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Revitalizing an Aging Notebook On the Cheap
jcatcw writes "Brian Nadel's ThinkPad R50 just hit its fifth birthday, and the years haven't been kind to it. When it was new, the notebook was reliable and fast. Now it's slow and prone to annoying shutdowns. Is it a good investment to revamp a notebook that's worth about $350? It sure is, because this old notebook will get a new lease on life for about $125 — a bargain, considering what it could cost to replace." On the other hand, upgrading RAM, keyboard and hard drive don't get you a smaller (netbook-style) computer, a new battery, or the transflective screen on the Toshiba linked above.
A 5-year-old notebook is worth $350? I don't think so. Hard for me to pay much attention to the rest of any article that begins that far off base...
A-Bomb
With a few exceptions, battery life just sucks with an aging laptop. and replacement batteries are either used up themselves, insanely expensive, or impossible to find.
I also heard if you tie hundreds of horses together your cart may run as fast as a Ferrari (and it'd be cheaper too)! Oats cost nothing compared to the price of gas these days...
Amen. Not to mention that the plastic casing is almost certainly weaker than a new laptop, making it more susceptible to damage. Just pay the $1099 and get a new MacBook. You'll get the latest in WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, a beautiful TFT screen, a fast dual-core processor, plenty of RAM, a battery that's new, battery life that his 5 yr old laptop could only dream about when it was new, a massive hard disk, a multi-touch touchpad (cue nipple-warriors), and a better operating system. All in all, a pretty good deal.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No mention of a new battery - I know my battery is useless after less than 4 years, I only get 5 mins now. At over $100, though, it's not worth it to me to replace. I'm always near a power supply. Add the $125 he spent, plus $125 for a battery, & you're only $150 away from a new Dell. Just sayin'...
I am a cheapskate that also owns a thinkpad R-series (an R32, to be more specific). I just dropped about $60-70 in parts (more when you include shipping) to replace a crack in the LCD bezel.
I almost gave up on it, and replaced it with a new unit, until I realized just how well my 7-year-old thinkpad still runs. I've seen my colleagues replace numerous dell, apple, and HP laptops in this time. This notebook has been in 4 countries, 3 provinces, and over a dozen US states with me. Its on its third battery, but thats not bad for its age. I bought it when I was finishing my 4-year degree, and its still with me now, over halfway into my PhD.
And when I realized that I would spend over $1,000 to get a new thinkpad with the options I wanted, I realized that my repair was a great investment. And of course the IBM (lenovo) website has all the documents you need to completely disassemble your laptop (and put it back together, too).
Unless you have extra money - and I'm guessing you don't, since you bought an R-series - you would be wise to put some money into refurbishing your laptop. You'll be glad you did.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The best investment you can make is to give that laptop to some enterprising person and tell them to make a blog or site and give you the a percentage of the profits.
You might even be better of simply donating the laptop to charity and deducting the donation from your taxes.
If you really need it for some reason or cannot possibly afford something newer, consider putting Xubuntu, Puppy, or some other lightweight OS on there.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I've been working on and in PC's for years and have never seen THAT bad a clog. Big dust bunnies are the worst I've seen...
Where the hell did this laptop go? It looks like it sucked up a ferret (look at the page 5 gallery).
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9096720&pageNumber=5
Good.. Bad.. I'm the guy with the gun.
I think the question is interesting, but really, to get an old laptop working again, you must still walk around with something that looks and feels aged, since the casing is torn, the monitor is far from what it used to be (LCD and TFT quality wears out after some time) and the keyboard is probably not what it used to be either.
Why not just spend $500 on a new computer, such as the Asus Eee or MSI Wind? You're definitely getting more performance out of it, plus the benefits of WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.
Full Tilt
Refurbishment makes sense for higher quality notebooks. My grab and go travel notebook is a loaded out (max memory, 80 gig HD) nearly 10 year old Compaq M300, it weighs in at 3.3 pounds has a magnesium case, and quality construction. The P3-500 is fast enough to browse the web, play youtube videos, and all that other basic stuff. Best yet I only have about $300 invested in it, so if it breaks I am not out much. Sure I could spend $1500 on a similared sized high quality replacement, but do I really need all those extra wasted clock cycles. And if I did spend $1500 on it, would I treat it like this grab and go, toss it around, leave it in the open in motel rooms while I am away, etc.
