PIMP my T43.

I have a 14.1" T43 (specs on sig). I'd like to upgrade it. How far will I be able to go and how?

*I would obviously upgrade the ram easily to 2GB.
*How can I upgrade the hard drive, how far can I go and compatability. My priority is capacity over speed.
*Processor. Would I be able to upgrade to the latest Santa rosa or maybe a core 2 duo?

Kindly post hints/advice on how to do this and where I can buy this stuff online, preferably amazon or newegg.

Thanks in advance.

 

As long as the hard drive uses an IDE interface, there will be no incompatibility issues.

The CPU is pretty much a dead end. You won't be able to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo processor. Perhaps you could upgrade to a faster Pentium M processor, but it's probably not worth it since you already have a pretty speedy 2.0GHz CPU.

 

You'll wanna do that.

*How can I upgrade the hard drive, how far can I go and compatability. My priority is capacity over speed.

I believe the T43 uses PATA hard drives, which is more widely known as UATA. Search for this at Newegg. You should be able to use any size hard drive.

*Processor. Would I be able to upgrade to the latest Santa rosa or maybe a core 2 duo?

No to both Santa Rosa and Core 2.

Kindly post hints/advice on how to do this and where I can buy this stuff online, preferably amazon or newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145048

I have 2 gigs of that in my T61. Love it. Can't go wrong with Crucial.

Depending on the size of the hard drive you want, I can only make a suggestion.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148073

That'll give you lots of room. It's on backorder right now, though.

Thanks in advance.

No problem. I hope this helps.

 

I would definitely get 1GB more of RAM as you said.

As sp00n said, the CPU is a dead end, and it isn't worth upgrading to a faster Pentium M either.

For HD unless you need more space, I would just leave it as is.

Bottom line is RAM is the best you can do it to give it a little more life. You can also OC the GPU to get better gaming performance, or do a clean install of windows to speed up things as well.

 

The ATi X300 had an option for 128MB? Are you talking about the Hypermemory or did you somehow solder on the 128MB version? just wondering

 

Don't get a new CPU. Get more RAM and a faster Harddrive. That'll give you the best noticeable difference. Faster harddrives in Notebooks are always noticeable.

 

Yeap, that's correct.

Unless you're going to be encoding video or doing something that DEPENDS on the processor, it's not worth speeding big bucks on a 'faster' processor.

 

I actually have a 128MB x300 in my Dell Inspiron 6000. I think it uses hyper memory, but to be honest I can't remember.

 

Most X300 (I'm not saying all) had 64megs on board then another 64 megs via Hypermemory. In the early T43s Lenovo had disabled HM in the BIOS limiting the card to only 64Megs, later they did re-enabled it, really didn't matter since most of the time the Driver overrode it and enabled HM anyway. Either way 64 128 it was a slow card. It was bested by a MR9700 with 64 megs.

Another word on the CPU. The fastest PM was the 2.16 anyway. There's no point in paying money for 166mhz. You'd get equal or better performance using the Dual Channel in the chipset to help speed up hypermemory and lowering latency of the chipset. What dual channel did to help in the old chipset wasn't really give more raw bandwidth (the FSB limited it) but help lower the chipset's response time(think NForce2). So get matching Sticks of RAM to enable dual channel, the old chipset doesn't have Async dual chan.