Lenovo W500 (4062-5FU): SSD (and perhaps RAM) Upgrade

Hello,

My father is using a Lenovo W500 (40625FU) that was bought from US. The machine has 320GB hard drive (7200 RPM) and 4GB RAM. He is using Ubuntu's latest LTS version (14.04) on it. He is not an advanced user and only does tasks such as watching videos/films, browsing on the internet, storing and viewing travel photos, listening to music and so on and so forth. He's been using the computer since the end of 2012. Before then, I was using from the end of 2009 to 2012. Under the warranty, once the motherboard was replaced. There were no other major issues apart from that.

In order to extend the lifetime of the computer and provide my father a better performance, I consider buying upgrading his computer with an SSD and maybe doubling its RAM. I have got questions though:

1) The RAM specification looks clear as "DDR3-1066/PC3-8500". I think the upgrade will be from 2x2GB to 2x4GB. Can I get any recommendation for RAM? Any brand/model?

2) I see there are different SSD types such as SATA and SATA III. What sort of SSDs are compatible with Lenovo Thinkpad W500? Any recommend brand?

3) Is it worth to upgrade given the type of usage?

Your help is much appreciated.

Thank you,

Ege

 

1) Just choose any reputable RAM vendor that offers a lifetime warranty on their modules, then select according to price whichever is cheaper. Kingston, Crucial Micron and Corsair are some examples that you can go for.

2) The W500 supports SATA II bandwidth so I wouldn't get too worked up on the read/write numbers of the latest SATA III SSD drives because quite simply it cannot reach those maximum throughput figures. That doesn't mean you can't select a SATA III drive, they should be backwards compatible and still be very fast compared to a mechanical spindle based hard drive even when restricted in SATA II mode.

At this point you should be looking at capacity, reliability and value. How much data does your father store on his drive? If not a lot then you could get away with a 128GB-240GB SSD which are relatively affordable right now.

From experience I have good luck with Samsung, Plextor, Intel and Sandisk SSD's in my ThinkPad systems while I had a bad one with a Corsair SSD. If I was to pick a budget SSD drive now I would choose the 240GB Sandisk SSD Plus drive for value and capacity, it even comes with a three year warranty too despite the low purchase price.

3) I think it's worth doing a SSD upgrade, the difference between an SSD and a mechanical hard drive is like night and day. Once you go SSD it's very hard to revert back to a mechanical drive and become impatient!

As for RAMs it depends how much multitasking your father does, as internet browsers these days are quite RAM intensive (especially with a lot of tabs) it maybe a good idea to give it a bit of breathing space and double up, especially since DDR3 prices are starting to bottom out before DDR4 becomes mainstream.

 

Thank you very much for the reply and information.

I consider the following as RAM and it costs £32 (~$46.5) on here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Komputerbay...1454791650&sr=8-3&keywords=DDR3-1066/PC3-8500

There is a deal for 240GB Sandisk SSD Plus as £44.99 (~$65.4):
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sandisk-240gb-ssd-plus-44-99-dabs-2388830

The total amount exceeds $100. Should I invest or wait a while to get a new laptop around £250 (~$360) for my father since he is a daily user?

Thank you.