I needed a laptop last year but didnt have much money, and after seeing your videos on thinkpads I decided to buy an older model and "repair" it. All it needed was a hardrive, ram, and a charger and its been a great machine! I liked it so much I started buying a few more thinkpads, slowly getting more comfortable with trickier repairs like screen replacements. I've had a lot of fun buying old/broken laptops and fixing them up! Honestly your videos talking about older thinkpads is what helped me get into this and I want to say thank you
Also really fond his videos, and raised my interest in messing/opening laptops. Too bad, for Europe i can't find much offers on Ebay. Even more that i live in Island, and many sellers don't ship to me as "OffShore" (not mainland Europe). Still my x230 and t450, were great deals.
I need a laptop (used) With the following spec; A recent laptop. At least core i5 and 8GB RAM. An SSD of 256 GB too would be fine or 500GB HDD At least 6th gen of core i5I need a laptop (used) With the following spec; A recent laptop. At least core i5 and 8GB RAM. An SSD of 256 GB too would be fine or 500GB HDD At least 6th gen of core i5 E-mail: iorpuumsugh@gmail.com
Thinkpads are like the old Land Cruisers or Land Rovers of laptops, just when you thought they're dead, they came back roaring with just a little nudge. Can't say the same for other models.
You are soooooo right. My old ThinkPad E520 (or 530) is still running for the relative I gave it to. The machine is now 11 years old. I wish I could visit it and pop and SSD into it. 8GB of RAM was a lot when I first purchased it. Now if only Dell, Lenovo and all the others would *STOP* whitelisting the hardware. It would be so much easier to upgrade some of the parts like the wireless adapter. Yes I know we can get the BIOS clean up but it adds to the cost and you need to find someone who knows what they are doing and doesn't add unwanted code in there.
One big reason I love ThinkPads. The Lenovo R61 I have is an 12-year-old model I bought on Refurbio for $79. It was upgraded with an SSD and an expanded battery, and aside from it being heavy as hell, it's a work horse. I've done so much with it in the past two years, and if I ever decide to upgrade to a newer model, I'm giving it to a family member or friend
... Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus
Just yesterday I literally found an old IBM ThinkPad 760EL in an abandoned building. I couldn't believe it. It was in a laptop bag but isn't in the best shape as was exposed to the weather, although not direct rain. Needless to say I rescued it. It was manufactured in 1996. This particular building is near to where I live and if I'd have known that laptop was there I'd have got it years ago when the building was first abandoned.
I'm out of a flock of 11 siblings. I have made myself the goto IT-person for my family and their friends and relatives. It only costs me a little of my spare time. This has given me about 15-20 free laptops over the last 10 years as they tend to give me their old laptops when they upgrade to new ones. My brother's mother-in-law not only gave me her old single core laptop some years ago when she "upgraded" to an iPad but she actually used to work in a phone factory and she gave me the solder station she worked with up until she retired. She bought it when the factory went belly-up. :) That is one way of getting computers. And yes I have gotten quite a few dual cores and core i3's and i5's that way as well. Teenage gamers tend to upgrade more often than others. P.S. They tend to use me because I'm cheap. I only charge them for coffee and parts. :)
I used a x220 Thinkpad for 5 years in college while pursuing my Computer Science degree (2016-2021). Although I made it sure it was tested before purchasing, I only paid about $120 for it off of ebay and it never gave me troubles. The only repair I needed to make was a single broken USB port, and after about 2 years I upgraded the HDD to a Samsung SSD for better storage. Overall the computer was still less than $200 which is much better than the thousands my peers had spent, and I used it to complete all of my assignments when I wasn't at my desktop. Never regretted it for a second. While I don't use it as much anymore because I have a company-issued laptop for work, it's still running perfectly fine.
Agree, no one in uni needs a workstation laptop when they have a desktop at home me included. I currently use an almost 7 year old lenovo yoga and it does me well, absolutely every assignment I had the professor even made sure to add "this shouldn't take longer then a minute on decade old hardware" and made me more aware of performance and algos
thing is, some people don't want to or don't have a desktop and some people come from another state, live in apartments, or rent a house, why have a big desktop if you could have a simple but powerful laptop that you could carry anywhere...
