Windows Vista (or 7) on ThinkPad T30

[Manuel]

Hi, my father uses an old ThinkPad T30 which, after 13 years, works perfectly. The model is 2366-R7G (CPU Pentium 4M 2Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD, GPU ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, Windows XP Pro SP3). The problem is that my father is a heavy Dropbox user and Dropbox will drop support for Windows XP as of August 29th.

I would like to buy a new machine for him, but he's very old and he literally loves his old computer. So I'm considering a bold alternative: upgrade Windows (Linux is too different for my father).

Is it possible to install Windows Vista 32 bit or Windows 7 32 bit on T30? Where to find the drivers?

[Unknown_K]

The GPU might not be supported and 1GB of RAM would be too slow for Vista/7.

[hhhd1]

try to get a T60 or T61, the difference between them and T30 shouldn't be too much.

[brchan]

Vista or 7 will run painfully slow on even the fastest T30.

The better option is to install a lightweight, easy to use linux distro such as BunsenLabs Linux or Linux Mint Debian Edition and then install Dropbox on it. Performance will be slightly better and there is no need to run anti-virus, which are some bonuses.

[TPFanatic]

Light OSes and light software make a world of a difference on older hardware... do what ^^^ said.

[kfzhu1229]

It is only personal opinions. I am using a ThinkPad A30 and T23 in Windows 7 x86 SP1 with firefox and added Intel 2200BG wireless. A30 has 1.2ghz and T23 has 1.13ghz Pentium III - M. Both with maxed 1GB PC133 SDRAM. Windows 7 takes 1 minute to start. T23's S3 GPU is somehow struggling but I feel like even A30 with the first generation of Radeon (Radeon 7k with 16mb RAM) works just fine. Do not expect Windows Aero, but basic tasks works pretty fine to me. Pentium 4M 2ghz is somehow faster and somehow slower than Pentium III - M 1.2ghz.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... &start=659
For Dropbox it takes more patience but tasks can be done.

[ajkula66]

Hi, my father uses an old ThinkPad T30 which, after 13 years, works perfectly. The model is 2366-R7G (CPU Pentium 4M 2Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD, GPU ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, Windows XP Pro SP3).

If both RAM slots are working, you should upgrade to 2GB.

Is it possible to install Windows Vista 32 bit or Windows 7 32 bit on T30? Where to find the drivers?

While it's possible to install Vista and W7 on these machines, the result is likely to be less-than-optimal. There are only "tweaked" GPU drivers which will affect the system's performance one way or another. All other drivers are available from either Windows Update or by clicking on the "drivers" link at the top of this page.

An *extremely* lightened-up and tweaked W7 32 will work, but it might be quite painful to use nevertheless, especially considering that these systems utilize PATA drives.

Good luck.

[Mike Blake]

Forced to by circumstances, I've fallen back to using my old T30 (recent seperate thunderstorms fried both my T400 AND T42). And this indeed has Vista on it, so it can be done, but I don't recommend it.

I got it years ago when I was still doing tech support and thought a cheap TP with Vista would be a useful learning tool. But I never had to support Vista, and it ran like a dog on the T30, so I put it aside.

Now I'm using it again and it's actually painful. To get it to run at all I have to boot into safe mode w/ networking, then use Firefox in its own safe mode.

I can understand your dad will probably miss that funky notch cut out of the upper left corner, but something more modern (or a FrankenPad in T30 clothing) is the way to go.

Ajkula66, you've jogged my memory -- isn't the T30 the one where one of the memory slots were often bad? Another consideration.

[jronald]

I have an X120e that was painfully slow on W7. It runs Mint Mate with Midori for a browser just fine. Might be worth a try.

Ron

[ajkula66]

Ajkula66, you've jogged my memory -- isn't the T30 the one where one of the memory slots were often bad? Another consideration.

Yes.

[kfzhu1229]

If so you are better off using a T23... The P4 isnt too much faster than PIII 1.2ghz if any faster. P4's advantage is that it runs latest version of Chrome, Spotify, etc. while PIII runs cooler. Their max memory spec. should be identical since one slot on T30 is done