The Right Tool for the Job: A Lenovo IdeaPad Y560p

Last summer (2015, not 2016), I had a job to do. My son was going into the 7th grade and needed to carry a computer with him pretty much every day. The alternatives up to that point was to check out an ancient ThinkPad X61, complete with 1Gb of RAM out from school, or carry his 6+ pound, ThinkPad T500. So it was pretty obvious that those weren't good options! As you can see, I came up with a different answer in the form of an X220. It had an i5 "Sandy Bridge" CPU, 4Gb of RAM. Pretty good for $59. I put in another stick of RAM to get it up to 8Gb and installed a 120Gb Intel SSD in it and he was set to go. 

A year later..... this happened. Our school system decided that they'd issue and mandate the use of Chromebooks. BYODevice..... dead and gone. So, now a-days, I often see my son trying to play Minecraft or Terraria on the 12.1" screened X220. Even though, those games aren't particularly taxing to the integrated GPU of the Sandy Bridge i5, it was definitely not an optimal solution. 

So, over the course of the last month, I've been researching gaming machines that were a few years old..... along the lines of the "Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge" era. There was of course, the quintessential gaming machines of Alienware such as the M14x and the less expensive Lenovo IdeaPad "Y" Series among the ones I looked at. I set a budget limit of $300, so that eliminated all the Razer Blade machines and most of the newer Alienwares as well. But I was still interested in those, since on occasion, an older model can be found (often needing a little work) in the high $200. However, it was the Lenovos that really interested me. While I'm very familiar with their ThinkPad line, I'm the exact opposite on their consumer machines. What I found was that they've developed a decent reputation on selling capable gaming equipment at reasonable prices. There's no multi-colored keyboards and air vents, or super-cool MacBook looking machined aluminum cases, but they did bring the goods in the hardware department.

Although I had originally started looking at the IdeaPad Y500 and Y510p (I'm an optimist), I came across a Y560p on eBay that just wasn't getting any love! It's bidding price sat at around $50 for a long time, until it finally edged over $100 at the end. I paid $102 with $12 shipping. So for less than $115, I have my son's next machine. What is it and why did I hone in on that model, other than for the price that is....

When examined; it's not particularly remarkable for a 2010 machine. It wasn't impossibly thin like the Razer, or crazy cool looking like the Alienware. It did have some chops on the hardware front though:

• Intel i7-2630QM "Sandy Bridge" CPU
• DDR3 RAM 1333 up to 8Gb
• AMD Radeon HD 6570 GPU with it's own 1Gb of memory
• 15.6" WXGA (1366 x 768) display

Those specs are decent, with the exception of the screen resolution maybe, but there's a little something that's hidden under the skin which really helps. If you look closely at the motherboard up at the top, you'll see 2 PCIe/mSATA sockets. One is not only full-sized, but capable of taking mSATA devices.....

Which means this! I like using mSATA spec'd SSD storage. It allows a machine to have the benefits of solid state storage for things like the OS while keeping a traditional mechanical hard drive in the 2.5" SATA bay for mass storage. The smaller ones like this 128Gb Micron can often be found in the range of $25-35. That'll make the machine feel snappy while not having to spend a lot of money on buying a bigger (eg. 256Gb, 512Gb) SSD. 

Warts? Sure..... I don't like that there aren't USB 3.0 ports, really dislike low-res monitors in general or the shiny plastic deck. Otherwise; it's pretty OK. It's going to be my son's computer anyway, not mine!

New Gen Portable "Workstation".....Workstation

I've had quite a bit of business lately. It's a weird for me since in years past, the month or two after Christmas/New Years has been relatively quiet. This year, I've had a number of my old clients as well as new clients who have contacted me to get replacement machines. Almost every single one of them, have been some sort of "desktop-replacement"/"workstation" machines. You add that to my wife's computer that I recently replaced and the selling off of her old T500, I've had the larger laptops on the mind.

As I've discussed already, her replacement was the ThinkPad T530 which is an Ivy Bridge generation "Core" machine. With ours' and because they are ours', I tend to be more patient and take more time finding that special deal. For one-offs like my wife's T530, you'll have to be VERY patient and/or lucky. I grabbed her's for around $135, and I was lucky, but also had to put up with a shiny keyboard, a cracked bezel and a bad battery on top of the lack of HDD. Today, I'm not really wanting to discuss these unicorns, but the machines that I can find at any time, any day. Yes; I'm aware that I've broached the topic in the past, but this post is about what's out there right now. Hopefully, somebody out there might even be able to use it for their own search!

