Scored a T510 on e-Bay...

[MichaelEC]

An excellent condition Lenovo ThinkPad T510, 2.66GHz Core i7-M620, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Win 10 Home Prem.

I wanted to buy either a T500 or T510 with Windows 10 already installed so I didn't screw up one of my other T5XX machines. I currently have a T500, T510, and T520. The T520 has has the i7 dual core, while my current T510 only has an i5 processor with 8GB of RAM.

This T510 has the i7 processor in it too. I didn't think that was even available in the T510.

I have 8 GB of RAM already on order for it. I don't know the machine type. I bought it before the seller could get back to me. The price at $160 with shipping included was too good to pass up. Especially looking like it spent most of its time in a corporate computer bag instead of under a worker's fingertips.

I'm actually buying this as a learner computer for my shop when/if the Windows 10 problems start coming in. I need to learn this OS since I don't have any computers running it.

I don't like it, and I don't like what MS has done to get people to use it, nor do I like what MS is doing with it once it's installed for users that don't know anything about computers other than to turn it on.

But that is a subject for another thread.

 

[fencepost]

I have a T510 (i5, nvidia) that I was asked to recycle (it's recycled! onto my desk with a new battery and hard drive) that's my Windows 10 testbed, and it works fine.

I also have a W500 from the same folks that's batteryless and on a shelf, and Windows 10 on it was troublesome so I'd watch out for the 400/500 series - you DON'T want the ones with ATI switchable graphics, apparently it was always troublesome and when I was looking there were no drivers. It's also not actually the card it gets recognized as, though I haven't gone back to it in the last few months. People trying to get Windows 8/8.1 running had to play games with compatibility mode on all the setup files and drivers to use Windows 7 drivers on it, though I suppose you could probably just lock it to one graphics card or the other in BIOS and be done with it.

 

[MichaelEC]

That's what I did with my T520. Just locked in the video selection in the BIOS, but my T520 is running Windows 7 Pro and always will be. This new T510 doesn't appear to have the switchable graphics, but I'm waiting on the seller to e-mail me the machine type so I can check the Lenovo machine type data base for the build specs.

My T520 has the i7 second generation dual core Sandy Bridge. I didn't know they were using i7's in the T510. I didn't think it was high end enough back then for the Core i7.

Well, now I have something with which to learn Windows 10 and not have to worry about mucking up one of my other T series units. I'm pretty pleased with the price too. I had to buy a loaded hard drive for the other T510 in addition to a RAM upgrade when I bought it and paid almost the same as I did for this one. And that T510 only has a Core i5 in it.

 

[acscva]

They are great laptops! I have one of the W510's that is like 7-8 years old as my main techbench PC. They are a workhorse. My travel laptop is a T450s which is an awesome unit too!

 

[cypress]

Very nice I bought a Latitude a couple weeks ago for $110. Works very good.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Love Thinkpads! Real workhorses! Nice score!

 

[MichaelEC]

They are great laptops! I have one of the W510's that is like 7-8 years old as my main techbench PC. They are a workhorse. My travel laptop is a T450s which is an awesome unit too!

I was beaten out on a bid for a W700 with all the bells and whistles a few days ago. I just let it slide. It was a nice machine, but getting a little long in the tooth for what the bidding was doing. W series are awesome Thinkpads. T's are close though.

 

[MichaelEC]

I have a T510 (i5, nvidia) that I was asked to recycle (it's recycled! onto my desk with a new battery and hard drive) that's my Windows 10 testbed, and it works fine.

I also have a W500 from the same folks that's batteryless and on a shelf, and Windows 10 on it was troublesome so I'd watch out for the 400/500 series - you DON'T want the ones with ATI switchable graphics, apparently it was always troublesome and when I was looking there were no drivers. It's also not actually the card it gets recognized as, though I haven't gone back to it in the last few months. People trying to get Windows 8/8.1 running had to play games with compatibility mode on all the setup files and drivers to use Windows 7 drivers on it, though I suppose you could probably just lock it to one graphics card or the other in BIOS and be done with it.

At Thinkpads.com they recommend you just select one card or the other in the BIOS and lock it in so's not to confuse Windows 10. That goes for the T520 and W520 machines too.

 

[fencepost]

For the W500 I need to open it up and clean it out, and probably redo the compound on the graphics card and CPU. On the ATI graphics it tends to overheat and shut down. The nice thing about it is that it's actually the highest-resolution screen in the house at 1920x1200, but it's kind of dim and I don't really have an appropriate power supply - particularly since I'm running with no battery at all. I have a 65W that I typically use with my T430 and several 90W for my desk and traveling with the T510, but I think the W500 with ATI is supposed to have a 135W and I haven't scored one of those.

I did decide that the best way to be sure of getting a genuine power supply was to go ahead and get the appropriate docking station with one included.

 

[mlfixer]

I personally use an L430 with i5 that i got from ebay for $200. I double the ram and added an SSD, the thing flies....

