Thinkpads Forum

I am looking for a barebones Thinkpad T42, preferably less than $500 shipped. Only requirement I have is that it looks good, works properly and has a 14.1" 1400x1050 LCD.

Specs on the following I don't care about, and they can even be missing entirely:
- Wireless card
- Optical Drive
- CPU
- RAM
- Hard Drive

PM me if you have something.
Thanks.

Good luck. You better hit the bay and hope for a steal.

I have a barebones T41 with a XGA screen for $400+shipping ...

I don't see a problem with that price, especially missing a few of the add-ons. Someone would be smart to part out their T42 and make more money.

I don't think it's that unreasonable. I just got outbid on this one yesterday.
T42 on eBay

GnatGoSplat wrote:I don't think it's that unreasonable. I just got outbid on this one yesterday.
T42 on eBay

Was that one high-res.?

$500 is not impossible, esp. if it's missing a few items as you listed.

Good luck.

underclocker wrote: Was that one high-res.?

$500 is not impossible, esp. if it's missing a few items as you listed.

Good luck.

Yes, it was high-res with the fingerprint reader which I don't see on a lot of T42s. It was BIN $500. I probably should have bought it and sold off the RAM, wireless card, and HD.

Thanks for the offer, gator, but I'm pretty set on a T42 w/high-res because I'm pretty fixated on running Vista w/Aero.

It would be so much easier and cheaper if I wasn't so attached to Thinkpads. Oh why do I have to hate shiny LCDs, widescreen and touchpads!

A T42 with high res isn't going to get that great of a rating with Vista. Vista wants a 128mb graphics card and the T42 only goes up to 64mb unless you mean a T42P. You would be lucky to pick up a T42P for $500.00. Maybe on ebay but not here on the forum.

It should be fine just with the desktop, no?
I don't plan to play games on it. Previous threads on the board have said the T42 hires w/ATI 9600 64MB works fine with Aero.

I hereby testify that T42 with a 64MB ATI Radeon 9600 video card runs Vista with full Aero effects (maximizing main RAM helps too).

That being said I have a very nice T42 unit for sale right now with the above mentioned capabilities, here take a look: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=41761

Thanks for the offer, syedj, but it's a bit more than I want to spend.

I almost got lucky with that eBay auction I linked to earlier... the guy emailed me and said his high bidder never contacted him and said he'd sell it to me for $500 shipped if he doesn't get paid within 24hrs. Unfortunately, his bidder ended up paying. Doh!

Check out

http://www.craigslist.org

in Seattle. There is a dealer that may have what you want.

I will throw this out there for a possible partial trade.

Aopen MiniPC MP915 - it's a PC modeled after the Mac Mini. It looks similar, but instead of being made of plastic like a Mini, this has a nice metal cover.

Specs are:
Celeron M 360 1.4GHz CPU (supports any Socket 479 Dothan core CPU)
Intel 915GM chipset
40GB 5400rpm Hard Drive (supports any 2.5" Ultra ATA laptop drive)
1GB DDR2-667 (takes DDR2 SODIMM)
Onboard sound w/SPDIF header (no external connector for SPDIF).
Onboard GMA900 video with DVI or VGA output.
DVD CD/RW Slot-in Combo Drive
2 USB ports
1 Firewire port
1 Ethernet port
Mini-PCI slot
RP-SMA wireless antenna jack with C.FL internal connector (connects to standard Mini PCI wireless cards)

I currently have an Atheros Super G 108Mbps 802.11a/b/g Mini-PCI internal wireless card in it, but was planning to keep it for whatever laptop I end up getting since my router is Super G.

It is NEAR MINT IN BOX. It is perfect, flawless, EXCEPT a few tiny scratches ON THE REAR that don't even really show up in a photo and no one would see it.

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

My search has ended. I went $44 over budget and bought a T43 instead.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0115573260

I figured the FAR lower cost of DDR2 was worth the extra money (1GB sticks are now less than $30 after rebate while DDR is something like $80).

How'd I do?

Did very good. Congrats!

GnatGoSplat wrote:How'd I do?

You did good. Now, T43's tend to have loud fans. Some people mind, but most don't.

pianowizard wrote: You did good. Now, T43's tend to have loud fans. Some people mind, but most don't.

Precisely the reason the T42s are so popular. T43s also have that irritating "2010" HDD issue.

I didn't know about the fan thing, but I'm not too worried about it. Most of the time I use the laptop in a room with loud TV so I doubt it'll bother me. 2010 HDD issue might be a problem, but the 80GB Seagate I plan to put in it is NOT in the list of known problem drives so I might be okay.

I hadn't realized the T43 is natively SATA with a bridge. Is it possible to use a SATA drive and bypass/remove the bridge? Seems kind of goofy.

GnatGoSplat wrote:How'd I do?

You did really good. Congrats!

Great price, great eBay work. Enjoy it!

Great purcahse. I saw his feedback and the items he sold. Prices were excellent ... sadly he does not have any machines now.

I received my T43 yesterday, so my search is officially over!

Wow, this seller wasn't kidding when he said "Excellent condition". The laptop looks MINT, there's no shiny keys, not even a spot on the spacebar. Not one mark on the outside of it, and not so much as a hint that it's not brand new except for some roughness on the HDD retaining screw. The battery however, has a little up/down play to it and the battery manager says it has 205-cycles on it and only 41% its original capacity. I was only able to get about 40-minutes out of it, but I was installing apps so there was a lot of DVD-drive action if that makes a difference. The position of the mouse buttons will take some getting used to, I liked the position better on my 570e, especially the scroll button. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate and it works great with the Aero theme, fast and responsive w/1GB. CPU fan is noisy when it reaches full-speed, and once the laptop warms up, the fan wants to run full-speed constantly. As expected, I hardly notice it with the TV in the room being on. I replaced the 40GB drive with my Seagate 80GB and it triggers the 2010 error. I have it set in BIOS to continue automatically in spite of the error and the drive works perfectly. My only concern is I greatly underestimated how tiny the text would be. At "120dpi Larger Fonts" the menus are perfect, but dialog boxes are blurry for some reason. I have to use IE because FireFox ignores the 120dpi setting and increasing text size in Firefox screws up web page layouts, not to mention it doesn't stick. The hi-res screen will take some getting used to, and I worry it'll make me even more near-sighted than I already am.

It took me a while to get used to the high res screens but now I can never go back. The low res screen fonts look too big now.

(P.S I'm nearsighted too.)