How often does Thinkpad hold sales/release new models?

Because I just checked out the mother's day sale with ~$655 in savings for T-series.

I'm currently looking to pickup a cheap T-series Thinkpad with a $500 budget. Crazy right? Anyway, I've been bidding up up on Ebay and lost some T510s at about $560.

I'm thinking that a few people are dropping the price on old Thinkpads for a few upgrade from now until Mar. 3rd but I have until August to hunt for a good T510 or T500 deal.

It would be nice to know about upcoming sales/release dates for Thinkpads so that I know when to go bargain hunting. It would also be nice to know if Thinkpads on the market ever drop prices (to know if my $500 quest is futile).

Thanks for helping a future CompSci student.

 

The problem with this is if Lenovo told everyone when the sales were, everyone would wait for them. They're very random. The only thing you can count on is there will be one eventually, but it's hard to pin down. About the best you can do is watch for a while so you'll know when they're low, but be prepared to jump when they are. The lowest I've seen a new from Lenovo CTO machine is about $600. $500 may be pushing it and you may be better off with a used T400 or T410 with warranty.

 

What's the probability of having another sale/release before August? If it's fairly low, I might just push my luck for bidding out a nice model within 3 days.

After some long research, I'm definitely pushing for older models T410 or T510 is ideal and T{4,5}20 are definitely out of reach at the moment.

 

If anybody could accurately predict these things.. they'd be off making a killing on the stock market instead of posting in this forum...

 

The question isn't whether there will be another sale, there surely will be, but will it be as good as the one now? That's the tough part to answer. Generally, prices slope downward over time, but I've seen it go both ways. A few months after the X60 was released you could get a CTO model for about $800 and it never got that low again until it started to get clearanced.

 

Ho ho ho. Thanks for the tip there. I just matched up some stock patterns with release dates and they seem to follow through consistently. I'll do a little research before I decide on buying out on this one.

 

Given your budget you can find an older T500 on Ebay still within warranty. Brand new real ThinkPads don't go down that low in price.

 

New models? I'm guessing once every year around when Intel releases new processors.

Sales? From what I can see, every major holiday and back to school. Get to know someone who works for Lenovo or IBM and you'll get much better deals.

 

Generally, here are the major sales:
April (I guess they announce new products or clear inventory? For some reason laptops tend to be cheap around now. )
August/September (back to school sale)
November/December (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas)

Laptop refreshes generally comes 3 months after intel/amd releases new processors, which is around once a year to a year and a half.