Is this a hot deal?

[gio]

Hi,

I've seen a ThinkPad T40 for sale in London for £1375 inc VAT. The model number is 2373-94G, which I can't find in the tabook list, but seems to correspond to 94U, namely:

1.6Ghz, Intel 11b wi-fi, 512Mb, 80G (4200), blue tooth, CDRW/DVD, 14" screen SXGA+, Radeon 9000 32Mb, XP pro

Its old stock, the sales guy did not aspire much confidence in me, trying to convince me that they retail for £2500.

I'm not bothered that its not cutting edge, I have a desktop mac that's my main machine. The ThinkPad will be for web development (including running apache server) , bit of photoshop work, testing and word processing on the move.

Is this a good deal - £1475 (about $2600) for a high-spec T40?

Do you think the slow hard drive will cause me grief in the long-term?

Does anyone know whether the 3yr warranty would still apply as the model is discontinued?

I have read about someone having a 'dodgy' experience claiming on their warranty after buying from this shop (shyamtronics, tottenham court road).

thanks

Giovanni

[mier]

That's the one I've got, except mine's got 1GB of RAM and is a refurb.
You can check current warranty status with the serial number on IBM's site. My experience in the States is that they don't bug you for receipts and stuff unless that system says the machine is out of warranty. It computes the base warranty by doing something like 3 years + 90 days from manufacture date. Can't say if IBM-UK does anything differently.

From my experience with the 80GB drive, it's no problem. But I have a gig of RAM. Maybe a little slower than average startup time for some apps but once they're loaded they run fine. With 512MB it might be a bit different with multiple apps loaded as then you'll be hitting the swap file which exposes you to the slower HDD.

And the sales guy was probably quoting the retail price the day it hit the streets. Which might even be close to right, I think mine had a US$3999
price tag on it originally.

[RCube]

I think it is a little high. Should be around 2000 or less.