What I mean by that is that at a certain price-point, a particular generation of machine is readily available. For me, the price-point is $200.... and the more below that, the better I like it. Right now, in "enterprise class" machines, $200 will buy you a nice Sandy Bridge laptop by one of the Big Boys (HP, Dell, Lenovo). Companies that sell hundreds of thousands of these machines and therefore have lots of inventory out there at the end of their three year corporate lifespan. Right now, it's the Dell E6420/6520, the HP 8460p/8560p, and the ThinkPad T420/T520 machines. These are easy to find and can range as low as $120 on up to $200+. Lower if you're OK to buy without a drive, and higher if it's fully ready to go. 

I probably don't have to tell you that Sandy Bridge generation machine have a lot of life left in them as far as being a viable working machine for an individual on a daily basis. They'll all take the easy to find and inexpensive SATA drives and DDR3 RAM. Although, I'll say that if you want to have lots of RAM, I'd buy it now while it's cheap, because in another year, it's going to be quite a bit more expensive!

 

Is there "anything to give" between them? As far as function, .....no. But other factors come into play. Some people love that their machine seemingly never changes and are OK, with the somber black and the retro buttoned down look. Kind of like the James Bond of laptops ..... and for them, there's the ThinkPad. These things are so traditional, the move to the "chiclet" style keyboard was considered revolutionary. They are kind of the black-tie tuxedo of the computing crowd. 

If you really want a Mac, but have to use a PC, the corporate level HP is for you. Even the touchpad on the 8460p is similar to it's MacBook Pro cousin. Clean lines devoid of superfluous creases and embellishment is the name of the game here. 

 

For those who don't care either way and simply want the same function at the lowest average price, the Dell E6420/E6520 is for you. They are nicely built (not as nice as either the ThinkPad or HP) and decent looking. They will do the job. Traditionally, Dell sells the most out of the big three, so they are the easiest to find and making them the cheapest as well. I've bought these guys for around $125 in nice shape. Peripherals such as docks, power adapters, and drives are cheap and easy to find. 

 

While these machines make nice daily drivers for just about anyone, they are also amazingly adaptable as well. Because they were corporate machines, the list of devices made for them are long and often useful even to us regular people. Just the batteries alone come in an variety of types (typically 5), ranging from 3 different levels of standard batteries, to modular bay battery, to "slice" battery that attaches to the bottom of the machine and functions as an adjunct to the main battery. Typically, there are 2 or more optical drives, and hard drive bay adapters to add more storage. Less normal, but never-the-less sometimes available are devices ranging from numeric keypads, and modular fan units to modular graphic card upgrades! 

And as if that wasn't enough, there always "the dock". Actually, it's not really that; there's often anywhere from 1 to 3 different docks! The simplest being a "port replicator" so that all peripherals can be attached to this thing and thus allowing the user to walk away with the computer by simply pushing a button. Then there are true docks that give the machine more capabilities than the machine by itself had, such as SCSI (back in the old days), drive bays, etc. Sometimes, manufacturers even have "advanced docking stations"..... that is a dock, but it does even more stuff! Things such as expansion slots AND drive bays. I even have an old IBM one with built in speakers. 

I have a client who's about to replace her desktop that's used for work with an HP Elitebook 8460p and since she uses multiple displays, as well as full-sized keyboard/mouse combo on a daily basis, I'm also going to add an HP Advanced Docking Station to her new rig as well. We'll be able to do all this for less than $350!   

Family Portrait 2016: Part 2, Personal Computing

It is 2016! We each have personal computers! Actually, I should say, "devices", since we all have more than one and they aren't all computers in the sense that most people understand them. There are 4 of us, and we all have at least one notebook (aka Laptop) computer, and one tablet. I'll get back to the "at least" part a little later.

In today's world, it's the notebook computer that's the typical product and it's the desktop that's a specialty item. Now that our children are at or close to teenage years, we all have uses for an actual computer. The last holdout was the daughter who started on a notebook computer playing games both online and locally loaded. But then, she went completely iPad oriented when she received her first one a couple of years ago. Last month, she announced to me that she intended on putting a "computer" on her Christmas List. I told her to take it off because, in our family, those are "regular use" items and not something special. WOW, what a different technological world a few years have made! Her reason was that she wanted to have her own Minecraft account, so didn't want to share with her brother! Anyway, that get's us to our current situation. We all have a "main" machine that we work on. 