Three reasons to upgrade, rather than replacement:
1. It could be cheaper. He was talking about a hard drive and memory here, both of which can offer a slight boost in functionality, which is all that some people need.
2. It may be easier. If you're only talking about upgrading the RAM, then you get to bypass the joys of installing software and reconfiguring your working environment.
3. You may have trouble getting the features you need. Have an old printer that you don't want to replace? Need a serial port on the road, but don't want to carry an adapter?
4. It just may be more environmentally friendly. It takes energy to manufacture goods. It takes time and energy to dispose of hazardous waste.
Upgrading doesn't always makes sense. But sometimes it does make sense. So why criticize people who take that less travelled path?
Been there, done that.
Your cart goes as fast as the fastest horse can run, minus a bit since he's now dragging the cart AND the other horses.
The vet bills to fix the broken legs of the horses that are slower outweighs the cost savings. RoHS prevents the simple solution to a broken leg.
Like Larry the Cable Guy says: I heard the right thing to do when your horse breaks its leg is to shoot it. So I did. Now I have a horse with a broken leg and a gunshot wound.
You can get a modern, dual-core laptop that will run XP or Linux like a dream for under $500 these days. It's hardly worth dropping money on an older one.
Set it aside and install Linux on it and use it for a download, firewall, torrent, web, development, java, gcc, proxy, cvs, - whatever - server. A working computer you can hack around on is always worth something.
My 'outdated piece of shit' is doing just great and I use it every day. The new battery lasts even longer than the original and the tickless 2.6 kernel doesn't hurt, either.
Sure, you can drop some money on a hard drive and RAM. That is if the notebook will take them. You may well run into memory compatibility problems or a hard drive size limit in the bios. Finding the right kind of RAM and drive may even mean having to spend big depending on where you live.
Much better to spend the money on a new machine. If you have plenty of spare time clean up the old one and use it for a picture frame. It'll be cheaper and likely have more space. Isn't this the accepted non-geek use for an old laptop? If you have LOTS of spare time, consider using it for a geeky project like controlling a robot. Serial ports use to be standard on laptops but now you have to buy USB->serial adapters. So for some things the old laptop is actually better and cheaper to use. You could even consider donating it to your local club. (I almost donated an old laptop to my r/c flying club. With a serial connected hardware module it could be used to monitor for r/c interference. In the end I decided against it because most of the guys at the club would rather have nothing to do with a computer on a Saturday morning).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
New Asus eee is 900 MHz. Old Compaq Evo N610C is 2.4 GHz. The Compaq has a much bigger screen, same RAM, twice the disk and goes for half the price.
I keep shoving hair into the fan intake of my laptop and now it's not running properly. What am I doing wrong?
Honestly, the IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads are probably one of the few models of laptops that *may* make a little sense to "refurbish", to get more life out of them.
Their utilitarian, black plastic cases tend to take more abuse than most before really looking "worn out" or "old". (No fancy silver paint to flake off, or aluminum shells to get dents or real obvious scratches in them, etc.) I've also noticed that batteries for most of them can be had for less money than many other brands.
At the same time, much of their userbase tends to be people not interested in flashy "extras". They just need a reliable "not too thin/breakable" portable to connect to the Internet with, edit documents, and other such basics.
But even given all of THAT, I'd question the point to the whole thing. I mean, do we need this article to tell us the common sense that "Hey, if you upgrade your system's hard drive and RAM, it'll run as much as 30% faster!" ??
Yeah, that's been true for pretty much every computer, laptop or desktop, throughout history... and it's often a good idea to do during the *viable life* of the system (first 1-3 years of use). After that, the cost/benefits tilt towards just buying a whole new machine, if you're feeling the need to spend ANY more money on the one you've got.
Very few buyers will worry about how much RAM etc it has. Most won't pay more than $x unless it has a fast CPU.
If you think that it is worth spending the extra $125 to have a faster machine for yourself, that's fine, but don't try rationalize it with resale value.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The write cycle failure time on most CF cards is so long, you should get at least a few more years of use out of it (and CF cards will be that much cheaper by then). Even then, from what I understand, write cycle failures are just that - a failure to write. You can get a new drive, copy the contents to the new drive and be good to go.
Ha ha ha.
New battery is $50. 802.11g wireless card is $30 and goes in the mini-PCI slot where the useless modem was. No dongles. You're the one with the dongle if you want to plug in your GPS.
