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Treasure
By: Dr Scott
September 6, 2009 @ 8:06 PM
Well, were do I start really, the amount of friends I have told about this little laptop of mine, I thought id give it a review…
I found it in a dustbin outside and electronics store for starters. So I thought a free laptop is a free laptop and took it home thinking if it worked great if not then no loss. I did not even expect it to turn on. But it did.
Apart from the ram which I upgraded myself, all the components are still the original ones from when I found it! I formatted completely and installed Windows XP and this was 4 or so years ago! I have formatted once and only once. It has a 20 gig harddrive and only a 1.13 Ghz processor. I use it for my music production software and the software claims to need 2.0 or higher cpu to run and 1 gig ram (I upgraded to only 376) and it runs just fine never crashed on me and never froze.
I dont know how old it is but it was a real treasure! I honestly think it is far better than any other laptop I have used or my freinds own, it keeps suprising me with little tiny gems for instance, my favourite feature of it is the tiny keyboard illumination light located above the screen geniouse. the only thing that does not work is the volume down button but i only listen to music that needs playing lound anyway :). i hope that was a good review never given one before, it is my true honest opinion. they are cheap to buy and upgrade. small and light enough to use comfortably out and about, i just put it in my back pack. i take it every were wtih me.
If this one ever finally decides its time to call it a day and retires, then no prizes for guessing which model and make ill be buying again when that time comes.
I love it.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
The good and the bad...
By: scodal
March 13, 2009 @ 12:28 PM
I’ve been using and loving my Thinkpad R31 since the day I got it. If anyone has reason and room to complain about this laptop it’s me. I bought one off eBay and it’s definitely a lemon and let me tell you.. despite it’s flaws, it’s still the best laptop I could have ever asked for. It has provided me so many years of joy.
First, the eBay seller shows pictures of the laptop with an English keyboard.. what do I get? A french keyboard! Second, the keyboard cannot be replaced (I worked at a computer shop and I tried to swap them) because the connectors are different between languages! So, suppor = del, ImpEc = Print Screen, Echap = Esc, Fin = End.. and lots of other completely retarded bizarro keys all over this thing. I’m on it right now. Fortunately, I’ve memorized the keyboard and am quite used to it now. Nothing I can do about it.
And worse than THAT is the fact that it (used to) have a media problem. Whenever audio or video or the combination of the two would present the computer would skip or freeze. I found that squeezing or putting pressure on the left corner towards me would alleviate this problem. As long as I kept that pressure it would seamlessly chug along without the skips and freezes. Kinda annoying and painful at times but I learned to deal with it. Most the time I would just keep it muted and surf the internet.
So, to those of you that gave this laptop bad reviews saying it can barely handle hardly any applications, I’m sorry to tell you, you’re just wrong or you’re not good at using your Thinkpad. I have pretty much done it all with this laptop. There is almost no limit to how much it can handle simultaneously.. and don’t even listen to that crap about having trouble surfing the net.. I have Firefox open right now with 5 tabs, Opera open with 2 tabs, and Internet Explorer on Meebo connected to 5 screen names at once. Along with that is a word document. My CPU usage? 2%. I mean this thing isn’t even struggling in the slightest.
I work part-time for an online research company. I love using my Thinkpad R31 because I can be mobile. But, the faster you search the internet the faster you get paid.. so I wouldn’t waste my time if this laptop couldn’t handle it.
I will say, the battery has always sucked. It’s the only weak point on this laptop. Also, no built in wifi, but it IS getting old. It’s amazing in 2009 I still find it suitable to sit and use. It recently quit working all together but I opened it up and found a way to force permanent pressure on that pressure point and now the laptop runs like it’s brand new. Five or six years later and it runs better than the day I got it! I’ll never get rid of this laptop and I’m truly sorry for all those that feel this laptop couldn’t provide them an adequate experience on the internet. I know for someone like me that types 200 wpm and has been surfing the internet since day 1 on a 66mhz computer, using this Thinkpad can definitely keep up with me… and that’s saying something cause I’m no slow poke. I require speed.
