HP t520 Upgrade Option and Life Cyle

[Dan_IT]

Device Type: HP t520 Flexible Series TC

OS: Windows 7 Embedded , 14WWETBE301#SABA#DABA

HDD: 16 Gb M.2 2242

RAM: 4 Gb DDR3L

Warranty Status: Expired

Hi,

Does anyone know the life-cycle of the HP Thin Clients? I'm trying to create an upgrade proposal for the HP t520 (x195). Right now I am set on buying new HP t530 (x195) with Win10 IoT, 16 GB m.2 2242, and 4 Gb RAM. It would be cheaper to upgrade (OS, M.2, RAM), but I'm just not sure if HP will continue to support Win7 after Microsoft Stopped (Windows 7 Extended Support End Date, 1/14/2020).

Knowing the life cycle of the t520 would really help me give an extra push. Any recommendation would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[rvndmnmt]

I am currently typing this out on a t520 running on a 128 GB M2242 SSD and 8 GB of ram with an internal WIFI card upgrade running on PClinuxOS.  In laymans terms, I got this thing doing what HP said it wouldn't or couldn't.

I'm certain that the upgrade options were limited on the power supply that was supplied with the original purchase.  That being a 65 watt power supply.  You can easily find 90 watt power supplies for around $20-$40.   16 GB of hard drive space isn't much and with the stock power supply it is stated that it can support up to a 64 GB upgrade to the SSD.  With the added power from the aftermarket power supply you could go a bit further.   With the M2242 form factor, the highest capacity I have found is 512 GB.  I am assuming you are using this in a business environment so that is above and beyond what would be needed to run an enterprise level of Windows.  I went with the 128 GB and went cheap.  I just use thing thing for surfing the web, e-mail, YouTube, word processing, generic stuff.  I don't need much more than that.  It cost me about $40 for that. 

RAM is another thing.  4 GB is a little low in this day in age.  This is, again, where an aftermarket power supply comes into play.  The mother board only has a single slot for RAM and the highest capacity I have found for DDR3 doubles what is installed.  8 GB of RAM isn't much but you could run Windows 10 on it.  

The WIFI...  Yeah...  I had an old laptop sitting around that ceased to function.  I raided it for the card and antenna.  With a bit of super glue, the slot to retain the WIFI card isn't threaded for a screw, and a bit of creative wire routing.  I got it to work.  Again, the added wattage of the power supply is key in making this possible.

It's not all gum drops and rainbows.  The bottleneck of this build is at the CPU.  I'm certain that you aren't using this for gaming or photo/video processing.  For general things the CPU is adequate but a dual core 1.2 GHZ 64 bit processor is a little weak.  For certain programs you might notice a bit of time to load them up.  That is because of the CPU.  Once you have the program loaded you might experience a bit of lag with certain actions but it is acceptable.  

In short, with a computer I dug out of a dumpster at work, for around $80-$100 you could load the full version of Windows 10 and use that to the end of support.  However I dug this out of the garbage and am not going to blow my money on a Windows 10 license.

Hope this answered your question.

[rvndmnmt]

Loaded Windows 10.  It works fine.  Just had to go from PClinuxOS to Ubuntu to load it to USB.  Going back to Ubuntu now but Windows 10 works fine.  You should be good to go.  

By Windows 10 I mean Windows 10 pro.  30 day free trial and all.  And by Windows 10 pro I mean the 64 bit version.  This thing came with Windows Embedded 7E 32 bit. 

Also, one bit of info.  Processor speed increased from 1.2 GHZ to up to 1.45 GHZ.  It averages about 1.39 GHZ.  I upgraded to active cooling with a notebook cooler and said 90 watt power supply and previous upgrades.  More power equals MOPAR if you can catch the mechanic expression.  I work on cars for a living but have had a bit of experience with computers going back to 1982.  I had to use a dial up phone on a 440 baud modem to access the dozen or so severs which were the internet and was charged long distance on the phone bill to do so.

I leave it up to you.