[kwlug-disc] Refurb laptops & monitors - Eco-Tech Recycling?

[unsolicited]

Thanks. Good points. Thanks chas, too - I had lost sight that laptops 
typically aren't white boxes, so have different original CDs. (And, wary 
of Toshiba from experience along the lines mentioned.)

Yep, these comments all mind me CHECK THE SPECS before buying anything, 
especially refurb. (Bearing in mind, any laptop battery is almost 
definitely going to be problematic, years in, which refurb are, by 
definition.)

Frequently, bonus is maintenance manuals are easily found by the time 
off-lease comes back to retail, including, and especially, upgrade 
options / capacity. IF you can even find stuff like memory for it any more.

Nothing like being bitten, as I have been, on a new laptop plus max 
memory I bought some while ago (Asus 1201n), only to find the hardware 
crippled the thing to 4GB memory. Spec'ed out to take the memory, but 
they cut some address lines (I think). <sigh>

To Khalid's (others?) point, a quick google of 'lenovo memory T6(0|1)' 
reveals max 4gb, which these refurbs come with. Good to know that at 
least that upgrade is off the table.

Sad that an SSD of any reasonable size (>64GB?) is almost 1/3 the cost 
of the refurb laptop. Suppose one should factor that in against new. But 
chas noted what I saw too - new at that price range is pretty low end 
hardware vis a vis refurb equivalent. (Seems to me when I see lots of 
off-lease stuff it's typically more business class / robust hardware 
than the 'cheap'est retail/home offerings.)


On 14-04-23 01:39 PM, hubert wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 12:27:37 -0400, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> said:
>
>> Thanks Khalid. Yeah, memory is usually one of the first upgrades -
>> mind you, getting old memory, large sizes, is often problematic. Just
>> like when buying new you have to toss the memory that comes with it to
>> put in new larger sticks. And hard drive. 'Problem' here still seems
>> to be 4:3 vs widescreen. Definitely going back a generation in
>> hardware. Losing things like USB 3, GB nic, and so on. Hard to know if
>> it's worth it.
>
> You won't necessarily lose on GB NIC, at least; the Thinkpads should
> come standard with it.  http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T60 And
> if it really is the 15.4" models as they say, then looks like it should
> be widescreen too according to ThinkWiki.