I own several T61's because of this channel. Sebi's videos made me fall in love with the older style T61 and T400 laptops many many years ago. I still have them all in their original IBM Thinkpad travel cases and i break them out occasionally to cycle the batteries so they don't go dead. After this video, i fired up my T61 with the upgraded T9300 Core 2 Duo CPU and i noticed for the first time that watching videos even on my Linux distro(Linux Mint Mate) seemed to studder quite a bit. Acouple years ago i never had that problem. Today's internet is just get too intensive for these older machines. The only way i can more power is to upgrade to the Core 2 Duo Extreme as outlined in Sebi's video. Otherwise they basically will have very limited use going forward. It really makes me sad to see these older Thinkpad become obsolete. I grew up on them and i loved their many unique features. What do the new Thinkpad still have?? A spill resistant keyboard?? That's it. All the classic features are gone. Hot swappable batteries- gone. Classic keyboard-gone. indicator lights for activity-gone. Latch to hold the top cover down-gone. Upgradable components-gone. dedicated volume buttons-gone. Lenovo is doing away with everything that made their laptops unique. There's nothing left to distinguish them from other laptops anymore. I do own some modern Thinkpads but to use them is NOT satisfying at all even if they are fast. I hate them.
Earlier this year, I replaced my 2008 MacBook with an X201. I have to say, the difference between Intel's Core 2 chipset and the first gen i series is night and day for many basic tasks. Unless you're a collector, definitely don't look older than anything Core i for basic tasks.
I agree at this point. The very latest laptops with Core 2 processors and faster chips like the Core 2 Quad/Core 2 Extreme might still be usable, but it's just not worth the hassle and money of trying to upgrade everything unless you got the laptop for a good price or already had it.
You should do a state of the collection video with your ThinkPads, older Macbooks, keyboards, and desktops! I think it is somethig that your audience will find interesting.
Not much of a collection at the moment, I got rid of those MacBooks ages ago. The footage was previously unused from a scrapped video of mine. Glad I got to showcase it a little here! :)
i know it aint 15 years old, but my t440p is STILL running strong until now, still uses it to do my daily work from home or out about, the only thing i ever did to the machine was upgraded it to the full HD panel and installed an SSD, other than its declining battery efficiency...it still runs like a champ. not to mention i have dropped it quite a few times through the years, man do i love thinkpads
T440p also my daily driver - i7-4800MQ - 16GB - 1TB SSD. Sits in a dock hooked up to a 27" monitor, remote KB and mouse. Haven't noticed a huge difference to my T14 (G2) i5-1145G7.
I've worked on many a Lenovo thinkpad in the 2nd-5th gen Intel core range. Great machines. I have an x220 which is only a sandy bridge i5, but it has 8gb and a 120gb ssd, got it for free (recycled by customer) at work it's my service call laptop. Just had to order a new caddy so the ssd fits in right, whoever refurbished it before used tape. Great great laptop, I love how it's light up keyboard is an actual light next to the camera that flips open and shines on the keyboard, now that's "GOAT with the sauce" if I may say so myself.
I also have a T440p as my main laptop, i7-4800MQ, 12GB RAM, GT 730M, 250GB SSD, 1080p panel. The only thing I've upgraded is the RAM and a dead battery, though someday I'm going to upgrade the SSD to a bigger one and max out the RAM to 16GB
Well, we're talking at least 6 years newer laptop, close to 7. A long time in computing, and at that time stuff was still getting old faster than today (though not as much as in the 90s-early 2000s), so quite different animals. Buy yeah, Thinkpads are so great. Well, they should considering their original asking prices, but for some reason, there has been a steady supply of second hand units for years at excellent prices. The value is terrific.
@@BilisNegra With the exception of video games/rendering/virtual machines, the amount of processing power required for most tasks has seemingly plateaued over the past decade. My T530's i5 holds up just fine for 90% of what I need to do; for the other 10% (playing modern video games), I just use my desktop.
My ThinkPad T430s is 10 years old now... it is still solid. I have loved the unit due to its ease to service and upgrade. It has an i7 3520M CPU with 8GB RAM. Upgrades came after six years of usage, replacing the HDD and Optical Drive for two SSDs: a 500GB for Windows 10 and 250GB for Ubuntu Linux.
I love my ThinkPad T61s (I’ve three of them 😅) and they get regular usage. I upgraded the RAM to 8gb and run Ubuntu and a couple other Linux distros. Aside from regular www and word processor use, I mainly use it to program in Python and for emulation. Nothing graphically intensive. However, on my main T61, it can overheat, which is the one problem I typically have with them. Especially, ones that ship with Nvida graphics
Loved the video, T61 is a beautiful machine. I personally bought myself a used T450 a few months ago and it's awesome! It's upgraded to 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD, so it's running quite smoothly. The battery life is decent too, with light use i can get to around 4 hours with no problems. I would never think about getting a thinkpad if i hadn't watched an older video of yours, where you recommend an older thinkpad as a great budget laptop, so thank you very much!
Very impressed with the performance of a 2007 laptop even if it's maxxed out. Think I'll go with an X201 as a linux entertainment center as these laptops look amazing and charmingly old. Might even get a trackpoint only palmrest lol. Depends on supply chain and the availability of different units. These older machines are disappearing... But as always thank you sebi this was one of my favorite videos you've made thus far. Takes me back to your old R series thinkpad video. It's so nice to have content about these amazing machines.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! As always thanks for watching, and I'm amazed you even remember my R series video as that was well before I was known for this sort of stuff. Unfortunately that machine succumbed to a motherboard failure a few years ago, but it will always have a place as my first ThinkPad.
@@anirbanpatra3017 Google is your friend. For a bit more detail look on Reddit, Lenovo's spec sheet for your model (they usually call it the psref document, so look up "Lenovo G580 psref" to find the highest supported upgrades for that model).
Since you made me a Thinkpad fan like 2 years ago, I'm always looking for them on flee markets and picked up quite a few for very cheap. (T2x-T6x. Some X series models and even found a X60 tablet) If you are into Windows 9x/XP era retro gaming (like I do), old Thinkpads can be perfect. Sometimes I'm surprised by the screen some old models use. A few months ago, I've managed to get my hands on a R50p. I has a 15" 1600x1200 IPS display. Never seen icons this small in Windows XP before :)
I don't think the R50p is a very common model, you scored a good catch there! I believe that model was at one point available with an even higher resolution 2048x1536 panel. That must have been insane in 2005.
The electronics swap meet in my area is the perfect place to get old laptops; both my $15 X220i and $20 T530 came from there, and I've seen plenty of other -20 and -30 series machines going for under $30.
My previous workplace furnished me with an (at the time) 3-year-old refurbished T410. I didn't complain, the price was right, I was able to consolidate SEVERAL machines into it, and it was an absolute tank. The laptop had originally shipped with XP, and still had the XP license sticker on it. But during the refurb process, it gained a Windows 7 license for refurbished computers. Windows 7 was upgradeable to Windows 10, so once I got tired of fighting with Linux on it, you bet that's what I put on that laptop. I used it for about six years as a daily driver, and it was a champ. I gave it to my neighbor and he continues to use it to this day, though a driver issue prevented it from updating past 1909. So I think that T410 was the only machine I'll ever lay hands on that ran Windows XP AND Windows 10 perfectly. And yes I did try XP on it at one point. All the drivers are available from Lenovo still, and it ran flawlessly. Made a decent retro-XP-gaming machine with its Quadro GPU!
I have a Dell Inspiron 9400 which I bought in 2006 still in perfect condition. It's got a Core Duo 32 bit processor running Windows 10 32 bit. I did upgrade it from a hard drive to a SATA SSD many years ago, and it has two USB 3.0 ports in a 54mm ExpressCard. It has GeForce Go 7800 graphics. It's got a 17" FHD screen. I've replaced the battery twice in 16 years.
I´m working in the upgrade of an old Dell D620 (2008), lovely device. Works fairly good with Linux and a mechanical hard drive. Not a gaming machine but usable for basic taks. Hopefully will work better with and SSD and a faster Core 2 Duo.
I use one with a T7200 and Samsung 860 EVO and I love it. I'm hoping to put a D630 board in it for even more speed and power. The Latitude D-series are the best laptops ever made IMO.
Excellent video! One of the coolest ones I've seen in a long time! I forgot that IBM even still made their series of Thinkpads in 2006, as I thought that Lenovo had already occupied those by then.
Thanks for watching! The whole IBM versus Lenovo branding on ThinkPads is kind of interesting, technically all ThinkPads made since early 2005 are Lenovo products, as it was in late 2004 that Lenovo acquired IBM's PC division. However, as part of an agreement made during this acquisition ThinkPads were still branded as IBM products for a while, and some in the T60/61 era were jointly branded as IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads. Some early T60's like the one I used for my FrankenPad project have no Lenovo branding at all (save for a very small "Manufactured for Lenovo" sticker on the bottom cover), while later T60's and T61's lack any IBM branding. By the time the T400/500 and X200 came out in 2008, Lenovo dropped all mention of the IBM name. Additionally, some consider the T60/61 models to still be IBM products as their development began while still under IBM, and the same engineers responsible for the design of older models worked on the T60/61. It's all fascinating to go down a rabbit hole into and just fuels the age-old debate of what the last true IBM ThinkPad was. I'm glad you enjoyed the video and learned something!
I've just spent most of the day on a Thinkpad x61 reading and replying emails, surfing the web to gather information, using whatsapp web to communicate with my banker across the globe, filling, printing and scanning forms, transferring funds, uplifting and placing fixed deposits at various banking websites, , organizing finances and keeping accounting notes on TreeDBNotes. Right now on my x61, I am reading and making web-clippings of the day's corporate news with an old version of Evernote (where web-clipping was possible without a paid subscription). In front of me over at the left side, I have a live telecast of a Italian Open tennis match playing on my Thinkpad x201 and over at the right side (also in front of me), I had your video playing on my Thinkpad x200 (which is still on a mechanical HDD). All my old machines have been converted to SSD except the x200. All machines are running Windows 10. Now who says old Thinkpads running Windows 10 are unusable in 2023? I have a fairly new Thinkpad L14 Gen 2 gathering dust at a corner.
