you can get dvdrw but depends on model, have to do bit of searching ebay etc i got a spare 40gb if interested

Also, can I upgrade the CD/RW drive to a DVD/RW combo drive, or are laptop drives not standard across the board like normal PC ones for example?

If I get a chance I'll remove the memory stick and see if there's another one underneath it or something.

there should be two, have you looked underneath it? if not then it'll defo take a single stick of 256

It looks like there is only one slot for memory stick?

no way you crap video m8 - its a laptop lol

memory generally on ibm's if you can find / afford two sticks of 256mb then it will take 512 - HDD max it will take it 40gb

i used to engineer shitty ibm laptops allday - hope it helps

Well fairly recently I sold my decent laptop :o and bought my mate's dinosaur of a laptop, I want to upgrade it because it's about as fast as a 1.0 Corsa...

It's an IBM Thinkpad i series Type 1171-NM1.

It's current spec:

Intel Celeron 700
128Mb RAM
10GB hard drive
4Mb video RAM
24x CD/RW drive
Windows XP Professional SP2 (originally had Windows ME but it got FUBAR'd)

I understand that the RAM can only be upgraded to a maximum of 192Mb, but what about the HDD, how can I tell if there is an upper size limit for this? I was looking at getting a faster spinning 40Gb HDD.

Also, is there any way I can get around the crap 4Mb video memory at all?

Thanks.