I have a MacBook 13 inch from 2011 that now plays YouTube videos daily for my daughter when she is eating and Netflix until we canceled the subscription. Still going strong with only a replaced battery and the hard drive replacing the dvd spot. I have an older 2004 Toshiba portage m200 tart also won’t die. The only thing that seems to die on these computers is the battery, which used to be a lot easier to replace.
The laptop that won't die
51–60 of 344 posts
Re: The laptop that won't die
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've done what you described multiple times. One other tip is buy one with a lower resolution screen, and then replace the screen with a higher resolution one. Be sure to research this, though, some of the highest resolution screens need a different mobo with a higher pin connector.
I think that advice depends on whether you're looking for "a laptop" or "a project" :) I'm a massive thinkpad fan, as per sibling comments I have half a dozen in the room with me right now, but have never and don't plan to ever replace a screen. My time and hassle are worth more than $0-$30 I'd pay for one that already comes with higher res, and the risk / pain / fidgetiness is outside of my own personal threshold. N…
lol what? I can replace the screen in under 15 minutes.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#53Yup. The T420 itself is quite big and clunky these days; but I have a couple of T420s ('s' tends to be the slightly smaller version of any given generation of the mainstream T series) in active use around home, and have setup and given a few to friends and family as well They run Windows 10 perfectly fine once you put an SSD in, and they're small enough not to feel like 80's retro-futuristic Cyberpunk deck clunkers :…
I'm posting from my X220 (circa 2013). It's a laptop of Theseus at this point, but bits of the original still survive. (The keyboard is the single most-replaced component, and I'm on my third motherboard.) I can't stand more modern laptops - I've yet to find a newer laptop keyboard that's comfortable to type on. Performance-wise, it's perfectly adequate to run Linux Mint or Windows 10. And I get a kick out of having…
Does the trackpad skip? That’s the only thing that is not perfect about my x220.
The only app that kills it is the dammed Zoom
Re: The laptop that won't die
#54I had a T420 in college. One day in a CS class, I bumped my (uncovered) cup of coffee and it spilled into the keyboard. I knew the laptop had ducts to drain water out, but never tested it (for obvious reasons).
I blotted up as much coffee as I could with some napkins and kept taking notes on the soaked keyboard. Worked like a charm. After drying it out, a few keys stopped working so I bought a replacement keyboard for ~$20 and swapping it out was rather fast (from memory).
I use an M1 MBP now, but I still have that thing in the basement. It still works, and I loved it. I don't miss carrying it around though (or the hilariously short battery life due to forcing discrete GPU mode so I could dock it for multiple monitors at home).
Re: The laptop that won't die
#55Anecdotal evidence is obvious but Lenovo has at least tried to keep up their quality (don’t buy anything other than the thinkpad line) but Mac durability in the long term may can have issues. I remember that I had to get a repair of two Mac’s I have owned (but one time Apple upgraded me to the newer version so that’s why I am loyal.)
Unfortunately I concur :(
Re: The laptop that won't die
#56I had a T420 in college. One day in a CS class, I bumped my (uncovered) cup of coffee and it spilled into the keyboard. I knew the laptop had ducts to drain water out, but never tested it (for obvious reasons). I blotted up as much coffee as I could with some napkins and kept taking notes on the soaked keyboard. Worked like a charm. After drying it out, a few keys stopped working so I bought a replacement keyboard fo…
Had a similar experience but with water and the laptop stopped working
Re: The laptop that won't die
#57it looks like the little red eraser in the center has taken a beating
Re: The laptop that won't die
#58https://archive.today/QJyfs
Thank you!
Re: The laptop that won't die
#59I can relate to this. I needed a laptop quickly and found a factory display piece on eBay. It was an x230. It must have been atleast a year old. I bought it. That was in 2013 or so. I'm still using it. Upgraded the Ram once. The current problems are a slow fan and a poor battery. I haven't fixed them yet but can probably do so. The thing still works. It's running an old Debian and is my primary machine.
I have the same machine the author shows in the picture. Agree completely. Also have a really old T60p. Might be close to 15 years old now. It has a bad fan. What I did was put the machine into passive cooling and spin the fan up at boot! Kind of like a jump start. Runs just fine.
If you want to make it like-new... The T60* fan is a few-dollar part on eBay (plus you'll need a little ordinary PC CPU heat sink thermal compound, and some tape), it's not too hard to replace, and there's documentation.
If you download the Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM) PDF for that model, IIRC, it'll tell you step-by-step how to replace the fan&heatsink assembly. Follow those instructions, but after you remove the assembly, just remove the thermal compound, pull the fan off, tape the new fan onto the old heatsink assembly, apply thermal compound, and resume following the HMM instructions for putting the 'new' assembly into the laptop.
Edit: The latest version of the HMM I could find: https://web.archive.org/web/20210429114642/https://download....
Re: The laptop that won't die
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll second this: Non-Thinkpad Lenovo laptops are poorly designed trash heaps. Thinkpads have largely retained the build quality that everyone brags on. My tl;dr advice for buying a computer on a budget is, get a T480s off of eBay. They are corporate cast-offs and there are so. many. of them. The R2v3 rating system has become popular. Get one rated C5 or better (cosmetic: minor usage marks only) and F4 or better (fun…
Do you mean "T480-s" as in plural of T480, or T480s, as in the smaller version of T480? The reason I'm asking is - "T480" is the last nicely modular ThinkPad with removable external battery. Which means if you get a used one and need to replace the battery, it's literally a 2 second job - you push a button, slide it out, and slide the new one in :) The "T480s" though is a slightly smaller version with only an interna…
I have a T480s as well as a T25 (let's not talk about the x300, x220 and earlier stuff I have, being used as bookends; I did have a 701 but sadly threw it out, much to my chagrin in recent years), and the T480s gets used more often, simply because it's more portable. Plus, a rare slim laptop with that neato expandable RJ45 plug, when newer slim laptops nowadays forgo the same.
The internal battery can be readily sourced and replaced easily enough.
My latest toy is a GPD Win Max 2, keyboard isn't too bad actually, but I doubt it will last anywhere near as long as the T480s.