Good value in an old machine

[Keef]

For many years, my "work" computers were IBM ThinkPads. I carried mine with me between offices, and could plug it into a docking station in any of several locations. I could use it in a hotel, with limited access to company e-mail.

When I retired, I bought one as my "own" machine. It travelled around between the Essex house and the "bolt hole" with the same docking station process. I replaced that one a couple of times, too. Then the iPad arrived, and proved more portable, and the laptop got little use. Eventually, it stopped working and I didn't bother to fix it.

For the rare occasions I needed it, I decided it wasn't worth investing in a new one. Just before Christmas, I looked on eBay and saw how cheap they had become! I bid on and won, for £46, a ThinkPad T42 with Windows 7 Ultimate and MS Office 2007 (the full suite) installed. The previous owner wiped off his personal stuff but left the software. The machine is in first-class condition, apart from the battery being near the end of its life.

It occurred to me that I couldn't have bought the software (it's legitimate) for that price, never mind a competent laptop. All I need is a new battery (under £20 for an aftermarket clone). Good value, I reckon.

[Tinstaafl]

When I needed to replace my last laptop, I chose a W500 Thinkpad (used). I like the variety of features & the docking station. Lot's of little touches such as USB charging with the machine powered off, both Cardbus & the newer type (whatever it's called), dual graphics cards (Intel on-board for low power & a more powerful AMD graphics card. It also has both touchpad & the IBM nipple.

One of the biggest factors was that new laptop screen resolutions are all in that bloody HD format. Even worse, most of them use a glossy screen. Glossy screens are an instant 'no sale' to me. My previous laptop was a 1600x1200 resolution and damned if I wanted to lose 10% vertical resolution when a large part of my use is writing documents & browsing the web. This W500 is the last of Lenovo's 1200 vertical pixel models *and* gains an extra 300+ pixels in width (1920x1200 vs 1600x1200).

It's a rather nice laptop!

Oh, and it came with Win7 Ultimate too. Not that I'm a Windows fan, but XP is no longer supported. Anyway, I mostly use Linux on it. About the only reason I keep Windows is to program the GPS data cards for an aircraft I manage.

[jimtherev]

Another fan of the T-series here.
But you got an exceptional bargain, Keef. Congrats!

[Saab Dastard]

Keef,

What is the performance like?

The T42 AFAIK comes with a single-core 32-bit Pentium M up to 1.8GHz, with a max of 2GB RAM and a GPU with up to 128MB RAM. Not the sort of spec. to run Windows 7 with any degree of urgency, I'd have thought.

I've got a similarly speced Compaq, which used to run XP satisfactorily - I tried Win 7 32-bit, but it was unsatisfactory, so installed a Linux distro instead, which is "adequate".

SD

[Keef]

Not particularly fast, SD, but speed isn't really needed where that will go.

2GB of RAM it has, but 32-bit can't handle a whole lot more than that.

On the Windows performance test, it scores 2.0 - that's 3.4 on the processor, 4.1 on memory, 2.0 on graphics, 3.6 on gaming graphics, 5.4 on disk data transfer rate.

The desktop here scores 7.3 / 7.5 / 6.8 / 6.8 / 7.6 so it's not that bad for a little old laptop.

[Saab Dastard]

Thanks Keef - a bargain at £46, even if sedate! :ok:

SD