Would you pay $600 for a T42p?

So, a few months ago I sold off all of my laptops except my Latitude C400 to get a beefier video card for my desktop computer, and to get a nicer LCD, too. They were decent performing machines (8600M GT power) although the screens were not very good, low viewing angle and not very rich color, despite color calibration attempts.

So fast forward to a week ago. A local guy on craigslist puts up an ad for a T42p. I had heard of the nice UXGA displays that come on thinkpads so I arranged to take a look at it. The display was indeed very nice. Viewing angles seemed just as good as my desktop IPS display, and color gamut was also very good as well, without even doing a calibration. The display did seem to be a little "pinched" in the bottom corners, but that may be just some overtightened screws.

My only issue is this: the hardware behind the T42p is pretty out of date. Used laptops from other manufacturers from this era (400mhz Dothan Core) seem to be selling for around $300 to $350 so I am wondering if the premium is worth it. Yes, it does have a few perks like Bluetooth and a FireGL gpu however for the same $600 I could have a later model machine with all of this stuff and even a dual core.

So do you think it is worth it? Or is there any other options out there that would be better? Thanks for any opinions/insight!

 

For $600, you could easily get an (almost brand new) Thinkpad T61 tricked out with the latest stuff like Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, big hard disk, etc. So I think $600 for a T42p is too high.

 

The display on the laptop you're referring to is FlexView. I agree, it's very nice; better than most of the laptop displays we have today. However, everything else about the laptop is very obsolete. In my opinion, the $600 sounds way overpriced for a laptop that's 3-4 years old. I would pay $400 at most for that laptop when I can buy a brand new ThinkPad for only $800.

 

$600 for a T42p is way too high. I think the $600 would be much better spent toward a new laptop.

 

Yep, gotta agree with the above, $600 for a T42p, even with FlexView, is a tad much. I admit the FlexViews are nice (my boss's boss has a T43p with one, it's a nice looking screen), however, the rest of the components aren't up to the same scratch as the screen is.

 

The screen is arguably the most important component on a notebook. There's none better than the FlexView. If all you are doing is office and internet you probably don't need more anyway. The Pentium M is still a very good CPU. It's faster than my Sempron 2800+ desktop which does Photoshop fairly regularly. If you want something with better specs, the T60 was offer with a UXGA screen as well though only the Core Duo versions, but you could upgrade it to the T7700 if you need more juice. A good place to look for them used is the ThinkPads.com marketplace forum. They come up fairly regularly. For ones in good condition they usually go in the $1,000 to 1,200 range, many still are under warranty which is always a plus for a used notebook.