Advice to buy a used T400

[Grominet]

Hi!
I'm new to the thinkpad community and I want to buy a used T400 and upgrade it (SSD, RAM).
As I want to libreboot it, T400 is the one I'm looking for because X200 feels a bit too small (and less powerful).

I stumbled across a refurbish company (kelsus it), which sells refurbished T400 for ~60e (I don't post any link because I don't know if this is allowed, you can easily find it on a search engine). That looks like a good deal to me, but I couldn't find any customer review for this company. Has anyone already bought on this website ? If so, would you recommend it ?

Thanks for your advices

[RealBlackStuff]

Google just Kelsusit for loads of (positive) reviews.

[Grominet]

Well, thanks for your reply! I've seen some good and not so good reviews.
Is ~60€ a good price for a T400 with no ram/hdd? I mean, I saw people find T400 cheaper than this, with ram. Is the refurbish thing really worth it?

[TonyJZX]

IMO I think 60 euro is an ok price for a laptop shell... ie. you provide the ram, the hdd and the psu, the o/s (use a loader!)/

I do feel however that many of us who are in the IT trade feel that 60 euro $70 usd whatever is a fair bit to pay for a shell where you have to do a lot of legwork to get a working laptop up.

I have not bought a 400 for around 2yrs? I dont even touch T410s etc.

I know that perhaps places like the US have a bigger market so you may get things cheaper but an example here is that I can get a T420 sans hdd and psu for under $100 usd.

This is a more useful machine.

I feel that a T400 even with a cpu like a P9300 4gb ssd is about a minimum as far as a Win7/10 experience goes.

Linux fares a lot better.

What you do get with a refurb is some kind of warranty I hope. Even if its only a fortnight.

[Grominet]

Thanks for your reply. US do actually have more offers, but shipping to France are so expensive that the save isn't worth it.
Well another problem is that I will probably only find a laptop with a QWERTY keyboard. Does people sometimes do a kind of exchange with somebody who own an AZERTY one ?

[Utwig]

Note that early T400s came with CCFL and late came with LED. There are two resolutions 1440x900 and 1280x800 in both LED and CCFL. To go LED you need display cable, display frame, monitor and display board or entire lid. Price of those parts alone is 200€, so you want to get the LED model from start. I just paid ~50€ for entire LED display lid, waiting for arrival. The CCFL lights have a life of about 6 years of daily use and 10 years of normal use and become dimmer with time. Getting a CCFL T400 means you will get bad screen and couple of years of useful life.

So at that price if you get LED display, it's OK. There should be loads of keyboards available as T400 shares keyboards with T60, T61, R60, R61 and T500 and it's very easy to replace. I just care about the big enter key, I don't care what it says on keys, I prefer Euro style ISO vs ANSI. I did sell one Norvegian keyboard that came with laptop to Norwegian forum user once and USA keyboard to some local. The supply of unwanted US keyboards in EU is probably bigger than AZERTY, so AZERTY will cost more (buy AZERTY, sell US), see if price difference is worth.

[Grominet]

Wow ok I didn't know there was two different type of screen for the T400. This is the kind of information I really need to know in order not to be surprised after the buy. Maybe you got some source for typical pitfalls to avoid when buying a thinkpad like this ?
As for the keyboard I think I can handle a qwerty one, at least in the beginning

[Utwig]

Also T400 either had a webcam or didn't - doesn't matter if you don't care.
Decide on the features you want - apart from screen stuff like RAM, HDD, keyboard, wifi can be cheaply replaced and upgraded. Check the part number in add and look up the system service parts to see which parts came with the laptop from factory. This will help you decide. A lot of models on market might be CTO (configure to order) so it's not ambiguous which parts they have originally. Check with seller.

Buy from some place where you can return for a refund or inspect in person nearby. I bought ~6 used Thinkpads locally or from Ebay or German shops and only one came bad and I was able to return it for a refund. Had to eat the 25€ cost of shipping back.

After laptop has arrived install Windows, check if all drivers work, if hardware (screen, trackpad, trackpoint, keyboard, webcam, wifi, ports, sd reader...) works, try memtest and prime95. If it's OK, you can start replacing parts, flashing modded BIOS and installing Linux.

[Grominet]

Thanks for your help. Wouldn't install Linux directly be enough to verify hardware?

[Utwig]

If all your hardware works in Linux and you can troubleshoot and install drivers in Linux (on old Thinkpads the only problem might be wifi, everything works out of box on Linux), then Linux is OK.

[TonyJZX]

It depends on how fussy you are... my best T400 has a 1,440 x 900 LED screen. These are rare.

After 10yrs I beleive the CCFL 1,200 x 800 screens now may look pretty dull and sepia.

Its a good idea to see one powered up before you buy it if possible.

[CrazyTPFan]

The ThinkPad T400 makes a great Linux machine I personally use Ubuntu Mate 18.04 on my R400 which is basically the same thing as a T400.