The IBM Thinkpad R50 Review

The IBM Thinkpad R50 was another great laptop in the Thinkpad series that began way back in 1992. It was also one of the last laptops that IBM manufactured itself before transferring the company to Lenovo in 2005. The R50 came with a 1.5 Ghz processor and 256 megabytes of ram. It also came in either a 14 inch or 15 inch LCD display. And weighed about six pounds.

You can find the IBM Thinkpad R50 for $100-$150 dollars on eBay. Not a bad price, considering that this R50 Thinkpad used to cost over $1700, just a few short years ago. You can install Windows XP or Vista on this machine. The keyboard is magnificent and it has a very business like feel to it. The R50 is very durable and has an extremely sturdy case. It is one of the best laptops IBM has ever made. It comes with a wireless card installed. The hinges on the R50 are extremely sturdy.

The R50 has the classic Thinkpad touch pad and has one of the most secure BIOS systems ever made for laptop. If you lose the BIOS password for a Thinkpad, it is extremely hard to recover it. This laptop also has a DVD-ROM/CD-R drive and a 40GB hard drive. The R series laptops look a lot like the T40 series laptops and have Intel Centrino processors in them. The Centrino processors have recently been discontinued. You can download the drivers for this laptop on the IBM site so don't worry if you lose the CD for this machine. You can upgrade this laptop to up to 1 GB of ram through the bottom slot. A screw holds the door for the ram, so all you have to do is take out one screw and install the chip of your choosing making a memory upgrade very easy for the average user.

In conclusion the IBM R50 Thinkpad is a great laptop you can buy today off of eBay for about $100. It is still a very decent computer in today's computing world. It is a good option for somebody that doesn't need a computer with a lot of power. It would be good for basic web browsing, email and watching video. Another great feature about this laptop is it is easy to work on and easy to take out the DVD drive and replace it with a DVD burner. If you are short on cash this would be a great option for you.