How to prepare T500 for Win10?

I noticed a taskbar icon on my T500 inviting me to upgrade to Win10. This machine is now about 5 years old and still has stock 4Gb RAM and 350Gb harddrive, and I think if I upgrade these items it should run for a few years longer with Win10. So I'd appreciate some suggestions on what I need and how to do it. I was thinking:

1) Get a 500+Gb SSD and copy my existing system on that, and keep the old drive for emergency swap. --> What kind of SSD would be suitable for a T500, and what's the best way to transfer my system on one one? (never done that before)

2) How much RAM should I get for WIN10, and what kind is compatible with a T500?

TIAS

 

1) Pretty much most 2.5" SSD's on the market should be fine in your T500 though it would be capped at SATA 2 speeds (it still be a lot faster than standard HDD anyway).

When you purchase a SSD, assuming it's the full retail variety most come bundled with cloning software that mirrors what you have on the HDD. When I had my Crucial MX100 SSD it came bundled with a downloadable code for Acronis True Image cloning software so check with the product to see what software is bundled in.

2) You can get away with 4GB RAM but that largely depends on what you do. If you constantly multi-task and open a lot of browser tabs you probably find that amount will saturate very quickly. Consider bumping it up to 6GB or maybe 8GB if you're prepared to keep your T500 for a little longer in the future.

Your T500 naturally takes DDR3 1066MHZ (PC3 8500) modules but there are cases where faster rated RAMs such as DDR3 1333MHz (PC3-10600) etc. can work as well but I would check the manufacturer website just in case. Maximum RAM your T500 can take is about 8GB in total (2x 4GB) but don't bother going for 8GB single modules as it would unlikely work on your system.

 

This is sort of related to the topic, but what's the current state of Lenovo's modern apps for thinkpads? Are there equivalents for Power Manager and such that can be installed on older machines?

 

Power Manager died with Windows 7.

It can be installed with a tweak or two under W8.x but can lead to system stability issues.

I'm going to presume - since I don't know for a fact - that it won't resurrect in W10.

 

Mentioned this in another thread but I recently installed Windows 10 on a ThinkPad x300 with only 2GB of RAM - it's running remarkably well with a CPU that's slower than your T500.

I don't disagree with PatchySan's recommendation to add more RAM, but you might be surprised how well things run with your existing 4GB.