From: Jim Biggerstaff (duh2000_at_bellatlantic.net)
Date: Sat Sep 02 2000 - 11:05:35 EDT
I recently got a 760EL (9547-U4S), P120, 32MB, 1.0HD, on Ebay, and I'm
delighted with it. There is a certain amount of luck involved when buying a
used Thinkpad unseen, and I had a fair amount of good fortune. The exterior
was slightly scuffed, the keyboard looked brand new, and the LI-ION battery
will run the machine flat out for about 2 hours. No dead pixels on the 12"
TFT. It is worthwhile to watch Ebay. A huge number of Thinkpads have been
leased over the years to large companies, and when the leases expire there
is a veritable flood of units up for sale. The laws of supply and demand
apply, and some excellent deals can be had.
It came witn Win98 and Office 2000, and ran a bit too sluggishly for my
tastes. I installed Win95 OEMSR2, parts of Office 2000 (including MISE5),
and there was a big improvement as well as a nice saving in disk space.
By current standards this is a slow machine, have no illusions. You won't
get the "snap" you experience with a more recent Thinkpad with a much faster
video subsystem, etc. Not a machine for heavy multimedia or intensive
graphics! My 760EL is an early model, it is my impression that the later
models are significantly faster.
BUT it runs MSIE5, MSWord2K, MSExcel2K, etc., quite well. I favor the
keyboard arrangement on the older Thinkpads, and to me it is a very
comfortable machine to use. I can jack into my home LAN and access the Net
via DSL and it works fine while setting no speed records.
It came with a 1.0GB hard drive. As it happens I had a 2.1GB unit on hand,
and put that in. The 760's have a hard drive arrangement that makes
swapping drives a breeze. I bought a second 2.1 GB drive onto which I will
install Linux, probably the SUSE distribution. This ease of swapping
configurations makes these notebooks a lot of fun for a tinkerer.
These are fine machines for anyone who needs an "acceptable" level of
performance for relatively undemanding applications and is on a budget.
jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Baker" <plumbush2_at_mediaone.net>
To: <thinkpad_at_cs.utk.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 11:19 AM
Subject: 760 laptop -- a good used computer?
> I have a friend who is considering buying a 760, primarily for word
> processing but I'm sure he'll have other uses for it. Is this model, with
> which I'm unfamiliar, a good one? Are there variations in the 760 line
that
> we should know about - different model letters? They certainly seem to be
> selling cheaply on ebay, and the money is a serious consideration for him.
> Thanks very much -- Jeff
>
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