I still use my T60 (Lenovo/IBM) as my daily driver. Only upgrade is a new battery and an SSD. It runs Manjaro (Linux). These things are built like tanks and last forever. For my use case it works like a charm. Even though I bought later era ThinkPads for other people, recognising that not everyone's use case (and patience) is the same. ;)
My wife still uses a X61s from 2007 with a friggin 1.6GHz Core 2 duo LV as her only computer and she's still happy with it :) She thinks it's really cute. It's running Linux Mint Xfce on an old 128GB SSD and the performance really is surprisingly good for what it is. It's still a very usable machine for light internet browsing and office stuffs like printing, scanning and word processing. Only 480p TH-cam videos are perfectly smooth but the 12" 4:3 screen is so tiny that the lower resolution doesn't actually look too bad imho.
I was originally going to use an X60s for this video, but it was having motherboard issues so I wasn't able to use it. They're really nice little laptops!
@@SebisRandomTech Hey Sebi! I just use the HDMI out and a Logitech pebble mouse and K380 keyboard. It works surprisingly great for browsing the web and TH-cam. Especially with those wireless accessories 🙂 Thanks for asking!
8:30 HAHAHA you fail to take into account the sheer power of STUBBORNNESS! I have been using a ThinkPad t43 from 2005 as my main laptop for nearly a year, and through many trials and tribulations I am able to maintain productivity! Nothing can stop me and my windows xp running, loud as hell, ThinkPad t43!
Older thinkpads are very useful for people who use mainly text based apps on linux without a desktop environment and running something like DWM. I have a much more modern T450 with an upgraded screen when i use a laptop outside of work but i still have my trusty x61s upgraded to the max with a new old stock US keyboard ( i am in the UK but prefer US layout). Honestly when not on chrome/firefox i cannot tell the difference and the x61s boots faster with the same custom arch linux + larbs install i have on it.
I've used Gentoo Linux since 2003 so I entirely agree with you about using optimised "roll your own" Linux builds to get the "best bang for your buck" out of old Thinkpads.
Watching this on a Dell Latitude E5500, Core2Duo t9550, 4 gigs of ram, slow spinny HDD, and running Windows 11 is no problem for this machine. I can watch TH-cam with no buffering problems, this old thing has amazed me. Very solid old machine, and everything works, minus a Bluetooth driver that I'm not too worried about. I'd say your video is pretty well spot-on.
Glad you liked it! Those older Latitudes, like ThinkPads from the era, are built like tanks and really easy to upgrade. I'd like to take more of a look at them sometime in the future. Thanks for watching!
I have a t61 and t61p. One has windows Xp and the other has windows 7. I keep them around for old software, they have good windows 98 compatibility. I have a docking station with a gpu as well. Ive also got a t440p, a p71 and a yoga 390.
I still use a 2008 Dell Insipiron laptop running Windows 7, I tried using Windows 10 but it slows a little bit the pc. Everyday tasks such as (Web browsing, microsoft office and media playback) are more than fine; however it is bulky and heavy, not that great carrying in a bag.
The T60 is a really good laptop in my opinion. Even though I have a powerful desktop and a laptop I still actually find myself using it pretty often for writing and other lightweight tasks.
Nice video! I'm still using my X200 with Linux Manjaro and I still use it weekly (mainly for JavaScript coding)! The keyboard is perfect on these older Lenovos.
The keyboards on these late IBM/early Lenovo ThinkPads are truly spectacular. That was probably my favorite part about filming this video, getting to type on the old keyboard. My T430's is still fantastic and even my X1 Nano still has a nice keyboard, but I think the T60/61's is ever so slightly better than any of those.
My mom got me one of those when I was a senior in high school in 2007 and it was the best thing I could use at that time. Now I still have it sitting on my shelf and pull it out whenever I want to play some of my old computer games that refuse to work on newer graphics cards, and to clean it and make sure everything is still in working order (besides the battery being dead completely so I keep it plugged in and I'm not really going to take it anywhere anyways). The case lost a screw, but besides that it's still in fairly good condition.
I still use my early 2011 MacBook Pro. I use it as much as I use the M1 Mac Mini in my office. Still works great for everyday use which for me consists of web browsing, streaming, light word processing, FaceTime and discord. Granted, I've done some upgrades to it. I've replaced the HDD with a SSD, I also replaced the Bluetooth 2.0 chip for a 4.0 chip so that modern devices would be supported and upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 16GB. I believe the stock CPU is a 2.3Ghz Core i7.
Still using an upgraded w530 and my backup is a sweet t530, I like the 15 inch thinkpads without the designated number pads, all the 2014's and up have them. As soon as I find out that the Frameworks laptop plays nice with Linux/Ubuntu I will have one of those, right now they still have hiccups. Might move on to the t480 cause I like the two battery system and will have decades left to mess with my favorite MX Linux. Missed seeing your videos, take care.
The X1 Extreme and the P1 offer 15 (and on the newest versions 16) inch displays without a separate number pad, so that could be something to consider for an upgrade when your W530 finally dies (if it ever does!). I'd like to check out the Framework machines but like you said, they still have their hiccups that need to be worked out and the lack of a pointing stick is a dealbreaker for me. I'm glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for watching!
Since mid. 2018, I own a Thinkpad R61i and basically did the same upgrades you did (except only 4GB RAM, T9300 for processor, a 2016 802.11ac-compatible WiFi-Card and LED Backlighting) that got me through all of my Software Engineering degree until now and will probably continue to do so. I also chose a model with Intel Graphics, because I did not want sudden failure because of the infamous "NVidia Bug". My perceived experience with productivity, web browsing and video streaming/playback matches yours (the screen is only 800p anyway, but this also means 1280x720 fits without any scaling) and I currently don't feel any need to replace it. It even ran Windows 11 for a short period of time and, if it's still possible in 2025, I will install it again when Windows 10 reeches the end of its life (meaning, this old computer outlived 5 whole generations of Windows)
I have a revised T61 motherboard that shouldn't have the dreaded Nvidia issues, however I still try to run it on the cooler side just to be safe. It'll be interesting to see if the T61 is still usable by 2025.
All students in my secondary school (me included) were using similar laptops to this one that were running windows 7 (upgraded from windows xp or vista ) up until 2018/2019, then they finally switched them all out with chromebooks once I left and went to high school. They were absolutely terrible. We had constantly problems with them and the problems ranged from terrible battery life to really bad performance and other technical problems that IT had to deal with. I feel so sorry for the poor souls who had to deal with all that crap for years and eventually having to deal with the chromebooks during covid.
I have small business selling computers, so many times i say that i will use something like X1 Carbon or similar for my University work. Many times tho, i find a buyer and i sell it. Having to install all of the programs and copy every file to a different one. That why i picked a Lenovo X200 Tablet, that i had in my vintage collection and decided to give it a try. I am impressed, first of all, it's the perfect choisce, because i will never sell a laptop from my collection, the secondary bonus is that all of the software required for my University tasks are old or not as demanding (like mathlab). I upgraded it to 6GB RAM, SSD and Win10, the laptop is doing excellent, the only obstacle is the CPU (C2D 1.6 Ghz). Watching your video motivated me to do something more to this old workhorse. I will look for a nice CPU Upgrade. Thanks.
My main PC broke this year (ASUS mobo blew up) and I needed a PC, so I grabbed my father's old ThinkPad R61 with a T8100, 3GB RAM and a 320GB HDD. Installed Manjaro Xfce onto it and voila, I had a PC to use :D Minecraft 1.19 w/ OptiFine with some shader patches ran at 100fps at 448x252 resolution, CS 1.6 ran at 100fps too, at 640x480 resolution. Honestly, I was pretty surprised about that kinda of performance on the Intel GMA X3100 graphics, pretty cool to see how these old thinkpads hold up nowadays xD
Even if it isn't buttery smooth with some modern tasks, it really is neat that machines that are over 15 years old are still remotely usable in the modern world. Glad the R61 could keep up with your computing needs!
@@SebisRandomTech yep, the laptop is still in very good shape physically and I never had to replace any hinges or such, these old thinkpads are really sustainable :D
nice video,very comfy indeed!~ i m using t400 now, it is the best machine i ever had. it even does funny beeping sound on startup. will try to max it out with quad core, ultrabay battery, 8gb ram and maybe 2nd wlan card. the only downside is that t400 is really a thicc boi, but still best budget thinkpad in my country. somehow x-type models became so pricy that you can buy two t-models for price of x one of the same generation :c
These older machines are still great for offline use. I use mine for file storage and documentation purposes. Yeah they can't go online really anymore but that's more reason to keep them around.
I have a T60 with a Core2Duo T7400, 3GB RAM, and ATI X1300 graphics with a 14 inch 1400x1050 display. It's fine for most basic uses, web browsing (chrome) is a little sluggish, but it's usable. Playing TH-cam isn't so much though. I've found it will only stop dropping frames when not in fullscreen, and even then, only at 480p 30fps. Even then, as soon as you move your cursor and the UI comes up (pause, volume, captions, settings, etc) it starts dropping frames again. Still it's amazing that such an old laptop is still usable at all, especially when running a less ram intensive operating system like Linux. (devuan with openrc btw, 67 megabytes idle ram usage) While I certainly wouldn't use it as my main computer, I would totally use it for basic office use.
I've managed to get some websites to load fine on a T42p I used to have, with a lightweight OS and some tweaking you *could* still make machines that old somewhat usable, but it'll still be a sluggish experience unless you limit its usage to the basics.
@@raymondgradzewicz Was using Windows XP with a patch to get security updates until 2019. Opera at the time was still supporting XP, not sure if that is still the case. Actually ran decently as long as you didn't try to play any videos on TH-cam, Reddit, etc.
