soon to be 'new' T40 user

[robert alcantara]

Hi all,

I recently bought a Thinkpad T40 off ebay and am expecting delivery of it this Monday. Specs: Pentium M 1.5 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD.

Waiting is the hardest part....

Unfortunately mine only has the CDRW-DVD combo drive. I looked at e-bay for the multi-burner but lowest I found was $79.99 USD + 25 USD shipping, for a used part.

Does anybody know of any other source with a better price?

An alternative I may take is using a WD Passport 160GB USB portable hard drive. It's extremely small (smaller than any external slim dvd burner) and obtains all power from the USB port. I'm told it's also possible to swap the drive in the external enclosure with the one in the thinkpad.

This is cheaper for me (can get it for $99.99 Canadian), and backups will be faster with no disk swapping. If I need to burn to media, I just hook up the portable drive to my desktop or my work laptop.

[Temetka]

The newer WD passports use SATA drives. So you may be out of luck as far as removing and installing it in the T40. The best way to tell is to open up the drive.

My T41P came with a combo drive like the one in your T40. I solved the problem by getting en external USB dual layer DVD burner with lightscrive capability for $59.99 plus shipping from e-bay.

You can get drives that will fit inside the unit. Some require modifying the drive bezel to fit correctly. Other drives have the right bezel but cost more.