@@noracola5285 depends. if you are a gamer it would feel more natural two press left shift because of game keybinds, and if u were used your computer for work it might feel more natural to press right shift because you will have both hands on the keyboard most of the time, unlike having only the legt hand on the keyboard in the case of a gamer.
I picked up my T430 at a flea market for $25. The only flaw it had was the CMOS battery was dead, and I think the errors that was bringing up made them think the machine was damaged. Thus far the only thing I've had to do with it was install a new CMOS battery, and upgraded the memory. And, of course, wiping the disk (I automatically do that with any computers I get) and installing Linux.
@@JatPhenshllem No, just residential (apt complexes, mobile home parks). Anywhere where people dump stuff and you probably wouldn't get in much trouble for diving. They don't show up that often, so you just grab them when you see them.
This is exactly what I do. I have about 10 ThinkPad's. I got carried away and bought too many. I haven't had time to fix them all yet. You have to have discipline or else it can become an addiction. 😱😁
Yeah I had good intentions too but after I fix them, I tend to put them in my collection. Now I have way too many laptops that I'll ever use. Serious ThinkPad addiction here.
@@klwthe3rd I'm really trying to cut down on how many I hold on to - For sure going to keep my FrankenPad T601, my X301, first gen X1 Carbon, and my FHD classic keyboard T430....that's already four... T480 I'm on the fence about, I was going to try to force myself to use it and wear it down to do a "then and now" type of video in the future, but I've frankly barely touched it since making my video about it. So that one might be sold. Once I get a proper replacement back for this T470s, it's likely going to be sold as well. I might hold onto a T450s to have at least one semi-modern ThinkPad, as this was my favorite when it comes to "modern" machines.
@@klwthe3rd The FHD/classic KB T430 has been my daily driver for a while, before that I alternated between a few. I use the FrankenPad on occasion but until I get something like a T70/700 modification for it, it's a tad too slow for my everyday needs. For r/thinkpadsforsale, you just have to make sure to have a timestamp in your photos (your reddit username and the day you took the picture written on a sheet of paper next to the laptop in one of the photos), and then have the country, state, what you have, and what you want for it in the title. For example, [USA-PA] [H] ThinkPad [W] PayPal
@@SebisRandomTech Yeah they keep saying I don't have a timestamp. I didn't know what they ment till you described it in this reply. I really really want to use my T61 as my daily driver but until you do a video on how to make hardware mods on these machines to install quad core processors, my T9300 just isn't fast enough. Gonna have to try upgrade to the extreme x9000 like in your video.
This is basically how I run my business. I buy used or broken laptops, fix them and sell them. I also love thinkpads. There's just something about them that keeps me hooked. I tend to find some people way undervalue items on ebay too, so tend to jump on these before anyone else can.
Hey brother, here in USA. Just bought a perfectly well taken care of Thinkpad T480, no scratches for under $200 on Ebay. But I am new to the thinkpad refurbishing and selling thing. I'd like to know if you have any advice you can give me
@@RavenWampus Read up on business fundamentals. Most people here are probably reselling the refurbished devices. I'd just find a copy of windows 10 with a volume license. Just a couple lines in command prompt makes that WINDOWS ISN'T GENUINE message go away.
hi, it's a great hobbie keeping alive all those thinkpads. I've done the same since my T400 presented problems and I'm learning a lot with your videos. thank you.
AS a ThinkPad lover?...I am all for keeping them out of landfills and huge piles of e-waste. If I can?..I buy them on eBay or other sites, fix em up?..and then give them away to family and friends as birthday gifts...I don't keep them anymore..as I have three T-420's a T-430, and X-1 Carbon (1st gen) and then I also have a Dell Latitude E-4300, a Dell XPS 15...and finally? a Huawei MateBook X Pro. All in the name of trying to keep some of these old electronics up and running! Plus?...its fun refurbishing and then installing Linux on 'em...
