Just picked up a broken T61...

Bought a Lenovo T61 from university surplus the other day for $30: no HDD, RAM, or battery. Unit would not start up at all. It's a 15" model, and I picked up an AC adapter with it. I bought it as a "fixer-upper" project computer, along with a broken T60 for $5. Curiosity got the best of me, so I checked the warranty status of both. T60's out of warranty, but the T61 has 5 months left! Needless to say, I was very happy. I threw in some RAM, took it to my campus tech repair depot, and after checking the warranty, checked it in for a full repair (for free!).

So, TL;DR, I got a soon-to-be-working T61 for $30 . Specs are as such:
* Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz
* NVIDIA Quadro NVS140 128MB
* 15" widescreen display with 1680x1050 resolution (my 20" Dell has this res!)
* Supports 4GB RAM, SATA HDDs
* CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive

Pretty excited about the new addition to my fleet, and to be a new Lenovo owner!

 

That is a pretty sweet deal.

 

What is "university surplus"?

 

lol sometimes they will just sell "extra" laptops for dirt cheap or they upgraded and starting clearing out their old computers. My workplace sells the clearance and parts only laptops for about those same prices.

 

not bad dude, rock on with it

 

Whoa killer deal. The t61 can support a max of 8 gigs of ram if you are not sure.

 

Let me get this straight, you bought the t61 for $30 at your university, found out that it had a warranty, took it back to your university, and got it fixed for free and now a working computer minus ram/hd/battery? Great deal bro!

 

At my university, there's a division of IT that handles disposal of old or broken hardware & computers. Basically, any dept. has any computers or electronics to get rid of, they give it to Surplus. The hard drives get erased & destroyed, per university policy (state school, govt. institution, you know how it goes). About once a month, the Surplus dept. has a public auction where they sell off the old & broken stuff as-is. It's a great place to pick up older gear that just got replaced and parts for other machines. This last auction, I picked up a few 17" LCDs for cheap, along with the T61.

Yeah, that's basically it! I threw in some 1GB sticks & a 160GB HDD I had lying around, so all I need is a battery. My grad advisor uses Lenovos, so he has an extra he's going to lend me.

 

Nice to know. Too bad it's DDR2, which is expensive. If I end up using this machine a lot, I might upgrade it to 4GB, but I've got 2GB in it so far. MATLAB loves to eat RAM for lunch.

 

Congratulations!!!! I was just going to add what Lead-org did. There are two wishlist items which are the fastestest processor and at least 4 gb of memory.

Renee

 

Holy poop, you made me drool, 35$ for two decent ThinkPads one of which was repaired within warranty for free, sweeeeeet !

 

if you do lot of matlab stuffs then you should upgrade the CPU to say a T9xxx or T8xxx CPU.

 

dude that's a killer deal indeed.

 

Wow very nice deal! Should be a nice computer for quite some time!

 

I must add that I would never sell this laptop afterwards and instead get rid of my T410 to make it all even sweeter !
And turn myself into wacko bargain hunter !

 

$30 for a T61 with warranty is a serious bargain. Congrats, there's plenty of life left with the T61 and hope you enjoy using it as I do with mine.

 

Thats how I feel about my t400! I bought a quad core thinking I needed it for my job and shortly realized my job was changing and I dont. While its great for encoding videos, its not as mobile as my t400. I definitely think the t61 has a few years left on it just as my t400 does too.

 

Sweet deal man! I am running a T60 and I love it. Easily the best notebook I have ever owned. I also have an older X40 which is great for on the go.

I prefer XP anyway, so it's all cool

 

The T400 has plenty of life left in it for most folks. Mine started with a P8600 processor; I only went to a T9600 because someone had an unused retail CPU on Craiglist for a hundred bucks six months ago (they were going used for $200 on Ebay at the time). I'm pretty much out of upgrades I can do other than an SSD (too expensive for the capacity I'd want), and some of it is overkill, but the prices were right and I can do my own work. If I do eventually get a T420, it will probably be more technolust than need.

The T61, similarly, has plenty of life left in the platform. Upping any T61 to a first-gen Penryn processor lowers heat, adds battery life, and SSE4 instructions, improving video encoding. Lenovo-branded Intel 4965AGN wireless-N cards are available quite cheaply on Ebay if you don't already have one; I just added one to my wife's.

