Oh and its pretty easy to upgrade the memory to 3GB. 5 screws on back. One module on back, one under the kb. Be careful with the touchpad bezel though, they are built kind of flimsy.

Ah... My good old trusty T60. I worked on one of these for a couple of years at my office. We had them so bogged down with security software that the thing dragged like crazy. Not a bad PC, but definitely old tech.

Invisiblemoose wrote:That's nonsense. My sister had a T60 with a T2400 and it flies with "current software" -- Windows 7, Firefox, MS Office 2010, etc. etc. Totally obsolete? A Core Duo? Please. My dual Athlon MP 1600 rig runs Vista Ultimate like a champ.

Of course, my sister's T60 didn't hold up too well physically. The chassis is falling apart, its gone through 2 keyboards and 3 batteries (and the current keyboard sticks and is missing keys, and the battery hardly lasts 20min), the HDD failed and was replaced, the DVD drive is ridiculously loud, the screen has many vertical red lines, the top mouse buttons smushed in and doesn't work right etc. etc. The worst problem is that it intermittently and seemingly randomly switches off. I hear a lot of praise about the durability of these Thinkpads, but I guess there are limits to how roughly you can treat them. Admittedly my sister doesn't exactly baby her equipment, but it's not like she regularly hurls it down flights of stairs. (I hope?)

lol i think your sister would destroy any laptop, in the end laptops are delicate, they have been made better with shock sensor harddrives and such but in the end, the lcd is glass and they are heavy and awkward. what they can do is make the hinges pretty durable and have a rigid chassis which is what thinkpads have. if you want to really throw around a laptop you need to buy a tough book, one that is literally ruggedized, but those are pricey, and big.

batteries, people expect too much, they die from cycle use and heat. and your sister like most folks knows nothing about such things, so they leave it to bake in the car, never mind the rest. so the battery will only last a year or less with heavy use, that is a given for lithium ion.

Pudnhead wrote:Parallel and serial ports in the docking station? Is there any use for those anymore or is that just an indication of how old this is? This is a serious question, by the way.

there is plenty of legacy equipment out there that uses serial/parallel ports and it too expensive to replace! this laptop looks like it could be a very affordable controller for a small fabrication shop.

I've been running Ubuntu on mine for 2 years now. This is one reliable solid machine. I definitely recommend it.

As I mentioned previously, the optical drive on this laptop ONLY READS DVDs. It can't write them so only the CD is available for data backup. That's pretty inefficient since each DVD holds roughly 7x as much data as a CD, and can cost about the same.

NewEgg is having a 1-Day $29 sale on a very sleek LG external DVD drive.

BigD wrote:It's exactly what it sounds like. This is a business notebook that a company leased from IBM. At the end of the lease, the company returned the notebook to IBM who puts it through an extensive refurbishment process, wipes the hard drive, installs a fresh OS, and ensures that all accessories are present. IBM (as the leasing company, they sold their PC business and Thinkpad brand to Lenovo years ago) works with Lenovo to get a 90 day warranty on the notebooks and then sells them wholesale.

Battery? new or used?

paltex9 wrote:would have bought one if the docking station was not present. shows how old this is.

We still buy laptops with docks for our users. It's not OLD because of that. They are used so you don't have to unplug all your connections all the time you want to move your laptop off your desk.

Neo7 wrote:Battery? new or used?

Lol used...
luck of the draw on batteries, but at this price you can't expect much. generic batteries can be found on ebay for not all that much. anyways these laptops are mostly deskbound or used where there is an outlet.

if you do use a battery ibm did good with their battery utilities, they allow you to control battery charge thresholds. google battery univserity if you want to know how to care for laptop batteries.

beagleboy99 wrote:I worked for a consulting company for a while and this was the exact machine we all carried on the road. I added more memory and that made a big difference (I think it was under $30 for another gb at the time). These things are really durable and take quite the beating-I had mine for over 3 years and it went into the TSA bins over 500 times and I never had a failure, which was pretty typical for the users at my company. These aren't the fastest or lightest, but they are durable, parts are easy and cheap to get (I did end up putting a new trackpad and buttons on mine eventually), It is kind of like the Ford Taurus of laptops, nothing flashy or fast, but durable and reliable. The only weak spot we found was the battery since we left it plugged in most of the time those went bad from infrequent charge cycles. The newer versions we received as replacements had a good battery health program that took care of that issue.