So, if you need a fast cheap laptop, this is the one for you. I loved it so much I just bought the Thinkpad T43 yesterday.. it’s just like this laptop.. but 3 times better.
I gave this laptop a 4/5 because of the battery. A laptop isn’t as great of a laptop with a sucky battery. It’s just facts of the laptop world. Performance wise, it kicks a$$.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Ibm Thinkpad r31
By: Dave G
December 5, 2008 @ 10:36 AM
It’s a good laptop, but I have a problem with the DVD-rom its not loading dvds it only loads cds why is that?
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
lousy battery life
By: chris
August 7, 2008 @ 1:31 PM
Its a solid machine apart from the lousy battery life.
I bought mine new years ago and within 6 months had to replace the battery. Battery life from new was about 35-40 minutes, but soon got so bad it harly had time to boot up before power warnings displayed. I got a new genuine IBM battery which took me back to 30-40 minutes battery life. Within 6 months that battery had gone the same way as th.e first. I’ve just purchased a 3rd party Lithium Ion battery for it and full charge to warning message is still only 45 minutes.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
I hotted mine up - and its great
By: Richie Rob
April 28, 2008 @ 12:53 PM
I bought 2nd hand – 256m mem & 30gig HD XPP. It struggled a bit – lots of paging.
I added 512k mem to 768M.
I added 7200rpm 60gig HD & now can’t get rid of it as its as good as most of the new ones.
The disk & memory shorten battery (new) life but its a great little computer.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Good Computer
By: The Unknown
September 14, 2007 @ 3:58 PM
The computer gave me no big problems but the ram is to low at 128mb. Upgrade to more ram.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
PIII M is the Best............
By: Joe
May 12, 2007 @ 11:24 AM
I just bought a R31 with Celeron 1.13 from auction, it’s a nice and quick laptop compared with the Toshiba Tecra 9000. PIII M Tualatin is the best CPU with Intel 830 MB. It runs very smooth and fast. And now, i’m gonna upgrade the CPU to PIII M either Pentium or Celeron 1.3 GHz. I will share my work with you guys.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Great Machine. Very Well Built
By: HiReZ
March 30, 2007 @ 1:59 PM
I use Dells at work, and have had a few old ones passed on to me. The R31 turned up and I got my hands on it, and it is so well built. I love Think pads and this one has resulted in the Dells being packed away. It still has only 128 MB ram, but is running XP Pro at a decent speed. it runs quietly and doesn’t get too hot. Dells burn my knees by comparison. It doesn’t creek, the screen is great, the think pad tools are great, and I love the keyboard light.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Keeps Chuggggging Along Just Fine!
By: Mark G.
March 14, 2007 @ 9:09 PM
My Celeron powered ThinkPad R31, that is running Windows XP professional, just never ceases to be a stallworth machine. My machine is @5 years old and it has been just great! Runs LEGO robotics software just fine, as well as scientific data logging software too. For the price it, has been flawless. Will need to upgrade RAM soon. Boot time is lighting fast-less than 60 seconds. Runs three programs ok.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Marvel of engineering.
By: Kelvin Vine
March 3, 2007 @ 8:58 PM
I have had my Celeron powered ThinkPad R31 more than 5 years. I purchased this laptop in university and being a poor student, it was the cheapest new IBM I could find. My first hint of greatness was when it outperformed my friends desktop which had a 1.7Ghz Athlon and 1GB of ram in a mp3 encoding speed test by about 30%.
Based on the specifications on this laptop it should have been useless years ago, yet somehow, it keeps on going! All I did was buy a 512Mb stick of ram about 2 years ago.
I am presently typing this review on my R31 using Word 2007, running Windows XP professional, have 2 excell spreadsheets open, 2 PDF files open in Acrobat Reader 8.0, 4 Internet Explorer 7 windows open with about 4 tabs in each, windows messenger, windows live mail, and am connected to the interent with a broadband EV-DO connection! And this is considered a light load for me.