 

My son has gone through a series of various ThinkPads back to an IBM (!!!) ThinkPad A21p, many moons ago! Every couple of years, he's gotten an upgrade just as soon as somebody else upgraded from a machine that was too old and slow for their use. Of course, they've always been ThinkPads with the exception of my ill-fated foray into old gaming laptops first with a Clevo, that followed by an Alienware. Then, back I went, to the faithful ThinkPads, generally of 15" screen size because he mostly used them to play games on at home, till this the current school year when he started the 7th grade and needed to carry a machine back and forth. So, now he has a ThinPad X220 that's compact, thin, light and plenty powerful enough for doing PowerPoints, Google Docs and light research on the web..... oh, and the every-present "flash-games" that all middle school kids play! Minecraft has moved over to a "self-built" (me, not him) gaming box that got it's start from my brother sending an ASRock, Mini-ITX board populated with a second-gen Intel "Core" i5 processor. Eventually, it received my old third-gen i5 processor. Today, it does a nice job equipped with that, an Intel SSD, and an nVidia GTX 650 graphic card (so it can stream to nVidia Shield devices). More on that later as well. We have it hooked up to the new Sony 55" 4K TV in the game/media room. 

His "personal" device, is the nVidia Shield Tablet. It has a nice 8" IPS screen, a powerful K1 Quad-Core processor and capable of streaming games from his gaming machine since that has certain level nVidia graphic card in it! He loves it when he's not "on restriction" from not keeping grades up to snuff! If you haven't read my earlier post on this thing, I'll go over the high-points quickly here. Other than the typical Android type things, and the game streaming that it can do, it also has a dedicated gaming controller as well, plus the capability to connect to an outboard monitor via HDMI and function as a "console". It's really a pretty slick concept and nVidia's execution is very nice.

 

On to the daughter. She, like her brother started her computing life via ThinkPads. In her case, custom (by Daddy) painted lavender, X31. That was replaced by a ThinkPad Z60t.....right around the time she got an iPad. The rest (the laptop too).... as they say; was history. That is, right up until last November, when she decided she needed her own machine so she could have her own aforementioned Minecraft account.

Then, she (I) got lucky! I had a friend who had a Sony VCPEH, a decent 15.6" screen "desktop replacement" of the "Sandy Bridge" Core generation. It was brought to me with an apparently dead screen/video sub-system to retrieve files. Indeed, the screen refused to light up regardless of what I did. However, it did output to an external monitor indicating the GPU was still good. They had already bought a new machine and didn't want the computer back after I got their files off. So it sat under my desk for several months then in a box due to our move to the new house. When I started looking into my daughter's request, it occurred to me that maybe I could just replace the panel on this Sony. This required me to take it apart so I could see the model number. When it went back together, the screen came back to life! This was followed by me digging into my parts boxes for more RAM, and a drive. So now she has an i5, with 8Gb of RAM, and a 160Gb Intel SSD. Like a certain overgrown elf, Daddy wiggled his fingers and made a computer appear.

Then there's my wife. And since I just recently wrote about her machine, I'll just quickly recap here. Several years ago, I talked her into a second-hand iPad (1st gen) because I knew of one I could get cheap. That was like 10 of these things ago! For me, they've been like the episode of the classic Star Trek, "The Trouble with Tribbles". They just keep multiplying! There is of course, her progression through the generations of these things. That was followed by the expansion into "kid territory" when the children were both elementary school age because Mom had them using apps to suppliment their school learning. All of that was part of the greater issue; that of her starting to use them in the classroom with her students. This grew into a full-scale conversion from a set of old ThinkPads to "older" iPads, and now to iPad Minis. We're up to 5 Minis (not counting my daughters) and one iPad2. Oh, and my wife is now on a 1st gen iPad Air.

 

Comparatively, her notebook computer progression is rather simple. She uses, mid-sized (15") ThinkPads. I typically get her something in the "T" Series, although, she's had "A"s, as well as "Z"s. We are how literally in the middle of moving her from a T500 to a T530. I've had SSDs in her machines for some time now. The newest machine has a 480Gb, Intel 2500 with 8Gb of RAM. Otherwise, the machine is unremarkable, but completely adequate for her needs. She hates it every time I do it, but I upgrade her about every 2 to 3 years as you can probably tell by the model numbers of the latest round. She swears it's more often, because I tend to reload her OS every year in between.