I am glad someone else restores and re-purposes electronics. I do it often. Why toss perfectly good tech when it can be restored? Never understood the wasteful mindset of consumerism
Forget crazy glue for broken screen screw inserts, or even on hinges. Use PL Premium. Lay it down like putty, insert the broken screw in metal grommet and smooth it like plaster. Its worked flawlessly for me a quite a few HP DV series laptops.
*Thank you* for that adhesive name. 👍 I have been looking for something that will do that job. I have used, in the words of Neo and John Wick, Araldite (lots of Araldite) in the past and then loosened the hinge screw off a little just to ease the strain on the repaired section.
Thinkpads are so awesome. I’ve been watching your videos I got a t430 for about $60 after never owning a thinkpad before in my life instead of trying to spend $200-300 on a new entry level laptop. I just put a i7-3632qm in it I got for $40, and a 500gb ssd. This thing is really beastly and snappy on linux, it’s beautiful! But tinkering with these is super addictive, it brings out my geekiness and I wanna keep checking eBay for various sized models that I don’t necessarily need right now But yeah-they are so practical, affordable and enjoyable!
Offer to be the repairman or tech garbage disposer for all your friends. Every time they upgrade you get something that could be useful to some degree.
Plastic (typically abs material) can be easily glue back together with abs pipe adhesive (available at Home Depot) or epoxy (2nd choice, not as strong). I often reinforce brand new replacement laptop plastic panels at the hinge locations with abs pipe adhesive to prevent future issues.
I paid 15 bucks each for two t510s about two years ago, no hard drive or caddy, but one of them had a 1600x900 IPS panel and the other had an i7 620m (top of the line for the model as far as I know) and a bad keyboard so I did a motherboard swap and now I have one nice ThinkPad and a lot of spare parts. Not the most usable laptop today but with the correct EQ, those speakers are actually MacBook quality and it's working very nice for college prep.
Excellent video! It's like you took my previous video idea and made it reality. I just got a T410 off a local EBay seller for $10 cause he thought the unit was broken once he removed the old HDD for security purposes. Smiles.
@@teerich2011 True. But I was so surprised that it was in mint condition. I could see the mark where the corporate asset tag sticker was affixed on the lid so it lead a pristine life in someone's office. I don't think I could part out such a mint machine. I would of fixed it if it was faulty for sure.
You could have sold that guy a bridge and gotten your $10 back from the sale. Ok, that was a bit _ not nice_ to someone who sold the laptop for a really good price. It's the nice people who don't ask exorbitant prices for their non working devices and don't complain when the "parts machine" you sold won't boot.
Good tips. I’ve built and repaired computers for years, but nowadays my decreased motivation to tinker combined with arthritis lead me to seek solutions that are a little closer to turnkey than those requiring more difficult repairs. I just purchased a refurb T440P for $200. Normally I don’t think I’d be willing to pay much over $150 for a working unit, but considering the seller also included a new battery and AC adapter (something that seems to be becoming less common for some reason) that was enough value add for me to put up an extra $50 for something I wouldn’t have to track down myself that probably would have cost me more than what they were charging in the process. Now all I have to do is add some extra RAM, an old SSD (of which I have more than a few I’ve salvaged just lying around) and I’m set, until I eventually get the itch to change out something more involved, that is. ;)
The battery is likely aftermarket from China. With lower lithium cells than the original. Buying a brand new OEM battery for any ThinkPad within the past 10 years is usually priced around $50-70.
Thinkpad T430 was the first laptop I've ever nearly fully maxed out. FHD mod, i7 QM, SSD and 16 GB of RAM. Now I use it with Fedora for programming and testing software, and despite of it's age, it work really well. Very fun thing to do and I can recommend it for every DIY tinkerer.
i7QM, SSD, 16GB RAM? I recently retired a Thinkpad E530 with those specs. Still works pretty well, it's just a little too 'old' to be officially supported by Windows 11. Linux Mint works great with it though.
