Lightning Strikes: The ThinkPad T61

NO, we didn't suffer a lightning strike. We had a bit of a lightning upgrade though. About a month ago, I was trolling the local Craig's List ads and can came across a poorly written ad for a ThinkPad. And of course, this peaked my curiosity, so I fired off an email to the seller to see what it was about. He turned out to be a recently graduated high school kid looking to sell all his various pieces of computing gear so he could by a Mac before heading off to college. The ThinkPad was a machine that he didn't use which had belonged to his uncle who had given it to him when he (the uncle) upgraded. In fact the kid, who was at work wasn't even sure what it was, but thought it was a T410. Therefore, at the listed $80; I jumped at it. Well....after several twists and turns (fairly common for Craig's List), I was finally able to meet him and it turns out that he was waaay wrong! It was a T61. Although, clearly NOT anywhere close to a T410, it was still a very good price for a T61 in nice condition, so I bought it. At which point, it promptly went under my workbench because I didn't have a use for it.

As most of you are aware, computers on a network need names so they can be identified. And given my geeky nature, I use military aircraft names for this. I also try to use groups which have similar names which roughly are associated to their function. They range from fighters for our daily use laptops like the very advance F22 "Raptor" for my X300 to the rather utilitarian C130 "Hercules" for the WHS file server built from old parts. The new T61 has been named the "Lightning II" for the F-35 depicted above. It replaces my wife's Z61m "Eagle". I know the logical progression would have been for this new machine to be the "Raptor" and the X300 to be the "Lightning II", but I didn't think about it then and will just have to live with this little screw-up in logic!

 

I've been VERY busy doing client work for the last month, so it mostly sat there under the bench, but when I did have a few minutes to look, it left me very impressed. It was in such nice condition that the original product "features" sticker was still on the lid. It really looked like a nice high-end corporate machine that just sat on somebody's desk for 3 years then surplused.....and I'm willing to bet, that's exactly the case. I did an image restore and it ran very well afterward, but mostly it just sat. Periodically I thought about what I wanted to do with it. I thought about replacing my Z61m "Tomcat" with it, but that seemed a waste since that machine sits in the closet most of the time given it's status as a "mobile studio" for a photographer that doesn't do much outside work. Plus, I had decided that I wanted to put an SSD in it since older machines of this type are really great candidates for the gains seen from this type of upgrade. Although SSDs have come down greatly in price, bigger ones (larger than 128Gb) are still pricey for someone like me. 

Then, one day I got my "marching orders". This came in the form of the wife walking in to the office and telling me that she needed another machine, so she could take one to school with her. Her new school district doesn't issue laptops and she wanted to have something that she could use there and not be tied down at her desktop. She wanted ot know if I had any ideas, at which point, I pointed under the bench and smiled. So I told her about the T61 which just "needed" an SSD for which I was given the approval to buy, then and there! Of course, this was what the last post was about, when I got lucky and came across the 240Gb Sandisk Extreme for $155 on Amazon's "Deal of the Day". Less than a week later, the Windows 7 running, ThinkPad T61 "Lightning II" was up and running. 

Total spent: $235 for a "Penryn" C2D processored, WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) paneled, 240Gb SSD, DVD+RW optical drive equipped laptop that I guess originally cost close to 10x what I spent! I'm going to say that I'm pretty happy with the build and believe that lightning did indeed strike on this one. But most importantly, my wife is VERY happy with her "new" and VERY fast machine!