Thinkpads Forum

aim me at thechamp0231

Can you be more specific? Maybe specs and what your price range is?

really anything.....less than 200 hopefully less than 100 too

I'll sell you my IBM 600 for 120 dollars. It has 160mb ram, PII 300mhz, 20gb hitachi hard drive, 24x cd rom, and a ac adapter.

I can strip down to nothing my T23 laptop. You would have to supply the ram, hard drive, optical drive and ac adapter. How low do you want to go?????

Ron

If thechamp isn't interested in the barebones T23, I'd definitley be. Give me a PM if he passes, thanks.

If you guys end up with a stripped down T23, I've got a variety of parts that you can have cheap to get them up and running.

2 128Mb PC133 SO-DIMMs
1 DVD Drive
1 DVD Multi-Burner
1 HDD Caddy
2 Small (6Gb) HDDs
1 Battery (down to about 40 minutes)

I'm not actively trying to sell (yet), but would be happy to help a fellow forum member get a machine up. Been down that road myself.

What is so good about the T23?

how much would you ask for that dvd multi burner if nobody else wanted it? or would you even want to sell it?

I'm certain that some of it is purely subjective and related to the user. For me, the "Thin & Light" form-factor is perfect. 14.1" SXGA screen on a 5 pound machine that has the single swappable drivebay.

The rest is a little more objective:
*Last of the T2x series (clearly the most refined of them and since it was a long running chassis with sister machines such as the As, and Xs there are MANY acessories and parts are easy to find)
*Can be had with the 1.13 or 1.2 PIII CPU which is a Tualatin core basically making it the equal of lower end P4 without the price.
*PC133 bus with a RAM Max bump to 1Gb vs. the 512Mb on the T20/21/22
*PC133 RAM is significantly cheaper than the equivilent size PC100
*Ability to use the later T30 main battery that was a higher capacity

Therefore, if you shop carefully, a T23 can be packed to the gills for a very resonable amount and you'd have a machine that very capable of doing anything a person would want other than full-on workstation or gaming duty. I do some photoediting on mine with Adobe Photoshop Elements. A lot of media stuff, like ripping MP3s and the regular websurfing/ Office stuff. It's does all that better than my school issued desktop with a P4 2.0

Oh, and I almost forgot. I feel like it was the last of the "classic" ThinkPads before production moved to China and IBM bowed down to pressure and put that accursed !@#$#$% touchpad on most machines!

P.S. To whoever was asking about the Multi-Burner, yes I'm considering selling it although I'll have to see how much they go for right now. It's about 3 months old and have burned all of 2 DVDRs and 3 CDRs. PM me if you want to discuss it further. I'm considering selling it since I'm one of the lucky few who got in on the Unity Electronics refurbished NEC 6650 DVD+-RW for $29 deal

what are you talking about? Having the touchpad and trackpoint is the greatest thing they've done. In case the trackpoint breaks down, you won't have to drag a external mouse around.

It just happens that I hate them. I'm sure there are others who think they are great, but when compared to the trackpoint (after the user is aclimated), touchpads are slower and less precise as well as far more prone to having problem in somewhat adverse conditions such as high humidity. They take your hands off the home keys. On top of which, they are the primary cause for people typing strange things when they drag their thumbs on them and move the cursor when touch-typing.

No big deal to me what other users like, but I personally refuse to use them unless I'm working on someone elses machine. If the Powerbooks had a trackpoint, I'd have bought one to do photo/video editing on by now.

i believe having both the Trackpoint and touchpad is gd..

sometimes my Trackpoint will hang for a few seconds... hehe.. then i'll use the touchpad...

but the Trackpoint is the best as its so much easier and more precise than the Touchpad...

I have a Thinkpad 770 that I am selling for 150.00 it comes with everything. Hit me up if you want to know about it.

If you are into Ebay purchasing, there are routinely 310- and 315-series Thinkpads on Ebay in working condition with all components and amenities for $20 to $50. From my recent experience, most of them start small (Windows95, socketed 133 or 166mHz processors and a single, small RAM module) but can be easily and cheaply upgraded with old-and-now-inexpensive RAM and processors. No USB connection though, which might be something most folks absolutely need nowadays.

I have a 310ED which is generally representative of the models from both series. My 310ED started with Windows 95, 133mHz Penitum and 16mb EDO RAM. It is currently running Windows 98 SE, a 400mHz AMD K6-2 and 128mb EDO memory... all beyond IBM maximum spec for very little investment in processors and memory. I am working on getting up to 256mb SDRAM and 600mHz AMD K6-III+ with a few more experiments and tweaks. There is a 310ED on Ebay right now for $9.99 which is already partially upgraded with Windows 98, 4Gb hard-drive, modem and 32mb RAM (I have no connections to the seller, BTW).

I just bought a 600E on Ebay Friday night for $99. Looking at completed auctions for the 600E there were a few that went for around $80, but most over $100. The seller of mine gave a 14 day satisfaction guarantee so I jumped on it (only $8 shipping too!). Everything looked good except for a good battery.

I also wanted something cheap (under $100) with USB to replace my aging 760CD and after reading the sticky in the 600 forum it looks like the 600E can be upgraded quite a bit to 512mb ram and a Pentium III. I just hope it doesn't cost as much to upgrade the 600E as a higher model would've cost.

The 600E is limited to a PII 400MHz CPU.

I don't know where you got the impression that it can be upgraded to a PIII.

Or, have I missed some changes recently?

Regards,

James

JHEM wrote:The 600E is limited to a PII 400MHz CPU.

I don't know where you got the impression that it can be upgraded to a PIII.

Or, have I missed some changes recently?

Regards,

James

The sticky thread in the 770, 600 forum has several posts from people upgrading their 600E to a P3.

There's also this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7427

bosco wrote:The sticky thread in the 770, 600 forum has several posts from people upgrading their 600E to a P3.

Yet another sign of my approaching senility!

Regards,

James

In JHEM's defence, the PII400 is the fastest upgrade for the 600E that has full practicality. In my experience with a PIII in my 600E, the chip ran nicely in Windows but I had to install 3rd party software to enable L2 cache after Windows boots and as a result of the L2 cache being enabled only after Windows boots, Windows took significantly longer to boot on the PIII 750 (600mhz) in my 600E than it did on a PII 366 or a PII 400.

If you don't mind the 3rd party software and a longer boot time, the PIII upgrade is a great solution to getting a fast laptop for cheap as the 600E's can be had for less than $100 in some places nowadays.