Upgrading My Laptop

[smartguy10]

I am thinking of upgrading the Laptop's few components . Can anyone recomend whats the best brand for these :-
a) Want to upgrade the HD from 120 to 500GB 7200 RPM.
b) Memory is already 2GB may be go to 4GB .

What else I can upgrade. Overall laptop is pretty solid.

[Peak2Peak]

What laptop do you have?

[smartguy10]

Its T60 ThinkPad T60 8744-5BU

[Peak2Peak]

Both Seagate & Hitachi produce 500GB 7200RPM (9.5mm) drives - My personal preference would very much lean towards Seagate as I have had good luck with these drives.

[Norway Pad]

b) Memory is already 2GB may be go to 4GB .

What else I can upgrade. Overall laptop is pretty solid.

Be aware that there is a chipset limitation at 3GB RAM. So if you install 4GB, your OS will only see and be able to use 3GB. So theoretically you only have to buy one 2GB module and keep one of the 1GBs you already have. And before you ask: No, there is no workaround or patch/fix for this limitation.

It must be said that you will get a little performance increase by installing two identical memory 2GB modules instead of the 1+2GB configuration to make 3GB. But I am not sure if this is something that is noticeable for the average user, and if it's worth the cost of the extra 2GB module. Others here can probably say more about that.

Another well recommended upgrade is a SSD hard drive. Worth considering before any other hardware upgrade. The SSD will be the next upgrade for my T60, probably even before I do the 2 -> 3GB RAM upgrade.