The NVidia might be very error prone, however it is much better than the ATI. It supports H.264 decoding which helps a lot when the CPU is barely able to do so. Also supports DX10. The Radeon X1xxx does not support H.264 as far as I know. However with more and more of the web switching to better codecs like H.265, AV1 or VP9, even those are not usable anymore.
Every time I hear "Middleton BIOS", I imagine Kate sitting in Windsor castle, hacking away on an old ThinkPad while William is away at some posh event. 😅
Bought a x230 7 days ago! Was feeling down as my dell latitude d620 had started to become unusable. So went onto ebay and took a look around. Bidded on a laptop and lost. Found the x230 and bidded and won! Did not know what I had gotten myself into as I wasn't familiar with the ThinkPad series! After buying it I read up on it as I only had a few minutes to bid when I stumbled upon it haha. I was delighted to find such good things about ThinkPads and the x230. I'm very much into technology. Programming, building pcs etc but I had never known much about the infamous ThinkPads! Anyways cut to the chase I received it 2 days ago and it's been a delight. Truly awesome. Light, powerful and good looking. Great for college. I mainly do programming and work so I don't need a super computer! I'm going to dual boot it with Linux so I have bought a 256GB msata SSD to put in the laptop so I can keep windows and Linux on separate drives. Anyways thanks a bunch! Binge watched nearly all of your videos over the past week :D
The X230 is such a solid model, as you've probably seen with the one showcased in a few of my videos. With an IPS display and the classic keyboard/palmrest swap it's probably one of the best blends of classic and modern that you can get today. I'm glad you're happy with yours and thanks for watching my videos!
@@SebisRandomTech Heck yeah! I have been thinking of upgrading the screen on my x230 actually. A month of usage and i love it. I put a msata ssd in so now ive dual booted it with windows/ubuntu. I am actually typing from the x230 in ubuntu rn. Really solid laptop. I would like to try the T series of thinkpads but I use my laptop for college, presentations, coding etc so I need an x series thinkpad for portability. Recently my friend wanted to get a laptop 2nd hand so i looked around for him and found a very nice deal. X270 16GB ram 520GB ssd very nice indeed. Catch is that he isnt getting payed till the end of the month so I have bought it and hell buy it off me haha. So thats arriving today so thats going to be fun to play with even if its for a short time haha.
I'm still using ThinkPad Yoga S1 from 2013, mainly because it has a touchscreen and comes with a stylus. At one point I was considering to replace it since SSD upgrade didn't do it any good, but then I replaced cheap cacheless A-Data SSD with a beastly Samsung 860 Pro (top of the line SATA III drive on the market) and things got way better. I also installed Windows 11 and the laptop actually runs it better than my other not-so-old IdeaPad.
Still using my TP W520 - 2013 vintage. I used it as my primary laptop until about 2019. I upgraded it to a P51. The only issue I am running into is the keyboard, I worn dimples into the keys after using it for nearly a decade. Before that I had a T60 which I think I got in late 2005 or early 2006. I replaced it for a better processor that supported virtualization.
We had ThinkPads as old or even older than this in a factory I worked at. Electronics department was still using them actively... For all those years I remember not a single dead pixel or dysfunctional key on them. Even their mouse knob things were good. I was blown away.
I personally think the last 10 years was a massive hardware plateau. my 10 year old 6700 in my desktop is perfectly capable of browsing the modern web and nearly everything you could want, including running cyberpunk, though I did get a 3050.
#TheLastRealThinkpad ;) But seriously, the T60 and T61 will always have a big place in my heart since those two were my first ThinkPads i ever owned and i still love to use them as dedicated Windows XP machines. The T60 with ATI X1300 is amazing for older PC games. You can even play UT 2003 on this thing. Especially when you have a 1024x768 resolution screen. Quake III Arena also runs amazing and i also played Serious Sam first and second encounter on this thing without problems and maximum settings. Watching DVDs on it is also pretty fun when you watch a lot of content that is 4:3 aspect ratio because of the generous 15' screen size that feels even bigger in person than on pictures. And of course the awesome Keyboard. If you consider the age of these machines and keep them for legacy applications, they are far better at that than any modern machine with modern Operating systems. The T60 and T61 are just such an incredibly fun experience. The T60 even more imho because of the 4:3 format.
@@Sourpusscandy I believe the T42 was the last *true* IBM ThinkPad, at least in the T series. Lenovo acquired IBM's PC division in late 2004 and so the X41 and T43, while virtually identical to their predecessors and still marketed as IBM products, were made by Lenovo. The T60 and T61 were Lenovo machines through and through, but retained the IBM branding due to a licensing agreement when the line was purchased. By the time the T400 came out in 2008 the IBM branding had been phased out.
@@Sourpusscandy yes and no. They were designed by IBM but manufactured by Lenovo. So they still have the actual IBM DNA in them while being put together by their new owner.
2009 Dell Inspiron 1545 here, maxed out to the C2D T9900, an SSD, a 1TB HDD in the optical drive slot, and an ExpressCard USB3 card in that slot. This is the model with the ATi dGPU, which helps some, and I run PCLinuxOS. This can go up to 900p streaming video just fine, which matches the screen it has. I'll hate it when this old laptop can't do the job anymore, but so far, so good.
It's quite incredible to see how well the T61 holds up. Granted, it is not ethical to daily a laptop like this, unless you need a machine to do basic things such as web browsing, word processing, and writing emails. My obsolescence timeline is anything made before the second generation Intel Core CPUs IMO, and that is if you choose Linux as an operating system.
I purchased that caddy back in 2015, it was one of the first "upgrades" I ever made to a ThinkPad. That model (an R51) has since succumbed to motherboard issues and I salvaged most of its parts to fix up other machines, and have kept the caddy around for other stuff. I suppose nowadays there's a little less demand for those kind of parts for laptops from 2005/2006.
I am running a T61 with Middleton's BIOS, Samsung 860 Pro 500GB SSD, Core 2 Duo T9500, Intel 965GM graphics, 8GB RAM running Fedora 37 and I am able to play 1080p youtube videos (with no frames dropped) and even 1440p video (with no frames dropped once it has gone full screen) in Chrome. I can run Discord, Teams, Chrome, Telegram and it get along farily well with minimal slow down. It has no issues streaming videos from Twitch, youtube or netflix etc..
I have a toughbook CF-30 (13 years old) 4GB ram, 128GB SSD 1.6GHZ Core M dual core. I got windows 11 running reasonably well on it. This machine is my only computer.
Generally I expect 10 years of performant use from a good laptop, then 5 years of hobbyist use in its twilight phase. Beyond 15 years they become objects of nostalgia or curiosity, or doorstops! Never owned a Thinkpad, I regret to say. Toshiba, Dell, Asus and Samsung were my foils. Just my humble opinion/experience as a software engineer. My oldest is a 22-year old Dell Latitude L400 with 80GB IDE, 256MB RAM, 1024x768px. It boots Win 95, 98SE, ME, XP, FreeDOS and Tiny Core Linux. Satisfies my retro/nostalgia urge (illness). Battery lasts 2 hours :)
@@muxtonungulate9423 Some newer ThinkPads have an option in the BIOS for you to do this from the factory. Older models do allow for it through BIOS patches such as the Middleton's BIOS I mentioned in this video for the T61.
For many years i have daily driven an T-60 and even used Win10 on it (even if the loading time were horrendous). I lately gave my T-60 a new life with WinXP for retro gaming.
They're cool and actually useful in some situations. For me it's a handy way to tell if the drive is actually working or if the system is responsive or not - especially when troubleshooting it's a small but handy feature.
I bought my Z60T while stationed in Okinawa, Japan back in 2007 from the Navy/Marine Corps exchange. I wish I had bought a T60 or T61. The Z60t was not as upgradeable.
The trouble is, several years of ThinkPads after the T61p then W500 generations were bogged down by questionable keyboards, quarrelsome touchpads, vexatious displays, or other challenges. As of Saturday, February 10th, 2024, ~9:52 P.M., E.T., I would assert that the W500 remains more than capable, and in fact excellent, as a daily-driver.
I installed Linux mint on a T490, and it loves Linux mint. It had its camera removed as a security precaustin due to issues with cameras being able to be started up by hackers. But I still love it with a Logitech camera.
Theoretically you shouldn't even need to remove the camera from the T490 or newer ThinkPads, as they all have a sliding cover to block the webcam's lens anyways.
I'm pretty sure the info that only 3GB can be used in a T61 is wrong. A (German) quote from the ThinkWiki: "Erst die ThinkPads mit Santa-Rosa-Chipsätzen (T61, R61, X61) können dank Memory Remapping volle 4 GB RAM (inoffiziell sogar 8 GB [2x4 GB]) nutzen"
Still running my T430, 2tb hd 16gb ram, new 9 cell battery and new power adapter. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Still haven’t’ upgraded the screen though. I should. I think I used your tutorial for whitelisting the off brand battery. Cheers! 👍
PS, the main reason I keep using it is because I play DVDs on it, in bed and the tray can come out and insert another HD when I need to swap to Windows for customers. About your upcoming reviews, if you know of any 3-5yo machines that still use 2.5” hd’s and DVD drives, please mention them, I would much appreciate it. I love the durability of the ThinkPad, and don’t care that it is heavy.
The T440p and W541 were the latest mainstream models with a DVD drive, however the L series still had them until the L570 and the P70/71 had a DVD drive as well. Since then those have been lost to history. As for 2.5" drives, the T480/580 still utilized them, the X270/A275 did as well, and the P series supported them until the P53/P73.
I'm still using HP Pavilion dv7 with AMD Phenom quad core, 4GB of RAM and 500GB Samsung SSD. Laptop is still usable and reasonably fast for everyday tasks. Most important fact: it was free.
I had a toshiba laptop i used to play Need for Speed Underground 2 or Euro Truck Simulator 2. Ocasionally the screen would invert at random upside down... It was around 20010-2014 and still works nowdays 12 years later
would love to see a video on the Thinkpad Advanced Docking Station. I had one a few years back but never got much use out of it so it went to another home!