It's _much_ easier to learn to tinker with something you got off eBay for $50 than to experiment with something you paid $1500 for brand new. The only thing my T420s struggle with is modern websites and their multimegabyte Javascript webpacks. For software development and lightweight quiet servers they're great. (One of my T420s, with a broken screen cost £30 on eBay, is a media server/music player, so I can stream content to my TV and control the music via the network.) I did get one off eBay so broken it had no keyboard, but with a dock and a usb linux stuck, it ran Ubuntu 16.04 just fine.
@@Chalisque fixing those things isn't that expensive tho. Idk how it looks in other countries. In Poland used screens for laptops cost around 10 to 15$
@@Vexisu Yes, a nice thing about Thinkpads. I've changed cooling fans, keyboards, ssds and ram, but I already have enough Thinkpads with working screens, so ones without screens are used as desktops/servers via a dock.
@@maxtornogoodWindows 11 has absolutely bogus requirements, my laptop from 2015 could run it perfectly if the CPU was supported, but iirc there are ways to bypass these requirements
A chemist friend of mine recommended me evonic acrifix 116 glue. It's a solvent glue meant for gluing abs plastic as well as polycarbnate and it even works on printed Pla. It's hands down the best glue I have ever used and I would highly recommend it over brittle CA/superglue for repairing plastic cases.
Good video man. I've also been doing this for years! Some easy fixes and others like you said best used for some parts value. Had some great buys doing this and have had so many good laptops over the years from doing this. Keep it up man!
I bought a used X230 five years ago from a company that only sells Thinkpad. I installed linux , SSD and then put 16Gb of RAM. I use this machine every day since then. The only problem after 2 years of use was the battery. This computer is from 2012 and as I said, it still works great.
I have an X230. It's 10 years old now. It still runs very well. With the help of so many awesome videos I am looking forward to upgrading the memory and hard drive and running Linux on it.
@SubToMeForNoReason yup. My dad's company sells old used laptops (to the employees). It was a really good deal. 16GB DDR3 ram, Intel core i5 5300U, 500GB SSD. It dose have some scratches and broken clips. But they can be replaced for pretty cheap
I don't do this kind of thing myself all that often but I help and encourage others to do so. I mostly specialize on Dell though, the service tag gives you the exact assy number of all parts if you know where to look and you can find almost anything factory new from China, which has worked great many times for me, sometimes getting very new laptops for free and fixing them for $50 or so plus a used power brick for $15-20.
@@SebisRandomTech Relatively speaking they are, compared to asus, toshiba and so on. On those I've had to solder and glue a lot because I couldn't find the actual parts, but for Dell I could always just buy it, swap it in and almost always it would work.
Excellent way to go. Great video, thanks for some common sense. I've been doing this for years. Like cars....a Bentley or a Civic, they all travel the same crappy roads. May as well save your money.
I wish i was in NA, over here in Poland they sell laptops that are basically unfixable (ruined motherboard) and very dated for the same prices as really decent fixable laptops on ebay.
Same in Oz. Since the _Work From Home_ started, the price of second hand computers has skyrocketed. I would rather be kneed in the groin than pay the prices being asked for. It's almost cheaper and in some cases it is to buy a new machine that is on sale than a "pre loved" unit. Some junk sellers have gotten very greedy during this time of pandemic.
i understand it might be a bit daunting but for hinges i usually drill a hole all the way trough and secure it with a nut & bolt. this way i don't have to worry about it happening again. works especially well if you have an aluminum back panel.
I bought x250 for around 150 usd abount an year ago and i think its the best option if you can get one with touch 1080p display with i5 or i7. Its comparitively modern looking,theres enough processing power for an every day user,the battery life is excellent,i can get around 5-8 hours depending on the usage. And the 1080p ips display is gorgeous. It is better than new laptops that are 600$ to 700$. I would definitely recommend buying one.
Athar...To me, the ThinkPad design is timeless. Two Thinkpads are in-fact on permanent display in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. The first is the classic design that continues to this day...and the second is the 710c butterfly ThinkPad.