Screen, backlight, and DVD drive still work great. Old case has nice texture instead of sexy new shiny finish that attracts scratches and fingerprints.
You've spent at least $600 and have a laptop that smells like a chemical factory. I've spend $400 and have a laptop and $200 left in my pocket.
I "know" that a new battery cost me $50, and it's even better than the original was.
The used laptop that I paid $300 for, over a year and a half ago, is going for $200 now, and it blows the doors off an eee.
I took win 98 off my wife's Pentium 2, 186Mb machine and put on danm small linux. It was like a new machine. boots in under 30 seconds and all the programs with their low graphics usage run snappy. The battery doesn't work and the screen is barely back lit but that doens't matter.
try Damn small. It hardly matters if you boot of CD or HD so just try it out.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is the key: AC power is available everywhere.
Take the battery out of your laptop and throw it away. It's dead weight - without it your laptop becomes truly portable.
Laptop manufacturers have missed a significant market by not producing lightweight laptops that use only AC power (_no_ battery packs).
Flakey memory is a common undiagnosed cause of system instability (along with bad power supplies). Testing the memory should be the first task performed after buying it from a place with a good return policy.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
For work, play, school ? Absolutely not.
...
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... before it died finally..
...
... when I am next to a machine I end up working, or reading dox, except when the machine is useless for anything else than "surfing"...
...
YES: for a
garage computer: to check that "how to fix my XYZ headlamps.
bedroom computer: to browse around, without having to put your shiny macbook next to the bed so your SO can step on it in the morning
kitchen computer: recipes
living room computer: to IMDB that movie trailer, or to run MTR (multi trace route) during an online game, to see your current latency (ping)
asterisk/appliance box: damaged screen, damaged keyboard/touchpad? Still perfect for a quiet always on application. Well I run my asterisk on NSLU, but my close next guess was my OOOLD vaio
A 5 year old machine should also have DVD playback capabilities, USB ports, etc, so they are perfect as a car pc, toilet pc, bathroom pc.... or whatever
I actually have a 6+ year old Toshiba near my bed. It annoys the hell out of me with windows on it, and it is slow as hell, but to quickly google something, or spend a lazy Saturday morning "surfing the net", it is perfect. Oh yeah
just my 2c
I've done this on a few old laptops. A couple of notes:
- Disk drives. Costs go down. A lot. For older HDDs @ 3600 or 4200rpm, if you have anywhere near a reasonable amount of memory, this is the easiest and best bang for the buck.
- Memory. If you buy new memory, the prices for older 'architectures' go up. Check out the price of 1GB pc2700 sodimm vs 1gb pc5300 sodimm (DDR2). It's about 2 to 3 times the cost for the older pc2700.
- CPU. Never actually done this, but have thought about it on some occasions. Best to find some boards or references where it has been done successfully - and which CPUs are OK. Actually finding a CPU can be hard.
Ultimately, I end up maxing out my RAM either when I buy it or within the first year. Hard disk drives, I just buy the minimum size at the time of purchase as I can pick up a cheaper and bigger one later on.
Also, it's worthwhile considering a NSLU2 or the like as a cheaper permanent storage solution and keeping the 'latest' information on the smaller laptop storage.
Cheers
ws
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Yours was broken, you to replace the keyboard.
I just turned in a 4 year old T40 Thinkpad that had an 80GB drive and 1GB RAM. The RAM is the only thing that wasn't stock. Employer paid for the 512MB stick.
But I also bought my own Bluetooth USB adapter as this machine had none. A Trendnet, about $17.00.
I also disabled the built in 801.11b wireless NIC and bought a PCCard 801.11g NIC from Compusa for net $4.00.
I also bought a USB mulimedia card reader for mini/micro/SD cards as this machine had none. About $10.00.
And last but not least I had to replace the battery recently. Employer paid for the battery.
In my opinion old laptops are only useful as stationary servers for some specific purpose like a router or a home media center or something where you need a small low powered unobtrusive box that runs quiet. If the USB and SVGA ports run you don't even need a keyboard/skidpad or a screen. Take out the battery, chuck it, if the screen doesn't work, chuck that too. Voila you have a 3 lb server.
It is illogical to think that a cart can go faster than the slowest horse.
Some say the hard disk is half full. Some say the hard disk is half empty. A group of monks posed this dilemma to the Buddha.
"All hard disks are virtual," he responded, and at that moment, all those who were present were enlightened.
My truck is like a series of tubes.