Lenovo ThinkPad T400

[Darrell]

A friend of mine has brought the above laptop out for me to let the guests use at the bar.

I don't know how old it is but he bought it fully re-furbished with windows 7 installed.

£160. I'm wondering how good this machine actually is.

Any ideas or experiences?

 

[Rory]

I'm wondering how good this machine actually is.

How good in what respect?

For use by random people to surf the web from your bar, for £160, it would be difficult to think of anything better. The keyboard drains might even save it if someone spills beer all over it!

The only thing that's not brilliant on Thinkpads is the display, but unless it's very bright in your bar then it should be fine.

If you're going to rely on the battery then the life (as in number of charge cycles) can be a random and when they fail they tend to fail totally and suddenly, so the machine won't work unless plugged in. There's many, many clone batteries available but I would never use one of those. A proper Lenovo battery is probably around £100.

 

[Darrell]

Thanks Rory.

I just wanted to know a little more about the machine.

I read somewhere that it has drain holes in case of an accident. I had a R50e years ago that I liked alot. My daughter spilt a glass of water over it and that was the end, I guess that didn't have the same drain holes!

 

[Dieselman]

I find IBM lappies to be robust. They used to have an issue with failing hard drives, but that was before the T400.

 

[Mr E]

We use Lenovo lappies - current on T420 and we seem to have a few HD failures, but it seems that if they get past the first 4-6 weeks then they are OK.

£160 is a nice price - I wouldn't mind getting one for our youngest at that price.