WTB: Very cheap laptop for student OR very cheap HDD in Aust

[T7TrainingSystems]

G'day, I've got a mate of mine who is a university student, very much struggling financially.

I'm not exactly rolling in money myself (small business owner...) otherwise I'd buy him a beautiful T43. Alas I am still hand washing my clothes in the sink to keep my expenses down, so buying lovely T43 for my mate is not practical in my situation

But I would like to get him a laptop because it would make a real difference to his world. I remember three years ago, a different friend gave me (I was completely broke and very much in debt at the time) a 600X that was in parts... and with that laptop, I slowly built what is now a small and struggling but exciting and promising business... so I know what a gesture of an old laptop gift can do for someone when they're down and out, and I'd like to do that for my uni friend.

Anyways, I digress. I'm looking for either:

A very cheap laptop - preferably a Thinkpad, but beggars can't be choosers. I only have a budget of $100.

OR

A very cheap small IDE HDD - speed unimportant, but I have a T22 sitting around without a hard drive. I'm not sure if the boot sector on the HDD died or whether it had the Blink of Death... hard to tell, but I don't have any spare HDD to test it out with. So I'd like to buy a cheap HDD to see if it works, and if it does then my university friend can have this beautiful T22!

I'd also be very happy to swap the T22 for any realistic working laptop, but I don't think the T22 is very swap-worthy - it has no HDD, the screen backlight is on it's way out, the right cursor key is missing and it possibly has the BOD!!

I'm all ears. And of course, bear in mind I'm in Australia - specifically Sydney.

Thanks to all!

Nick

[KristianJ]

I may have a spare working 30 or 40GB HDD somewhere in the house that I never use. I'll try and find it and test it tonight - if it works I don't really want much for it...$20 shipped, maybe...or $15 if it's 30GB. I'm in Penrith so you wouldn't be waiting for at least a week - I can even get it to you personally depending on where you live.

[seaweedsl]

For $100 unless you can get a T23 (doubtful), I recommend you look for a Compaq Armada E500 on Ebay.

Built like tanks, they were solid biz notebooks that are now going for around that price. Screens vary from 13" to 15" and it's a PIII about 500 up to 1.13Ghz.

Like the T23 it's a very nice machine except for USB 1.1 and lack of built in WiFi. Great speakers. Unlike the T23, it's heavy and bulky though.

There is another good related Compaq, the M700, something like that, as well that's lighter, I believe.

Steve

[seaweedsl]

Here's one right on this forum:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=63901

And the price is $100

[rkawakami]

<snip>... but I have a T22 sitting around without a hard drive. I'm not sure if the boot sector on the HDD died or whether it had the Blink of Death... hard to tell, but I don't have any spare HDD to test it out with.

I would say that if you can consistently power up the system without the hard drive installed, then your T22 does not have the BoD. If the system has a difficult time with booting from the hard drive, then that would point to a HD issue (or a motherboard problem).

The usual way of determining if your T22 has the Blink of Death is to watch what happens when you try to power it up. The BoD symptom is that when you push the power button on the keyboard, the only signs of life is the hard drive LED blinking for about 1/10 second. However, just because the laptop powers up this time does not mean that it does not have the BoD . The other "feature" of the BoD is that you can never be sure if the system will start or not.

[T7TrainingSystems]

Hi all, thanks for the consideration and thoughts, but I managed to pick up a $43 screamer on eBay: http://tinyurl.com/5zbym9

Hopefully it does the job!

Cheers!

Nick

[rbena]

Nice find on the Latitude CPi. It's another good low-cost notebook along with the Compaqs and early IBM T-series mentioned previously.

[KristianJ]

Hi all, thanks for the consideration and thoughts, but I managed to pick up a $43 screamer on eBay: http://tinyurl.com/5zbym9

Hopefully it does the job!

Cheers!

Nick

Ah, memories...my first laptop was a CPi. Didn't really enjoy it that much and thought that the build quality left a bit to be desired in the plastic around the hinges, but it still worked fine. It's still in the family - I gave it to my sister when I bought myself a T40 a couple of years ago, and when I bought a T42 for the family, the Dell went into retirement.

If you're keen on a HDD that's larger than 6GB, let me know because I'll still happily offload one of the spare drives if it works and has no bad sectors.

[T7TrainingSystems]

If you're keen on a HDD that's larger than 6GB, let me know because I'll still happily offload one of the spare drives if it works and has no bad sectors.

Thanks for the offer but 6 gig will be plenty for what essentially will be an internet and word processing machine. More than 6 gig will just leave too much space for him to put procrastination/distraction movies and mp3's on it!!

It's always nice to keep the old equipment in the family. As an ex-musician, I sold my first keyboard and have regretted it ever since. Glad to hear the CPi is fine - good co-incidence too!!

Cheers,

Nick