Advice on upgrading my laptop

[rainth]

Hello, I have an old Thinkpad T43 and I would really appreciate some advice on the best upgrades I can get for it.
While the simplest option would be getting a new computer, I am not really up for that as I think an old-looking pc is less prominent of getting stolen.

My current hardware is the following:

Hard Drive: 55.8GB
Processor: Intel Pentium M 740 -- 1.73GHz
Operating System: Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3 (5.1.2600)
DirectX Version: 9.0
Physical Memory: 2038 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 128 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 13 Stepping 8
Processor Speed: 1729 MHZ

I hope I can extend the life of this machine, as it has served for quite some time without much problem.

 

[johnb35]

Unfortunately it has a max memory of only 2gb and doesn't have windows 8 drivers on Lenovo website. I'm not saying you won't be able to get windows 8 installed but you may have an issue finding drivers. Also your hard drive is kinda small for windows 8. You'll need 16 gb just for the OS and then you'll take up more with the updates. So by the time you get a new hard drive and buy a new operating system as XP is no longer supported then its really not worth it for such an old machine. I would save up a few hundred dollars and get a new system.

 

[rainth]

Interesting, I would really like to revive my laptop though, as it is kind of flexible with upgrades and I don't really plan to use it for high-end stuff. Is there a way for it to make a new processor (less than 3GHz but above 2) work on it? Also, I think the hard drive won't be much of a problem as I guess having an external drive would be more beneficial for the OS to work alone in the main drive (which upgrading should be good, too).