Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Found for free locally. Took a bit of effort to track down the compatible power supply, but I did manage to find it. Works perfectly with an upgraded hard drive and floppy drive.

This thing is massive.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

I first got this laptop for free at a community garage sale in 2021. It was non-functional when I got it, but I was able to get it working eventually after replacing a bad capacitor on the motherboard. However, many issues remained and it never ran reliably. Fast forward to 2023, I finally got a parts unit off of eBay and now it boots reliably, and most functions on it seem to work. The hinge mounts are broken, which is an issue on all of these at this point though. Luckily, they failed in a way that they act completely floppy, so I can keep my unit stored closed without any risk of damage.

It's got a really nice keyboard, but a really terrible screen. Good for typing, bad for games.

Status: Semi-Working

Condition: Good

I bought this one off of eBay in 2023, for around $70. It was sold as working, and it was when it arrived, but it unfortunately developed problems shortly after. Mainly, I took it apart to get the NiCad CMOS battery out, and caused internal microfractures to the weak keyboard cable while doing so. Because of this, some keyboard keys don't work at all, and others only do so intermittently. Otherwise though, this WinBook works and boots into Windows 3.1. Well, I think the DC/DC board needs a capacitor replacement as it doesn't like to warm-boot, but hey, it mostly works.

It's not a very good laptop though. No sound, bad keyboard, and a passive matrix LCD. The LCD is much better than the PS/Note 425's LCD, but it's still passive matrix.

I'm still very glad I bought this, despite its faults, as it came with the rare proprietary power supply, which has come in handy for my other 486 WinBook.

Status: Working

Condition: Poor

I'd prefer to call this one an "eBay rescue" more than anything else. I got it for all of $30, sold as untested, with some plastic damage. I just felt bad for it, and once I had the 4-pin AC adapter from my other WinBook, I had to get it. To my surprise, it works perfectly! It's got some chipped of plastics here and there, and I had to fix the hinges with JB weld (as did I with the other one), but it boots up. It's got a faster CPU than the other WinBook, and a better screen (color!), but it otherwise about the same. Still not a great laptop, but regardless it's one I'm happy to own. I just like weird old laptops.

Status: Dead

Condition: Fair

I got this one for free at the VCF East Swap Meet in June, 2023, "sold" as-is with LCD rot. Once I got a look inside it though, I saw that it had been utterly decimated by corrosion. Clearly, it had been in a flood long ago. I made some salvage attempts, but it ended up being just about a total loss.

That being said though, the keyboard on it feels very nice to use, and it's got a trackball built in. It's also 386-based, meaning it's a compact 386 laptop with a built in pointing device, which isn't super common. Now that's got me wanting a working one! To bad they seem to be very rare.

I believe that this laptop was designed by Lexmark.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

A nice, high quality 486 laptop with a TFT screen and robust hinges that don't fail. Is such a thing even real?

Status: Working

Condition: Good

The best spec of the first-gen Versas - Pentium with the 10.4" LCD, 640x480. There was an 800x600 version, but that one's worse for DOS games. This is my only laptop that hits that "perfect MS-DOS gaming laptop" spec of a 640x480 TFT screen and a DOS-compatible sound card.

Status: Semi-Working

Condition: Excellent

It's in near perfect condition, but has motherboard trouble. The real time clock will fail intermittently, and cause it to not get passed BIOS. I've tried replacing the clock crystal and the RTC chip itself and it still has trouble, so it's probably something else. Still, it will cold-start if it's been sitting for a while, then it will run fine until a reboot. Most of the time.

Status: Working

Condition: Mint

I bought this one New-Old-Stock from a member on the VCF Forums. As that would suggest, this unit is in peak physical and operation condition. It's great!

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Another eBay find. It's a bit rough, missing screws, the screen may be starting to fail, but it works (for now). Bought it because I wanted a 560, thought they were neat. My opinion on it now that I have one? Eh. They're ok. Built well, robust hinges, perfectly fine, but for some reason I still don't absolutely love it like I thought I would. I'm still not sure why.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

A nice, high quality Pentium laptop. I was lucky enough to get one with zero corrosion from the two internal varta batteries as well!

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Got this one at the VCF East June 2023 Swap Meet for $50. It works, but it's a bit rough. Not a bad price though for a working mid 90s Toshiba, in an age when VARTA CMOS batteries are killing them all. As for if it's good or not, well, it's good! Very good. No complaints about its usability.

