I have a ThinkPad X200 that I bought new from Lenovo when you placed your order and they built it to your specs in early 2008. It was very expensive -- I even sprang for the cellular option (3G, before we knew about Gs). Also with the docking station, which I used every day, all day, as my office desktop. Undocked the computer and brought it home each night.
Replaced the 160gb hard drive with a faster 1tb one 12 years ago. Only had 4gb RAM because 4 more would have been something like $700. Ran Linux and TDE the whole time. And kept it in very good shape.
So tonight I sprang for two 4gb memory strips for an 8gb machine (now $35 rotal) and splurged $88 for a 1tb Samsung 870 Evo ssd. I did not buy it a cellular account, so it will finish its days with its cellular circuitry unused. I've never even seen a Linux cellular application.
Anyway, I hope it will now be a lot faster. The empty ExpressCard slot might so-remain, because there's nothing that goes there -- two extra USB-3 ports, or an SD card reader, or maybe an M.2 PCIe sata drive -- that would be more than spending money just to spend money. At least there's an excuse for the upgrades. Over the life of the machine, they might save me as much as half an hour. I may have overvalued my time.
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