T21 upgrade

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stone · #1 Post by **stone** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:30 pm

Hi,

Just bought myself my first thinkpad (+ dock and wireless PCMCIA 208.11g card) on ebay for €200/$254 incl. shipping
It's so much better then my broken Dell C800: the trackpoint, thinklight (very useful!!) , the weight ...

But it is a bit slow and i want to upgrade it ... what's the best upgrade i can do? More RAM or bigger/faster HD or faster CPU?
I use it for office work, browsing the web, IM, music.

Specs:
Thinkpad T21
Pentium 3 750MHz - 100MHz
2*128Mb RAM - 100MHz
10Gb HD - 4200RPM
Windows XP

Thanks in advance.

#2 Post by **dorronto** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:50 pm

Welcome aboard this Forum....

More ram (512 max) and then a 5400rpm hard drive. You'll be surprised at the difference!

Ron

#3 Post by **rkawakami** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:09 pm

Second vote for increasing system RAM... Of course I work for a company that makes memory modules so my opinion is slightly skewed

. In all seriousness, your best first step is to max out the memory (if money allows). This will enable you to minimize the disk thrashing that will occur as your CPU tries to access the swap file on your hard drive (virtual memory). If your uses are only for word processing, surfing and MP3 files, then I would only upgrade the hard drive if it were to increase the size, not the speed. In other words, I rate storage capacity higher than rotational speed for the types of usage you refer to. You're always going to wish you have more space on your drive; you probably aren't going to notice that your multi-page, graphics intense, word processing document got saved 1 second faster. Just MHO.

(edit: Another thing I just thought of when looking at your system specs... Turn off all of the "eye candy" that Windows XP insists on using if it's a default install. Search the net for suggestions on how to minimize Windows usage of CPU cycles. Check your Startup folder to see if there's processes that are being launched that you rarely use. Tune your operating system to run lean. Best part of this advice... doing all of that is FREE!)

Berny · #4 Post by **Berny** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:01 pm

2*128Mb RAM - 100MHz

=256 MB RAM. not too bad for XP, as long as you only make office and surfing. 512 MB RAM will be better of course, but I doubt you will notice much performance increase during office work.

10Gb HD - 4200RPM

10 GB is too small if you increase the RAM to 512 MB. Swapfile and hibernate file will consume 1 GIG of HDD space alone !!!
Go for a 60 or 80 GB HDD with 5400 RPM. then you'll have enough space for some MP3s.

faster CPU?

first of all check if your power managment settings are at "max. performance". this will give you full CPU speed (but also the shortest battery time).

stone · #5 Post by **stone** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 7:23 am

After reading the above posts and more research i did some serious cleaning, tweaking and optimizing.(Talking about an infected lappy ...

)
I think the best upgrade will be a new HD because i'm currently using only 105MB RAM (winamp, wordxp and IE are running) and still 7,87Gb HD space used

Sorry for the stupid question

but what kind of HD do i need? i know it's 2.5" but which interface, max GB, ... ?

btw, is 59°C normal for a mobile CPU

? and whats the clicking noise under the left side of my keyboard?

- Paul

dsvochak · #6 Post by **dsvochak** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:18 am

what kind of HD do i need? i know it's 2.5" but which interface, max GB, ... ?

You can use virtually anything available on the market, provided it's a PATA drive. See this for a discussion of drives: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=24116 and this for tips on how to transfer your system to a new drive: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27721

whats the clicking noise under the left side of my keyboard

Likely it's noise from the hard drive which is located behindi the I/O plugs on the front left side of the machine. There is a link in the "Cloning how to" to the hardware maintenance manual which has clear explanations of what is where.

is 59°C normal for a mobile CPU

See this thread for a recent discussion of this issue: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=23699

stone · #7 Post by **stone** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 2:31 am

Thank you for the responses!

I'll order this one next week

http://www.azerty.nl/producten/product_ ... b-oem.html

- Paul

Berny · #8 Post by **Berny** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:25 pm

good choice ! enjoy.

T21 upgrade

T21 upgrade

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