Thinkpads Forum

Hi guys,

Long-time TP user, but been a macbook person for the past 2 years (13" macbook pro and 27" Quad core i5 iMac)

Decided to get a cheap ThinkPad as a back-up machine or "on-the-go" machine when I am waiting in between my soccer games.

Originally wanted to buy an X60s (had one and sold it for around $450 a while back) for ~$200. But could not find one that I need.


Came across this mislabeled X200 listing on Ebay for ~$630 shipped:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 479wt_1141

The model is 7470-A12 with warranty until 12/2/2011

Here is list of parts:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... Results.vm


To my suprise, here are the specs:

X200s core 2 duo 1.86ghz SL9400 Penryn
2x2GB DDR3 ram
12.1" WXGA+ LED matte (1440x900)
Bluetooth
Ultrabase X200 with DVD multi-recorder
160GB 7200rpm HD
9-cell Sanyo battery
Windows Vista (argg)
Pretty decent cosmetic condition

Since this won't be my main computer I really don't need all the accessories. I was thinking about:

Selling the X200 ultrabase, the DVD multiwriter

Put the 4GB ram into my 27" iMac (for a total of 12GB ram), and use the 2x1GB module I have laying around.

Questions that I would really like experts here to weigh in on:

1. Did I get a good deal?
2. How much can I sell the X200 ultrabase and the DVD multiwriter for?
3. Would the computer slow down a lot if I just go with 2GB?


Thanks in advance!

If you like the machine and are happy with what you paid, who cares what someone you're never going to meet thinks about whether you got a good deal or not. Having said that, it seems like a pretty good deal. If you can sell the ultrabase that will sweeten the deal.

If you look on eBay it ranges anywhere from $100-200. The fact you've got the drive will help. It's kind of hard to say on this one.

I think most people are fine with 2GB of memory unless you've got a specific need to run memory intensive apps like VMs. You can always add more later.

FredGarvin wrote:I think most people are fine with 2GB of memory unless you've got a specific need to run memory intensive apps like VMs. You can always add more later.

Oh, i don't use VMs lately, but i found that even 4GB is too small, so i finally upgraded my X200s to 6GB.

an extremely good price especially considering you got the WXGA+ LCD, that LCD is pretty expensive.

Thanks a lot guys. I will mostly use it more emails, MS office, and web browsing. I do most of the heavy duty stuff on my imac.

I think 2GB is probably fine for me. I will run XP on it if I have to.

2 gigs should be fine for general use.

lead_org wrote:2 gigs should be fine for general use.

I'll say!

At this moment I'm running NetBeans (with a large project), Iceweasel with 15 tabs across 2 windows, 2 file managers, 3 terminals, geany, gedit, Evolution (with several thousands messages in several mailboxes), and Rhythmbox.

Current RAM usage? 363 MB.

You'll be fine with two gigs.

ThinkRob wrote:At this moment I'm running NetBeans (with a large project), Iceweasel with 15 tabs across 2 windows, 2 file managers, 3 terminals, geany, gedit, Evolution (with several thousands messages in several mailboxes), and Rhythmbox.

Current RAM usage? 363 MB.

You're lucky. With my large project (200K lines, 2K files) Eclipse PDT itself was consuming about 0.5-1GB of RAM.
Currently, RAM consumption on my system is 5 of 6GB. Consumption by program is: Chrome (secondary browser) 1.3GB, Sleipnir (primary browser) 600MB, VS2k8 (+ReSharper) with a not-so-large project 400MB, IBM Lotus Symphony with a half-dozen docs opened 300MB etc...

PS: Or maybe you were saying about physical RAM consumption, and everything went to swap in your system?