As for me; I just wrote about that issue a couple of days ago, so won't repeat it here other than to say that I'm going to talk tablets soon.

The Intel Gift That Keeps On Giving...... The Core/Core 2 Duo

In early 2006, Intel began shipping their new product, code named "Yonah" and "Merom". These new CPUs were designed to take back the crown and restored the luster which AMD had taken in the preceding years. This story really starts a decade before when, from the mid-90s till close to 2000, Intel had been clearly the leader in the processor industry, although AMD had given it a very decent run for their money with the K5/K6 architecture during those years. However, those chips were always seen as being the inexpensive alternative if you couldn't afford the real thing! So, in 1999/2000 Intel was the monarch of all it surveyed with the PIII "Tualatin" follow-on to the "Katmai" and then great "Coppermine" processors. 

Then this happened! Netburst...... otherwise known as P4 (or Pentium 4). It turn out to be a wrong turn in the Intel roadmap. Simple put; they fell in love with speed. I was working in the IT world at that time and remember it clear as yesterday. "Netburst" was the next big thing, it could do everything fast. It was so fast, it required a new type of RAM.... RAMBUS (RD RAM) and even a new socket...... the Socket 423. I remember having to do a budgetary tapdance just to buy system memory for those machines because it was so expensive (and my predecessor had under-spec'd the hardware when that group of machines were bought. They were Dell Optiplex GX400 and a thorn in my side for the next 3 years. The P4s got faster AND hotter, AND faster AND HOTTER. The CPU game went this way for 5 years, until the "Smithfield" Pentium D processors came out in May of 2005. In fact, they ran so hot that most major manufacturers never made P4 small form-factor machines. The Pentium D was essentially 2 of the "Prescott" cores on one die, but it was a change that would be a harbinger of really big things to come. The other shoe dropped in January of the following year when the "Presler" chip was launched. Sure it was still a P4 based Penitum D, BUT it was built on the 65nm process. AND chips were made to go into the new LGA 775 socket which would soon become the host to the really big change.

That same January, Intel slipped the "Yonah" Core Solo and Duo onto the market in notebook form only. This was followed in July with the notebook "Merom" and in August by the Desktop "Conroe" Core 2 Duo processors. These weren't just the "same old, same old": Intel had gone back to it's roots of the last PIII "Tualatin" chip that valued cool-running efficiency versus the flat-out speed of the P4 line. The new architecture put Intel back into the drivers seat where it's been ever since. Not only that, but this series of chips dating back to 2006 weren't replaced till the "Clarkdale", "Core" Series of 2010, weren't just long lived, but can still run current operating systems and quite a lot of productivity software as well. If you're someone who uses a computer to do simple tasks such as websurfing, checking email and consuming some media, the later, "Wolfdale" (desktop), or "Penryn" (notebook) work fine. Now, if you're a media creator....... then I'd say look elsewhere!

If you're wondering where I'm going with this; then here it is! We have 2, ThinkPad T500s in our house right now that are about to go to new homes. My son's old lower-spec'd machine that has integrated Intel graphics, on a 1280 x 800 screen, and my wife's nicer switchable graphics (integrated Intel GMA 4500M or ATI Radeon HD 3650) on a 1680 x 1050 screen. These machines have run very well over the last 3 years that we've had them. My son's only got replaced this fall when he needed to carry a machine to and from school daily. However, in the last couple of weeks, I've run into opportunities to sell both machines. One will go for $150 and the other for $175. Both buyers were happy to be able to get them for those prices and they'll do a good job for the new owners. 

 

Their replacements will be a T530 running 3rd generation i5 bought for $135. It'll need a HDD, but I planing on moving her 512Gb SSD over to it. I'll have to spend about $20-30 for a new palmrest but at the end of the day, this machine will have pretty much cost me $0. My son's current X220 was bought for about $80 (after shipping) from an eWaste dealer. It didn't come with a drive, but did have 4Gb of RAM. I was able to move his old 160Gb Intel SSD into it as well as add another 4Gb of RAM that I had on hand. So that exchange will have made me about $50. This whole story really isn't about the great deals I got on the new machines, but really that those old Core 2 Duo ones were such a great generation that they were still viable enough to get me enough pay for their own replacements!

