My GREAT Christmas Buy

[jronald]

So Im tooling around FeeBay, and I stumble on a Z60t for $19.99.
I goob it and forget to bid. Contact the seller, explained that I was without cell coverage, and he relisted it for 7 days.
I watched again, and placed my bid in the last few minutes, like normal and won it.

I was warned that it would not stay running, but I figured with a 40gig HDD, DVD-RW, Power Supply and Good LCD it was real hard to go wrong for 20 bucks.

It arrives, and I see its a Z61t, not amused but Im ok with it. It fires up and within 5 mins, sure enough it shuts down. I fiddle with it, and also find out it has 2.5 gigs on memory. So Im still good with my $19.99 investment. Its basically a clean machine, so I take some time this afternoon and disassemble the thing, thinking the thermal paste has dried out. Imagine my surprise when I find a new fan installed, missing half the screws. I pop off the fan and instantly spot the thermal paste protector (blue plastic) still in place!
Yanked the protector off, reinstalled the fan with all the screws, fired it up with uBuntu on a DVD and wait.
2 hours later Im still waiting on the thing to overheat and shut down. It doesnt.

So I double click the install button....and Im posting on the thing now. Not bad for $20.00

Ron

[wolfman]

Wow - that's a great get, congrats! Very nice deal.

[Neil]

I agree, nice grab! I'm just glad I didn't see it too, 'cause I might have been tempted to bid on it, and I sure don't need another ThinkPad!

It arrives, and I see its a Z61t, not amused but Im ok with it.

I would think you would rather have a Z61 than a Z60...why not amused?

[jronald]

I have a couple of 60's Im working on and needed parts for, thats why I was not amused.
On the other hand, Im not upset either!

Ron

[DaKKS]

Good buy, mate. Real nice catch. Lovely machines the Z61(t)s.

[A31]

Nice deal you got there. People often sell items on eBay they think are broken are for real cheap, but actually all it takes is a quick repair job and it's back up and running and hey you've got yourself a great deal.

I remember people doing this with GeForce 8/9 series cards. They had an issue where the solder would go bad and the card would malfunction, one of the solutions you could try was to bake the card in an oven to reheat the solder, and usually it worked. There are probably loads of apparently 'faulty' 8/9 series cards on eBay which could just do with a bit of baking to get them going again. In fact, I picked one up, it was a 9600 GSO 384MB. It was artifacting, so I stuck it in the oven and hey presto, when I took it out it worked again. Sold it a friend (who is fully aware that I baked it) and he's happy with it! Those older cards still aren't bad for gaming either, but the V-RAM can be a bit of a limitation sometimes.

Anyway, you got yourself a great deal. Congrats!