And my main work desktop is a Lenovo M92p that I also got on ebay for $150 (bare bones). I added an i7-3770 @ 3.4ghz, 16gb of RAM and two SSD drives. Btw the M92p is the first Thinkcentre machine with USB 3.0 ports so don't get anything earlier like a 91 which has usb 2.0.

I think it is funny how many of us are using Lenovo gear, they are very robust just like back in the IBM days.... glad Lenovo didn't change much except for all the bloatware.

 

[MichaelEC]

They did change the keyboard starting with the T/W 530 and up. I don't care for that island style very much.

 

[fencepost]

The T430 isn't bad, though I can see why people like the older keyboards as well (after using KeyTweak to remap the page forward/back buttons to Pgup/Pgdown). I would advise against getting anything in the Tx40 series, the things they did to the touchpad were awful. We put one of those in at a customer, and that only stayed because the end user was one of those folks who always used a cordless mouse.

 

[MichaelEC]

There is a mod out somewhere, I can't remember where I saw it, but you can take a W/T 4/510, or 4/520 keyboard and refit it to the T/W 4/530 and 4/540 laptop chassis. It involves some tweaking of the mapping and some driver work.

I will eventually move up to newer Lenovo's, but I'll certainly miss the old 7-row keyboards. Lenovo was supposed to produce a 'Retropad' but so far that has never materialized. Talk has been going on now for at least three or more years about it.

 

[fencepost]

The Tx40 touchpad was horrible, not sure about the keyboard but I think it's OK. ISTR that it's possible to retrofit a touchpad assembly from the Tx50 down to the Tx40, but by the time you do that why not just buy a used Tx50?

I do like that on the T430 I was able to switch to an SSD (albeit SATA2) by simply adding an mSATA card and keeping a spinning metal drive for bulk storage; at some point I may switch to a 2.5" SSD but it doesn't seem urgent. I believe that after that they switched to the PCIe NVMe slot, but I'd have to check on that.

 

[brandonkick]

I love my T420 / T520 (yes I have both!) and hope they both last for a very long time.

I have win 10 on the T420, and win 7 on the T520. IIRC neither have an SSD yet and
both need ram upgrades. They are great machines, well built and plenty capable.

Can't beat em for the money.

 

[MichaelEC]

Any trouble with the switchable graphics cards in the T420 running Win 10?

 

[MichaelEC]

Yesterday the T510 arrived with Windows 10 Home loaded. I should have gotten one with Pro loaded as I can't access the Group Policy Editor to install something I need to try and get the fingerprint scanner working. Lenovo says it just flat-out won't work in the T510 running Windows 10, but I wasn't going to give up that easily until I ran into this road block. Oh well. I can live without it. It's not like I can't lock up this machine tighter than Presley's pants if I wanted to.

I have only been on the internet with this machine for updates and to download a few cleaner programs. The 8GB of ram showed up today and really increased the performance of this i7 first gen machine.

The machine is absolutely, remarkably clean with no marks or damage. Even the corners of the lid still have all of the rubberized coating on them. You don't see that very often on a machine of this vintage unless it spent its entire life in a laptop bag. You'd swear it just came out of a sealed box.

Windows 10 seems to be be very fast compared to 7 Pro. But time will tell. I hate to make a judgement off of one day's use.

Windows 10 has a few quirks aside from the security issues. This will not be a serious work or internet computer, but more or less just to learn the OS with and try out different problems. I've already had a Windows 10 machine in for service but fortunately it was hardware related and not a Windows 10 issue.

I'm pretty happy with it. Also, this is not the computer in the initial post. It must have been one of their company's generic photos of a T510. I was expecting the somewhat used looking computer in the first two photos I posted. The T510 they sent is in much better condition.

 

[fencepost]

Nice. I know the fingerprint reader works under Windows 10 Pro, because I use it and didn't have to do anything special to make it work.

I don't recall whether this was a clean install or an upgrade, but if it was an upgrade it was upgraded from a clean install of Windows 7 plus the Lenovo software. Looking at C:\ it looks like I did it in October, so at the least I had to do an upgrade first - I just don't remember if I then went back for a clean install as well.

Your touchpad's in better shape than mine - mine has a very worn area, and it's been a little flaky lately though the trackpoint seems to be fine.

 

[MichaelEC]

Nice. I know the fingerprint reader works under Windows 10 Pro, because I use it and didn't have to do anything special to make it work.

Do you mean on the T510? MS was very adamant about the FPR not working on the T510/Win10 combo. If you do have it working maybe I'll try a clean install and upgrade to Pro. I have the COA for Refurb Win10 and an .iso.

 

[fencepost]

Yep, T510, i5 540 not the i7, and I'm logging in with the fingerprint reader. I don't remember doing anything special to make it work.

TouchChip Fingerprint Coprocessor (WBF advanced mode)
AuthenTec
Location Port_#0003.Hub_#0003

Driver is AuthenTec, 1.6.2.352, 2/27.2013, signed by "Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher"

If the driver came from Lenovo, I have "System Interface Foundation" and "systemupdate507-2015-09-29" still saved, though that may not really help. It's using the Windows fingerprint management, not Lenovo's.