It's great to know that your cause is of higher purpose of "reducing electronic waste" and being able to save money at the same time. It just makes sense. Keep up!!! 5 stars.
I get my first T440p as refurbished and pimped it with upgrades and still i spent the same amount as for a budget new laptop. Then picked up a T60 only with CPU, RAM an Wifi card and nothing else, and now it's fully working and posted on the bay for a new home. Now i'm watching for the "parts only" auctions... damn you Sebi ;)
I earned a living back in the days buying and reselling used laptops. Thinkpads were mai favorites, I still use a T460 and a T550. Wait! How did RU-vid know all about it and suggested me this video?
Ripped of hinges is a very common issues and relatively easy to fix. What we do in our shop is that we glue what is left together after which we drill one or two holes trough the panel/hinge and just use very small profile nuts/screws to make it as unnoticeable as possible. Trust me it's on there better then it was originally. We also see the hinge get ripped off from the frame side and we can do similar things and usually totally hide the repairs. Also we keep all broken laptops and the most expensive part they usually have is the LCD display which is very expensive as a new replacement part, it costs us nothing and we can fix otherwise expensive issue.
The Thinkpad is my all time favorite laptop. I've got an older one which is a Chromebook and use it for my acting PC. Scripts and zoom, etc. Works Great!!
I like this sorta stuff, my dad brought home a fried EliteBook 8540W from work a while back..despite being young ..I ordered a new board and fixed it.. Used it for years. I'm going out today to purchase an old Galaxy Note Pro 12.2" tablet..despite it being around 7 years old..it's still a very capable and worthwhile investment.
3 years ago I got a T430 for £300, and I still use it for college today, only considering upgrading to a T480 or X395 because I need better battery life.
My current laptop is a Dell G3 3590 that I purchased for $3 at a garage sale. The seller said it was left behind when they moved into the house, didn't have the charger and didn't know whether it worked. I brought it home and it happened to use the same charger as my Latitude E6500, and not only did it work, but it also has the best graphics card available for the model, a GTX 1660ti. I found a charger with the correct wattage for $10, and upgraded it to 32gb/2tb from the original 8gb/512gb. Its an amazing laptop for under $150 I've also had luck finding laptops in ewaste bins. My Latitude E6500 came from an ewaste bin and still had its docking station attached, with no issues whatsoever. I also got an HP Notebook 15 (forget the model but it was only 2.5 years old at the time) that only needed a new battery and a (10 years old at the time) Toshiba Satellite with an i7-2670QM that had overheating issues caused by a piece of tape that was stuck in the fan. I have since sold the HP laptop and my brother still uses the Toshiba Satellite.
Sounds like epoxy, was thinking the same thing during the video. Epoxy is almost always going to be better than some super glue that lasts a year or two.
when I needed to get a laptop a few years ago, I was really tight on funds. I got very lucky and found someone selling Thinkpad laptops on Craigslist, it was the middle of the summer so that is a slow time for selling laptops. It came with decent amount of RAM and Windows 10 Pro (I needed the Pro OS Version). I couldn't tell if it was refurbished, but he only charged $150 for the laptop. With the price he was charging, I thought that it might be stolen but I my fears were allayed when I visited him at his convenience store in an upscale community and he had a lot of them for sale (unfortunately the store closed down during the pandemic) Sometimes you get lucky, the laptop is still running strong, never had any issues.
I agree with the advice you give here. I recommend used Elitebooks to my clients, they are military grade build quality and usually never break down. But if they do they are super easy to work on compared to other brands. You should check them out. While HP makes really crappy home pc's that break down within a year or two, HP Elitebooks are actually built by the old Compaq warehouse and have a much higher quality control. Various government offices use these and upgrade every 3 years and the surplus get spread around on amazon and ebay. You can pick up a nice elitebook from a few years back for around $200
@@SebisRandomTech i highly recomnmend them. they normally come with 3 year warranties from HP, which means they really know these laptops won't break down!
