SSD on Middleton BIOS isn't much faster than a Seagate XT hybrid drive.

I love my t61p mostly for the LG 1920x1200 screen. It's overclocked dual ida at 2.7ghz and undervolted using throttlestop, it runs fast and cool. I probably stress the machine pretty good running 3 -4 virtual machines and usually have some music or youtube video running.

For the past 2 years I've been running the Seagate Momentus XT 500gb. I had a M4 256mb SSD laying around from my desktop upgrade and finally installed it. The benchmarks say there is a huge difference. But usage wise for every day tasks there isn't really any difference. It's maybe minimally more responsive in the VMs.

I somehow scored an 841 on AS SSD benchmark. Eventhough SSDs have dropped quite a bit I think the 750gb XT might be a much better price/performance bargain for most t61 users with the middleton bios, I know I'd rather have the space as both drives perform very similarly imo.

 

Though my experiences with the MomentusXT (500 GB versions, 3 of them) have been sourly disappointing. Hardly better performance over a mechanical drive. There is no way an SSD feels the same as an SSD cached HDD. Boot up should be noticeably faster, my 160 GB Intel 320 series on my old desktop got a usable desktop in 17 seconds. On my now gone E6410 with a 500 GB XT drive, a usable desktop was 30 seconds. Heck with my RAID 0 SSD array in my Alienware, I had a usable desktop in 10 seconds.