T61: is this a good deal?

I have an opportunity to buy a T61 15.4" with 1900X1200 screen, T7300 C2D, 100GB 7200rpm HDD, 4GB RAM for $200. It looks like it was never used! I would be buying it largely for the screen. Worth it?

 

Scoop it up!!!

 

I'd say if its in good condition then it would definitely be worth the $200.

 

To be honest, I thought it might be a steal. Even though it's 4 years old, it has a decent C2D and even a (fairly lame) nVidia discrete gpu. Add those to the screen and the "legendary" TP keyboard and build, and I would have thought it was worth, say $500 or more. I might not get it if not, because it's an impulse buy and I might want to sell it after a few months if it's taking up desk space and I'm not using it enough.

Would there be a market to re-sell it at $200?

Thanks.

 

I'm sure there'd be a market, hell I'd be interested.

 

Oops, made an important mistake: the screen is 1680x1050; is that WSXGA+?

This is still high resolution for one of the rare 16:10 aspect ratio, no?

Does anyone know about the other characteristics of this screen?

 

It is WSXGA+ according to the following Product & Parts Detail @ Lenovo.

Not to sure how rare it is or the characteristics of this screen (i.e. FlexVIEW) but from what I can see for the T61, the 15.4" screen model also came with WXGA (1280x800) and WUXGA (1920x1200) types.

 

If it has an Nvidia GPU, I would avoid it. Nothing like baking your new ThinkPad back to life.

 

At $200 its a steal.

Go for it.

 

I'd take it. I do however strongly prefer 14" models.

 

Do you feel that way even given Tsunade's comment?

 

show that comment to the seller and demand lower price. Might work

 

There are so many other T61 out there. Don't buy one with an NVS140M is all I can say. Think about it this way, if it were an Intel X3100 motherboard, the seller probably wouldn't be selling it. He's selling it that low cause it HAS a known defective Nvidia chip.

 

Mmmm...

How can you tell which T61 doesn't have the NVS140M?

 

If purchasing online (i.e. eBay UK) then I would generally get the seller to confirm the exact model and serial number of the IBM/Lenovo laptop, so I can then check the hardware configuration at the Lenovo Support Website - in addition to that I would ask them to clarify a bit more as well after finishing off my own lookup.

If it's a local face-to-face sale, then I would check out the laptop fully along with running a few utilities off of a USB flash memory stick - examples would be BatteryBar (so I can see the status of the battery), Speccy (to see a top-level overview of the system config), SecurAble (to confirm what the CPU & motherboard are capable of x64 & VT support), CPU-Z (to have a look at the motherboard config), etc.

Would also make sure the BIOS has no passwords set-up along with the deactivation of any security tracking as well...that's just my tuppence worth of checking...apologies if I went overboard there but it's better to play safe rather than sorry! ;-)

 

the way I see it - if it were a problematic GPU then it would most likely have died by now.

In general, if a part (any part in any machine) will fail then it will most likely do so in the beginning or towards the end of its life time, and not likely to fail in the middle.

We're way past the beginning of the nVidia GPU lifetime, and IMO not near the end of it as well nowadays.

also, check the specs of the 140m - it was actually a very good GPU compared to it's neighbors (110m, 120m, 130m, 135m, 150m, 160m, even the 300m).

NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#Mobility_Quadro_NVS

not to mention the crazy overclock that it can do, lol, over 50% for me

 

I have a few T61 models that have the NVS 140M. All the boards have been replaced within the past year with non-defective chips. Check the seller, see if the board has been replaced with a newer, working board. The new boards, from what I've seen and heard, do not suffer from the NVIDIA defect.

 

There were initial reports that the Nvidia chips did fail fast, HOWEVER working at a help desk job, we STILL get at least 3-4 laptops a DAY with failing Nvidia chips, so I can safely say your statement that if it hasn't failed yet, it won't fail is absolutely false.

That's like buying a used car with a well known history of problems, and saying oh it's been 10 years it definitely won't happen to me. If you want to take that risk, be it on your own machine. That is why I sold my D620/D630 with Nvidia chips.

 

do you really get that many failing laptops per day? ... highly doubt it unless you provide hard evidence. What I expressed was a widely known engineering truth about failures in parts, in general, so because you say you get X number of laptops failing doesn't make my statement absolutely false.

That you got scared and sold your Dells because you saw some higher number of failures compared to other models GPU failures is your own choice. Such is my own choice to keep my machine based on how it performs, which is quite impressive for what it is. Plenty of laptops out there working just fine.

 

Yes, we get the whole range of Nvidia laptops with the black screen of death, HP, and Dells mostly, all varying from 2005-2007. No I don't have hard evidence, why would I lie about something like this? My job is to provide technical support to my customers, I'm not going to make some bs up just to prove my point. Nvidia sold MILLIONS of laptops with those defective chips, dating back from Geforce 6 all the way to some Geforce 9 chips.

Now your laptop, if it sports a revised motherboard may not experience the failure, but trust me I have seen my share of failed T61\T61p.

OP it's up to you if you want to roll the dice and buy a laptop that might fail. If you want piece of mind, my advice is to skip it, there are a TON of T61's out there, as low as 150, as high as 450. My advise, buy the middle ground, 200 dollars.

 

I thank you all for your tremendous response to my request for advice. I've always wanted a T61 with an excellent screen - would prefer the WUXGA but even the WSXGA+ is appealing. Still, I have no time to deal with a laptop with problems and the seller had not replaced the graphics card or mobo. There are indeed many, many of these for sale and I think I will err on the side of caution. This seemed like a deal that was "too good to be true" and the condition was nearly brand new looking. I believe chances are this one is ok, but I am familiar with the many nVidia failures of the past and it's possible that this one was used so little, with non-taxing apps that the potential problem never presented.

Again, thanks for all the input and support. This forum rocks!

 

you know part of the problem is also connected to the design of the cooling systems. We have Dell D630 here and it's cooling abilities can not come even close to those of the thinkpad. About the same story with most HP laptops I've seen, no wonder these would fail somewhat more often.

on top of that, I've seen Dells that come with thermal pad between the heat sink and the GPU. Because of reports like these I had to open mine to make sure it uses paste and not pad, and all was fine. I got the A2 revision of the chip, and the laptop is from late 2007, so I can't tell what was changed between the revisions. But I've seen some T61 laptops to use the older A1 chip.

anyways, I think it was good discussion about pros and cons of considering this purchase, enough IMO for somebody to make up their own mind.

good luck