I don't think the T61 motherboard in your Frankenpad has the infrared port. If I remember correctly Lenovo has removed it after the T60 series, although I could be wrong.
I had one of these for a while. Wound up giving it to an Afghan guy who'd come over after the Taliban took over, so he could watch movies on a screen bigger than his hand for a change. Held up well enough with 720P and non-60fps video that it served him just fine until he got a new laptop recently. I gotta get that thing back sometime, it's a great backup machine for some basic browsing and sub-1080P video if everything else breaks down.
He never did stop thanking me, so you're quite right. I'm just thankful I had a spare at the time that could handle some form of HD video and go online, being stuck on a phone only is an awful way to do your internet stuff and watch movies..
@@Kohreku Personally I use my phone for watching videos more often than a computer, but sometimes the bigger screen can be quite nice, as well as having a device that is actually useful for other stuff too (web browsing, getting work done, etc).
I am daily driving a W700 as my main machine for the past 6 months, it's not that much better then your T61 in therms of CPU but it does come with the 1GB NVIDIA GPU which is a game changer. It Runs Win 11 with 8GB of ram and 3 Storage devices, a SSD and 2 HDDs. I didn't plan to use is as a daily machine but through a series of rather unfortunate events, that's all i have for now. The web browsing is totally fine, i use Firefox with about 20-25 tabs open while having the CPU sitting at an average of 50% utilization and 75-80% ram utilization, most of which taken by other background apps i usually have open. I don't play games anymore but i did try the latest minecraft version and on lower settings, it was fine and playable. the most resource intensive game i tried on it was war thunder and it ran at an average of 25FPS on lowest settings and Native resolution of 1400*900 if i remember correctly. I am a CS student and do some programming on the side, it is fine for smaller projects but the CPU is not supported by Android Studio.loading Visual Studio does take a while but the lighter VS code runs just fine. The screen is 17 inch, 16:10 one and is perfect for office work and coding. it is a bit yellow but i am fine with it as i wear glasses with blue light control and that makes any screen seem yellow. the CCFL backlight while not as bright as a LED one, is better for work during the night when lights are off. the double think lights light the laptop and they are bright enough to light my notebook as well in order for me to take notes during the night. and thanks to you and your w700 video, i did manage to find the right finger print driver and i can log on to windows with the finger print scanner.
Glad my video was helpful for getting the fingerprint reader to work! That was an odd quirk of some of these older models. I’m happy that your W700 does what you need it to - if you had to be stuck with one model that’s not a bad one to be using! Hopefully your fortunes change for the better soon (in regards to your rather unfortunate events)!
I deal with a lot of Core 2 duo laptops, so I know very well how these things are. If one's plan for the Socket P Core 2 machines is for modern daily tasks, the costs of your upgrades is a very delicate balance. Spend too much on a T9500.T9900/X9000 and you spent more money than getting an i5 laptop that's better. If you have a Core 2 based laptop, get an inexpensive Core 2 duo T8100, T8300, T6600 or P8800, and get decent price on RAM and SSD, then it's a worthy investment. So, if 4:3 screen is not something you hold dear, a T601 frankenpad would be a terrible investment from a cost to performance perspective - They cost as much as a specced out Dell Precision M4700! One of the pony tricks I have when dealing with Core 2 laptops is the FSB overclocking on 965 chipset laptops, from ThinkPad T/R61 to Dells to HP's to Acer laptops. The other pony trick being that I buy smart CPU buys (like the 4 CPUs above) and RAM upgrades in dozens quantities from China, giving a good price. As for Socket M based laptops, unfortunately they are simply too weak for 2022's tasks. CPU is much slower and runs hot, chipset is choking on bandwidth, no SATA2, 3.25GB max RAM, terrible Intel GMA 950 graphics (or 7000 series nvidia GPU with bad driver support and high failure rate, ATI also has bad driver support). Unfortunately for Socket M, the AMD's Socket S1G1 platform that came right after 945 platform aged much better, so does 965 platform.
It certainly is a delicate balance, and even when I made the upgrades to my T601 a few years ago it wasn't the best investment from a price:performance perspective. Upgrading that machine to the fullest was more of a love project for me, and while it may not be suitable for modern everyday needs I still have a few more plans for it in the future... You're absolutely right though, for the money spent on a few upgrades to a Core 2 era machine you could easily find a much better Core i-series laptop.
I saw the title of this video and I just started cracking up, my job has me work on machines this old all the time and for some reason i just thought it was funny how the concept is so far fetched that you literally made a youtube video about this and I have to deal with this on a daily basis. I will note that while this kind of project is cool, I do think it is more for show than practical, you can easily find a more recent laptop for really cheap and upgrade it instead (or even buy a broken top of the line model and fix it yourself, which is often very lucrative), another thing I have to note is that if you bought something that was very top of the line 10-15 years ago it will still be usable today under the right circumstances but if you bought what I would class as "e-waste in 2 years max" for really cheap, it will be just that. One last thing I wanna say (while trying not to generalize too much) is that I do get to work on a lot of thinkpads because they seem to last the longest, they really are impressive machines for their time.
That was the point I made with this video, while a machine this old *can* be upgraded to the point that it is still usable for the most part, it really isn't worth it when more modern machines can be purchased for around the same price or cheaper and still be perfectly usable. As I said in the video, this model represents a best-case scenario since I made several upgrades to it, and it was already a fairly high end machine when it was new (compared to the e-waste in 2 years stuff, or as I like to call them Wal-Mart Specials). ThinkPads have always been my favorite, these older models really are/were built like tanks and have for the most part withstood the test of time. I'll be interested to see if my newest ThinkPad (the X1 Nano) will still be kicking in 15 years.
I installed ChromeOS on one of those, and it works very well. Basically, ditch Windows and you can make those still worth it of many things to make them do.
I haven't messed around with ChromeOS too much, mainly due to bad experiences I had with Chromebooks at my high school, but I can see the web-browser-only experience being sufficient enough for some users and may breathe a little more life into older hardware. At some point I may have to give it a try.
I have never upgraded it, never needed any maintenance other than formatting even though I took it on several trips. I've played online action games on it (like Warface) and it worked great, but now I'm using Linux so I only play single-player games on it.
I have a dell latitude e5500. I planned on doing the same thing as you and transplanting another motherboard into it to get more than 4gb of ram and a better cpu. Don't know what motherboard I could use but I'll find one eventually
I know this is really random but where was the shot of the thinkpad and the railroad signal taken? cause i’ve been looking for searchlights for awhile now
![[🔴LIVE] งานประกาศรางวัล MAYA TV AWARDS 2024 : มายามหาชน](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nwmWYXXVwBY/mqdefault.jpg)
Aw yes comfy old ThinkPad vid
I own several T61's because of this channel. Sebi's videos made me fall in love with the older style T61 and T400 laptops many many years ago. I still have them all in their original IBM Thinkpad travel cases and i break them out occasionally to cycle the batteries so they don't go dead. After this video, i fired up my T61 with the upgraded T9300 Core 2 Duo CPU and i noticed for the first time that watching videos even on my Linux distro(Linux Mint Mate) seemed to studder quite a bit. Acouple years ago i never had that problem. Today's internet is just get too intensive for these older machines. The only way i can more power is to upgrade to the Core 2 Duo Extreme as outlined in Sebi's video. Otherwise they basically will have very limited use going forward.
It really makes me sad to see these older Thinkpad become obsolete. I grew up on them and i loved their many unique features. What do the new Thinkpad still have?? A spill resistant keyboard?? That's it. All the classic features are gone. Hot swappable batteries- gone. Classic keyboard-gone. indicator lights for activity-gone. Latch to hold the top cover down-gone. Upgradable components-gone. dedicated volume buttons-gone.
Lenovo is doing away with everything that made their laptops unique. There's nothing left to distinguish them from other laptops anymore. I do own some modern Thinkpads but to use them is NOT satisfying at all even if they are fast. I hate them.
For youtube try using a front end site like piped, the browsing experience improvement compared to normal yt is immense on older machines.
Earlier this year, I replaced my 2008 MacBook with an X201. I have to say, the difference between Intel's Core 2 chipset and the first gen i series is night and day for many basic tasks. Unless you're a collector, definitely don't look older than anything Core i for basic tasks.
I agree at this point. The very latest laptops with Core 2 processors and faster chips like the Core 2 Quad/Core 2 Extreme might still be usable, but it's just not worth the hassle and money of trying to upgrade everything unless you got the laptop for a good price or already had it.
i've just bought a thinkpad x200 on ebay for 49 euro
@@AM-mk3zc That's not a bad deal. It will probably be a little slow but the X200 is still a very nice machine.
yeah, the i5-520M just wipe the floor compared to the fastest Core 2 Duo
@@SebisRandomTech with libreboot :P
8GB of DDR2 memory? My condolences for your wallet.
Yes maybe 100buck
S
I was looking to upgrade my HP 6730b. CPU upgrade super cheap but the DDR2 so expensive
@@gavinstarling8737 fr, I gave up on an old pc cause of this
I had like 6 sticks of coursair 4gb ddr2 laying around for years and now I’ve got no idea where they are
they are kinda cheap in my country, i bought 2×2 kingston 800mhz kit for like 5 dollar brand new
I was 10 in 2007, and I remembered being awed by modern laptops at the time and wondering how computers could ever get any more advanced
i was 0 in 2007, don't remember shit
@@M1szS i was 2 in 2007 lol
@ParisFletcher tbh that's nothing advanced comparing to the electronics in it
I was 0 and I have the thihnkpad x301 now lol
You should do a state of the collection video with your ThinkPads, older Macbooks, keyboards, and desktops! I think it is somethig that your audience will find interesting.
