Will turbo memory ever fail?

Hi,

I have a T61 with intel turbo memory. I'm wondering if it will ever fail? I keep reading about the limited number of read/write cycles. I use my T61 very heavily, and I plan on using it probably for another 10 years. I wonder if it will fail before then?

If it does every fail, can I pull the turbo memory out of the T61? Can it be replaced by me?

Thanks! Sorry for the simple question...
betty

 

Don't know about 10 years. A lot of other things will fail by then, like your battery for instance. But should it fail, it is relatively cheap and easily replaceable by a customer.

 

IIRC the ITM module occupies a PCIe slot which is user-replaceable, though I would imagine that in a few years you wouldnt want/need a new laptop, and as Nicodemus stated, a few other components will likely die within 10 years.

 

To be honest, it doesn't do much. If you're low on ram, upgrade it, and just remove the turbo memory module.

 

Yes, I would also second fabarati's suggestion.
If you do not want to open your notebook, it's probably also enough to simply turn turbo memory off...

 

If it does fail, it’s designed to be a temporary read-only copy of what’s on the HD—so you should have minimal issues.

 

Great, thanks.

 

here's a link for lenovo servicing videos. If your uncomfortable, this site shows basically everything you need to know to take apart the laptop.
http://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/ion/

 

Oh wow. This is unbelievable. I don’t know any manufacturer that has gone to these lengths. As a result, I’m impressed and even happier with my first Lenovo purchase—and I don’t even have the notebook yet!

 

lol well most manufacturers have service videos but Lenovo just made it more convenient for service centers and us [the awesome (Lenovo) customers] with such an awesome site. I'm sure they'll update that site with the newly release series (since x300 is on their already).

 

If the question is "ever", then Yes as all electronics do. Microsoft designed the flash cache feature in Vista for notebooks with 10 year life span (of the flash drive) in mind. I hope Intel's implementation does not degrade it. On the other hand, you can buy 4G ram for about 65 bucks...

 

Just a comment about Turbo Memory. The point isn't really to enhance performace, it is to increase battery life, even if by just a few percent by limiting reads and writes to the disk. I just wish the modules came in larger sizes. So buying extra ram really isn't a replacement for ITM, although more ram is never a bad thing.

 

There's just one problem with that: It doesn't really do anything. Even Intel themselves unoffically confirmed that.

 

I see ITM possibly going like many MS technologies. You never know, now you might get 10-20 minutes extra battery life with it after it is trained and it seems pretty pathetic. A year or two down the line the third iteration will be ironed out for the most part and it will be worthwile. Of course the whole technology might be chucked the bin.

I'm just pointing out the purpose is all.

 

The training doesn’t work very well. So much so that Intel has created a silly user pinning application that allows you to decide what goes on the module—and that’s just what I always wanted, another application I need to babysit where the power of the computer should be able to do this by itself. The truth of that matter is, like you said, in a year or two we’ll all have huge SSD drives—and ITM will need to reinvent itself or disappear.

At the end of the day, it does improve things, but the improvement is slight with more memory (and SuperFetch). One of the main reasons HP and others decided not to use this technology is because Vista can only use ONE ReadyBoost device at a time—and they felt using whatever available memory card/stick the user had would be better than forcing them into the 2GB card that was built into their computer. At the end of the day, Lenovo is giving you choice.

 

I don't know, the problem there is that if a PC hibernates it invalidates the readyboost file on external thumb drives, SD cards, and such forcing the file to be recreated when the PC wakes up. ITM does not suffer this issue. 2GB integrated is bigger then what I have seen availble so far as an add-in card.

The best of both worlds would have been a BIOS option to turn the thing off.

 

This issue has been addressed in Vista SP1.

 

See, they're making it better already!




Thanks for the info! I didn't know that was fixed