The biggest issue with this one for me is how horrifically terrible the plastics are. I swear that I notice a new stress crack every time I pull it out. It's bad enough that I suspect I will eventually have it completely fall apart on me, which is a shame.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Regular old eBay find. Showed up with a broken hinge unfortunately. The actual metal snapped, so I either have to source a replacement hinge or try some JB Weld and hope it holds...ugh. It's otherwise in great shape, and works just fine at least.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Another eBay find, and another WinBook. This one's a Pentium MMX system, and a quite nice one at that. Great all-rounder. Biggest issue with these is that the plastics around the hinges like to self-destruct, but they haven't on this one yet. I reinforced the area inside around the hinge mounts with tons of epoxy to try to keep it from cracking.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

I got this one from the same guy at the same garage sale that yielded me the PS/Note 425 (and also for free!). This one was working from the get-go, and remains so now. It's one of my favorites, if not my favorite, from this era. Everything about it is just great. Build quality, keyboard, screen, the whole shebang.

Status: Dead

Condition: Excellent

Bought at the June 2023 VCF East Swap Meet for $20 working. I took it apart to check for any impending VARTA doom and found some. Unfortunately, the battery had already won. An internal connector was damaged, and became desoldered partially when I cleaned up the corrosion. Later it fell off entirely. I tried to reattach it but failed. It's technically able to be fixed, but it's pretty far gone.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Another cheap eBay find, this time from late 2020. It works fine, but the plastics are extremely brittle. Good laptop though, shame the plastics are garbage.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

This one came from a Mercari lot of two, the other being another D300XT that I parted out. It had a cracked LCD. This one works, although the plastics are in similarly poor shape. Hinge issues, etc. I mainly bought the lot for the accessories: two power supplies, documentation, floppy drive modules, and more. Lot was $70 total, and I needed a new charger at the time anyway as my last one had failed. I figured that $70 for two chargers, and two laptops, and a bunch of extra stuff was well worth it, and it was, to me at least.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Another eBay laptop, just wanted one from this series. The motherboard sustained damage from the VARTA CMOS battery, but by some miracle it still works. In decent shape although the plastics are just as bad as the CPi's are. Luckily many parts of this one are made from magnesium.

The battery did take out the keyboard though. So now I'm stuck with a Spanish keyboard, which was the only replacement that I could find.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

The T-Series before the T-Series. This thing is built extremely well, and it has one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever used.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

This thing is a marvel of Sony's engineering from the time. It's a crazy thin subnotebook, can't believe how thin it is for 1999. It feels super high quality too, most of the case is magnesium, not plastic. Only a few of the trim bits are plastic.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Got this one off Craigslist in 2022. It's my main dedicated Windows Me system at the moment, and it's a pretty neat and underappreciated ThinkPad in my opinion.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

I got this one from the February 2022 VCF East Swap Meet, along with an extra parts unit. They've been plagued with motherboard issues since I've gotten them, and I only finally got them working recently (August 2023) by successfully replacing the Analog Devices ADP3421 regualtor chip on one of the motherboards. I really really like this laptop though! One of my favorite ThinkPad designs.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Another find from the 2023 Swap Meet. This one may just be my favorite XP laptop as well, it's super nice.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

My first laptop, and my first computer, first acquired back in 2011. The original motherboard partially failed sometime in 2012 or 2013 (would freeze when booting NT-based Windows, 9x still worked), and I moved on, with it only partially working. Finally, in 2018, I bought a parts machine off eBay and fixed mine. Most of the parts except for the motherboard are from the original unit.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

I got real lucky on this one. The A22p is just about the best ThinkPad you could buy in 2001, and I got mine for $5 from the 2023 VCF East Swap Meet! It's in excellent shape and it works just fine. Love this one!

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

I absolutely love this class of laptop - 14" display compact laptop with a 1GHz or faster Pentium III. The T23 is this, and it's a ThinkPad! Those reasons are why I was after one of these for years. Finally found one in January 2024 on eBay for under $50, untested. Lucky me though, it actually worked!

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Another 2023 Swap Meet find. I'd been wanting one of these purple VAIOs for a while now, so I was happy to pick this one up for $20. It works just fine, although it is a bit sluggish. I think the Windows Me install is just a bit bloated up. I'll probably take a backup image soon, since it is the factory install, then clean install Windows 2000 for a speed increase. I like it though!

Status: Working

Condition: Very Good

A nice little Pentium III subnotebook. 1.2GHz Pentium IIIM!