 

"Upping any T61 to a first-gen Penryn processor lowers heat, adds battery life, and SSE4 instructions"

What is the first generation penryn that is the fastest applicable to the T61P?

Renee

 

Isn't it the T9500?

 

You are correct, sir!

That said, I find it's usually best to buy the second from the top. There are usually much better prices on Ebay buying the second-fastest. Second-fastest is the T9300, and there is only 100MHz difference in speed (2.5GHz vs 2.6GHz).

The T8300 is only 100MHz slower than the T9300, but it has 3MB of cache instead of 6MB. That cuts the price sharply, so if you aren't doing super cache-heavy work, it's far more economical.

 

Even a t8100 is not a bad choice.

 

Checked prices on eBay, looks like the T9300 is going for ~$150, and the T9500 for around 200 .

Once it gets back from service, I'm going to benchmark it and see how it stacks up with my MBP (specs in sig). I'm not tied to OS X, since I have a PC desktop and a Hackintosh desktop as well, so using a PC as my main mobile rig isn't improbable.

I'm keeping this one, not going to sell it. I might even extend the warranty. I think I can get an additional 1-2 years on it. Might be a good idea, since this has the Nvidia NVS140. I've read on these boards and around that it has heat issues and some problems.

Worst-case scenario, it makes a good desktop replacement sans battery in my office for running code and stuff.

 

I also have to put some money into fixing the T60, so upgrading the processor in the T61 is further down the list. The tinkerer in me wants to do this really badly!

Here's a shot of the $5 T60 in its current state. I got it without RAM, HDD, ODD, battery, keyboard, palmrest/trackpad, and charger:

 

Did some research, and I believe that the T60 processor can be upgraded as well! I wouldn't mind swapping the proc on the T61 (T7300) with a T9xx and putting the old one into the T60...

 

T60 uses socket m processor and t61 uses socket p processor won't work interchangeably. That look t60 looks like near new, since there is very little oxidation on the magnesium chassis and the screen looks very shiny (you cleaned it)?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/552252-new-cpu-my-t61.html

^ that's my post on upgrading my CPU to T9500, check it out, I posted lots of useful info there

 

Just the screen, the chassis is as-is. I know it has a Core Duo T2400, and it boots as well.

 

nice i am envious, tell me which uni you are at, and i will camp outside of the IT recycler place.... good stuff.

 

Haha, count me in lol !
Oh, wait, were not in the same country and not even probably on the same continet, oh crappp!

 

Called the campus tech center, and they said that replacement parts have been ordered. ETA for return should be about a week or so, hopefully.

Apparently, they had to replace the system board, DC power jack, and AC adapter!

 

Wait for the warranty unit? And also see if you can get a warranty extension.

 

Yeah, for the T61. I'll look into the warranty extension, thanks.

 

Awesome stuff here, thanks! This is just tempting me to spend more money .

 

These laptops will soon drain your bank account. And welcome to the thinkpad club.

 

Update: the tech center on campus here (an authorized Lenovo repair center) had to replace the motherboard, processor, AC adapter, and DC input jack . Even after getting the parts and installing them, the thing still has problems. They're sending it straight to Lenovo now, and we'll see what happens from there.

 

Well that kinda stinks but at least it's still under warranty!

 

Ignore it, he paid 30$ for it, I could wait for month !

 

I'm a patient man, I don't mind waiting a while !

 

Tell them its a lemon product and u want a replacement right away (just joking)! If its completely ed up there is a chance you'll get an upgrade to the next generation.

 

Yeah, didnt think about it this way ! If the laptop ends up at Lenovo's repair center couple of more times he could ask for replacement and get either T410 or T420, which one to get might depend of when the problems occur !
Milk that capitalist money machine !

 

I was thinking that too. While unlikely, here's hoping that Lenovo sends me a T410!

 

Why being so shy, opt for T420 !

 

Just got my T61 back from repair, and everything is running quite smoothly. I've got 4GB of RAM in it, Win7 x64, and all my essential programs. Also picked up a cheap OEM 9-cell battery. It runs all my code & projects pretty well. I'm impressed with this machine's capability!

 

That's good to hear! I would run PC Doctor on it just to make sure.

 

Awesome! Glad to hear it worked out for you.

 

Cool, hows the battery life with OEM battery?
And where did you buy this battery, do you have warranty on it?