pcmag review:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363193,00.asp

not a bad deal, thinkpad pretty reliable machine.

Good price for a Lenovo I suppose. But crappy specs overall...Money better spent elsewhere since reliability doesn't matter when the specs are 3 years old!

ThinkPads tend to be a bit more physically durable than other laptops. They're also more consistent between the various models, which makes it easier to adjust to a new one.

4gb I woud have bought by now. Thinking about it instead.

Here's a Notebook review.

1.5" is sooooo thick. But a friend of mine has a very similar ThinkPad. It's really well made and runs great. This looks like a good deal!

Where does it say if it is a refurb or not?

Epsilon519 wrote:Where does it say if it is a refurb or not?

Under the price.

Condition: New

The PC Mag review is accurate. This is the very machine I'm on right now. We bought a bunch of them for field sales reps to do email and spreadsheet kind of work, and I actually ended up taking one for myself after my last machine quit. I added the 9 cell battery 6 months ago, and with that I get a 5.5 hour charge time with constant use.

2GB of memory is small these days, especially for Windows 7. The CPU is fairly slow and the graphics are very low end, so it is not a good laptop for gaming. It should get reasonable battery life however with 6 cells and low power components.

I wish this was on deals.woot so I could downvote it.

This may be the worst Woot! deal ever. Look at the specs on this thing, absolutely terrible. Will people actually buy this rustic POS?

I think this is the video for this woot. It's just a small video showing off some of the features of this laptop set to fancy music.

Normally I would go for a faster processor at the $330 price point for a laptop. This one scores around 1500 at passmark. I usually try to get a minimun 1800 passmark score on the CPU when I research a budget laptop. That being said, this is a Thinkpad, they are super well built.

For a budget machine this is a pretty good deal, I'd definitely get it for myself if I had the need.

Epsilon519 wrote:Where does it say if it is a refurb or not?

Looks like swapping the RAM out for more should be cheap and easy ($45.99 @ crucial.com for 8GB Kit (4GBx2)DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1333 • 1.35V).

I found a video from Lenovo on swapping the hard drive. What kind of hard drive does this thing support and what would it cost me? The stock drive is too small for me.

Epsilon519 wrote:Where does it say if it is a refurb or not?

you have to click the read more. I think the dev's are currently working on featuring it on the front page too though See this post i made a few days ago

yarrr @Linad beat me to it :P Oh well i'm keeping it up!

One of the features that have been on Thinkpad forever is the Trackpoint thumb stick. Its takes a bit to get used to but once you do it is so much easier to use than a touchpad as you can leave your hands on the keyboard while navigating the screen.

For business use (especially on the go) this is a great little laptop. I really wish I could justify replacing my existing secondary 'travel' notebook with this.

auujay wrote:Looks like swapping the RAM out for more should be cheap and easy ($45.99 @ crucial.com for 8GB Kit (4GBx2)DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1333 • 1.35V).

for this kinda specced laptop, id say just spend about 25 bucks on 4GB of ram 2GBx2, cause your not gunna be doing much on it thats gunna need the full 8GB

jandrese wrote:2GB of memory is small these days, especially for Windows 7. The CPU is fairly slow and the graphics are very low end, so it is not a good laptop for gaming. It should get reasonable battery life however with 6 cells and low power components.

2GB of ram is plenty for what most business users use (word, excel, outlook, internet). That is what this notebook is aimed at. Sales reps, etc. $15 gets you 4gb extra these days anyway.

Most budget laptops are not good for gaming.

ctweeks2002 wrote:for this kinda specced laptop, id say just spend about 25 bucks on 4GB of ram 2GBx2, cause your not gunna be doing much on it thats gunna need the full 8GB

Fair enough. I am looking at replacing my old Core2Duo Inspiron that was recently dropped (and broke the hinge). I am not going to be playing games at all but I want it to run Win7 without complaining and I figure it might want more than 2GB of RAM.

Kizzbot wrote:This may be the worst Woot! deal ever. Look at the specs on this thing, absolutely terrible. Will people actually buy this rustic POS?

Yes people will buy it. Its a Thinkpad, Lenovo has kept the standards IBM had with this line pretty high, they are still built very well.

The stats are not that bad. They were pushing this Toshiba a few days ago which had a processor that scored 598 on passmark, 1/3 the speed of this one.

Friend just bought the 14.1" version of this laptop a month ago. Great reviews so far.

craig616 wrote:not a bad deal, thinkpad pretty reliable machine.

