Comment by ivraatiems
8 days ago
I love these old ThinkPads. I refurbish and sell them all the time. Just moments before writing this, I finished fixing up a T580; earlier today I did a heatsink replacement on a W510 which is going strong with an SSD and 20GB RAM.
The older they are, the better they are, but even the modern ones are still pretty good. Like the OP mentions, the market for parts is strong and it's easy to get what you need. Then when you go to sell them, they sell for a good amount. That W510 is worth at least $100 in its current condition.
>The older they are, the better they are
Everyone agrees the build quality used to be better (my grandpa already said this about appliances from his youth). But one thing I almost never see discussed is the power consumption of these old devices. Older CPUs often double as room heaters. Modern ones, especially the Apple M-series, have become a lot more efficient. So while I agree that modern laptops suck in many ways, I would do the math to see if it's actually cheaper to buy and use an older computer. Maybe not if you're in Qatar or Russia but some countries have extremely high electricity costs.
It just isn't really a measurable impact against an overall picture.
At maximum, a T580 can draw 44 watts. 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, at 50 cents a kWh (quite expensive for the US), that's $65 a year. That's a several-year-old computer already.
The W520 can draw a much higher (but still low relative to a desktop) 150 watts. The cost per year to run it would then be around $220/year - but again, that's assuming maximum power draw for much of the day every day. Your home refrigerator uses more than twice that.
For most people, I don't see this cost increase as a problem.
For me power draw is about battery life. If you occasionally need to work without a power plug, or carrying your laptop from meeting to meeting all over the office, you really appreciate when the power lasts all day. My T14s battery draw of ~6.5W on the 57Wh battery will last me ~8 hours, good enough for a day unplugged at the office. (I'd love a bigger battery, but it is what it is...)
My refrigerator doesn't use anything like 300 W average. An IKEA 310 l fridge is rated at less than 100 kWh per year.
Even if you add a 210 l upright freezer to it is is still less than 300 kWh per year. That's 300 kWh / (365 * 24 h) = 34 W
ThinkPads use 20V chargers. USB-C supports 20V power delivery. What's the efficiency of power adapters back then compared to current gen USB-C chargers?
I have a T520. What can I do to make this thing useful again? Even when new, the battery life was pretty awful.
Mail it to me and I will take care of it for you ;)
Kidding, of course. Here's what I recommend:
The single best thing you can do for your machine is get a SATA SSD into it. That will 10x the performance of your system for most tasks immediately. After that, max out your RAM at 16GB DDR3.
Assuming a 500GB SSD, you can do both of these things using new parts for less than $100, and if you get used parts, for less than $50.
A system with a 2nd-gen i5 or especially i7, 16GB RAM, and 500GB SSD storage will be fast enoug for essentially every modern computing task that isn't modern gaming, graphic design, video editing, or complex programming (it'll be good enough for simple coding tasks). You can do whatever else you want.
As far as batteries, my recommendations are twofold: Get the highest-wattage charger you can (probably a 170watt for the T520, I think) and the largest battery possible. New ones are available on eBay. You want the "extended life" models. They're not great, but they should get you a few hours of usage. Depending on what you get and where it's from, it's another $20-$50.