... So They Loaded Up The Truck and Moved To... Terrell!?!

Although this image is from the remake, those of you who grew up in the late 60's and early 70's will remember the Clampetts well! The reruns would be on the TV virtually every day during my childhood and of course the opening credits played with the scene of the family moving to "Beverly; Hills... that is...". That is exactly what I feel like right now as we're in the countdown till the big move next week. We finally have the closing dates for ours and the house we're buying nailed down (sort of) and are scheduling the move date. So, what am I up to?

This of course... well duh! Yup, less than a month before we head back to school. We teachers have less time than that. So yes indeed: we are walking the tightrope of prepping for school (both for ourselves and the kids) while moving to a new home. It's a little stressful....

 

This time is a little different than the previous 7 in that my son Josh is headed to middle schools (grades 7 and 8 here). I taught that age group for much of my career so I'm well aware of all the issues, so that part isn't so bad. Besides, I'm just down the street at the high school and he'll be in a school staff by my former colleagues. I do have to get ready for a one issue though. Perversely; from a technology standpoint, our school district is much better prepared to deal grades 5 and 6 as they issue those kids the Dell Latitude 2100.

True: it's not the most advanced notebook ever with it's 10" screen and Atom processor, but it was rugged and came with 2Gb of RAM. No I'm not joking. That 2Gb is FAR superior than the 1Gb they put in the ThinkPad X200 that they bought for the high school and don't get me started on the 512Mb that was spec'd for the X61 of the middle school machines!!! It's so bad that the majority of the students don't check out school machines any more, preferring to BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology), or the most prevalent solution, use a smartphone. You can imagine what that does for efficiency when they have to actually have to do something productive; oh like type a paper.... 

 

You're probably thinking: "surely your son has a notebook computer", and of course, he does and has had since he was 4 or 5. In fact, he's now on his 5th or 6th generation of notebooks, having started with an A22p and most recently using a T500. Which gets me to my story. If you're the least bit familiar with that 15.1", 6+ pound machine you'll understand that it's a wonderful "workhorse" computer eminently suitable for the combo school work-Minecraft job it had been doing..... while sitting immobile on his desk. However, the concept of having a slightly built 12-year old packing it to and from school daily in a backpack probably isn't an ideal solution. At first I considered moving him to a smaller-lighter-slightly derelict T400 I have sitting around, but really; it isn't that much smaller and lighter. "What to do", says the propellerheaded dad?

The obvious solution is to buy another computer, right? You guys know me too well! In this case, there's more to it than my losing battle with TAS (Technology Acquisition Syndrome), but hey; we all have our little issues, right? Anyway; lets look at the decision matrix. Starting with the fact that school desks are NOT any bigger than when you and I went to school with nothing more than paper and pencils. Despite what the politicians would like you to believe, they are not building the schools any different than they used to. Sure, they add projectors, some Ethernet jacks and a WiFi AP in each room, but the rooms themselves are the same. As in the same size, with the same sized desks in there, with more students by the way (but that's another issue altogether). So you have a desk surface with the same size that they used to have, but the students are expected to have a notebook computer AND paper and pencil on there as well! Which gets us back to the original issue with the model of computer. If you compare the actual difference between the T500 and T400 side-by-side, there's not that much to give between them. Sure the T400 feels lighter, but the reality is that even the "S" model isn't that much better. Solution? You're lookin' at it..... The X-Series of ThinkPad! These machines were designed from the ground up to be "sub-notebooks" meaning between 3 and 4 pounds of carry weight, and a footprint based on a 12" screen. I kind of already knew this as my experience with them go back to the original X20 way back in my IT days in Chicago. In fact, I've owned every model between the X2x, X3x, X4x, X6x, and up to the X30x that have been my personal machine before the current X1. However, my detour through the X300/301/X1 had left me in the bigger screened branch of the line and have forgotten about the 12" machines since the demise of my daughter's X61. At this time, I'm not going to regale you with the process of deciding between relatively recent 12" models, but will simply say that I ended up at a working X220 at $59, but missing parts.