Not much of a collection at the moment, I got rid of those MacBooks ages ago. The footage was previously unused from a scrapped video of mine. Glad I got to showcase it a little here! :)
i know it aint 15 years old, but my t440p is STILL running strong until now, still uses it to do my daily work from home or out about, the only thing i ever did to the machine was upgraded it to the full HD panel and installed an SSD, other than its declining battery efficiency...it still runs like a champ. not to mention i have dropped it quite a few times through the years, man do i love thinkpads
T440p also my daily driver - i7-4800MQ - 16GB - 1TB SSD. Sits in a dock hooked up to a 27" monitor, remote KB and mouse. Haven't noticed a huge difference to my T14 (G2) i5-1145G7.
I've worked on many a Lenovo thinkpad in the 2nd-5th gen Intel core range. Great machines. I have an x220 which is only a sandy bridge i5, but it has 8gb and a 120gb ssd, got it for free (recycled by customer) at work it's my service call laptop. Just had to order a new caddy so the ssd fits in right, whoever refurbished it before used tape. Great great laptop, I love how it's light up keyboard is an actual light next to the camera that flips open and shines on the keyboard, now that's "GOAT with the sauce" if I may say so myself.
I also have a T440p as my main laptop, i7-4800MQ, 12GB RAM, GT 730M, 250GB SSD, 1080p panel. The only thing I've upgraded is the RAM and a dead battery, though someday I'm going to upgrade the SSD to a bigger one and max out the RAM to 16GB
Well, we're talking at least 6 years newer laptop, close to 7. A long time in computing, and at that time stuff was still getting old faster than today (though not as much as in the 90s-early 2000s), so quite different animals. Buy yeah, Thinkpads are so great. Well, they should considering their original asking prices, but for some reason, there has been a steady supply of second hand units for years at excellent prices. The value is terrific.
@@BilisNegra With the exception of video games/rendering/virtual machines, the amount of processing power required for most tasks has seemingly plateaued over the past decade. My T530's i5 holds up just fine for 90% of what I need to do; for the other 10% (playing modern video games), I just use my desktop.
My ThinkPad T430s is 10 years old now... it is still solid. I have loved the unit due to its ease to service and upgrade. It has an i7 3520M CPU with 8GB RAM. Upgrades came after six years of usage, replacing the HDD and Optical Drive for two SSDs: a 500GB for Windows 10 and 250GB for Ubuntu Linux.
I love my ThinkPad T61s (I’ve three of them 😅) and they get regular usage. I upgraded the RAM to 8gb and run Ubuntu and a couple other Linux distros. Aside from regular www and word processor use, I mainly use it to program in Python and for emulation. Nothing graphically intensive. However, on my main T61, it can overheat, which is the one problem I typically have with them. Especially, ones that ship with Nvida graphics
Loved the video, T61 is a beautiful machine. I personally bought myself a used T450 a few months ago and it's awesome! It's upgraded to 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD, so it's running quite smoothly. The battery life is decent too, with light use i can get to around 4 hours with no problems. I would never think about getting a thinkpad if i hadn't watched an older video of yours, where you recommend an older thinkpad as a great budget laptop, so thank you very much!
Glad I could help steer you in the direction of ThinkPads! Thanks for watching!
Very impressed with the performance of a 2007 laptop even if it's maxxed out.
Think I'll go with an X201 as a linux entertainment center as these laptops look amazing and charmingly old. Might even get a trackpoint only palmrest lol.
Depends on supply chain and the availability of different units.
These older machines are disappearing...
But as always thank you sebi this was one of my favorite videos you've made thus far. Takes me back to your old R series thinkpad video. It's so nice to have content about these amazing machines.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! As always thanks for watching, and I'm amazed you even remember my R series video as that was well before I was known for this sort of stuff. Unfortunately that machine succumbed to a motherboard failure a few years ago, but it will always have a place as my first ThinkPad.
@@SebisRandomTech RIP R52. Forever in our hearts.
Hello,
I have Lenovo G580 with no upgrades
How do I know what is the max upgrade possible for the laptop?
Plz guide me.
@@SebisRandomTech amazing video.but i would like to know how did you learn to do all these
@@anirbanpatra3017 Google is your friend. For a bit more detail look on Reddit, Lenovo's spec sheet for your model (they usually call it the psref document, so look up "Lenovo G580 psref" to find the highest supported upgrades for that model).
Since you made me a Thinkpad fan like 2 years ago, I'm always looking for them on flee markets and picked up quite a few for very cheap. (T2x-T6x. Some X series models and even found a X60 tablet)
If you are into Windows 9x/XP era retro gaming (like I do), old Thinkpads can be perfect.
Sometimes I'm surprised by the screen some old models use. A few months ago, I've managed to get my hands on a R50p. I has a 15" 1600x1200 IPS display. Never seen icons this small in Windows XP before :)
I don't think the R50p is a very common model, you scored a good catch there! I believe that model was at one point available with an even higher resolution 2048x1536 panel. That must have been insane in 2005.
@@SebisRandomTech Yep and according to the Thinkpad Wiki, all R50p models came with an IPS screen. 1600x1200 was the inferior one :)
The electronics swap meet in my area is the perfect place to get old laptops; both my $15 X220i and $20 T530 came from there, and I've seen plenty of other -20 and -30 series machines going for under $30.
@@techno-sorcery9852 Sounds like a great place to get stuff like that!
@@SebisRandomTech it is more insane now if you think about it, its above 1440p even? fricking wild.
My previous workplace furnished me with an (at the time) 3-year-old refurbished T410. I didn't complain, the price was right, I was able to consolidate SEVERAL machines into it, and it was an absolute tank.
The laptop had originally shipped with XP, and still had the XP license sticker on it. But during the refurb process, it gained a Windows 7 license for refurbished computers. Windows 7 was upgradeable to Windows 10, so once I got tired of fighting with Linux on it, you bet that's what I put on that laptop. I used it for about six years as a daily driver, and it was a champ. I gave it to my neighbor and he continues to use it to this day, though a driver issue prevented it from updating past 1909.
So I think that T410 was the only machine I'll ever lay hands on that ran Windows XP AND Windows 10 perfectly.
And yes I did try XP on it at one point. All the drivers are available from Lenovo still, and it ran flawlessly. Made a decent retro-XP-gaming machine with its Quadro GPU!
I have a Dell Inspiron 9400 which I bought in 2006 still in perfect condition. It's got a Core Duo 32 bit processor running Windows 10 32 bit. I did upgrade it from a hard drive to a SATA SSD many years ago, and it has two USB 3.0 ports in a 54mm ExpressCard. It has GeForce Go 7800 graphics. It's got a 17" FHD screen. I've replaced the battery twice in 16 years.
I´m working in the upgrade of an old Dell D620 (2008), lovely device. Works fairly good with Linux and a mechanical hard drive. Not a gaming machine but usable for basic taks. Hopefully will work better with and SSD and a faster Core 2 Duo.
I use one with a T7200 and Samsung 860 EVO and I love it. I'm hoping to put a D630 board in it for even more speed and power. The Latitude D-series are the best laptops ever made IMO.
Excellent video! One of the coolest ones I've seen in a long time! I forgot that IBM even still made their series of Thinkpads in 2006, as I thought that Lenovo had already occupied those by then.
Thanks for watching! The whole IBM versus Lenovo branding on ThinkPads is kind of interesting, technically all ThinkPads made since early 2005 are Lenovo products, as it was in late 2004 that Lenovo acquired IBM's PC division. However, as part of an agreement made during this acquisition ThinkPads were still branded as IBM products for a while, and some in the T60/61 era were jointly branded as IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads. Some early T60's like the one I used for my FrankenPad project have no Lenovo branding at all (save for a very small "Manufactured for Lenovo" sticker on the bottom cover), while later T60's and T61's lack any IBM branding. By the time the T400/500 and X200 came out in 2008, Lenovo dropped all mention of the IBM name.
Additionally, some consider the T60/61 models to still be IBM products as their development began while still under IBM, and the same engineers responsible for the design of older models worked on the T60/61. It's all fascinating to go down a rabbit hole into and just fuels the age-old debate of what the last true IBM ThinkPad was. I'm glad you enjoyed the video and learned something!
I've just spent most of the day on a Thinkpad x61 reading and replying emails, surfing the web to gather information, using whatsapp web to communicate with my banker across the globe, filling, printing and scanning forms, transferring funds, uplifting and placing fixed deposits at various banking websites, , organizing finances and keeping accounting notes on TreeDBNotes. Right now on my x61, I am reading and making web-clippings of the day's corporate news with an old version of Evernote (where web-clipping was possible without a paid subscription). In front of me over at the left side, I have a live telecast of a Italian Open tennis match playing on my Thinkpad x201 and over at the right side (also in front of me), I had your video playing on my Thinkpad x200 (which is still on a mechanical HDD). All my old machines have been converted to SSD except the x200. All machines are running Windows 10. Now who says old Thinkpads running Windows 10 are unusable in 2023? I have a fairly new Thinkpad L14 Gen 2 gathering dust at a corner.
I love your content I'm glad your back. FYI Libreboot in 2023 is VERY important!
I still use my T60 (Lenovo/IBM) as my daily driver. Only upgrade is a new battery and an SSD. It runs Manjaro (Linux). These things are built like tanks and last forever. For my use case it works like a charm. Even though I bought later era ThinkPads for other people, recognising that not everyone's use case (and patience) is the same. ;)
My wife still uses a X61s from 2007 with a friggin 1.6GHz Core 2 duo LV as her only computer and she's still happy with it :) She thinks it's really cute. It's running Linux Mint Xfce on an old 128GB SSD and the performance really is surprisingly good for what it is. It's still a very usable machine for light internet browsing and office stuffs like printing, scanning and word processing. Only 480p TH-cam videos are perfectly smooth but the 12" 4:3 screen is so tiny that the lower resolution doesn't actually look too bad imho.
I was originally going to use an X60s for this video, but it was having motherboard issues so I wasn't able to use it. They're really nice little laptops!
Glad to see you back Sebi! I love your videos! I have a Thinkpad T480 that is my dedicated TV machine and it runs amazing and was only 250 bucks :D
Thanks for watching! That's a pretty interesting use for the T480, how do you have it set up?
