Thinkpads Forum

I was at my bi-weekly Salvation Army hunting grounds today, and noted about 30 desktop computers along with about 10 remaining T60, T43, and one R60 'in stock'.

Unfortunately, the lady said they had already been picked over rather heavily, so while I got lucky with one T60p Thinkpad, the other two T60 Thinkpads I got were Intel graphics models.

All are clean, with one appearing almost unused (Intel Graphics), and all three amazingly have hard drives installed, working batteries installed, RAM installed, Hard Drive caddy/cover + two of the three actually have the original Lenovo branded power supplies included with them.

I have two questions-
1) Are a lot of businesses now basically dumping all of their systems that came installed with XP at this point to comply with security protocols since the original XP OS of these laptops is no longer being supported? These are not junk condition computers,


2) They also have a T60 15.4" with ATI graphiics that was in good physical condition, but when I booted it up, it would only "beep" 3 times, and nothing showed at any point on the display. This does not have a power supply with it. Is this probably a bad mother board, or could it be something more minor?

I dont really need 4 T60/T60p, but I plan to take the two Intel graphics units, install Linux Mint and sell them, while keeping both original Lenovo power supplies and also keeping the T60p unit. If I can get 50 bucks a pop on Craigslist for the 2 Linux T60 units, I will get the two power supplies and the T60 + make 10 bucks in the overall deal.

Are there any 4:3 15" T60 units?

I cleared out all the T60 except the one 15.4" that only beeped when it tries to boot, and one 14" T60/ATI machine that was very scuffed up and had a cracked palmrest in one corner.
I hooked up the only two Lenovo T60 power supplies they had in stock to the three I was buying and they did not charge any extra to me.

They still have a working R60 and 3-4 T43 that I did not personally check out closely.

It looks like businesses are getting rid of anything enmasse that came with XP as original equipment because I never expected to get 3 fully functional T60 and two Lenovo power supplies for under a 100 bucks.

New supply is always welcome. But after that, it's probably the end of line for affordable T60 parts - you will only find them in those sites selling them for absurd prices.

Yeah, I would agree that this should be the end of the line for most corp/business surplused T60-era Thinkpads.
Realistically though, due to the RAM limitations of T60's, RAM demands of M$ OS'es, and the cost of adding a M$ OS to the surplused device their is a fairly low ceiling for what even aftermarket sellers can hope to realize from these units. There is a corner retail shop near me that had been trying to sell surplus T60's for $329, and I recently noted they are 'out of business'. Even on Ebay the non-liquidation stock simply sits unless its $50-$75 price range, and there are a lot of these units that were manufactured.

Its probably a good time right now with the end of XP to get deals on these particular units, but the parts and stripped units are going to be avail cheap on Ebay for a long time to come, in my opinion.
There are so many of these that were produced are never/seldom used, that one of my thrift shop trio still has the protective blue covering vinyl over the front infrared window and all its original stickers.

Laptops from 2006, early 2007. Businesses are probably just replacing them if they didn't already. It's old stuff; mid-life replaced batteries probably mostly worn out, increased failure rate, etc. etc. Doesn't make sense for them to pay to get new OS, when for not that much more you can get an entire new laptop with new OS.

I work in I.T. with said businesses that cycle their hardware a lot, and there's two reasons:

#1 90% of the time it's cheaper and easier for the client to purchase a whole new system rather than paying the costs for an onsite technician and the windows license. End users also want a new machine at times just for the sake of it being new; especially VIPs that don't want to use something old. As an I.T. provider we also generally quote new systems instead of renewing old machines to eliminate failure and so the systems are under warranty.

#2 Windows 7 (which is what a lot of clients want) is no longer sold as a separate license, only sold with an OEM-made machine by select manufacturers. So they'll just have to buy a whole new system for Windows 7 anyways.

I hope that makes sense

But you know what? It's not such a big deal: it allows me to get a lot of discarded systems for free.