[ltp] [Slightly off-topic] About to buy a second-hand ThinkPad X200....

[Helen Borrie]

At 09:31 AM 31/01/2012, Dick Summerfield wrote:

>The funny thing is that when looking for a cheap used laptop a few months ago
>I chose the Thinkpad because I'd heard how rugged they were - drop them, pour
>liquid in - take them into space - all no problem. Since then I've heard hardly anything
>but how easily they break!!! :-)

When the big earthquake hit Christchurch, NZ, on Feb. 22 last year, my 90-year-old mother was evacuated up here to us in Auckland.  Of course, I asked her about her 2006-vintage T42, which lives on a hospital trolley beneath her big TV set, which is suspended from the ceiling in her "compact" cottage in an aged persons' residential village.  She said, "Oh, it's wrecked!  It came down and there are wires everywhere.  I didn't even dare to touch it!"

Of course, they lost power when the EQ struck and then there were intermittent power failures for weeks afterwards, with the aftershocks.  

At the end of April, I took Mum home to Christchurch, carrying with me a laptop bag for the purpose of transporting her T42 back to Auckland with me.  When we got in, sure enough, there was the T42 on the floor, resting half-open on the front edges of the screen and keyboard.  And, yes, there were quite a few wires: the power cable, the Ethernet cable and USB cables for her external keyboard and mouse.  ;-) 

I picked it up from the floor, set it upright and swiped a finger over the trackpad.  Up came her email client and immediately began downloading 9 weeks of email.  I carried the bag back to Auckland, empty.

We have three more fairly elderly Thinkpads here in the home office network: another T42, a T43 running off a docking station because the battery fuse is munted, and my trusty T60 that troops with me all over the place on conference trips.  The T43 (including the docking station) I bought last year from an on-line auction site as "not working" for $56 NZ (thinking I would dismantle it for parts).  The first thing I did was to replace the battery with a brand new one, but no go.  However, it works great with the docking station and has been the main Ubuntu server in my test network for 8 months solid.

I do note that the T43 is a bit more "chunky" than the two T42s, more like the T60 in its outward appearance.

Helen