If you haven't read my old stuff before or I haven't made my point: here's the deal. These are ABSOLUTELY, the notebook computers to target!!! Let's start with that it was $59..... less than $80 after shipping. It was missing the A/C adapter, hard drive, drive bay cover, but had the critical battery! It was missing everything I had and mostly didn't want and had the one relatively expensive piece to replace. The X220 is the "Sandy-bridge" i5/2520m core version of these machines and is only 2 generations off of being current. Additionally, the 4Gb of RAM it did have was in the form of 1 module, giving me the ability to simply put in another to max it out to 8Gb (which I did immediately). The missing hard drive was going to get pulled and replaced with a 120Gb Intel 330 SSD out of his old machine anyway. Oh yeah, least I forget that I had to spend $1.96 to buy a drive-bay cover. Woe is me! Need I say that I have a drawer full of ThinkPad A/C adapters and that he'll be able to go anywhere in the house without having to move one. And since his and my schools have both been equipped with ThinkPads for years, there'll be A/C adapters everywhere! This might very well be the slickest upgrade I've done in years!

 Now that I'm feeling good about myself..... 

 

Frugal Gaming.... Is There Such A Thing?

About a week ago, my brother sent me some parts. Basically, it was centered around an Asrock Mini-ITX motherboard of the Sandy-Bridge generation. Along with it came an "S" spec i5 processor, attendant cooling and other misc parts. As the much as I LOVE computer parts, I don't really need another machine. Granted, this board is technically more advanced than the one in my bedroom HTPC and could replace that, but why? That machine does exactly everything I need it to do, and does so quietly, because it's low-powered and therefore runs "cool"! So, what to do with this relatively capable board?

Most of you are aware that I have a young son. He's not quite a teenager, but he's close enough. Right now, he plays Minecraft and loves all things 3DS, but soon enough, he'll get into "real" gaming. This year, for Christmas, we got him a Steam account and bought the Kerbal rocket building program. I'm sure he's pretty quickly want to play other PC oriented games as well. As of right now, his ThinkPad T500 is fine for what he wants to do. However, being the Nerd-Dad that I am, I'm already ahead of him on where he headed..... and that won't be anything where his ThinkPad would be very good. 

As I was helping my student rebuild her old Alienware, I started thinking that one of those might be a good candidate for my son as well. However, he just doesn't have that much space in his room. A few years ago, we reworked his room and built a large loft, so there's a space underneath that's his little "boy-cave". It's nice, but it's only the size of a "queen" bed under there. Right now, he has a cabinet, that holds a TV, his a GameCube (!), XBox, and a bunch of Legos. There's some seating and it's where he "hangs out".

You can probably see where this is going. Mini-ITX board, small hang-out area..... Mini-Gaming Computer! Although that Asrock board only has an H61 chipset, we certainly won't be over-clocking or anything close to that. We are talking an 11-year-old, after all! So; here's what I'm thinking on this. I'm going to use an actual stand-alone GPU so it will have some decent graphics ability. Maybe something long the lines of an Radeon HD 7770 or an nVidia 460; whatever I can get the best deal on. A re-tasked SSD, 320Gb mechanical drive and call it good. 

We're done then; right? Not so much! What does an 11-year-old want his "gaming rig" to look like? If you're my son, then, anything green will be good. As soon as I saw the Azza CSAZ-103 case, I knew that it would be the case for the boy! As it turned out, it's inexpensive, and pretty much designed as a case that replicates a gaming console to some degree. Perfect! As soon as I land a suitable graphics card, we'll start building.

The Frugal Propellerhead Family's Great 2014 Computer Upgrade

The great 2014 technology (mostly computers) upgrade is now over. WOW, it was a crazy and fast ride..... kinda like the Texas Giant roller coaster! 

Many of you will remember the late spring when I moved my desktop workstation to an Ivy Bridge "Core" system built in the ginormous Cooler Master Cosmos II case. At the time, we were a Core 2 Duo family. The workstation was a "Yorkfield" Core 2 Quad, myself and daughter on ThinkPad X301/X61 running low/ultra-low voltage C2D, wife and son on ThinkPad T61s running regular mobile C2D. 

Around that time, I came across a ThinkPad T500 locally that was too cheap to pass up (sub-$100), so it began. While these machines are "Montevina" platform running Intel's Penryn processors and thus NOT the later Westfield, "Core" processors, there's not a huge difference in routine performance. Especially when you load them with plenty of RAM and run the OS on an SSD. The whole thing really gained momentum a few weeks ago when I picked up a cheap T400 on Goodwill's auction site (yes there is such a thing). It had some issues such as a couple of broken USB ports, but at $42, I wasn't going to complain! 

