Rolling the dice with Ebay

[virge]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200655658694

I wonder what this would have sold for if the auction title and item description were better. Looking at the seller's history, he/she seems to deal with Thinkpads quite a bit, so I'm surprised at the lack of detail in this listing. Hiding faults? or just lazy? That's one heck of a blurry picture!

[ZaZ]

You never know what you'll get with ebay until it arrives. That's been by experience.

[rkawakami]

Hiding faults? or just lazy?

I'd vote for "lazy" . Although there's just enough details in the description to assume that there's probably more things wrong with them. Nothing about them being able to boot or their power-up status, for example.

[virge]

I think the safe bet would be that none of the machines power up (or power up to a password request). Since the seller mentions a cracked LCD in one of the machines, but not the others I would assume that the rest are physically undamaged. I don't know what "original memory" refers to... the fuzzy picture does show some modules, but there should be more than that if we're talking about the memory originally installed in the machines. I also see hard drive rails and something that looks like a hard drive. Where's CSI?

[NorrisCell]

A price like that would have been low enough for me to gamble on. If even a small portion of the machines had usable parts it could've been a good haul. The T400 might even be under warranty still if something was wrong that didn't involve damage.

[virge]

Well, here's an update for anyone following this thread.

Got the box the other day. Packaging was minimal and consisted of a couple layers of the small bubble wrap.

Inside:

1x T400 - No optical, no wifi, no HDD/caddy/rails/cover, no memory. With and without memory installed the machine will spin the fan for a few seconds and then power down. No beeps. WXGA+ screen doesn't light up. Still under warranty till May 2012. Missing screws. Need to check machine for liquid damage.

1x 14" T60 - Stripped and in pieces. Has T2400 CPU and Intel Wifi. LCD is physically unbroken.

2x 15.2" T61 - Both have T7500 CPUs, 2GB memory, DVDRW drives. No HDD/caddy/rails. ABGN wifi and BT installed. Both have the older Nvidia GPU. One will go into BIOS, but black screens when trying to load OS from optical or HDD. The other one was labeled "bad keyboard."

2x T42. Both have CDRW-DVD drives, 2x512MB, and 40GB HDD. One has cracked LCD. Neither will post.


Also in the box was one 20v and one 20v adapter. Both genuine Lenovo products. No batteries. I swapped out the bad keyboard in one T61 and tossed in a spare HDD. Installed trial version of Windows 7 and all the Thinkvantage software. So far, I've run about 5 rounds of stress tests on the CPU and GPU without any errors. Looks like the clock is still ticking on this timebomb!

Haven't gotten around to playing with the other machines. I need another project like I need another hole in the head. Yet here we are....

[emeraldgirl08]

lol ^^^

Where does your new MS keyboard fit into the picture?!

I'm debating on buying a T7200 for my R60.... winded up buying a sleeve for it....even though it probably will never leave the house...

[Thinkpad Lover]

So, was it worth it? I agree with Josh (NorrisCell) above. If I would have seen this auction I probably would've taken a gamble on it myself.

$127.50 for a year's worth of projects LOL. I think you can either part out and sell a few piece by piece, fix up a couple into some useable form for your own personal use (since they seem to have deep underlying issues you might not want to resell them unless you're sure you've truly diagnosed and fixed the issue), and sell one or two that can be made to run stably. I think you can easily make a huge profit off of these after a year or so of hard labor

Daniel

[virge]

I've already got enough projects to keep me busy for the next year... without these new machines! Since the motherboard on my Z61m started going out, I've reverted to my T60 while working on a plan for a replacement widescreen. A few weeks ago, I bought a widescreen T60 which needs a new fan. While checking out Ebay, I came across this listing. Now I have added six extra machines and still don't have a fan. It's a disease.

@emeraldgirl08-- the MS keyboard is for an HTPC I'm putting together for a family member. In addition to the too many half-dead Thinkpads around here, I have the makings of 4 HTPCs that I need to put assemble in my "free" time. This is what happens when you become the tech support for the family!