SL Series ThinkPad Laptops

[#1]

I found the trick to install SATA via:

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=SL_ThinkPads&thread.id=1426

Amazing how useful this forum is.

[#2]

I was planning to downgrade to WinXP. However I have found the Vista Basic runs decently on my SL400 (2Ghz, 2Gig RAM).

How much of an increase in performance would one expect from going to XP ? Also with the advent of Win 7 it should be easier to upgrade from Vista, so I might just bide my time with Vista and wait to upgrade.

Any thoughts ?

[#3]

Well, basically I'm against Vista in every turn... but if it isnt broken, DONT FIX IT

I've been having a lot of issues with Vista and that's why I went for a clean install with XP on my SL500.

If you really need an extra boost on your laptop, I'd suggest 2gigs more mem and getting rid of unneccessary programs; a lot easier and faster than going back to XP

Just my c2, cheers!

[#4]

Thank you so much for the step by step.  I am an IT Director and have 20 SL500's to image and i needed to erase the utility partition as well as get ride of all unwanted software.  I have an XP SP 3 volume lic DVD, and it still did not work until i followed your steps.  I kept getting a blue screen will hardware failure errors.

Thanks again!