As a former Lenovo repair tech I can say this with experience: Business models are reliable. The consumer stuff is as much garbage as Dell Inspirons. Or more accurately, as likely you break on you.

Hi,
What is the battery life without the additional battery?
Punit

mactaggart wrote:The PC Mag review is accurate. This is the very machine I'm on right now. We bought a bunch of them for field sales reps to do email and spreadsheet kind of work, and I actually ended up taking one for myself after my last machine quit. I added the 9 cell battery 6 months ago, and with that I get a 5.5 hour charge time with constant use.

This is a terrific buy. I've had this machine for 2 years; the only difference is mine has an Intel processor. It's well-made, performs beautifully and hasn't given me a bit of trouble.

Grab it!

I see some negative feelings here. Is there something better for around the same price?

I'm looking to buy something for a part time employee who would mainly just use Excel (not hardcore math, but for basic sales tracking), Outlook, Word, and DropBox.

I don't need something thin or light, because it's not going to get rigorous use, but I want a notebook so they can take it with them on days they're not in the office.

The closest price I can find is 349.00 at MacConnection with free shipping.

kellic wrote:As a former Lenovo repair tech I can say this with experience: Business models are reliable. The consumer stuff is as much garbage as Dell Inspirons. Or more accurately, as likely you break on you.

So, is it worth it or are the upgrades/repairs going to eat my savings alive?

groundlessnfree wrote:I see some negative feelings here. Is there something better for around the same price?

I'm looking to buy something for a part time employee who would mainly just use Excel (not hardcore math, but for basic sales tracking), Outlook, Word, and DropBox.

I don't need something thin or light, because it's not going to get rigorous use, but I want a notebook so they can take it with them on days they're not in the office.

You have described what I think is exactly what this notebook should be used for.

penwynd wrote:So, is it worth it or are the upgrades/repairs going to eat my savings alive?

He just stated that the Thinkpad (this is the business line) are still very well made. For the price you probably won't find a better built notebook. Thinkpad's may never win any design awards, they are a bit clunky, but they are well built.

I have a T60. Yeah. Replaced everything but the hard drive. Been kicking for 6 years, if you can believe it. Battery no longer works. Basically a crappy desktop. 60 Gig hard drive. Can't imagine using a computer without it after all this time. I have 8 gigs of ram I bought around cyber monday that have been dying to go into a new laptop, but I had to buy a new car at the time.

This is the most tempting woot I've seen in a while, except for the small HDD and no USB 3.0. I do a lot of data transferring, but I assume it'll be faster than my current laptop anyway since my USB ports are kind of shot.

Should I bite?

EDIT: Tried to call the trackpoint a n1pp1e, sentence got blocked, meant to say I can't imagine using a computer without it. Love haivng my hands stationary and being able to move around without going down to the trackpad.

Should I worry about processing power or will anything be a shock-to-my-system upgrade from this relic I'm typing on now?

Anyone know what the WINSAT scores are on this tool ?

jdorritie wrote:Should I worry about processing power or will anything be a shock-to-my-system upgrade from this relic I'm typing on now?

I think for a primary system I would find something with a faster processor for about the same price. I've seen notebook cpu's hit almost 4000 on passmark (more than twice as fast) at the $350 price range. For a take with you on the job secondary machine, this is a good one as it is well built.

Aside from Panasonic Toughbooks, Thinkpads are the best-built notebooks out there. The Thinkpad Edge line is a step down, but these are still better-built than most consumer laptops.

On the other hand, the components and screen make this a two-year-old budget laptop. Like most Woot! laptop offerings, it'll work for your productivity and communication needs, but gaming and other high-power applications will be very limited. Don't be fooled by the discrete GPU, it's slower than the integrated GPUs of laptops from the last year or two.

this laptop wasn't worth $400 (on sale at best buy) when it was new, much less now when it's end-of-life even for $300. on the surface it looks like a good deal, and i aaaaaaaaaaalmost bought one until i dove into the reviews. even when it was new it was slow and on the lower end of the spectrum for its price point ($400 on sale at best buy) ... now, a few years later, it's way past its prime and not worth the money.

and i'm a HUGE fan of IBM laptops, especially thinkpads (T-models especially). no love from me for lenovo on this one. sorry china.

I love the Thinkpads, I have a T60 mounted in my truck that doesn't have the smoothest suspension and I drive about 60-70 miles a day on average,,,,,this laptop has done so well without breaking that I just bought a T61 off ebay for $120(didn't come with an operating system), installed WinXP and Win Vista and I use that for in the house.