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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...
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
Or you know, buy one of those EEE PCs for $350...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
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?
He's looking to upgrade on the cheap, and your recommendation is "just buy a new mac"? Somehow, I don't think he'll be taking that piece of advice.
You obviously aren't too concerned with processing power, hard drive size, or the latest gee-whiz features if you're interested in upgrading an old machine. An Asus Eee or similar MID might be a little closer to what you're looking for. All the portability and simplicity you're used to, without all the heartache.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
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.
This is actually true of most LCDs under 24", and increasingly, LCDs under 30". Cheap TN screens are present in almost all laptops and consumer level PC monitors. What are the disadvantages? Most (if not all) are natively 6-bit per color (instead of 8-bit per color). Viewing angles are poor compared to higher quality IPS or PVA/MVA/CPA panels. But response times are typically better, so "high-end" TN panels are popular with gamers.
Not too long ago, panel sizes like 20" 1600x1200 and 24" 1920x1200 were non-TN, but this has changed. The current 20" iMac uses a TN screen - the previous model did not, causing a decrease in picture quality.
Still, bigger LCD panels aren't TN for at least one good reason. The viewing angles would be unacceptable in many environments.
The way I see it, there's no real reason to throw good money after bad. If he needs a better laptop, shell out the dough and get a better laptop. Don't screw around with a money pit or you'll end up shelling out just as much in the long run. (Need a new battery? Oops. More money. LCD backlight getting dim? More money. Need Wifi? Keep bleeding.) Even worse, you'll have all kinds of weird dongles hanging out just to upgrade to support modern features like Wifi and Bluetooth. (Assuming he doesn't already have the optical disc and floppy drive dongling. :-P)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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).
For work, play, school ? Absolutely not.
...
...
... 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
It is illogical to think that a cart can go faster than the slowest horse.
I would be mighty impressed if you got a NEW battery for a 5 year old laptop for only $50. Batteries for older hardware get more expensive over time, not less.
That price seems about right for the Thinkpad ones I'm currently looking at on eBay... the UK's a little more expensive on average, closer to $60 inc. shipping. You may have problems sourcing for less popular brands of laptop.
Except for that huge antenna sticking out.
Running an internal antenna isn't difficult, even doing it properly rather than just bundling the wires into any free space.
the majority of older laptops would have to go the PCMCIA route, which is both expensive
It's not. You can get a PCMCIA 'g' card for under ten quid, the same as a USB adapter. And most five-year-old laptops (i.e. 2003 vintage) have USB ports.
for something that is likely to be unreliable
No signs of it yet. Whilst we're talking anecdotes and guesses, though, I do have a friend who's had to return two new Mac laptops due to overheating in the last few years.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Tssss.... You don't understand, do you? My dad has a P-III 733MHz laptop, which I think is from around 2000. The machine is completely set to his hand, he loves the resolution (1600x1200, I think... might be a tad less).
Over the years we scavenged parts from left and right: it now has 512Meg RAM instead of 256Meg RAM (scavenged), he has a Linksys 802.11g PCMCIA card ($30 ?), he as now a 80Gig disk instead of a 20Gig disk (scavenged from a more modern defective laptop - I used g4l to copy contents from the 20Gig to the 80Gig) and a scavenged DVD drive instead of the original CD drive. Now last year, his keyboard started acting flakey, and I told him: "Okay, look it's time for a new laptop".
He didn't want to. His XP installation was last redone in 2002 (I secured it, and he runs as User and knows about proper adiministration), and he likes it as it is right now. He spend $300 on a new laptop keyboard and two LiIon batteries that fit his machine. The battery life of his machine is simply astonishing.
He has enough power, he has enough memory, he likes his installation, and he has great battery life. Just by scavening around and spending a little (over time, of course)
So, by doing this: he saved himself money (he would never go for a 1280x800 screen... that's what cheap laptops come with), he saved the environment, and he's happy! What is more to ask?