[lqet]

Last year, I decided to build an X62 (Thinkpad X61 or X60 with custom hardware) after reading about it here [1]. Shipment of the modification kit (some plastic parts + a new mainboard) took 2 months from China to Germany. It took me a while to find a brand-new screen as a replacement for the original 1024x786 screen (which has to be modified, including some minor metal-working).

After roughly a year of heavy daily use, I must say that this is the best laptop I have owned in my life (including previous Thinkpads R60, T510 and and T460s). The size is just perfect. With the new hardware, it is incredibly light-weight. The 4:3 screen is something I have been missing for a long time on my laptops, and the classic Thinkpad keyboard is just a million times better than the new model. The quality of the original X61 chassis is also very good, and it looks just great.

Overall, the laptop cost me roughly 1000 EUR and around 20 hours of work. This includes 32 GB of RAM, a brand new 100 GB SSD and a brand new replacement screen I bought at Alibaba. I started with a broken X61 I bought for around 40 EUR on eBay, on which I replaced the new Lenovo "ThinkPad" logo with the original IBM ThinkPad logo that was still used on the X60.

[1] https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/

[newnewpdro]

I came very close to ordering this, as I still use an x61s for most of my hacking due to the ideal physical form factor and classic compact keyboard w/trackpoint.

One major problem I have is the rather old SXGA+ screen used in the mod has a CCFL edgelight, and the last time I did an LED conversion on a modded SXGA+ x61s the visual results were not great - certainly nothing close to what is had on modern LED backlit displays.

The other issue is getting quality replacement batteries for these old thinkpads. Aftermarket ones tend to suck and OEM ones are either counterfeit or very old stock in my experience.

Furthermore, while this particular laptop strikes an exceptional balance of size/weight and usability with a great keyboard, there are some singificant flaws in the chassis design. Every single x61s I've had (there have been many now) has cracked in two places through normal usage:

1. The left edge of the palm rest immediately adjacent to the near keyboard edge above the pccard slot. There is a stress riser there due to the unsupported palm rest flexing above the card slot cavity. It's just a matter of time before it cracks from fatigue.

2. The top edge of the last CPU fan vent grill. The screen hinge is nearby and the cyclic strain of opening and closing the display eventually breaks the chassis at this thin spot - another stress riser caused by the CPU fan exhaust vent. Once the crack is formed, the area visibly deforms whenever moving the screen.

For the most part those chassis flaws seem to be largely cosmetic, but the crack near the hinge does seem to be allowing new and probably increasing levels of flex causing strain on other components which may fail later.

[lqet]

For the display, I bought an LED conversion kit (mainly for the reduced power consumption) and have no complaints regarding the results. But if you are used to modern screens, the display may indeed appear a bit grainy. It doesn't bother me, though.

Regarding the problems with the chassis:

1) Yes, this is absolutely true. The used X61 I bought on eBay already had this issue in a very early stage. However, as the conversion kit does not come with a pccard slot, I just glued the slot latch shut and re-enforced it from the inside. The kit actually comes with a plastic part to close to ejector-button hole for the pccard slot, which is also designed to give additional support.

2) Hm, I will keep an eye on this, but so far I do not have any problems here. On previous ThinkPads I owned I found that any cracks in the chassis can be stopped from extending by opening the ThinkPad, adding a generous amount of superglue on the crack (from the inside) and immediately sprinkling fibers (with a 5mm length) on the glue. I usually obtain the fibers by cutting off a small part of some cheap hardware store synthetic cord.

It should also be added that I have a few spare parts from an X60 chassis (from which I obtained the original logo stickers). If you compare the X60 and the X61 chassis, you can definitely see that some additional reinforcements were added to the X61 chassis, so if anyone is planning to build an X62, I would recommend to use an X61 as a starting point. The X61 chassis also has some kind of a copper heat shield below the palm rests, which the X60 chassis has not.

[newnewpdro]

What are you doing for batteries? How's the battery life on your X62 in linux, and how many cells?

I did appreciate the improved battery life with the LED conversion, but my complaints are more along the lines of colors being off and a visible pattern of the LED strip at the bottom of the display. It's non-trivial to get the LED strip perfectly aligned in the CCFL gutter, and in my last attempt there were some other artifacts, it certainly didn't look OEM in terms of quality.

Having said that, the SXGA+ 4:3 screen in that dimension is a rather nice resolution. I just wish there were compatible OEM LED options to do the mod with. Unfortunately these days nobody seems to be producing 4:3 screens.

[lqet]

Yes, it took me some hours to adjust the LED strip to minimize the effect, but the LED artifacts s are still faintly recognizable in the bottom 5mm of the screen if I'm in a dark room and the screen is mainly white in this area. However, I usually use this laptop as my daily coding workhorse within a terminal with a dark background, where the effect is not present.