For those who aren't aware, the T400 is the 14.1" version of the T500 (15.4" LCD) with universally integrated Intel graphics vs. the switchable ATI Radeon HD 3650 GPU and higher end panels that can be optioned. Around the same time, while MacBook Air shopping on Craigslist (not for myself), I spotted a T500 for $75 complete with the Advanced MiniDock. Yes, I did say $75! That's just stupid cheap! So, I picked it up last weekend on my great Metroplex swing through Arlington, Kennedale, Bedford and Dallas (more on this later). 

And of course, right in the middle of this mash-up came the X1 that replaced my X301. So, are you wondering how I can afford to do this on a teacher's salary? After all, we're talking $1000+ retail on every one of these machines with the X1 over $2000! 

Ahhh.... that's the money question if you'll pardon the pun. First of all; know your market. Secondly; know your products. And thirdly, be ever watchful and ready to strike when the opportunity arises. So, let's start at the beginning:

• I know that working computers can always be sold, it's just a matter of what it is, which governs how much it can be sold for. Pretty much any laptop running a recent OS can sell for about $100.... give or take. In this case-in-point, the T61 machines sold for between $125 and $150, which is exactly what I sold my son's machine for. While the Z61t (daughter's laptop) being older and slower, with a bad battery sold for the $100 that I asked. So, that gives me $250 to upgrade. The other half of the market is that the newer T400/500 can and do often appear for under $100 if one is patient.
• The Montevina platformed T400/500 are in a number of ways significantly faster and better machines than the T61 that they replaced, while at the same time take the same drives, batteries, A/C adapters, docks etc. However, they use a faster bus, run the next gen "Penryn" Core 2 Duo processors, and uses the DDR3 memory that I want standardize our home machines onto. This RAM come in a higher density per module and are thus cheaper to buy. Whatever the cost is for a size (1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb) memory I can buy in DDR2 is close to the next size up in DDR3. I also know that in my 8 year old daughter and 11 year old son's computing world, the spec of these machines is more than enough for their needs. After all, we're talking YouTube and Minecraft. So, even the Intel integrated GPU version of these machines is plenty. 
• Now that I had a known target and money in hand from selling their old computers, I was ready to catch the $42 (about $70 after shipping) T400 on Goodwill and the $75 T500 on Craigslist. All-in-all, I spent less than $150 for an complete upgrade, netting me a +$100, in the exchange. Where did that $100 go? Into upgrades of course! The T500 that Josh got received an Intel 160Gb SSD over the 64Gb SSD that was in the T61. The T61 went away with a 160Gb mechanical hard drive that was originally in that machine, so the SSD is sitting in my drive box awaiting future use. The 64Gb SSD in Katie's machine went into her T400. She doesn't need a lot of storage, but I'm afraid that Minecraft and other 11 year old games will be too much for his old SSD. That 160Gb upgrade cost $55, so I'm actually still on the plus side of the ledger! Even the Advanced MiniDock that was included with the T500 came into play as we can now move his speaker plug from the unfortunate front position to the rear.

But what about this? OK, I'll admit it. It was a "one-off", one of those ridiculous deals that sometimes still happen on eBay. I got it at $305, so about $330 after the rather high shipping, but still a very low price. I'm selling my X301, complete with it's 160Gb Intel SSD, and 8Gb of RAM for $300 while including my spare no longer needed batteries. If I wasn't selling to my friend who's been lusting after it for a long time, I'd price the machine (downgraded to 4Gb of RAM and 128Gb SSD) for about $375-400 which is completely doable. I'm doing this because, he and I have been friends for a LONG time. And, it's where my personal ThinkPads go to live out their retirement (T23, T42p, X41, X300 and now X301). 

Before I close out of this long post, I'll go back and explain what I was doing last Saturday.... instead of writing blog posts. Besides the T500, I also went out to pick up a iPad Mini 2 (aka Mini Retina) for my wife to go into her fleet. Yes, for those who are counting, that's 6 iPads that we own and 7 that are used on a regular basis including the iPad 2 that her school provides! I promise, I'm going to write a post just on our little brood of these things soon! Oh, I also stopped by and visited with one of my favorite YouTube video makers who goes by iBookGuy. It was a great visit and will make its way into a future post as well. In any case; now you know how the great upgrade of 2014 came about to be and how it was done, at a pretty low cost.