Almost mirrors my experience. Just swap out plane travel with road travel and we have a pretty much identical view... except my company didn't get a new one they went to Dell.

AS it was said, reliable laptop, p/u some memory and keep your eyes out for an extended battery eventually you will need to replace this one. Keyboard and track pad were beat to %#!! after 2 years (my fault not IBM's) and my cooling fan got really loud on me in about a year and a half and that is inexpensive to replace.

Over all decent laptop... it did its job.

I'm using the T61 at work right now - Good laptops but like others have said...it's old.

zorlod wrote:We still buy laptops with docks for our users. It's not OLD because of that. They are used so you don't have to unplug all your connections all the time you want to move your laptop off your desk.

yea that was a Jatravartid complaint, docks are still good for business laptops, you don't want to spend a lot of time plugging in monitors and the rest when you get to a desk, the dock simplifies it all.

sdc100 wrote:As I mentioned previously, the optical drive on this laptop ONLY READS DVDs. It can't write them so only the CD is available for data backup. That's pretty inefficient since each DVD holds roughly 7x as much data as a CD, and can cost about the same.

NewEgg is having a 1-Day $29 sale on a very sleek LG external DVD drive.

true, but these days I consider dvd backups inefficient as well, you might as well just get a 500-1tb external usb drive, and toss stuff there. so much easier. dealing with stacks of dvds is so annoying, anything else..use thumb drives.

I work in a corporate environment where we have to support several different laptop models. The T60 is still in the support structure and we are installing Windows 7 and Office 2010 on them - runs pretty well. I wouldnt suggest running applications that need lots of I/O or CPU like a virtual machine application or Visual Basic, as you will see the age of the machine at that point.

I'm working on one of these bad boys right now, running Vista. As a matter of fact, I just received my new X201 and was lamenting the fact that I would have to return this one.

Good solid machine, it has traveled with me on dozens of personal and business trips over the years and held up well.

I used to buy these off lease for a company I worked for, Lenovo cleans the cases and re-images them with fresh software (Windows and the usual bloatware).

Usually comes with a 30 day warranty for any out of the box problems. I never had a problem with any of them. One nice thing about these is that the software and drivers are all available from their website and will be available even years later(not all manufacturers do that).

This is a great deal for a student or someone without a lot of money to get a good reliable older laptop to surf and do e-mail.

I had one of these for about 3 years before my scheduled upgrade while working for IBM. Good workhorse of a machine for day to day use. Only recommendation is that if your going to use a lot of memory hogging apps up at the same time, (i.e. I ran dual monitors so I know I did), then I'd bump another 2 gigs. Cheap memory, found mine on ebay and snapping it in was pretty easy. But yeah all around good workhorse and the docking station really adds to the ease of just of taking it on the go. I got about 4 hrs solid straight work out of the battery.

franigans wrote:well any 32bit os isnt going to address more than 3gb regardless, but yes some chipsets also had the same limitation so any 64bit os would also be limited.

that being said there is no point installing 64 and more than 4gb ram on such a machine.

all in all these things are built pretty sturdy, which is a nice change from the flimsy hollow thin plastic feel of many cheap laptops. thinkpads had "rollcage" or reinforced cases, decent engineering. even have some water venting ports for minor keyboard spills.

***

I have owned one, as well as a T61, T400, and now a T420; I know about the durability.

These systems have a Core Duo processor, so they can't run a 64bit OS anyway (later T60 systems had a Core 2 and still had the same memory limit). I was pointing out an issue with Woot's specs, to benefit others. By the way, 32-bit Windows XP can address 4gb of RAM if available, just not all for applications. There is a 2gb limit per app, and most of the RAM above 3gb goes to kernel-mode device drivers.

In for 1!

I have had T40 and T41's at work and they tend to be rock solid compared to other laptops. Next best thing to a Toughbook in my opinion. One must respect a laptop with chromed screen hinges!