@@SebisRandomTech Hey Sebi! I just use the HDMI out and a Logitech pebble mouse and K380 keyboard. It works surprisingly great for browsing the web and TH-cam. Especially with those wireless accessories 🙂 Thanks for asking!
@@SelfSufficientZ That's a pretty cool way to use it, I like seeing hardware repurposed in interesting ways like that.
8:30 HAHAHA you fail to take into account the sheer power of STUBBORNNESS! I have been using a ThinkPad t43 from 2005 as my main laptop for nearly a year, and through many trials and tribulations I am able to maintain productivity! Nothing can stop me and my windows xp running, loud as hell, ThinkPad t43!
Older thinkpads are very useful for people who use mainly text based apps on linux without a desktop environment and running something like DWM. I have a much more modern T450 with an upgraded screen when i use a laptop outside of work but i still have my trusty x61s upgraded to the max with a new old stock US keyboard ( i am in the UK but prefer US layout). Honestly when not on chrome/firefox i cannot tell the difference and the x61s boots faster with the same custom arch linux + larbs install i have on it.
I've used Gentoo Linux since 2003 so I entirely agree with you about using optimised "roll your own" Linux builds to get the "best bang for your buck" out of old Thinkpads.
Watching this on a Dell Latitude E5500, Core2Duo t9550, 4 gigs of ram, slow spinny HDD, and running Windows 11 is no problem for this machine. I can watch TH-cam with no buffering problems, this old thing has amazed me. Very solid old machine, and everything works, minus a Bluetooth driver that I'm not too worried about. I'd say your video is pretty well spot-on.
Glad you liked it! Those older Latitudes, like ThinkPads from the era, are built like tanks and really easy to upgrade. I'd like to take more of a look at them sometime in the future. Thanks for watching!
Watching on my T500 with 8GB ram. I will use it until it dies.
I have a t61 and t61p. One has windows Xp and the other has windows 7. I keep them around for old software, they have good windows 98 compatibility. I have a docking station with a gpu as well. Ive also got a t440p, a p71 and a yoga 390.
I still use a 2008 Dell Insipiron laptop running Windows 7, I tried using Windows 10 but it slows a little bit the pc. Everyday tasks such as (Web browsing, microsoft office and media playback) are more than fine; however it is bulky and heavy, not that great carrying in a bag.
The T60 is a really good laptop in my opinion. Even though I have a powerful desktop and a laptop I still actually find myself using it pretty often for writing and other lightweight tasks.
I love the form factor of the ThinkPads from that era, hence why I did the FrankenPad upgrade to have a newer T61 motherboard in one!
Nice video! I'm still using my X200 with Linux Manjaro and I still use it weekly (mainly for JavaScript coding)! The keyboard is perfect on these older Lenovos.
The keyboards on these late IBM/early Lenovo ThinkPads are truly spectacular. That was probably my favorite part about filming this video, getting to type on the old keyboard. My T430's is still fantastic and even my X1 Nano still has a nice keyboard, but I think the T60/61's is ever so slightly better than any of those.
My mom got me one of those when I was a senior in high school in 2007 and it was the best thing I could use at that time. Now I still have it sitting on my shelf and pull it out whenever I want to play some of my old computer games that refuse to work on newer graphics cards, and to clean it and make sure everything is still in working order (besides the battery being dead completely so I keep it plugged in and I'm not really going to take it anywhere anyways). The case lost a screw, but besides that it's still in fairly good condition.
I still use my early 2011 MacBook Pro. I use it as much as I use the M1 Mac Mini in my office. Still works great for everyday use which for me consists of web browsing, streaming, light word processing, FaceTime and discord. Granted, I've done some upgrades to it. I've replaced the HDD with a SSD, I also replaced the Bluetooth 2.0 chip for a 4.0 chip so that modern devices would be supported and upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 16GB. I believe the stock CPU is a 2.3Ghz Core i7.
A new Sebi's Random Tech video! OMG! Finally!
Still using an upgraded w530 and my backup is a sweet t530, I like the 15 inch thinkpads without the designated number pads, all the 2014's and up have them. As soon as I find out that the Frameworks laptop plays nice with Linux/Ubuntu I will have one of those, right now they still have hiccups. Might move on to the t480 cause I like the two battery system and will have decades left to mess with my favorite MX Linux. Missed seeing your videos, take care.
The X1 Extreme and the P1 offer 15 (and on the newest versions 16) inch displays without a separate number pad, so that could be something to consider for an upgrade when your W530 finally dies (if it ever does!). I'd like to check out the Framework machines but like you said, they still have their hiccups that need to be worked out and the lack of a pointing stick is a dealbreaker for me. I'm glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for watching!
Since mid. 2018, I own a Thinkpad R61i and basically did the same upgrades you did (except only 4GB RAM, T9300 for processor, a 2016 802.11ac-compatible WiFi-Card and LED Backlighting) that got me through all of my Software Engineering degree until now and will probably continue to do so. I also chose a model with Intel Graphics, because I did not want sudden failure because of the infamous "NVidia Bug". My perceived experience with productivity, web browsing and video streaming/playback matches yours (the screen is only 800p anyway, but this also means 1280x720 fits without any scaling) and I currently don't feel any need to replace it. It even ran Windows 11 for a short period of time and, if it's still possible in 2025, I will install it again when Windows 10 reeches the end of its life (meaning, this old computer outlived 5 whole generations of Windows)
I have a revised T61 motherboard that shouldn't have the dreaded Nvidia issues, however I still try to run it on the cooler side just to be safe. It'll be interesting to see if the T61 is still usable by 2025.
Looking at that older Thinkpad, man I love the chassis. Timeless!
All students in my secondary school (me included) were using similar laptops to this one that were running windows 7 (upgraded from windows xp or vista ) up until 2018/2019, then they finally switched them all out with chromebooks once I left and went to high school. They were absolutely terrible. We had constantly problems with them and the problems ranged from terrible battery life to really bad performance and other technical problems that IT had to deal with. I feel so sorry for the poor souls who had to deal with all that crap for years and eventually having to deal with the chromebooks during covid.
Thank you for all the good advice. My inexpensive x220 is performing very well. Doing everything I want.
The X220/230 are rock solid models. Glad yours is doing well!
I have small business selling computers, so many times i say that i will use something like X1 Carbon or similar for my University work. Many times tho, i find a buyer and i sell it. Having to install all of the programs and copy every file to a different one. That why i picked a Lenovo X200 Tablet, that i had in my vintage collection and decided to give it a try. I am impressed, first of all, it's the perfect choisce, because i will never sell a laptop from my collection, the secondary bonus is that all of the software required for my University tasks are old or not as demanding (like mathlab). I upgraded it to 6GB RAM, SSD and Win10, the laptop is doing excellent, the only obstacle is the CPU (C2D 1.6 Ghz). Watching your video motivated me to do something more to this old workhorse. I will look for a nice CPU Upgrade. Thanks.
The CPU can't be upgraded, shame.
My main PC broke this year (ASUS mobo blew up) and I needed a PC, so I grabbed my father's old ThinkPad R61 with a T8100, 3GB RAM and a 320GB HDD. Installed Manjaro Xfce onto it and voila, I had a PC to use :D Minecraft 1.19 w/ OptiFine with some shader patches ran at 100fps at 448x252 resolution, CS 1.6 ran at 100fps too, at 640x480 resolution. Honestly, I was pretty surprised about that kinda of performance on the Intel GMA X3100 graphics, pretty cool to see how these old thinkpads hold up nowadays xD
Even if it isn't buttery smooth with some modern tasks, it really is neat that machines that are over 15 years old are still remotely usable in the modern world. Glad the R61 could keep up with your computing needs!
@@SebisRandomTech yep, the laptop is still in very good shape physically and I never had to replace any hinges or such, these old thinkpads are really sustainable :D
nice video,very comfy indeed!~ i m using t400 now, it is the best machine i ever had. it even does funny beeping sound on startup. will try to max it out with quad core, ultrabay battery, 8gb ram and maybe 2nd wlan card. the only downside is that t400 is really a thicc boi, but still best budget thinkpad in my country. somehow x-type models became so pricy that you can buy two t-models for price of x one of the same generation :c
These older machines are still great for offline use. I use mine for file storage and documentation purposes. Yeah they can't go online really anymore but that's more reason to keep them around.
Why?...Ive got Lenovo ThinkPad R500 and its going strong online
@@tomaszgalec864 youtube / hq video will stutter
@@hornox4life ....but still, they can, lower than hq runs perfectly :)
@@tomaszgalec864 Yep, it works, only a few seconds of waiting time now and then😄
@@hornox4life Nope...below hq runs smoothly, you are wrong my friend...or you have bad internet connection.
I have a T60 with a Core2Duo T7400, 3GB RAM, and ATI X1300 graphics with a 14 inch 1400x1050 display. It's fine for most basic uses, web browsing (chrome) is a little sluggish, but it's usable. Playing TH-cam isn't so much though. I've found it will only stop dropping frames when not in fullscreen, and even then, only at 480p 30fps. Even then, as soon as you move your cursor and the UI comes up (pause, volume, captions, settings, etc) it starts dropping frames again.
Still it's amazing that such an old laptop is still usable at all, especially when running a less ram intensive operating system like Linux. (devuan with openrc btw, 67 megabytes idle ram usage) While I certainly wouldn't use it as my main computer, I would totally use it for basic office use.
I've managed to get some websites to load fine on a T42p I used to have, with a lightweight OS and some tweaking you *could* still make machines that old somewhat usable, but it'll still be a sluggish experience unless you limit its usage to the basics.
@@SebisRandomTech huh, didn't know the T42p was usable at all on modern OS'
@@raymondgradzewicz Was using Windows XP with a patch to get security updates until 2019. Opera at the time was still supporting XP, not sure if that is still the case. Actually ran decently as long as you didn't try to play any videos on TH-cam, Reddit, etc.
We use our 2 T60's for playing the Sims 2 with all bar 2 expansions!. Handles it well.
