T400 Upgrade plans. Sugestions?

So, I recently got the X201, not to replace my T400, but to travel with instead.

Now that the X201 is up and running with all the stuff I need for work, I figured I'd do some upgrades to the T400. I have 8GB of RAM sitting in wait for the 500GB hard drive to arrive.

The only thing I have left to figure out is what OS to put on my main machine. I've been wanting to have Linux full time on one of my machines (to finally jump in and learn). But I can't ignore the improvements of Windows 7. I'd do a 64 bit install if I did go that route.

Any thoughts?

 

You could dual boot with Windows 7 and Linux.

 

I'd have to make Linux first in the GRUB. I'd want that to be the primary option. I've dual booted in the past and never used the Linux side. . . . . Probably my best option.

 

dual boot is probably your best choice. You would have the best of the both world.

 

Best upgrade after Win 7 would be ssd primary drive, large hdd in the ultra-bay.

 

In this day and age I would not recommend dual boot for your stated purpose, to learn.

Instead, I would download a virtualization product like VirtualBox (free). See VirtualBox Downloads

After that, see VMWare Workstation at VMware Workstation: Run Multiple OS Including Linux & Windows7, on Virtual Machines. That's what I use on Windows 7.

And of course if you have a MSFT TechNet subscription, run Windows Server and Hyper-V. They run fine on the T400.

 

Seconded—highly.

VMware is better than VirtualBox, but you get what you pay for here.

I don’t recommend this. You lose many notebook-specific capabilities—power saving, Bluetooth and others—when you run Hyper-V.

 

Regarding running hyper-v, I was making some assumptions there. First, that the person doing the install is going to use either dual boot or boot from vhd. Second, that because it wasn't going to be the primary day-to-day OS used, sleep states and a few other features like bluetooth wouldn't be an issue.

My third recommendation is certainly the most complex and is pretty silly if all you want to do is run an instance of UBUNTU, SLED, RED HAT, or whatever distro floats your boat. Stick with VirtualBox or VMWare if that's the case.