My favorite feature is the ThinkLight. According to the ThinkWiki, the T60 has one. Doesn't show it in the pics, but there is a tiny LED on the top edge of the screen which shines down on the keyboard. Toggled by Fn-PgUp. Great for on the airplane or taking those late night work calls without lighting up the room.

NapalmRiot wrote:How is this a bad computer for a poor student going into college that just needs something to toss in his bag and use solely for word-processing and internet research?

own'd

I didn't see who you were directing that at. But I think it's a great machine EXCEPT the 1024x768 drove me mad. I bought one of these and returned it for a T61, because the screen resolution was straight out of 1993. I think most students will experience the same screen shock when trying to use this machine.

ja2038 wrote:It's not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T60 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters.

may the farce be with you

Was going to get this for my parents till I realized it doesn't have a webcam. Sigh.

I had a ThinkPad x60s for a while and I loved it. I have since moved on to a Dell Latitude E6510 and I picked this one up for my Dad to replace his Dell netbook. Thanks!

TimJohn wrote:There's a review from over 5 years ago if you Google it. I don't see why you wouldn't spend slightly more for a netbook or tablet.

Because some people LIKE to have a decent-size screen AND keyboard! I write software, and while I CAN use my wife's netbook for 5-minute fixes, it feels like a half-hour with the tiny keyboard and screen. This is close enough to full-size that it's totally decent to type on. If you need to type, it makes a real difference.

And keyboards don't get any better than the ones on Thinkpads.

I've got one of these that my company sent me to log into the network. It came with a VPN installed on it and I use it to enter in my expenses. I have a much faster desktop, laptop iPad2 and GTablet that all work much smoother than this machine does.

My biggest complaint is that even though it runs XP is still takes more than five minutes from the time I push the on button until its loaded up and ready to go.

In 2007 it might have been the bomb, today it is slower than my iPhone 4.

Wonder if they give you a new battery with it, or an old one that only holds a charge for 10 minutes.

What generation of processors? and has anyone put Win 7 on it yet successfully? Sounds like a good deal.

uncre8tv wrote:I didn't see who you were directing that at. But I think it's a great machine EXCEPT the 1024x768 drove me mad. I bought one of these and returned it for a T61, because the screen resolution was straight out of 1993. I think most students will experience the same screen shock when trying to use this machine.

I don't think so at all. It all depends on what you're used to. For 15", 1024x768 is a perfectly respectable resolution. Just set the screen preferences suitably (small icons and fonts) and I don't see why most people should mind. Just accept that you're more finicky than most about this particular point, and move on.

Personally, I prefer it, actually, since things are a little easier to see (you can actually read 9-point type without squinting), but maybe that's just my eyes. I find that 1024x768 looks just fine up to 16", and this is 15". (FWIW, 1280x1024 looks fine to most people up to 19".) Just because it looked good in '93 doesn't mean it looks bad now; the human eye hasn't changed much since then. (Well, mine have, but most...)

lapolonio wrote:can't we find these in RePC or some other ecycle place for cheaper?

I seriously doubt it. I just checked their online store, and apparently they think an ancient Sound Blaster ISA (!) card is worth $24, and the one 3DO game they have is as much as I paid for my 3DO system.

For everyone wondering whether Windows 7 will run on this laptop, the answer is yes.

This is the best laptop I've owned in many years, and I've owned almost every single brand out there. It's extremely durable, I had dropped mine million times and it still works like a champion. Fingerprint reader actually works and it's a nice little feature to have. Worth noting, this laptop will run almost every flavor of *nix without you needing to spend decades searching for drivers; Windows, obviously, is also a breeze.
It's not fast by today's standards, but with uncluttered OS and nothing heavy running, it's more then competent. I'd take it over smallish netbooks any day.

P.S. Mine is almost 5 years old and not a thing had gone wrong, sans the battery being a bit weak.

FAN ERROR - lol. Have seen this issue with a lot of these laptosps.

jeffiekins wrote:I don't think so at all. It all depends on what you're used to. For 15", 1024x768 is a perfectly respectable resolution. Just set the screen preferences suitably (small icons and fonts) and I don't see why most people should mind. Just accept that you're more finicky than most about this particular point, and move on.