Status: Working

Condition: Good

This thing surprisingly uses a desktop Pentium III chip in it. Soldered, unfortunately.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Essentially the same as the C610 but with an updated motherboard inside with a Pentium 4 processor, and it's got a higher res screen standard. As such, I like it about as much as my C610, and that's to say, it's good!

Status: Working

Condition: Good

I found this one on Mercari, untested, for $30. It ended up being dead, but by a combination of an attempted RAM slot reflow and some dumb luck, it came back to life. I was ready and had even started parting it out, but then I tried powering it on "one last time" the next day, and it magically started working. No idea how that happened, but it's worked since (knock on wood). One RAM slot is dead though, and only one speaker channel works. I'll take my wins though. I also got lucky, this one's got the high end 1400x1050 LCD!

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

My newest WinBook to date in my collection. Found it for relatively cheap on eBay, and it's a pretty neat laptop! I really love the design, it's *so* early 2000s.

Status: Working

Condition: Poor

Bulky Pentium 4 desktop replacement. Works but has a bung fan, the hinges are iffy, and the rubber coated lid is sticky.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

A lower end AMD Sempron powered laptop. It has a really nice keyboard but is otherwise unremarkeable, except for perhaps the wacky looking design.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

This thing is a massive desktop replacement laptop, powered by a full Prescott Pentium 4. It's insane in just about every way. Even has a built in subwoofer - in the battery!

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Super nice Pentium M-based XP laptop. I love this thing.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Here we have a Windows XP-powered tablet computer! It's a really neat little computer. It's pen controlled, and actually works really well.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

This one's another Pentium 4 desktop replacement. This one has a slightly older Northwood P4 in it though. Also big and bulky. I call this one the cheese wedge.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Basically a standard business laptop. Mine works fine, but it's got the base model screen and worse, it's yellowed badly and has pressure damage. Just need a screen upgrade and it will be perfect!

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Probably the most generic and common Dell laptop ever. I've seen so many of these. This particular one was my 2nd laptop ever, and a former daily computer. This one works fine, but has a busted right screen hinge that I need to replace.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Most people agree that this was the definitive final IBM-made T Series ThinkPad. It's a really nice looking laptop, and great to use, but it known for reliability that's spotty at best. Mine still works for now though.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Lenovo's first gen low end. Rather unremarkable, but this one will always be very special to me. It was my first ThinkPad, and I have a lot of good memories with this thing in general. I may convert this one into a higher-end R60 at some point.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Very average 17" laptop in most regards. The speakers were good, but they're blowing out as all the old Harmon Kardon speakers seem to do.

Status: Semi-Working

Condition: Poor

Previously dead, this laptop's condition has been upgraded to semi-alive! It's had a failed GPU for as long as I've had it, bad solder joints. Been through the oven 3 times, and still won't stay reliable. I thought it had fully died again, but I managed to boot it a few times last night (as of writing), so it's still not completely kicked the bucket.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

A pretty nice 17" business workstation laptop. Very nice keyboard, good screen, overall good.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

This one has a T61 base, a T60 display housing, and a T61p 1920x1200 display and model badge.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

A high end workstation system. It's got a REALLY nice for the time LCD with 1920x1200 resolution and great colors. Contrast isn't bad either, but it's definitely still TN. This is an excellent system.

Status: Working

Condition: Poor

A former daily driver laptop. I loved this one... now it's in poor condition though and has a few functionality issues. I was going to get a parts unit to fix it, but now I've got the 8530w workstation version of it so I'm probably not going to. I really should just part this thing out but I'm sentimental.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

The souped-up workstation version of the 8530p. 1920x1200 and Quadro graphics!

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

My mother used this laptop daily for 11 years, and that keyboard wear proves it. It's a tank though, still working perfectly despite all that use. It will probably outlive us all.

Status: Working

Condition: Good

I built this one out of two parts systems, and a handful of other parts. It's currently my fastest Windows 7 laptop by CPU performance, although my T430 will break that record once I get a 3840QM swapped in. Still, for now, this one holds that title. I really am quite fond for this laptop. The design is pretty unique, it's built pretty well, and it's a fast, capable system. Mine's a pretty high-end example. My main complaint is with the TN screen. Mine's the 1600x900 panel, but the contrast still sucks. That's just a serial issue with every 14" laptop from this time though, so it's not really Dell's fault.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Wouldn't you look at that! A netbook. I really dislike this one.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Mid-end late Windows 7-era laptop. It's far from the worst thing I've used, so it has that going for it. Yet another case though of a laptop with very mediocre speakers having some fancy audio brand's logo on it though.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

I've got three of these. