Extending the life of an old IBM Thinkpad X.41 laptop

When travelling I use an IBM Thinkpad X.41 from 2005 ,the model is described here

The original spec was :

• Processor: Intel Pentium M LV 758 (1.50GHz, 90nm technology, 2MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB)
• Wireless: Intel PRO 2200BG or 2915ABG, Bluetooth optional
• OS: Windows XP Home/Pro
• Screen: 12.1″ TFT XGA (1024 x 768)
• RAM: 256MB or 512MB PC-4200 DDR-2 SDRAM (Upgradeable to 1536MB Max)
• Hard Drive: 1.8″ 20GB, 30GB, 40GB or 60GB @ 4200RPM
• Battery: 2.5 hr (4-cell) 5.7 hr (8-cell) (extended-life battery option adds 3 – 4 hours of life on top of quoted numbers for each respective battery)
• Ports: 2 USB 2.0 (1 IBM Powered USB 2.0), Infrared, expansion bus (for optional ThinkPad X4 Ultra Base Doc); external display; AC adapter; RJ-11 modem port;RJ-45 ethernet port; audio: headphone/line-out, external microphone.
• Slots: 1 PCMCIA card slot, 1 Secure Digital card slot
• Dimensions: 10.5″ x 8.3″ x 1.06″ (w x d x h) (with 8-cell battery it’s 10.5″ x 9.3″ x 1.06″)
• Weight: 2.7lb with 4-cell battery, 3.2lb with 8-cell battery
• Expansion: ThinkPad X4 UltraBase dock optional

This blog is a bit of a history of this unit, and the various upgrades and tweaks I have made to it to keep it going and performant.

The laptop in question was given to my wife when she worked for a company in 2004. the company was later taken over by another IT Company, who made computers. When their laptops were renewed the old IBM units were not needed and the laptop's were given to  their owners. This example then sat in a draw in our attic from 2005 until around 2013.

Our Son wanted to travel and work abroad, before going to University and needed a laptop to work, socialise etc. We decided he'd use the old IBM , on the basis that if it broke or was stolen it was not a heavy loss, and we'd get him a macbook when he returned to start at University.

I installed a new Kingspec PATA 64GB SSD drive in it, and Ubuntu as the OS. He travelled for a year , teaching English as a foreign language and using the laptop to deliver  slide material using Open office via the laptops single VGA external port. It was rather a slow machine by then , being a humble 1.5Ghz pentium processor, but it saw him through until he returned in 2014. The laptop returned to the attic.

When I retired in 2019 and returned the company provided laptop, I realised I didn't have a machine for travelling and occasional use and so out came the trusty old X.41 again.

I decided to make a few further tweaks to it. The old battery was holding little charge, so I got a new double sized , 8-cell battery from ebay. These seem to be creeping up in price, but at the time it was around £20.

While Ubuntu had been fine, its interface was a bit cumbersome on the small form factor X.41 display  a 12.1″ TFT XGA (1024 x 768), and after looking at Linux distributions for smaller/older machines I settled on peppermint . Peppermint has a nice clean look and feel, seems to run well on this laptop and assumes you will run mail and office tools via a browser, rather than as local native apps, which suits me as a big user of Google tools. 

It was easy to install from a bootable USB stick , you can run from this to see how the OS works before committing to install on the hard drive. I should add that I'm very comfortable with Linux, having been using it or earlier Unix OS's since 1984, but I think anyone could get on with peppermint. 

The install of Linux seemed to have no issues with getting sound working or using the Wifi network on the laptop. I have had some issues with Bluetooth, but that's not a major issue for me, the laptop has a headphone socket if I need headphones or speakers.

Even with an SSD and a lightweight Linux distro this laptop is old and you can't ignore the fact that a 1.5Ghz Pentium, with 1.5Gb of memory is quite a low spec. This manifests itself in a couple of ways, and I have had to compromise here. 

Watching video content is a bit of a struggle and has some freezing. Nor would this laptop be good for large image or video editing. Website payloads have got larger and more complex and sometimes web browsing a bit slower than I'd like but is usable.

A few additional things I have done to improve performance are :

• Swap space. I don't. I configured the laptop not to have a swap partition
• Disabled desktop effects. 
• I use Chromium as my browser , the open source code tree of chrome. I found that disabling "hardware acceleration" made the performance better on this old machine. Try it and see, but  i think when resource is limited, it's better without. I also use Ublock origin as an ad and tracking blocker

NOTE since version  81 Chrome/Chromium performance has got a lot better when handling multiple tabs

Based on my experiences covered in my blog on Gaming using a Dell latitude, I also configured the BIOS, and disabled or hid every feature I didn't need, including Serial/parallel ports, Infrared communications, wired ethernet controller, docking station features for dual monitors. My reasoning is that the less features the Kernel has to deal with and manage IRQ's for , the better . I configured power management for maximum performance when AC power is present. 

Finally I spent some time pondering what to do with the PCMCIA slot, which was empty ? back when PCMCIA was the primary means of adding capabilities to laptops there were all kinds of devices available in this format. I pondered getting a sound card , thinking it might unburden the onboard sound card ? In the end  I decided to get a blanking plate and fit it with some extra ventilation holes. I bought a cheap plastic blanking insert, which I managed to jam half way in. When I finally got it out , the slots door was jammed open. I pondered this and decided to live with it. So I have a jammed open PCMCIA slot with no card or cover. OK it might get a bit dusty but it also allows some airflow inside the laptop which helps, and I can blow out with air duster from time to time.

PCMCIA slot with open door

The most recent thing I have done was to replace the CMOS battery. I was noticing sometimes warning messages when booting and its probably well overdue. it was easy to do I followed this video from Ultimate DIY https://youtu.be/L6LnYbOPJjs,  it was pretty simple, though easier as I ordered a 3-wire battery online from ebay, so didn't need to do any soldering.

While I had the keyboard removed I blew air duster through the fan and board to remove dust and crumbs. It seems a little quieter now , perhaps the fan is less stressed.

I do love this old laptop. It's small, still looks very modern, but in a different way to the world of sleek aluminium airbooks etc. It has useful features too, the external SD card reader is handy, for rapidly copying digital images.

One final tweak was to use a wireless mouse. While the red tracker pad works OK, I still struggle a bit with it. I use a small Logitech wireless mouse , which works well and the small slimline receiver neatly fits in one of the two USB ports. It's interesting how the laptop feels a lot faster when used with the external mouse.