Personally, I prefer it, actually, since things are a little easier to see (you can actually read 9-point type without squinting), but maybe that's just my eyes. I find that 1024x768 looks just fine up to 16", and this is 15". (FWIW, 1280x1024 looks fine to most people up to 19".) Just because it looked good in '93 doesn't mean it looks bad now; the human eye hasn't changed much since then. (Well, mine have, but most...)

well no, dpi isn't linked to the os anymore, you can set the font size and gui size independent of the resolution. this is why the iphone has screen resolutio density/dpi far beyond any pc monitor and yet people use it just fine, the more fine the resolution the better. that being said xp wasn't as good at the scaling, but over all it looked just fine, i had a 1650x1050 15" and it looked incredible compared to the crude 1024x768 screens, more screen desktop area means you can actually use windows, whereas on 1024 it is so cramped you are pretty much full screen all the time.

of course that being said at this price there is no complaining.

the human eye is capable of seeing far higher resolution than any hd screen. photos and video only benefit more from a high dpi screen, text even looks better, just as old printers with low resolution couldn't do smooth fonts, the higher the resolution the better and more crisply you can render anything.

I've been using my T60 since 2005. LOVE IT. Can't seem to replace. Bought an Alkaline extended battery and 2 extra GB of ram and it will go another 5 years.

acornatl wrote:I've been using my T60 since 2005. LOVE IT. Can't seem to replace. Bought an Alkaline extended battery and 2 extra GB of ram and it will go another 5 years.

What does OLD matter when it comes to a THINKPAD?!?!? I keep seeing people worry about that. Its utlra portable and for $200 bucks...its an awesome deal. I spent $1300 on mine when it came out.

drwin, 32-bit Windows 7 will work fine. Even better if you up the RAM a bit.

I'll say it again, these aren't bad machines, but they are OLD. LCDs and motherboards don't last forever, and these have been in service for about 5 years already. A new one of either is likely to cost you about $100 just for the part (new here meaning refurb or scavenged), and more if you can't install it yourself. Lenovo LCDs are a pain to install too, because of the wire routings around the frame and flimsiness of the bezel. Granted, my memory on this model may be fuzzy, as it's been a year or two since I've done an LCD on one...because that's how long ago the warranty ran out.

This may be a better choice than the $300 Acer on the shelf at Bob's Cheap Electronics, but choosing between this and finding a decent new machine for $500 or so, I'd choose the new.

We use these at work and they are used for 2 years then returned to the company. They come with the operating system and that's it. No software. So basically, this a very bulky MP3 player.

Scooley01 wrote:What does off lease mean?

It means your getting my old one that I turned in for a T410.

paltex9 wrote:would have bought one if the docking station was not present. shows how old this is.

You can purchase a new Dell laptop with an extended docking station that still has serial connections as well. The docking station is just a bonus in this case.

True parellel and true serial port are still needed for some equipment. The parallel port contains voltage and signals that are not availiable on USB to Parallel adapters. I build some lighting controllers that can only use true parallel ports and others that still use serial ports (some USB to serial port adapters will work for these.) There are newer USB controllers making their way into the mainstream but for D.I.Y. controllers nothing is cheaper to build than a parallel port one. Just a solid state relay, an extension cord, and an old parallel port cable with an old version of vb6 and you can control up to 8 AC outlets with the computer. Add a few more components and that number goes up to 12. Warning, it becomes addictive. I have over 352 channels on my USB controllers for Holiday light shows and looking to triple that over the next year.

I had one for a few years at work and besides the battery not lasting too long it wasn't that bad. I was complaining about how slow it was one day when I realized that maybe, just maybe, it was slow because I had 7 Excel Spreadsheets, 6 Word docs, Lotus Notes, Access, several IE sessions and some mainframe programs open at the same time. I thought, you know, if I did that on my machine at home, I suppose it wouldn't like it either. Eventually I did get a newer Lenovo but all in all, not a bad little machine when I had it.