purchased a new used thinkpad

[bmwjohn]

Just FYI:
I just got a refurb Lenova L412 14" Thinkpad, I-5, on board graphics, 4 gig ddr-3, 250 GIG. (WIPED) CERT. OF Auth. $127. I have to load Win 7, then upgrade to Win 10. Looks good. NOW, Crucial will sell a medium speed? 240 gig SSD and an upgrade 4gig to 8 gig total for about $100. All I need is the correct docking station. Some have USB 3.0, some claim to NOT, all around $30. Anyway, looks good for around $230 plus docking station. I like thinkpads!

 

[JHZR2]

Nice find! Definitely max RAM and go SSD if you're starting with a fresh computer. Good luck!

 

[Donald]

Do you have that little "pencil eraser" for a mouse. As an prior IBM employee I had many Thinkpads and they all had the little pencil eraser for the mouse. Initially there was no touchpad also. So we got use to them. But I think many people (non employees) hated it and hooked up external mouse.

Getting more than 4 GB of RAM may not help that much. When Windows 10 (and probably 7 & 8) has more RAM than it needs it uses it for caching of things you might use again. So if you happened to open back up an application you had closed it might have some of the program files cached. But with an SSD you can pull them in quickly also.

 

[bmwjohn]

yes, I have the pencil eraser and the touchpad. Win 64 bit will use more than 4 gig., and the graphics are onboard, so I believe they can reserve extra memory for graphics use.Some thinkpads had discrete graphics, IIRC, but Intel on board is probably more reliable.Most TP UNITS have similar parts, and are widely available on e-bay. Large corporation recycle their computers and give to charities in bulk, often in excellent condition, and are resold by charities that don't always know what they have, although they may have an excellent parts supply.I bought a new regular Lenovo some years ago and it rapidly failed, and lacked a cheap used parts source. My current unit came from "green penguin" on e-bay, but there are many out there.

 

[raytseng]

if it doesn't have the red pointer it's not a thinkpad. That is iconic and a hallmark patented feature of a thinkpad.

For all those that say it's an annoyance, you can just get the non-thinkpad lenovo.
If they got rid of the button, they'd lose a huge % of users that buy thinkpads specifically because of that thing.
Even changing the mouseclick buttons, they tried it with last years models, and got railed for it by their core users, and they U-turned and brought the expected interface back

It'd be like asking Ferrari to make a front wheel drive car.