This may be an old thread and I may be new here, but I feel the need to say something about the whole SSD in an old IDE laptop thing. When I read these threads about installing an ssd in an old 44 pin ide laptop, I see the typical whining and complaining from those who seem to be doing little more than googleing an answer.
I have been a tech for 20 years now and one of my favorite quotes applies to computer tech as well. " The quickest way to get an American to do anything... is to tell them it can't be done ". Although most of this country seems to have given up on that, I have not.
I have a 12 year old Motion Computing M1400 Tablet with the 44 pin IDE interface. Just for shits and giggles, I decided to install a 256Gb SATA SSD via a 44 pin IDE to SATA adapter. It bears mentioning that this particular SSD came out of a customers system as a defective unit, overheating and freezing, I kept it as a demo to show others. The original 80Gb hard drive was split down the middle for XP tablet edition and Linux Mint Debian edition. I simply cloned this drive to the SSD and WoW. Even in it's partially defective state the SSD was at least 3 to 5 times faster and well beyond the typical 120Gb cap that most of these older systems had.
My plans are to order a 44 pin IDE to msata adapter and a 256Gb msata card for this wonderful tablet. I have also recently discovered that there 802.11 n wireless card available for these older systems as well. Nothing can be done about the 2Gb memory limit, but with Linux that won't be an issue.
It is not my intention to put down anyones... opinion on the use of SSD's in the older systems, however, now that SSD and adapter tech is getting cheaper and better, it truly is practical, feasible and most definitely useful. I don't know that I would go so far as to install say a 4Tb Sandisk sata SSD, at $ 6,000.00 in and older system, but currently anything up to a 256Gb SSD is worthwhile.