Buying a used Thinkpad T40

I'm trading in my X30 for a T40 plus cash tomorrow. I have a couple questions about the T40 though.

1. Is there anything I should know about it before I make my purchase?

2. It comes with a wireless-b card, can I swap it out for an Intel b/g wireless card without any hardware issues?

3. I'd like to buy a 9-cell battery for it, but it's not worth paying $150 for a brand new one from Lenovo. Are there any good OEM knockoffs where I can buy one from? Will the battery gauage program still work properly?

4. Does it have a built in roll cage?

-edit-
5. For those who have the T4x series, does the Battery program let you set the maximum charge capacity?

 

1) Not that I know of, many say it is built like a tank.

2)Do you mean a mini-PCI Express card?

3) Go with Lenovo branded form Newegg, its retail, dont buy junk, could fry your new Laptop.

4) In the body yes, in the top, no. The screen cover is Magnesium alloy.

You will love it man, I have been working with T40s this summer @ my internship that have been abused - they show no signs of wear and their style never gets outdated!

You'll love it!

Does it have any warranty left?

 

Just a couple of slight corrections - the T40 doesn't have PCI-Express. The 802.11 card is just plain mini-PCI card, and yes, you should be able to replace it with an Intel BG2200 or IBM Atheros a/b/g part.

I've completely disassembled my T42 a few times before. The top cover is indeed mag, bit I don't know if I'd call the chassis skeleton a "roll cage" in the sense that Lenovo is now using. the T4x has several beefy magnesium alloy support struts, mainly along the left side and the back where the hinges connect (you can see it plainly if you take out the battery). It's indeed very very tough, but don't expect the body to be 100% free of flexing and creaking if you strain it. Also, if you have a 14", don't hold the laptop in one hand by the palmrest, it will strain and potentially break the plastic.

I'm too scared to get a cheap 3rd-party battery too, I say stick with Lenovo, and yes Newegg tends to have the best prices on those

Enjoy the laptop, it's a great one.

 

I said mini.

 

Thanks to everyone. There's no warranty left since I'm buying off Craigslist. It was a business leased laptop.

I can't wait. A lot of people praise the T4X series.

 

I know what you meant; it's kinda hard to find a laptop with a real full-size PCI-Express slot The T40 does not have a mini PCI-Express slot. It's a plain mini-PCI card slot (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_PCI v. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express_Mini_Card)

 

Your avatar image makes me cringe, irrespective of drain holes

 

I've been using a T42 (1.8G CPU with 1.5GB RAM) for over 3 years now and never had a problem. In fact, it's still performing to my satisfactions today and I believe it can still do the kind of jobs I throw at it for another 12 months and more.

For a T40, which is owned by my brother-in-law, we recently ran into one RAM upgrade issue

He wanted to add an extra 1GB RAM (on top of the stocked 512MB) and we all thought it would only cost about CAD$60+taxes, which was the average 1GB DDR2 RAM.

However, the type of RAM used on T4x's turns out to be DDR and that would cost about CAD$150+taxes per GB.

That's the only thing that you may want to know.