I have NEVER had a hardware failure.
I cannot find a better word to describe this laptop other than MAGICAL.
Sadly the battery has now stopped taking charge, and the cost of a new one is prohibitive otherwise I would have gladly continued to soldier on with my wonderful R31. Also sadly, the new Lenovo made IBMs are too overpriced and cannot be customised to the machine I need, and so ill be moving on to another brand, though I doubt I will ever have another laptop that serves me like this one did.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
great work horse- very reliable
By: Benji
November 30, 2006 @ 1:17 AM
got mine 2nd user and had it 3 yrs- upgrade the usual stuff- hd, ram etc, and it still keeps up with the rest best of all its a solid chasis so take a little knocking about! maybe a bit heavy but hey them little vaios are for girls!
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Takes a licking keeps on ticking
By: Kumar
September 22, 2006 @ 9:43 AM
My R31 is 4 years old no major problems with it. I’ve used it for all my assignments in university and it’s still with me! The only problems i can think of are that it’s heavy and the screen isn’t up tp par, but overall quality of it is amazing!
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Reliable, up to a point
By: Joe
September 6, 2006 @ 7:10 AM
I’ve had this computer for a whopping 4 years. And it still works. However, it’s barely getting by. This computer fills up fast, slows down easily, and really is overall unrealible if you’re trying to perform important work on it. For basic email checking and the like, this computer is a good choice. But if you plan search the internet with multiple websites open at the same time, or keep music/DVDs, please purchase another computer with more memory and faster processing power. Throughout college, I was able to get my work done, but there were many a days when I lost my work, had to reboot, or just simply opted to go to the local library because my computer was just too slow. There was even a time when I had to borrow my friend’s Apple notebook to finish an important paper. Sign of the times? Bottom line, if finances permit, you should do better. :)
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Great for an older laptop
By: Charlene
August 20, 2006 @ 8:00 PM
This laptop is great if you can get it cheap… does everything really well and have had no problems. Upgrading the RAM to 760mb and the hard disk to 80gb have made mine perform really well.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Greatest Laptop Ever
By: Dan
May 29, 2006 @ 12:32 AM
I’ve owned one for over 3 years and it’s been flawless. It’s fast, reliable and ultra durable.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Look elsewhere for a good buy
By: Joe, NC
April 11, 2006 @ 7:28 PM
The IBM thinkpad is terrible choice for those who are in the market for laptop that works easily. Many people like the idea that it works simply – but that’s just the problem, it works TOO simply. The computer is obviously of substandard quality because it’s easily breakable, slow to boot, in a few years time it will begin to unexpectedly crash consistanly. Interested in music? Don’t buy this computer – the saving capacity here is terrible. Internet surfing your thing? This laptop can barely keep three to four windows opened at the same time without freezing. Overall, I’ve had this computer for four years. Since the beginning, it has given me nothing but problems. Do not buy.
Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Excelent
By: Anderson
November 4, 2005 @ 4:47 AM
The thinkpad notebook is the best device even made.
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Solid, Reliable, good all rounder
By: jon boy
October 30, 2005 @ 8:50 PM
I’ve had no problems with this laptop, solid performance with everyday tasks, works excellent in wireless networks, great features for the money, if you can grab one at the right price, go for it!
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Old Reliable
By: Billy Bob
September 23, 2004 @ 12:24 PM
Very outdated but somehow manages to get the job done.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
has the battery life of mayonanise
By: mr_ass
September 23, 2004 @ 11:34 AM
the battery decides when it wants to work and when it wants to die on me, horrible battery in this thing
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Its better than a shoe box i guess
By: bob_theman
September 23, 2004 @ 11:28 AM
the screen will sometimes turn on and then turn off out of nowhere. cheap generic inverter card is the cause
Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Piece of junk!
By: The_Buyer
September 23, 2004 @ 11:25 AM
constantly crashes while im doing work.
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No