retiring a T60 - good used replacement ?

[retired]

Hi - I've been using and enjoying my T-60 for years now but I know it's getting old and am thinking of replacing it with something newer like a W520. I'm in a remote area in central America where there are virtually no parts available, high temps and humidity so i need a reliable machine -thoughts ?

[dr_st]

If you are eyeing a **20 series, consider a **30 series (possibly with a classic keyboard mod). Essentially the same design, slightly higher specs and USB 3.0 across the board.

[atagunov]

Hi - I've been using and enjoying my T-60 for years now but I know it's getting old and am thinking of replacing it with something newer like a W520. I'm in a remote area in central America where there are virtually no parts available, high temps and humidity so i need a reliable machine -thoughts ?

I don't think many of us here have experience running Thinkpads in a humid environment.. My T520-s and my X220 have been serving me well and W530 is very similar to T520. Yes I wish I had a W530 with classic keyboard rather than T520. *30 are a better version of *20 in virtually same bodies.

But I guess many newer machines are sturdy enough too. As usual it's a question of the budget I guess. On the one hand you could consider upgrading your T60 to 8Gb RAM with a T61 motherboard (depends on size of T60). But 8Gb DDR2 costs £75+ unfortunately. Then there's a whole spectrum of newer machines taking DDR3, starting perhaps with T510. At the other end of the spectrum my cheatsheet for new Thinkpads - those I don't buy looks like this:

- 17" P73 - bomb proof'n' heavy, wide kbd
- 15.6" P53 - bomb proof'n' heavy, wide kbd
- 15.6" P1 gen2/X1E gen2 - 1.8kg, alum chassis, seems P1 is almost a twin of X1E
- 15.6" T590 - 1.75kg, U series processor
- 14" T490 - 1.46kg, U series
- 14" X1C - 1.13kg, U series

From the information I have none of these suffer too badly from reliability point of view

[kfzhu1229]

I don't think many of us here have experience running Thinkpads in a humid environment.. My T520-s and my X220 have been serving me well and W530 is very similar to T520. Yes I wish I had a W530 with classic keyboard rather than T520. *30 are a better version of *20 in virtually same bodies.

But I guess many newer machines are sturdy enough too. As usual it's a question of the budget I guess. On the one hand you could consider upgrading your T60 to 8Gb RAM with a T61 motherboard (depends on size of T60). But 8Gb DDR2 costs £75+ unfortunately. Then there's a whole spectrum of newer machines taking DDR3, starting perhaps with T510. At the other end of the spectrum my cheatsheet for new Thinkpads - those I don't buy looks like this:

You probably wanna avoid the really beefy ones and the really slim ones when the ambient temperature is very high. The CPU won't necessarily overheat but other components on the motherboard certainly will.
An ambient temperature of something like 30-35C certainly will yield you a much hotter laptop than air conditioned environment of ~25C, and at that point you might even wanna purchase a bottom mount laptop cooler so components on the motherboard like the VRM's don't overheat.
Well the steep price of 4GB DDR2's (and rarity these days as they got bought up in this pandemic) on eBay is just prohibitively insane. Got mine on Taobao just 2 weeks ago and I spent half that on two 4GB sticks.

[elray]

I'm in a remote area in central America where there are virtually no parts available, high temps and humidity so i need a reliable machine -thoughts ?

Buy. Two.