NEED HELP WITH LAPTOP!

[Turnyface]

Hi All, I am in desperate need of help and need it FAST! (before Monday). Here's the dilemma: the aerospace engineering program at my school requires me to have a thinkpad to "complete the program." Why? I don't know. After several attempts talking to the program manager, I am left with, well, having to purchase a thinkpad. In order to keep the portability option open, I am opting for the W500 - big enough screen for my viewing pleasures and not like a brick in my pack. The problem is that the "best" processor I can get for the computer is the T9900 (duo core) and I want a quad core. Is it possible for me to put a quad core into my laptop where my bios will recognize it, my computer won't fry up, it fits into the correct slot, and I get the full benefits of a quad processor? If so, what would work? Is a 2.0 GHz quad better than a 3.06 GHz duo? Or, should I get the best mobile quad available now, the qx9300 at 2.53 GHz? Again, I don't want to fry my laptop. Secondly, I am looking for a top of the line SSD. Which one would you recommend shoving into my laptop? What is the fastest / biggest / baddest / mother*&^%ing SSD out there? Lastly, I am going to upgrade the ram from 1gb to 6 or 8. I am having trouble deciding how much I need, either 6 or 8 ddr3. What is some good ram out there that I could get the best performance out of for a solid amount of money? (not too much). I do a lot of work with MATLAB and mathematica. I also do a lot of video converting / encoding and play hours of Microsoft's Flight Simulator X. Recommended CPU?: Recommended SSD?: Recommended RAM?: Thanks for your time.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

Before Monday? you won't get it that fast from Lenovo website, you probably going to find a reseller or something, which severely limits your options.

Quad Core? Don't think the heat sink can manage the heat output on this cpu, the only Quad Core processor option is available in the much bigger W700 not the W500.

Quad Core is only good where your software knows how to manage workload over many processors. So you got find out the software is optimised for more than two cores. From Matlab point of view, the benefits of Quad doesn't seem to be much over the Core 2 Duo processors. But the amount of L2 ram affects the speed of calculation, as much of the matlab calculation are iterative, so fast a large L2 memory can help out. 

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/154745

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.matlab/browse_thread/thread/cd4941be3f01928f/f4d27cde23... 

here is an article that you should read.

I would recommend the T9900 for matlab, since you can't get Quad Core anyway, nor does it help unless you can code in such way that use quad cores.

SSD? Hum 256 gig is the largest i have seen, but i am not sure about the speed.  

Anything more than 3 gig requires 64 bit OS, 8 gig is better than 6 gig if funds permit.

Video converting/encoding.

Intel engineers reckon that CPU does more work than GPU. While, more recently GPU is playing and more important parts for such work. 

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

i think your need is better fulfilled by the W700 than a W500, but the only problem is the weight of the W700.