I want to turn my T500 into a powerful desktop. Help!

Well I was planning on keeping my laptop and building a new desktop but now with funds very short, I am going to put off building a new desktop for a while. I am keeping the laptop but I would also like to use it as my desktop. I am using my machine for word processing, web, itunes and programming/development. I would like to make this laptop as fast as possible. So here is what I am planning on doing:

1.) Buy a docking station. I want the most powerful one with the most ports(ex: ps2, usb, etc). Which one should I be looking at?

2.) I definitely need a new harddrive. My current one is a 120GB 5400rpm drive and it is VERY slow. I definitely need higher capacity to store all my files and I need speed. Cost is definitely a concern here so I was planning on buying a 64 GB Crucial C300 SSD for my OS and main files and then use the ultrabay for a 320GB 7200rpm SATA drive(along with a harddrive adapter). I currently have a DVDRW drive in there, but I would keep the harddrive in there most of the time and then swap out this for my DVDRW when needed. What do you folks think? Any other options?

Any help would be great. I am planning on mostly getting all the stuff on ebay used. New if I can get it for a good price. Thanks.

 

1.- What does a docking station offer that you will need? There are several docking stations that Lenovo offers, so your answer to that question will dictate the ultimate choice. If the answer is just "more USBs" or "a more ergonomic stand," then you may not even need a dock.

2.- That sounds like a good plan. If you will be using the DVD drive frequently, you may consider buying an inexpensive USB external DVD drive (I got my Asus drive for $20 after rebate), so you can just keep your hard drive UltraBay in the T500.

 

If you're getting a SSD for the main bay, why not a 5400RPM for the ultrabay? Speed isn't as important for storage. It's not a great time to be buying any hard drives right now.

 

why is that?

 

Flooding in Thailand has constricted supply, which causes price to increase. I bought four 2TB desktop drives earlier in the year for about $60 a pop. Now, there's not a 2TB drive on NewEgg for less than $200.

 

ain't most harddrive made in China?

 

That's just like asking whether Fords are made in the US, and why they would be affected by the Japanese earthquake/tsunami. There's major hard drive part operations in Thailand (particularly WD, I think), so all hard drive prices are affected. Now would definitely not be the best time to buy a hard drive.

 

China does have factory for manufacturing hdd, but they are not enough to supply the global demand. Thailand's operation is crucial for keeping the price low, also the Thai workers are slighter cheaper then the Chinese, but not by much. HDD are produced in countries where wages are low, have easy access to other secondary factory operations (like manufacturing casing, etc), have good port facility.

 

If you want to do gaming and you don't find the graphics strong enough, you can consider doing a DIY e-GPU for increase gaming performance on an external monitor.

And yes as the others have stated above, now is a bad time to be purchasing a drive.

 

Thanks for the responses. Here are some further details of what I am planning:

1.) I need a docking station since I will be using my T500 as a desktop connecting to my monitor and fullsize keyboard, along with other peripherals like the printer and such. Other times I will be using it as a laptop moving it to other locations. Therefore a docking station will be very convenient. It will be used for more than a way to get more USB ports. I want the most powerful docking station, which one would that be?

2.) Zaz - you make an interesting point. I guess I could just use my 5400rpm drive for my ultrabay drive. That might be a good way to save me from buying another drive for my ultrabay drive. This ultrabay drive will mostly store my MP3s. Itunes will be using this drive a lot. I am not sure if it would be too slow for even this purpose? My OS, files and programs I use can probably fit on the SSD.

3.) I don't think I will need more GPU power. I don't really plan on planning any games.

4.) I really need this setup finalized, so I don't think I can wait to long for Harddrive prices to fall. How long will this drop take? I am looking at the 64GB Crucial SSD, and the price doesn't look that different to me than the past. What price is a good one to pay?

5.) I don't think I really need an external DVD drive, I use it so rarely I can deal with swapping it out when needed

6.) I definitely need a harddrive caddy for the ultrabay. There seems to be some cheap imitation ones out there that seem to work fine. Are these ok? I was looking at This one or this one. What do you think?

7.) The only problem I can see is that I have a logitech Z5500 stereo system hooked up to my desktop and I am not sure how I can hook this up to my docking station and laptop. Right now it is hooked up to my desktop by just using the desktop motherboard line outs, not optical or anything fancy. Anyone know what I can do?

 

you probably should get the eGPU solution, it will make your laptop graphics performance lot better if you run it in desktop mode.

 

Here's some input which I hope helps:

1: IIRC, you have two docking solutions available to the T500: the Advanced Mini-Dock, and the Advanced Dock. I have the mini-dock for my T500, which comes with four USB 2.0 ports, parallel(printer) port, serial port, DVI and VGA video outputs, S/PDIF optical audio, headphone and microphone ports, and a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port. The Advanced Dock differs by adding a small PCI-e slot(I haven't heard of people having much luck adding video cards in this, but sound cards, USB expansion cards, etc may work), a multi card reader, and an Ultrabay drive bay. However, the Advanced Dock is going to be -much- more costly than the mini-dock, which I think will suit your needs just fine. Keep in mind that many used docks won't have power adapters, so make sure to look at your auctions closely. The T500 shares the docking stations with the T400, T61, and T60-series notebooks. I got mine used for $40 or so; you should be able to find a comparable deal.

