Would you buy a T43 today?

[ajkula66]

And I have done probably 20 or more, without ever getting any dust in...

I can attest to the validity of this statement...

[RealBlackStuff]

And George has done a lot more than just rebuilding hydraulic spheres!
His favorite cars were (and still are AFAIK) Citroens, just to get an idea of their complexity, read up a bit on this website: http://www.citroenclassics.co.uk/hydraulics.php

After that, taking a ThinkPad apart is child's play, sorry.
Another big advantage: you don't get your hands dirty!

[kfzhu1229]

Have you ever read my How-to? http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=88991
Didn't take me more than maybe 15-20 minutes.

And I have done probably 20 or more, without ever getting any dust in...

To make things harder, I was stuck with a good XGA Toshiba display and a bad backlight Samsung SXGA+ display... In the end it turns out the rubber heads at both ends are different and I already broke the Toshiba one...
Then to make things even harder, I ended up throwing it into my A30 instead but ended up with insufficient cable length. Now the lid of that computer cannot be closed or else the screen turns white

[kfzhu1229]

And then the backlight is messing that computer up: every time I turn the brightness lower than 7, it produces the hissgate iPhone 7 sound and sometimes also the backlight brightness is inconsistent which is annoying.
But then thanks God I already bought a battery from Canada computers so that I can still get 2+ hours of battery life

[w0qj]

So are you suggesting that I'm a ThinkPad power user for using 30+ tab browser, email program, and large MS Excel file?
Never thought of myself as a ThinkPad power user...hurray

[For the record, all of the 30+ browser tabs are news/investment web pages, and none of them are YouTube, none are Facebook, etc.
But like you said, many web pages have advertisement videos in it, hence heavily taxing your computer.]

30 tabs is heavy computer usage. If you open 30 tabs of things like Youtube, Facebook, etc. you would need around 20GB of RAM to be safe. In that case go and buy a server, they come with a bunch of memory for a really cheap price. I wouldn't open more than 5 tabs on my T43 at the same time. As for Office, I have office 2007 and office mobile installed (Office 2013/16's hardware acceleration is not supported by the Radeon X300 therefore eating CPU power constantly to display the GUI). I wouldn't put my computer to sleep as it is not too unacceptably slower to start Windows 10 than waking it up from sleep. Putting your computer to sleep will significantly shorten your components' lives as nothing lasts forever. ThinkPads are built to last at least 8 years, not for a few years. Go and buy a T43 with 2GB RAM, at least 40GB HDD, Pentium M 780, and Windows 10, try sticking with it for a month, and then go back to your laptop. You will be using your laptop much lighter and nicer.

[Whynot?]

For everybody's information:

Hunting through my parts stock, I discovered another T43 motherboard with SATA-mod.
This, combined with other stock parts, will turn into what must now become my absolutely LAST SATA-modded T43.

It will have:
- 15" housing
- 15" new Sharp UXGA (1600x1200) LCD with AVS (comparable to IPS)
- T43 motherboard with ATI X300 graphics and SATA-mod
- the fastest M 780 (2.26GHz) CPU, will get M10 long fan and fresh AS5 thermal paste
- 2GB RAM
- bluetooth/modem
- Intel 2200BG wifi card
- 500GB SATA hard disk
- Chicony Keyboard
- palm rest with FPR (Finger Print Reader)
- TTAV134's BIOS with Slic2.1, no Error 1802 (use ANY wifi card), no Error 2010 (use ANY hard disk/SSD)
- W7 Pro/32-bit installed
- genuine OEM 72W 16V charger
- battery in green (need to check 6-cell or 9-cell)

Overall it will be in very good condition.
The T43 clearplate does not have a Bluetooth symbol (but you could have a T40 clearplate with BT instead).
Waiting for the CPU.
I'm still working on the price, will let you know.

I recently got a t43p. Upgraded the CPU and RAM. Only thing missing is the SATA mod to speed up things a bit. Could you give me any useful links for that? I already did some research on my own. But I would need a step by step guide with clear pictures as I haven't done anything like that before. Any help appreciated.

[RealBlackStuff]

That machine has already been sold and shipped!.
But have a look here: http://theboardroom.info/sata_mods.html

[Whynot?]

That helps a lot indeed! Thanks! It's a pity, that you can't continue to do these mods any more...

[kfzhu1229]

Yea it is a pity but it is not like the machine is too slow without the mod. After the SATA mod BIOS mod is also strongly recommended. If you dont want to risk anything but only have SATA drives you can always go for ultrabay adapters even though it may not be the original SATA speed