For me I grabbed an X230 for 190€ (and 40€ shipping for me is expensive, and IPS screen from aliexpress), and T450 for 300€ (Local market, Portugal). Great machines, very good performance. And for that price, in Portugal stores gets you celeron cpu or very low end i3. I looking to get some "collection" of refurbished, and experiment with laptops. But Europe prices are higher than US. Not much availability, and for me many sellers don't ship as it's "outside of Europe, not in mainland Europe". The x240, x250 and further, are kinda disappointing with just a single RAM slot, cutting performance of the iGPU. I would be looking for 14'inch dell e7440/e7450 or HP 840 G2,G3 (Would like FHD) and 12'inch HP 820 G2, G3(again FHD). Unlocked bios on x230 with 1vyrain. Someone has experience with HP Elitebook's? Great video btw. Been following your channel for a while.
Love these tech videos that really make sense, for average consumers and tech enthusiasts. Really appreciate the effort you put into making this well comprehensive video.
Thank you so much for the tips Sebis, one of my dreams is to make a thinkpad collection/museum on my own, so far I have 2 (T430 and X61s thanks grandpa) but when the lockdown passes and prices drop I'm thinking of hunting down a x230 or x220
x230 i would say, just because the better iGPU, and 2 usb 3.0 ports. there are many opinions of the chiclet keyboard on x230. But i enjoy it. never used an x220. But both are able to modify bios, and remove wifi whitelist.
I'm the guy that buys your £1200 laptop for £300 when it's 2 years old. I don't mind being a generation or two behind and many machines seem barely used. I've done small repairs, replaced batteries and displays etc but I do always look at the very cheap "no power on" machines and wonder... motherboards aren't usually cheap to come by but I've been learning more about component level repair and for a lot of machines there's a ton of good information regarding likely failure modes for some models.
I repair phones, and always look "for parts or not working." A surprising amount of phones that don't turn on at all can be fixed with a very simple battery replacement.
Like your ideas. I've collected several over the years and some are basically for parts when the need arises. One old one works, but it needs alil work done to it again now that I had relocated and it may have been damaged along the way. Keep up the good work, my friend.
@@SebisRandomTech I used those quite a lot back in the late '80's-early '90's on military office computers, and being so used to them it took me quite a while to understand today's love of them. Everything old is new again. They must have been pretty good to have stood up to the usage they did.
@@k.b.tidwell Mine is from 1990, still works like a charm. Many like the tactile "click" of the buckling spring switches used in these keyboards. They're excellent for typing because of this.
I think good way to save money (in the future) is to buy a laptop with replaceable parts like (SO)DIMM RAM slots, Removable drives, things being held together by screws only, etc. I upgraded my low class laptop by swapping the 4GB RAN for 8GB and the old (now basically dead) HD for a Crucial SSD. Also my laptop has some really good motherboard for its class as it even supports M.2 sata. 😅
FYI companies throw these way by the dozens for either recycling or to be resold (I would know I work in IT). My advice to anyone would be to always buy second hand enterprise laptops like the Thinkpads or the Dells which are a year or two old.
Ive been thinking of purchasing laptops that are working, but with a broken screen (seems pretty common). The idea I was going for was to remove the screen and use the 'base' computer with other laptops of the same persuasion in some sort of Kubernetes cluster.
Or plug in a dock and run as a desktop or just plug in a monitor. You do need to keep in mind the wifi ant is usually in the lcd case. You remove it and you will need wired network or a usb wifi card. It is a great way to take a mlb functioning computer that work mostly and continue using it even if it has a lot of broken parts. I mean what do you really need to function? Your ports, fan, power cable port and power button.
fyi if the lcd is cracked many lenovo laptops will not output video to the video port if its still plugged in. You need to unplug it on the mlb and then it will out put. I saved a lot of repairs in the depo when the mlb was ordered replaced to give ext video with the lcd cracked when the lcd repair was denied. I just unplug the lcd and made my notes.