2: Your 5400RPM drive should be fine for general file and music storage for the time being. I'm running an SSD/HDD combo on my ThinkPad but a more telling observation might be my G73, where I have most of my games loaded on a 5400RPM HDD, and my OS drive is an Intel X25M SSD. There is a noticeable delay in loading/playing games, but my music and other files on the HDD work just fine with no perceivable lag.

3: As a quick question, does your T500 have switchable graphics or just the Intel X4500MHD integrated? If it has switchable graphics, you will have to switch to the ATI card in order to run the DVI input off of the dock. As an aside, the ATI HD3650 is still decent-ish for a notebook GPU and will handle most games that're a few years old or older just fine. I recall playing MW2 on mine at high-ish settings and native resolution enjoyably. It could possibly handle current titles with resolution and settings turned down a bit.

4: Unfortunately, there's really no way of telling when HDD prices will fall. As SSDs are made from different components than HDDs, their prices will likely remain static. It's a good performance upgrade. As far as price, I got mine used. The 160GB Intel X25M in my G73 was around $200USD when I bought it back in April, and I found my Samsung 256GB drive for a whopping $100 off of Craigslist, but that was a complete fluke as the seller didn't think it had any value since he couldn't get it to work with anything but a ThinkPad(Lenovo-branded drive).

5: That's the beauty of the Ultrabay. Whichever drive you need is a quick swap away. I think you can find an external enclusure for the DVD drive on eBay if you look hard enough. Not sure what they're going to cost.

6: I haven't heard of much(if any) difference between the cheap eBay caddies and the original Lenovo-branded ones. I sprung the extra cost for the OEM one, but in retrospect I should have saved the money and went for the cheap one.

7: Like I mentioned in my answer to your first question, the docks have both optical and line out audio inputs. All you'll need to do is plug in whatever you have on the dock and it'll play just fine.

 

1) Docking stations aren't more or less powerful, they're more or less feature-full. One of the docking stations has a higher wattage adapter, for those that need it, and digital video to support 3 way monitor outputs.

But before you get in to the new docks, I think you should be looking at Series 2.0 used/old stock docks. The Series 3 docks aren't compatible with Tx00 series except for the T400s. There is a USB dock that may work.. not sure if it has all the features you need.

http://shoplenovo.i2.com/SEUILibrar...D360E5473EB9DFEB639312E18E&hide_menu_area=yes

4. Go to newegg and check out hard drive prices. They're absolutely ridiculous. They're nearly double or triple at least. Wait! I wanted to build a raid backup solution but put it on hold. EDIT: The price hikes are on mechanical drives! SSD's are priced normally still.

6. Those will work. How lenovo wants to charge 50 bucks for a HDD caddy is crack-induced. Fit and finish may not be as good, but it will do what it's supposed to do.

7. Most docking stations have an audio out and mic in. So you need the opposite of a splitter, an mini RCA 2 into 1 jack. Have a mono rca cable going from the dock audio out into one of the jacks, and your desktop line out into the other jack, and then they both go into the speaker. That way you wont have to switch. It'll take audio from your desktop, and laptop, even at the same time. Which I don't recommend haha.

 

Thanks a lot guys! A special thanks to LegendaryKA8. Your answers really helped me to choose. I went for the 2504 Advanced mini dock with DVI(got the adapter and keys as well). After researching a lot this looked like the one I needed. I was thinking about the advanced dock, but it didn't really have what I needed. The plug in PCI-e seems gimmicky to me and I feel it might not work. This(what I bought) looks like a perfect fit.

It took a bit of research since it was hard to figure out which dock had the most features. The only thing I though was problematic was the hook up to my Z5500 stereo, but it has a SPDIF connection and I believe this is compatible with my Z5500. Is this the coaxial cable?

How about hooking up to 2 monitors down the road? Is that doable?

 

I don't have much firsthand experience with S/PDIF, but I want to say that the coaxial cable is what you want for interfacing... if I said the dock had an optical input I was definitely mistaken; it is coax. Once I move cross-country in a few months I'll be doing a similar setup with my machine, actually. I'd like to hear your experiences once you get your system set up.

Two monitors is definitely doable; I'm using two on my dock right now. You have a VGA output and a DVI output; simply hook up both to the dock and there you go. If you need more real estate another stopgap measure is to keep the dock on your desk and use the T500's panel as your second(or primary) monitor.If you weren't going to use them for gaming and HD video, you could also add additional monitors via USB monitor adapters. I did come across a video of multiple monitors running this way on an X200t here: 3 DisplayLink USB Video Adapters On One System - YouTube

Definitely interesting to see how well it performs on an X200t, as it has a less capable CPU than those that came in the T500.