Bit unrelated: there are upgrade kits available for Thinkpad laptops - does anyone know if there is a way to replace the motherboard of a 2004-era R40 with something at least a bit faster?
Looking at the Thinkwiki page for the R40 [1] it looks like they come in Celeron, Pentium 4 and Pentium M models. You’d want the 1.7Ghz version of the Pentium M for the best speed I’d think. There’s some talk of changing the motherboard out on an R40 here [2] and there seem to be plenty of motherboards on ebay for cheap.
[1] http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:R40 [2] http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=80880