IBM T41, Windows Question

Hey there, I am going to get an IBM T41 soon from ITXchange.

Now I am wondering if I upgrade the Ram to 2GB and the HDD 80GB or higher, how would Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit(x86) run ?

(And I know that the size of HDD does not really affect performance at all, I am not new to PC's & Laptops)

I am assuming that I won't have Aero due to the ATi 7500 and lack of drivers for the OS but it is not a big deal.

Here are the specs of the one I am getting from ITXchange the exact way that they will ship it to me:

ThinkPad T41, Pentium M 1.6 GHz/1 MB, FSB 400 MHz, RAM 512 MB,
HD 1x40 GB, DVD, LAN EN, Fast EN, Gig EN, Modem, Win XP Pro, Black, TFT 14.1" XGA (1024 x 768)

I also plan to get an Internal 802.11a/b/g card from an IBM factory outlet or CL(Craigs List)

Any suggestions/Advice is very much appreciated as this is going to be my first lappy, and the only gaming I plan on doing is Halo 1 or Half Life 2 Death Match and leave the real gaming to my PC!

 

You should get as much RAM as possible; 2GB is ideal, and probably the maximum allowed for your model. Vista runs pretty well, but it is very slow on boot up. The Pentium M (mine is 1.7GHz with 2MB of cache) is barely enough to meet Vista's needs.

Wrt the hard drive, you should plan to have enough space given that Vista will take around 15GB freshly installed. If you have less than 60GB of data, an 80GB HD should be fine.

 

The most important factor for boot times is the hard drive speed not the CPU. I think XP will offer you better performance.

 

The specs on that are very similar to my old Thinkpad T40 (Pentium M 1.5Ghz, 40GB HD, Radeon 7500, 14.1" XGA, upgraded to 1GB). It may not even be possible for you to get to 2GB on that machine. On my T40, only 1 of the 2 DIMM slots was user accessible and it used standard DDR. Regular DDR memory is somewhat difficult to find these days, and I don't think it even comes in 2GB modules. Therefore, I think 1.5GB is about the most you can get.

That being said Vista will run, but you won't get Aero and XP would probably run a lot better. If you are intent on going the Vista route, I would suggest that you get the fastest hard drive available, because Vista has a bad tendency of thrashing the hard disk to populate its superfetch cache.

Gaming on that machine will also be difficult. Half Life 1 will run fine (I used to play CS on it occasionally), but Half Life 2 and other source games will not, the Radeon 7500 is just inadequate. I was able to play Rome Total War on it as well, but even remotely modern games like Civ4 will probably be unplayable, and in my experience had some really bad artificats because that is only a Direct X 7card (most newer games REQUIRE a Direct X9c card to render properly).

Despite those limitations, I highly recommend that you get the T41. The entire T4x line are fantastic machines. They are very solidly built, get respectable battery life (you might want to get a new one, I got a spare from CalCellular), have fantastic keyboards, and are very effective for office applications, coding, web browsing, and similar tasks.

 

I know for a fact that the Second ram slot is located under the keyboard of the T41 so for me, accessing it is not an issue.

And thanks for your help so far guys, as a side note, do you know of any better performance laptops for around $300-325 CAD as the T41 will cost me $323 CAD

also it is a brand new/ Factory refurbished in 100% Like new working order.

 

You could certainly find laptops that are better performers at that price range. However, it is probably impossible to find a laptop that is as well built, as pleasant to use, and with as a good of a keyboard as the T41 for anywhere near that price point. I used my T40 for the better part of 5 years because it was so much better than any non IBM/Lenovo laptop for build/keyboard quality.

 

At first I wanted a Dell because I heard that their laptops are solid and have great customer support. But then my stepdad let me use His R60e and I loved IBM from there on.

Also I don't Intend to use this lappy for more than some Web Browsing, Traveling to and from Dads place, Movies, and giving Internet to my 360 when @ parties!

 

I agree. My T42 has outlasted my AMD/Nvidia HP laptop, and will probably outlast my current Dell. The T42 is what a laptop should be.

 

Agreed, my T42 is a freaking beast. It actually ran vista quiet well, it had a fast 1.8Ghz Pentium M Processor, 2GB's of Ram, and a 7200 RPM hard drive. Even though I like my T400, I feel the build quality is not as good as my T42 (keyboard flex, plastic palmrest flex). It was even able to run the Aero interface with the Radeon 9600

 

Do any of you guys know what games I could play with the Above IBM T41?

I just am curious if I can run BF2 on low or something, but still playable?

 

Basically, anything less demanding than Half-life 2. Diablo II, Starcraft, AoE series, games like that. The Radeon 7500 won't run 3D games very well apart from old ones like the original HL.