As soon as I read the title of this topic I thought that 2 GIG of RAM doesn't sound right 

I know that some Pentium 4 systems of the time could take 2 GIG but not many laptops did, that's sounds unusual, ok it was a long time ago now and my memory isn't what it used to be.

Will be interesting to see if 2 GIG does work in it, keep us posted 8pla.

Will two gigabytes of RAM really work in a Pentium 4 laptop?   



Honor and praise to IBM for making Thinkpads so well 

"Boot time could be a tad better, has to be said. "

Indeed, Data.  The boot time could be many tads better.   It is quite slow.  However, I can explain... I put the Thinkpad into diagnostics mode in the BIOS Setup Utility to do an extended POST which stands for Power On Self Test, if any readers are curious.

This way I could test out the new RAM chip upgrade.  And, I get a two and a half minute video for show off the 2GB RAM. Luckily, diagnostics mode is easily disabled in the BIOS Setup Utility. Yes, that is unusual, the text displayed on the screen.  I hope the US Govt doesn't come knocking at my door for breaking the restriction on RAM.  

This Thinkpad, is one of the last models manufactured by IBM, before they sold their PC division to China. I enjoy buying products from China.  The delivery may take longer, but the price, quality and customer service is excellent, in my experience.  It is funny how  Memory Companies advertise the Maximum Memory upgrade for an IBM Thinkpad A31 is 1024MB.

Carl,

That's an interesting story.  I wonder, how does Windows 10 work on classic laptops?

Classic laptops are readily available to rebuild for fun, as a  low cost hobby.

Used laptop components are available online at deep discounts.  So, I think classic

laptop rebuilds are easier on a budget than used netbooks are.


Netbooks are more streamlined.  Yet, the large keys on the keyboard are more comfortable

for me on classic laptops.   And, I like having access to legacy ports: The parallel port,

the serial port, etc. can be useful for development purposes in prototypical projects, I think.


 

As mentioned above, Lubuntu...

Works well on classic laptops.

It has low hardware requirements.

Reference:  

http://lubuntu.net/

Laptops are just crunched together more, and have more screws sometimes than desktops.
Wow, seems NewEgg has some refurbished laptops i3, i5 for about $100 bucks.  
No recommendation intended here.  Just surprising to see them priced that low.

Hey Data,

Funny you should make an allusion to that.      I was just about to refer to how amusing this laptop was, with 512 megabytes of random access memory... Waiting for it to finish processing was slow, but steady.  Now, with four times what it was originally designed for (two  gigabytes of random access memory)... Things are even more interesting.