by ThinkPads on April 7, 2009
A few weeks ago I wrote about an alternative to netbooks in the search for a low cost computer. In fact, I even specifically called out the ThinkPad X41 as a great option (yes, I’m quoting myself):
The folks over at OSNews have a review up on a ThinkPad X41 purchased from Geeks.com for a good price, and with Linux preloaded! It is of course a refurbished box and only comes with 512MB RAM, but you can bring it up to 1.5GB. The slooowwww 1.8″ 4200rpm drive will hold it back in outright performance, but you could always drop in a 1.8″ SSD if you find a good bargain. Regardless of your intentions, this Geeks.com-edition ThinkPad X41 is a good bargain at only $239, although it appears to be out of stock at the time of writing.
The folks over at I4U took an aging ThinkPad X40, with its bottlenecking 1.8-inch mechanical drive, and dropped in a KingSpec 1.8-inch SSD that also brought capacity up to 32GB from 20GB. They were very happy with the result, as there is no more HDD churning noise and performance is strongly improved. The downside is of course the price, with their 32GB model running $170. That is almost as much as the X41 I cited above, but for a hair over $400 you could have a machine that rivals netbooks in usability and likely performance as well.
Source
by ThinkPads on March 26, 2009
I’ve talked a good bit about netbooks compared to full-size notebooks on here, so I hope you all aren’t getting board with it. I think netbooks are a cool direction the industry has gone in and they certainly have value: they get the job done, cost relatively little, and are very portable. Overall these are very capable machines, but they aren’t suited for everybody. A 9-10 inch screen is on the low end of usability, and screen size also dictates keyboard layout.
So what might be a good alternative to a low cost netbook? Used ThinkPads for one. The 4x series ThinkPads are renowned as the best of the best in terms of overall quality. While you won’t find a dual core processor in those models, the good old Pentium M is still a plenty efficient CPU and with a high capacity battery, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with run-time.
Throw in a good amount of memory and dig up a 7200rpm Parallel ATA hard drive, and you’ve got a winner! The T4x and R4x models come with 14.1-15 inch 4:3 ratio screens, full-size keyboards, and a well constructed chassis to continue to take abuse.
The folks over at OSNews have a review up on a ThinkPad X41 purchased from Geeks.com for a good price, and with Linux preloaded! It is of course a refurbished box and only comes with 512MB RAM, but you can bring it up to 1.5GB. The slooowwww 1.8″ 4200rpm drive will hold it back in outright performance, but you could always drop in a 1.8″ SSD if you find a good bargain. Regardless of your intentions, this Geeks.com-edition ThinkPad X41 is a good bargain at only $239, although it appears to be out of stock at the time of writing.
Or maybe a T-Series is more to your liking. T42 and T43′s are fairly easy to find in refurbished state for around $300, like this deal from J&R here. If you’re lucky, you can even come across a sale like this brand new ThinkPad SL direct from Lenovo for under $500.
My point here is that if you need a cheap notebook, don’t pigeon-hole yourself into a cheap (both in price and quality) and/or semi-usable machine when you have other options.