I managed to get a $1000 dollar laptop for $200, what you usually have to look for is something that may appear broken or not have a lot of info on it, but you have to know enough about the computer to tell if it’s actually working or not
Bought a T420 last year, corebooted it, upgraded CPU(was a 2/4 2nd gen i5, now it’s a 4/8 3rd gen i7 35w), RAM, changed DVD bay for an HDD, and has been the best laptop I’ve ever had, got also a e-waste Dell Vostro that my workplace was about to discard, fixed it and runs great, battery works, has been serving me well for months now too since my Thinkpad doesn’t has a battery, recently also I’m repairing an iPhone 6s (wrecked screen, home button with broken flex cable, battery needs replacement and camera AF doesn’t work), last month I replaced the home button and screen, this month I’ll replace battery and camera, I’ve been using it during daily because where I live is kinda sketchy and it has been serving me pretty well but I do miss playing emulators on the go
Nearly all of my Thinkpads came from a flea market. You just gotta look around. I sniped my W510 for 25 bucks and its still a tank. Problem is that even broken Pads are now going for a lot because of the Pandemic.
I've found a lot of my coworkers have been seeking used laptops for their kids, they don't want to let them use theirs for schoolwork, or buy new ones that'll probably get broken..
@@archygrey9093 They're driving up prices of any laptop, because of the increased demand of computers for people to work from and students to do schoolwork on.
Thanks man for your vid’s. I just finished my first laptop project. A friend of mine had a laptop that was bugging her. She downloaded a ton of stuff over the last couple of years and it ran painfully slow. I took a look at it and I did the normal maintenance that is available on a Win10 machine. Still it ran painfully slow. Barely useable slow. I offered to upgrade the system. I have to admit, there was a point where I wondered if I could get it back together. My desk area is not ideal. A compressed air can to clean it up, SSD and a ram upgrade from my favorite PC store and it runs amazingly fast. Like new. It actually runs faster than my desktop system and all of my laptops. 👍
Hello, I have a question, as I've been using my T530 heavily since 2013. I love the matte 1600x900 display and the laptop surviving despite drops and spills, so I'd like to have a spare marvel like this. Yet I wonder whether swapping SSD from a T530 to another one with a slightly different processor would necessitate reinstall or cloning OS (Windows 7 or Linux)?
@@SebisRandomTech Thanks for your response. I only consider another T530 but they usually come with slightly higher clock processors than my particular model.
@@SebisRandomTech Thanks for your response. I only consider another T530 but they usually come with slightly higher clock processors than my particular model.
Great video. I’ve a bit of a laptop addiction and have been doing my own rebuilds since I discovered eBay in the early 00s. I started with Thinkpads and for a while made pocket money by rebuilding T20s for people, but then I got into Macs and had a lot of fun rebuilding G3/4 and Intel era laptops as well as the earlier iPhones before everything became soldered on single boards. The 2015 MBPs and the MB 12 are the latest generations where it makes much sense and replacement screens now often cost more than the machines will sell for in good condition which is sad. I made a few forays back into the PC world this year with a rebuild of a Carbon X1 Tablet and an Asus 12 inch machine from 2009 which had the first gen of Intels ULV Core Duo chip. I’m considering perhaps having a go at a Thinkpad P-series machine as they look like they’d make good *nix machines but I have to sell off some things first to make space. My son helped me with an MBP 15 rebuild a few months back which was a present for his grandma and he enjoyed that. At some point we have to build a desktop PC so he understands that process as well. But I’ll admit I much prefer working within laptop constraints: finding good candidate machines and then any parts necessary to either fix or upgrade them is a very nice break from my work routine. It’s also interesting seeing how hardware performance has changed over the years.
Superglue and baking soda, along with a small set of files for sculpting, is a good way to rebuild small plastic tabs which are otherwise irreplaceable. I've had good long term luck rebuilding the tabs that hold a small door to a TV and repairing broken car dashboard components this way. And yes, the dashboard holds up even through years of summer/winter cycles. In my experimentation, Loctite 401 seems to be the best for this. You dot on some glue where the part needs to go, add baking soda, give it a minute to dry, then repeat until you have a "stalagtite" bigger than the part you need. Then file it down into whatever shape is necessary.
