Thinkpads Forum

Hi! In this threat I explain how I bought my three S30 from Japan.

In Japan there is no ebay, Yahoo Auctions ( auctions.yahoo.co.jp ) dominates the market.

Why Japan?

Only in Japan online auction sites are many S30 available. In China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Korea you might only find one or two items.

Getting an S30 from Japan is not easy because no seller would ship to you and most japanese do not understand Englisch.

So you have 2 choices:

1. find a japanese guy who lives in Japan and buy this S30 for you and let him ship it to you. (who have japanese Friends in Japan??)

2. go to www.rinkya.com or www.shoppingmalljapan.com (is a little bit cheaper) and let them buy the auction items and ship it to you.

These are "middleman-companies" which are specialized for this problem. For my own experience I can say, Shopping Mall Japan is very respectablly!

How it works:

-Register at SMJ (shopping mall japan)
-Make a deposit, for example transfer 200$ via paypal so you can use the fivefold of 200$ for bidding! That would have to be sufficient for a S30.
-Go to the SMJ-Bid-form and bid on the selected Yahoo-Auction.
-if you have won the auction, SMJ pays the seller and receives the item.
-then tell SMJ to ship the item to you.
-now you have to pay the remaining amount

-It depends on your country how much import taxes you have to pay when importing something from Japan. I have no idea how much this is in US. In Germany you have to pay 16% of the item+shipping, in Austria I had to pay 20%.

Important for installing an OS is a bootable USB-CD-drive. If you don't have one you must buy a S30 with USB-CD-drive. Such drives are rare everywhere so you can buy such a thing in your own country but I recommend to buy a S30 + a USB-CD-drive from Japan because this are special compact IBM-drives which needs no external power supply.

A S30 in good condition + USB-CD-drive and good battery (standard lcd-cover and japanese keyboard) costs ~58.000 Yen (~64.000 with piano finisch cover and englisch keyboard).

The following fees are coming up to you:

530$ for the S30 (1$ = ~110 Yen)
10$ shipping to SMJ
2,5$ wire fee
60$ SMJ fees.
10$ handling fee for bigger items (everything wich is bigger than some CD hullets...)

so for 612$ the S30 is at the SMJ store. SMJ does have special connections to US so therefore I think that you only have to pay shipping from the US-store but I don't know exactly.

Shipping to EU or UK costs ~66$ via EMS and this is the most recommended shipping method for such expensive items.

If you have to pay taxes for your item I also don't know.

SMJ takes the current Yen-Rate - ~4 Yen to protect them from market flux. So if the Yen rate is 1$ = 110 Yen, SMJ gives you 106 Yen for 1$. In fact of that the whole price would rise about 3,5%.

So a S30 would cost about 634$ without shipping and import taxes if required.



I bought three pieces and paid 2220$ for all of it. Then sold two for 1505$ so for my S30 I had to pay 715$. Upgrading to a bigger HDD, CF-SD-adapter and internal Intel 54mbit Wifi costs 125$ extra so I paid at last 840$ for the whole item.

This rare item is only for IBM-fans, but therefore you have somthing unique. The IBM S30 is expensive, it doesnt matter where you buy it. People who don't want to pay so much money have no chance getting an S30. Even if you ARE in Japan (on holiday ect), the S30 in good condition costs ~ 530$ if you find it in a store.

The 600 MHZ ULV Cpu has not much power, but office, internet, corel draw a little bit, photoshop a little bit, watching videos in pal (divx, mpeg works fine, only quicktime doesnt), looking at photos is no problem if you install a Windows xp reduced with nlite. My XP does only need 60MB of the 256MB Ram and takes 17 seconds from hibernation. The battery works 5-7 hours.


At last some photos:


IBM Thinkpad S30 "Trinity":




3x S30 + 2x T23:




14,1" T23 vs. 10,4" S30




Goliath vs. David!
17" HP Pavillon vs. 10,4" S30:




CF-SD-adapter:




thx for reading!

i really like the s30- it looks like a laptop theyd use in one of the matrix movies.

if not for the price, i would love to own one. i wonder if it would be possible to acquire the shell of the laptop cheaply and add other model thinkpad parts?

???? Why buy three outdated thinkpads for 2200$ when you can get an new X60 for that money...
I just cant figure it out.......

Gustavo wrote:???? Why buy three outdated thinkpads for 2200$ when you can get an new X60 for that money...
I just cant figure it out.......

Same reason people buy classic cars for more than a high-end luxury/sport car.

the darn glare on that hp! still though, very crisp screen. my last job gave me a huge hp core duo, and while it made my r40 look like junk, i didnt even want to touch it..

Hey thanks for the middleman companies web adress. I'm a fan of Tokyo fashion, I'd love to order some of their clothes.

christopher_wolf wrote:

Gustavo wrote:???? Why buy three outdated thinkpads for 2200$ when you can get an new X60 for that money...
I just cant figure it out.......

Same reason people buy classic cars for more than a high-end luxury/sport car.

And, pray, what exactly is that reason?

IMHO, it's a waste of money and resources...

pphilipko wrote: And, pray, what exactly is that reason?

Getting people to ask that and wonder why, of course.

Gustavo wrote:???? Why buy three outdated thinkpads for 2200$ when you can get an new X60 for that money...
I just cant figure it out.......

I sold two of them on ebay for a little bit more money.

pphilipko wrote:

christopher_wolf wrote:Same reason people buy classic cars for more than a high-end luxury/sport car.

And, pray, what exactly is that reason?

IMHO, it's a waste of money and resources...

Some of us are just fascinated with the older machines. I would pick up an S30 in a heartbeat, if I found one at a reasonable price.

Look at the Butterfly (the 701 series), I get a lot of interest when I take it out in public. It's like driving up to a car show with one of those neat 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupes....lots of ooohs and aaaahs...especially if it is still running in pristine condition.

Older computers can generate good interest. About just over a year back, just as I was finishing Junior year in high school, I had my FrankenPad 760ED/XD/whatever I can call it at a lunch table where I was finishing some last minute work and I had this flock of kids around within minutes admiring it. It's funny because among them, it was considered a small computer since the growing trend seems to be computers that cover the whole desk whereas this thing was 12". Still, I don't expect flocks of fans admiring my old laptops everyday but it was still fun while it lasted.

Great post the S30 is my favorite ThinkPad

AlphaKilo470 wrote:Older computers can generate good interest.
...
It's funny because among them, it was considered a small computer since the growing trend seems to be computers that cover the whole desk whereas this thing was 12". Still, I don't expect flocks of fans admiring my old laptops everyday but it was still fun while it lasted.

I even get reactions of that kind when I'm out with my X30!

Just love its form factor, and it still works like a charm as well...

I saw someone before auctioned 2 s30's in ebay before sold for around 300$ and I never bothered to buy it unless it was cheaper. But still great info to buy something in japan.

boon wrote:I saw someone before auctioned 2 s30's in ebay before sold for around 300$

$300 is very cheap for the S30. Had you bought it, you could have easily sold it and made $100.

yah didn't thought about that, I only thought of buying for myself and I was trying to get rid of transnote so just didn't want to end up another p3 600mhz. But I almost did

I'm missing my transnote already too....

BachManiac wrote:Upgrading to a bigger HDD, CF-SD-adapter and internal Intel 54mbit Wifi costs 125$ extra so I paid at last 840$ for the whole item.

which intel mPCI card did you use?   mine still has the original 802.11 B card and i'd love to upgrade it to a BG card if possible.

i bought my s30 the hard way by studying two years of japanese language in college then picking it up while on a trip in japan.