Regarding the battery, I use this one: https://www.laptopbatteryexpress.com/Lenovo-long-life-ThinkP...

Battery life is around 7-8 hours when I am coding with 100% screen brightness, using a basically vanilla Ubuntu 16.04. It was close to 9 hours when the battery was new.

[marpstar]

I bought an X60 for college in 2006. The only complaint I ever had was the 1024x768 display. No CD-ROM, < 3 lbs. The best keyboard I've ever had in a laptop. I miss that thing.

I'm too lazy to build an X62 but I love that it is a thing.

[Yetanfou]

I'm still using a number of T42p's with 1600x1200 4:3 screens for these reasons. The combination of the good screen, keyboard and the sturdy hardware weigh up to the disadvantage of the rather anaemic CPU (1.8GHz Pentium M) and the limited memory (2GB). An inline PATA-SATA adapter and a SSD make the things faster than they ever were in their heyday and they still run for hours on the extended battery.

It'd be worth a try to stuff a more modern board into its magnesium frame but only if that board could drive the screen.

[Waterluvian]

The one problem I have, rational or not, is just how worn out those laptops look over time. The plastic gets all shiny and worn down and the thing just starts looking greasy.

That's probably the only thing I miss from my older macbook.

[ggreer]

I don't mind the worn look, though I often clean the fingerprint oils off the keyboard. A blog post titled Aged to Perfection describes my view[1]:

> The truth is that consumer products are ‘new’ for a very brief moment when they are first removed from the packaging, but spend the great majority of their useful lives as ‘used’ products in the process of decay. Many welcome the breaking-in of products like a leather wallet or a pair of jeans as this wear can be aesthetically-pleasing. The Japanese have a term for this, “Wabi-sabi”.[2] Wabi-sabi can be used to describe the aesthetically pleasing wear of an object as it decays over time.

I still use my X62 as my primary development machine. I like it so much that I've ordered an X210 from the same manufacturer.

1. https://designmind.frogdesign.com/2011/09/aged-perfection/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

[_emacsomancer_]

I've looked longingly at 51nb's X210. It probably could be put into an X200 chassis rather than an X201, I imagine, which would be ideal (I wouldn't really want the touchpad). I can't justify the cost right now though, sadly.

[thomasko]

You can easily put a palm rest without touchpad in the X201, those parts are pretty cheap on ebay.

[_emacsomancer_]

Is the presence/absence touchpad the only significance difference in the chassis between the X200 and X201? (I've never owned an X201.)

[drakonka]

My X1 Carbon is only three years old and already looks really crappy. I take it everywhere with me and it's been through a lot - I'm not exactly gentle. To be honest I kind of like how dinged up it is, shows the nice history of planes and coffee shops we've had together and yet it keeps chugging along.

[abledon]

Just like designer jeans , people will be buying laptops with factory made scuffs and wear and tear in 20 years. Mark my words . There will maybe even be apple iPhones with designer scuffs in the year 2035

[justbaker]

“Excuse me but this Apple already has a bite taken out of it!”

[acomjean]

stickers to the rescue? Or as a protective measure. I've noticed I've been replacing older stickers that have been scratched badly on my MacBook. Goo Gone is what I use to remove the adhesive glue from the old stickers.

[bdcravens]

Doing a plastidip on ThinkPads is a common fix, if you can tolerate that aesthetic

[vvanders]

If you like the 4:3 the 3:2 of SurfaceBook is an okay compromise for something that's a bit easier to source.

[syntaxing]

Same! I built my X62 after reading his post. How did you do your replacement screen? I have the HD version but I cracked something internally when I was replacing the bulb to LED :/. Works great besides some light leakage on the corner. I just cover it with some tap to stop it from blinding me.

[lqet]

For the metal work, I bought a cheap tool like this here [1] and a diamond separating disc. Replacing the screen was by far the most complicated part, but there are many tutorials still out there, because this was already a fairly common mod for the original X61. It is incredibly important that the screen fits _perfectly_ into the lid, otherwise it won't close properly and/or you will get strange patterns on the display after a while because of the stress. Inserting the LED strip was relatively easy. For the light leakage, I bought some very thin black tape at Obi (a German hardware store) which doesn't let any light through (I have forgotten which tape it was, it was suggested in some old tutorial in a German ThinkPad forum).

[1] https://www.amazon.de/Multifunktionswerkzeug-Mehrzweckschlei...

[kristianp]

Are there T40 mods available? I'd prefer a 14 inch to the X60's 12 inch screen.