The NVidia might be very error prone, however it is much better than the ATI. It supports H.264 decoding which helps a lot when the CPU is barely able to do so. Also supports DX10. The Radeon X1xxx does not support H.264 as far as I know.
However with more and more of the web switching to better codecs like H.265, AV1 or VP9, even those are not usable anymore.
Every time I hear "Middleton BIOS", I imagine Kate sitting in Windsor castle, hacking away on an old ThinkPad while William is away at some posh event. 😅
🤣🤣🤣
Bought a x230 7 days ago! Was feeling down as my dell latitude d620 had started to become unusable. So went onto ebay and took a look around. Bidded on a laptop and lost. Found the x230 and bidded and won! Did not know what I had gotten myself into as I wasn't familiar with the ThinkPad series! After buying it I read up on it as I only had a few minutes to bid when I stumbled upon it haha. I was delighted to find such good things about ThinkPads and the x230. I'm very much into technology. Programming, building pcs etc but I had never known much about the infamous ThinkPads! Anyways cut to the chase I received it 2 days ago and it's been a delight. Truly awesome. Light, powerful and good looking. Great for college. I mainly do programming and work so I don't need a super computer! I'm going to dual boot it with Linux so I have bought a 256GB msata SSD to put in the laptop so I can keep windows and Linux on separate drives. Anyways thanks a bunch! Binge watched nearly all of your videos over the past week :D
The X230 is such a solid model, as you've probably seen with the one showcased in a few of my videos. With an IPS display and the classic keyboard/palmrest swap it's probably one of the best blends of classic and modern that you can get today. I'm glad you're happy with yours and thanks for watching my videos!
@@SebisRandomTech Heck yeah! I have been thinking of upgrading the screen on my x230 actually. A month of usage and i love it. I put a msata ssd in so now ive dual booted it with windows/ubuntu. I am actually typing from the x230 in ubuntu rn. Really solid laptop. I would like to try the T series of thinkpads but I use my laptop for college, presentations, coding etc so I need an x series thinkpad for portability. Recently my friend wanted to get a laptop 2nd hand so i looked around for him and found a very nice deal. X270 16GB ram 520GB ssd very nice indeed. Catch is that he isnt getting payed till the end of the month so I have bought it and hell buy it off me haha. So thats arriving today so thats going to be fun to play with even if its for a short time haha.
I'm still using ThinkPad Yoga S1 from 2013, mainly because it has a touchscreen and comes with a stylus. At one point I was considering to replace it since SSD upgrade didn't do it any good, but then I replaced cheap cacheless A-Data SSD with a beastly Samsung 860 Pro (top of the line SATA III drive on the market) and things got way better. I also installed Windows 11 and the laptop actually runs it better than my other not-so-old IdeaPad.
I don't expect more than a museum level experience in the T/X-60/61 pile I decided to buy/repair.
Still using my TP W520 - 2013 vintage. I used it as my primary laptop until about 2019. I upgraded it to a P51. The only issue I am running into is the keyboard, I worn dimples into the keys after using it for nearly a decade. Before that I had a T60 which I think I got in late 2005 or early 2006. I replaced it for a better processor that supported virtualization.
I had one of these around 2011, I thought they were old (and slow) back then!
I'm glad you finally uploaded a video. Kind of my favorite TH-camr out there...
We had ThinkPads as old or even older than this in a factory I worked at. Electronics department was still using them actively... For all those years I remember not a single dead pixel or dysfunctional key on them. Even their mouse knob things were good. I was blown away.
"Many newer games I tried to run just crashed on startup"
*footage of trying to start Crash Bandicoot game*
Surely this isn't a coincidence
I'm surprised nobody else caught that ;)
I personally think the last 10 years was a massive hardware plateau. my 10 year old 6700 in my desktop is perfectly capable of browsing the modern web and nearly everything you could want, including running cyberpunk, though I did get a 3050.
a fellow old thinkpad user. respect.
Likewise!
What a shock.....I got it since 2008 and still keep it till today
Its working pretty well.
#TheLastRealThinkpad ;) But seriously, the T60 and T61 will always have a big place in my heart since those two were my first ThinkPads i ever owned and i still love to use them as dedicated Windows XP machines. The T60 with ATI X1300 is amazing for older PC games. You can even play UT 2003 on this thing. Especially when you have a 1024x768 resolution screen. Quake III Arena also runs amazing and i also played Serious Sam first and second encounter on this thing without problems and maximum settings. Watching DVDs on it is also pretty fun when you watch a lot of content that is 4:3 aspect ratio because of the generous 15' screen size that feels even bigger in person than on pictures. And of course the awesome Keyboard. If you consider the age of these machines and keep them for legacy applications, they are far better at that than any modern machine with modern Operating systems. The T60 and T61 are just such an incredibly fun experience. The T60 even more imho because of the 4:3 format.
I keep the 4:3 T60/61 around primarily for older standard definition content. Older shows and movies look really nice on it.
They were still IBM products, right?
@@Sourpusscandy T60/T61 were made by Lenovo
@@Sourpusscandy I believe the T42 was the last *true* IBM ThinkPad, at least in the T series. Lenovo acquired IBM's PC division in late 2004 and so the X41 and T43, while virtually identical to their predecessors and still marketed as IBM products, were made by Lenovo. The T60 and T61 were Lenovo machines through and through, but retained the IBM branding due to a licensing agreement when the line was purchased. By the time the T400 came out in 2008 the IBM branding had been phased out.
@@Sourpusscandy yes and no. They were designed by IBM but manufactured by Lenovo. So they still have the actual IBM DNA in them while being put together by their new owner.
2009 Dell Inspiron 1545 here, maxed out to the C2D T9900, an SSD, a 1TB HDD in the optical drive slot, and an ExpressCard USB3 card in that slot. This is the model with the ATi dGPU, which helps some, and I run PCLinuxOS. This can go up to 900p streaming video just fine, which matches the screen it has.
I'll hate it when this old laptop can't do the job anymore, but so far, so good.
My X200 still working as the first day.
I had 1 of those back in 2010 used to play red alert 2
It's quite incredible to see how well the T61 holds up. Granted, it is not ethical to daily a laptop like this, unless you need a machine to do basic things such as web browsing, word processing, and writing emails. My obsolescence timeline is anything made before the second generation Intel Core CPUs IMO, and that is if you choose Linux as an operating system.
Been trying to find the DVD caddy for the T60 and T61 for ages. Hard to find these days because the connector is nonstandard.
I purchased that caddy back in 2015, it was one of the first "upgrades" I ever made to a ThinkPad. That model (an R51) has since succumbed to motherboard issues and I salvaged most of its parts to fix up other machines, and have kept the caddy around for other stuff. I suppose nowadays there's a little less demand for those kind of parts for laptops from 2005/2006.
I am running a T61 with Middleton's BIOS, Samsung 860 Pro 500GB SSD, Core 2 Duo T9500, Intel 965GM graphics, 8GB RAM running Fedora 37 and I am able to play 1080p youtube videos (with no frames dropped) and even 1440p video (with no frames dropped once it has gone full screen) in Chrome. I can run Discord, Teams, Chrome, Telegram and it get along farily well with minimal slow down. It has no issues streaming videos from Twitch, youtube or netflix etc..
I have a toughbook CF-30 (13 years old) 4GB ram, 128GB SSD 1.6GHZ Core M dual core. I got windows 11 running reasonably well on it. This machine is my only computer.
Generally I expect 10 years of performant use from a good laptop, then 5 years of hobbyist use in its twilight phase. Beyond 15 years they become objects of nostalgia or curiosity, or doorstops! Never owned a Thinkpad, I regret to say. Toshiba, Dell, Asus and Samsung were my foils. Just my humble opinion/experience as a software engineer. My oldest is a 22-year old Dell Latitude L400 with 80GB IDE, 256MB RAM, 1024x768px. It boots Win 95, 98SE, ME, XP, FreeDOS and Tiny Core Linux. Satisfies my retro/nostalgia urge (illness). Battery lasts 2 hours :)
Never too late to start! Next time you come across a ThinkPad, feel free to join the club! 😎😎
I've made it a New Year resolution in fact ;) When I get one, I'll be tempted to switch the CTRL and FN keys.
@@muxtonungulate9423 Some newer ThinkPads have an option in the BIOS for you to do this from the factory. Older models do allow for it through BIOS patches such as the Middleton's BIOS I mentioned in this video for the T61.
There's a good chance you can get full quality TH-cam playback by playing videos in VLC
For many years i have daily driven an T-60 and even used Win10 on it (even if the loading time were horrendous).
I lately gave my T-60 a new life with WinXP for retro gaming.
I love those LED status lights. I remember them back in 2010 era from my dad's work laptop.
They're cool and actually useful in some situations. For me it's a handy way to tell if the drive is actually working or if the system is responsive or not - especially when troubleshooting it's a small but handy feature.
I still use 17 yrs. old Fujitsu-Siemens with Windows 7 daily. My IBM ThinkPad year 1998 has Windows XP3, I'm not using it online anymore.
I love my T-61. She still works reliably and is stable and fast enough.
I still enjoy mine quite a bit. This video certainly won't be the last time you see mine! ;)
You can't kill old IBM laptops, they will just keep going and working..
I still use my 2013 dell e6540 daily, no complaints
I bought my Z60T while stationed in Okinawa, Japan back in 2007 from the Navy/Marine Corps exchange. I wish I had bought a T60 or T61. The Z60t was not as upgradeable.
The trouble is, several years of ThinkPads after the T61p then W500 generations were bogged down by questionable keyboards, quarrelsome touchpads, vexatious displays, or other challenges. As of Saturday, February 10th, 2024, ~9:52 P.M., E.T., I would assert that the W500 remains more than capable, and in fact excellent, as a daily-driver.
As someone who has used old laptops i can say that a Core 2 Duo is barely enought to use the internet and stuff but works
Cool video your views on a thinkpads are always great
Appreciate it! Thanks for watching!
