T400 upgrade- a few questions

I want to upgrade my T400- 5400 RPM, 250 GB HDD; 4 GB 1066Mhz RAM- to a Crucial Bx100 120GB SSD and 2x4GB RAM ( this). I have a few questions:

1) Will this RAM work with the T400? I know that the T4o0 supports 8GB RAM, but I also know that there are some sets of RAM that are a bit more temperamental.
2) My usage will be schoolwork- writing documents, browsing and using Onenote. Will it be a waste of money to upgrade the RAM? Should I upgrade to an SSD or more RAM?

Thanks in advance.

 

Just upgrade to SSD and enjoy.

 

Thanks for the quick answer! Do you think the BX100 is a good SSD? The only one that's cheaper where I live is the Transcend SSD 370 (15$ difference). How do they compare in performance and power consumption?

 

I have Crucial MX100 and it has been working without any problems, I have no experience with Transcend drives, however, you can compare any SSDs with the use of the link below.
http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Transcend-SSD370-128GB-vs-Crucial-BX100-120GB/2699vsm23372

 

OK, I'll go with the BX100. According to this review, it is the SSD with the lowest power consumption, and while performance isn't top of the line it's certainly decent at least.

 

Definitely get the BX100 over the SSD370. Performance is a draw but the much better power efficiency = longer battery life of the Crucial will actually be felt in everyday usage.

 

Do you already have 8GB of RAM? Maybe I read your initial post incorrectly.

Either way I think you're fine with 4GB. Nothing you're doing necessitates more than that.

 

Yeah, I currently have 4GB and I thought that's enough- until I started wondering if the constant hanging and stuttering when opening files might be the RAM. After reading a bit, I think that an SSD will solve these issues. The T400 isn't very new at all, but it's still enough for everyday usage IMO; therefore, there's no reason to throw it out and buy a new laptop if I can make it just as fast for ~70$.

 

The T400 from circa 2008 is still a good platform for the tasks you do.

The SSD is a no-brainer for ~$70 - but it won't make the T400 perform faster. It will just make it more responsive. While this may seem like a small distinction for your workloads, it has real world differences that you might not expect to see after upgrading just the SSD.

If you can install Win8.1x64Pro and put in 8GB RAM (2x 4GB in dual channel), along with the SSD, the system will be transformed and actually have more performance than what you have now or by just simply adding the SSD too.

This performance increase will help if you're multitasking your indicated workloads or just navigating the O/S.

The key points are that you need both upgrades to fully optimize the system and that you need an O/S that can take advantage of greater than 4GB RAM.

My opinion is that the system you have is worthy of both upgrades.

Good luck.

 

Agreed.

We have a R500 - your T400's bigger/cheaper sibling - with T9400, 8GB RAM and an Intel 730 SSD which serves as everyone's beater machine and is still holding up remarkably well. For the needs that you've described, T400 should do just fine.

Happy upgrading.