For the laptops with broken display hinge posts, you could always remove the lid/screen assembly entirely and turn it into a "slab-top." Just hook it up to an external monitor and use it like a desktop computer.
In Mumbai, India one can be friendly to the several local scrap vendors. Regular visit to their shops can give you a chance to find a faulty laptop or mobile or any other random electronics scrapped by someone else. Some of the electronics start working with battery changes. I got a hp compaq tc4200 tablet PC with touchscreen for around $10 (INR 800) in oct22. While i have to learn to repair it I came across this video. I am happy !!
I use a ThinkPad X220 (the tablet version) as my core writing machine and it blows me away how much the older models hold up after over a decade, especially when you upgrade the hard drive to an SSD.
I got my faulty L390 for $250 and spent $250 on it for repairs+ mods. :) 512GB nvme+32GB RAM with the 8565U i7 :) I still have almost 3 years of warranty.
A trick I might add for people looking to REPLACE their laptop with a different model is to look up for a model lacking all the components that you can transfer from your existing laptop. For example, I'm looking for a ThinkPad X220 right now, and I already own and daily a T420. Since it's basically the same architecture I know I can save money by looking for an X220 without RAM, HDD, SSD or CPU, and transfer them from my T420, that I can later resell. Now, this is really not strictly based on owning a ThinkPad, except for the CPU you can usually remove RAM and drives pretty easily, and many different brands from the same year are compatible with the same CPU, so if you can remove it, you can go with another brand with the features you want.
I got my T60 for £30 off Facebook market as a guy just wanted to get rid of it as it had been sat in his attic for the last few years or so, it was in an ibm bag, and had a dock. All it needed was a new screen.
This has been my business for a long time, and I still do once in a while nowadays in Nigeria. Thinkpads are usually the best cos they hardly have issues aside from battery , ram or screen compared to Acer( I hate them) or HP. Fujitsu's are also good but parts are scarce... I wish I have someone to constantly ship these to me in Nigeria.... Let's open an international business
❤ I got hooked on t430 / t430s / w430/ t520 / w520 laptops. I ordered almost twenty in different levels of repair or disrepair, and ended up with 10 perfect fully optioned machines, 3 or 4 servers or internet facing machines, and loads of parts. Since then, sold 5 to finance a dozen more, and so it goes.
I dropped and broke the screen of a x220i Thinkpad. Got a used non-working x220 for $40 Australian. Transferred x220i into the x220. Found a Lenovo B590 in the corner of my brother's office. No power supply. I tried the power supply that came with the x220 and it turned on. Windows wasn't booting properly and it's HDD. Got an SSD and installed Windows. It only had 4Gb RAM and I'm lucky to find a couple of 8Gb RAM from a couple of laptops that was either not working properly or simply slow. Took the CD ROM out and stuck the old HDD in a CD caddy. So I got a working, faster Lenovo B590 with 16Gb RAM, 250Gb SSD with extra 500Gb storage and 15.6" screen. My only cost was the 250Gb SSD for $29.
Whenever I've need an appliance I generally buy used or spares/repair from ebay. The main point for me is you need to have patience to wait for a good deal to show up and to be willing to look up the product you're interested in, checking to see if there're any common issues that are difficult to repair, and checking repair guides and the price of spare parts.
I repair laptops sometimes and if the charger has a damaged cable I cut the part off that's bad, strip the wires near the ends, and solder them back together. Doing that has worked well for me for a long time. After a repair like that the electrical tape I wrap around the repair can start coming off after a year or two, so I put a zip tie on the part where the tape is and it lasts forever that way. Also, I'll probably keep my t430 until I die. I moved about 6 months ago and had to go without my gaming pc for 4 weeks. I played games on it with geforce now and it worked very well with an external monitor, mouse and keyboard. Thinkpads are awesome. Edit: Also, I've fixed several dvd drives that wouldn't read a disk by finding the firmware from lenovo or the original manufacturer of the bare drive that lenovo uses and flashed the firmware and fixed them that way, no kidding.