I installed Linux mint on a T490, and it loves Linux mint. It had its camera removed as a security precaustin due to issues with cameras being able to be started up by hackers. But I still love it with a Logitech camera.
Theoretically you shouldn't even need to remove the camera from the T490 or newer ThinkPads, as they all have a sliding cover to block the webcam's lens anyways.
I'm pretty sure the info that only 3GB can be used in a T61 is wrong. A (German) quote from the ThinkWiki: "Erst die ThinkPads mit Santa-Rosa-Chipsätzen (T61, R61, X61) können dank Memory Remapping volle 4 GB RAM (inoffiziell sogar 8 GB [2x4 GB]) nutzen"
3 GB is the max for the T *60,* however the T61 as you pointed out can handle 4 or (unofficially) up to 8 GB of RAM.
Still running my T430, 2tb hd 16gb ram, new 9 cell battery and new power adapter. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Still haven’t’ upgraded the screen though. I should. I think I used your tutorial for whitelisting the off brand battery. Cheers! 👍
PS, the main reason I keep using it is because I play DVDs on it, in bed and the tray can come out and insert another HD when I need to swap to Windows for customers. About your upcoming reviews, if you know of any 3-5yo machines that still use 2.5” hd’s and DVD drives, please mention them, I would much appreciate it. I love the durability of the ThinkPad, and don’t care that it is heavy.
The T440p and W541 were the latest mainstream models with a DVD drive, however the L series still had them until the L570 and the P70/71 had a DVD drive as well. Since then those have been lost to history.
As for 2.5" drives, the T480/580 still utilized them, the X270/A275 did as well, and the P series supported them until the P53/P73.
I'm still using HP Pavilion dv7 with AMD Phenom quad core, 4GB of RAM and 500GB Samsung SSD. Laptop is still usable and reasonably fast for everyday tasks. Most important fact: it was free.
I had a toshiba laptop i used to play Need for Speed Underground 2 or Euro Truck Simulator 2. Ocasionally the screen would invert at random upside down...
It was around 20010-2014 and still works nowdays 12 years later
Very high quality laptop
i love the thinkpads. they are great machines. i love my x240. beast of a machine.
would love to see a video on the Thinkpad Advanced Docking Station. I had one a few years back but never got much use out of it so it went to another home!
I'd like to make a video about it eventually. I obviously have one but am still trying to figure out how I'd like to go about doing a video on it.
I don't think the T61 motherboard in your Frankenpad has the infrared port. If I remember correctly Lenovo has removed it after the T60 series, although I could be wrong.
Whoops, that was a slight error on my part! I'll make note of it in the description.
I had one of these for a while. Wound up giving it to an Afghan guy who'd come over after the Taliban took over, so he could watch movies on a screen bigger than his hand for a change. Held up well enough with 720P and non-60fps video that it served him just fine until he got a new laptop recently.
I gotta get that thing back sometime, it's a great backup machine for some basic browsing and sub-1080P video if everything else breaks down.
I'm glad the guy you gave it to was able to get some use out of it. I'm sure he's grateful for the generosity!
He never did stop thanking me, so you're quite right. I'm just thankful I had a spare at the time that could handle some form of HD video and go online, being stuck on a phone only is an awful way to do your internet stuff and watch movies..
@@Kohreku Personally I use my phone for watching videos more often than a computer, but sometimes the bigger screen can be quite nice, as well as having a device that is actually useful for other stuff too (web browsing, getting work done, etc).
2 vids in and im subbed.
Great looking channel.
I am daily driving a W700 as my main machine for the past 6 months, it's not that much better then your T61 in therms of CPU but it does come with the 1GB NVIDIA GPU which is a game changer. It Runs Win 11 with 8GB of ram and 3 Storage devices, a SSD and 2 HDDs. I didn't plan to use is as a daily machine but through a series of rather unfortunate events, that's all i have for now. The web browsing is totally fine, i use Firefox with about 20-25 tabs open while having the CPU sitting at an average of 50% utilization and 75-80% ram utilization, most of which taken by other background apps i usually have open.
I don't play games anymore but i did try the latest minecraft version and on lower settings, it was fine and playable. the most resource intensive game i tried on it was war thunder and it ran at an average of 25FPS on lowest settings and Native resolution of 1400*900 if i remember correctly. I am a CS student and do some programming on the side, it is fine for smaller projects but the CPU is not supported by Android Studio.loading Visual Studio does take a while but the lighter VS code runs just fine. The screen is 17 inch, 16:10 one and is perfect for office work and coding. it is a bit yellow but i am fine with it as i wear glasses with blue light control and that makes any screen seem yellow. the CCFL backlight while not as bright as a LED one, is better for work during the night when lights are off. the double think lights light the laptop and they are bright enough to light my notebook as well in order for me to take notes during the night. and thanks to you and your w700 video, i did manage to find the right finger print driver and i can log on to windows with the finger print scanner.
Glad my video was helpful for getting the fingerprint reader to work! That was an odd quirk of some of these older models. I’m happy that your W700 does what you need it to - if you had to be stuck with one model that’s not a bad one to be using! Hopefully your fortunes change for the better soon (in regards to your rather unfortunate events)!
Still have my truty R51e , those were built to last!
The R51 was my very first ThinkPad. I will always have a soft spot for that model.
I use my HP Compaq NX6125 17 years old laptop with Athlon 64 3000 socket 754 2gb 333 DDR1 with PATA SSD disk and ATI Radeon X200M on 32bit Win 8.1
I deal with a lot of Core 2 duo laptops, so I know very well how these things are. If one's plan for the Socket P Core 2 machines is for modern daily tasks, the costs of your upgrades is a very delicate balance. Spend too much on a T9500.T9900/X9000 and you spent more money than getting an i5 laptop that's better. If you have a Core 2 based laptop, get an inexpensive Core 2 duo T8100, T8300, T6600 or P8800, and get decent price on RAM and SSD, then it's a worthy investment. So, if 4:3 screen is not something you hold dear, a T601 frankenpad would be a terrible investment from a cost to performance perspective - They cost as much as a specced out Dell Precision M4700!
One of the pony tricks I have when dealing with Core 2 laptops is the FSB overclocking on 965 chipset laptops, from ThinkPad T/R61 to Dells to HP's to Acer laptops. The other pony trick being that I buy smart CPU buys (like the 4 CPUs above) and RAM upgrades in dozens quantities from China, giving a good price.
As for Socket M based laptops, unfortunately they are simply too weak for 2022's tasks. CPU is much slower and runs hot, chipset is choking on bandwidth, no SATA2, 3.25GB max RAM, terrible Intel GMA 950 graphics (or 7000 series nvidia GPU with bad driver support and high failure rate, ATI also has bad driver support). Unfortunately for Socket M, the AMD's Socket S1G1 platform that came right after 945 platform aged much better, so does 965 platform.
It certainly is a delicate balance, and even when I made the upgrades to my T601 a few years ago it wasn't the best investment from a price:performance perspective. Upgrading that machine to the fullest was more of a love project for me, and while it may not be suitable for modern everyday needs I still have a few more plans for it in the future...
You're absolutely right though, for the money spent on a few upgrades to a Core 2 era machine you could easily find a much better Core i-series laptop.
I saw the title of this video and I just started cracking up, my job has me work on machines this old all the time and for some reason i just thought it was funny how the concept is so far fetched that you literally made a youtube video about this and I have to deal with this on a daily basis. I will note that while this kind of project is cool, I do think it is more for show than practical, you can easily find a more recent laptop for really cheap and upgrade it instead (or even buy a broken top of the line model and fix it yourself, which is often very lucrative), another thing I have to note is that if you bought something that was very top of the line 10-15 years ago it will still be usable today under the right circumstances but if you bought what I would class as "e-waste in 2 years max" for really cheap, it will be just that. One last thing I wanna say (while trying not to generalize too much) is that I do get to work on a lot of thinkpads because they seem to last the longest, they really are impressive machines for their time.
That was the point I made with this video, while a machine this old *can* be upgraded to the point that it is still usable for the most part, it really isn't worth it when more modern machines can be purchased for around the same price or cheaper and still be perfectly usable. As I said in the video, this model represents a best-case scenario since I made several upgrades to it, and it was already a fairly high end machine when it was new (compared to the e-waste in 2 years stuff, or as I like to call them Wal-Mart Specials). ThinkPads have always been my favorite, these older models really are/were built like tanks and have for the most part withstood the test of time. I'll be interested to see if my newest ThinkPad (the X1 Nano) will still be kicking in 15 years.
at least its better than school pc
I installed ChromeOS on one of those, and it works very well.
Basically, ditch Windows and you can make those still worth it of many things to make them do.
I haven't messed around with ChromeOS too much, mainly due to bad experiences I had with Chromebooks at my high school, but I can see the web-browser-only experience being sufficient enough for some users and may breathe a little more life into older hardware. At some point I may have to give it a try.
holy crap lol i didn't know fingerprint readers went back as far is 15 years, super cool video
The first model that had them (the T42) came out almost 20 years ago (in 2004)!
I am watching this in my 12 year old laptop (Lenovo G470).
I have never upgraded it, never needed any maintenance other than formatting even though I took it on several trips.
I've played online action games on it (like Warface) and it worked great, but now I'm using Linux so I only play single-player games on it.
Can we expect a video on the 2503 GPU docking station at some point?
holy shit i found this vid through reddit, didn't know you posted there (though now that i think about it why did the thought never cross my mind lol)
I have a dell latitude e5500. I planned on doing the same thing as you and transplanting another motherboard into it to get more than 4gb of ram and a better cpu. Don't know what motherboard I could use but I'll find one eventually
Amazing tutorial buddy!
The early (IBM) Thinkpads were extremely expensive.
I know this is really random but where was the shot of the thinkpad and the railroad signal taken? cause i’ve been looking for searchlights for awhile now
CN’s Bessemer Subdivision in western PA. The entire line uses searchlights…for now…
You can see several of them in operation on the video I linked at 4:47 during one of the train shots!