I Just Bought My First Thinkpad

[DrThinkpad]

Hi everyone,

I just bought my first laptop ever ! I had to go with refurbished since I have the very tight budget of a grade 9 student. Can you rate the deal I got ?

I went for a T40 for 454 $ including taxes and shipping.

2373-8U0 mobo
1.5ghz centrino
512mb 266mhz ram (going to 1g if not 2g soon)
40g 5400RPM HD
ATI Radeon 7500 (tweaked* (fixed) after, able to hit 121 fps !)
Wireless 2100b adapter
Windows XP PRO (Switched to WinXP Lite)

Came with 2 USB joysticks for games and a new luxury Targus carrying case.


I am satisfied with the computer but did I pay too much ?

Thanks for sharing a tiny bit of your wide knowledge on thinkpads

P.S I also heard about T40 mobo issues, is the 8U0 reliable if anyone knows Thanks. By the way, forgive my poor english as it's my 3rd language

[Harryc]

So, you're a High School freshman that got your first Thinkpad (a T40) for $450. Let me tell you, enjoy that fine machine and take care of it. Don't pick it up with one hand by a corner...always use two hands. Otherwise, yeah you did ok. Enjoy your Thinkpad and welcome to the forum. Let us know if we can help in any way.

P.S. Other forum members know better than to say anything bad about the first laptop purchase of such a smart freshman, and if they do they're just jealous. Go Thinkpads!

[jimmy274]

Excellent! Hope you enjoy it like the rest of us
Nevertheless don't go overclocking the GPU - it's not a desktop and GPU is fairly fragile - just listen to Harry's advice and don't overclock it, and it'll live forever.
At this point the GPU problem is yet to be documented, nothing is certain, except one thing - heat and flexing do matter, but handling your T40 with care (never hold it with one hand and never overclock the GPU) will give you an excellent and extremely reliable machine!
Congratulations one more time!

[ThinkPad]

Ah highschool..that was a good 12 years ago.

[DrThinkpad]

Excellent! Hope you enjoy it like the rest of us
Nevertheless don't go overclocking the GPU - it's not a desktop and GPU is fairly fragile - just listen to Harry's advice and don't overclock it, and it'll live forever.
At this point the GPU problem is yet to be documented, nothing is certain, except one thing - heat and flexing do matter, but handling your T40 with care (never hold it with one hand and never overclock the GPU) will give you an excellent and extremely reliable machine!
Congratulations one more time!

I will turn it back to 1500mhz ASAP since I want it to live forever hehe

I will probably use PC Wizard to make my settings better and so cover the light loss of performance

[jimmy274]

Actually, I was reffering to the GPU - Ati Radeon 7500. The CPU's fine - you probably don't have a long fan so the extra heat from CPU does not heat up the Radeon 7500.
An article at ThinkWiki:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... led_screen
even states that one should lower the Radeon clock speed for improved safety, but I don't think that a lot of people here does that...
Enjoy and no fear - so long as you treat it nice, it'll treat you nice

[DrThinkpad]

Actually, I was reffering to the GPU - Ati Radeon 7500. The CPU's fine - you probably don't have a long fan so the extra heat from CPU does not heat up the Radeon 7500.
An article at ThinkWiki:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... led_screen
even states that one should lower the Radeon clock speed for improved safety, but I don't think that a lot of people here does that...
Enjoy and no fear - so long as you treat it nice, it'll treat you nice

Lowered the GPU to the default 260hz. I won't probably lower it again since I'm gonna baby this thing

I'm gonna keep the processor at its original frequency though since I didn't notice that much of a difference and it may decrease slightly the heat of the processor.

[sjthinkpader]

Ah highschool..that was a good 12 years ago.

A real youngster.

[ThinkPad]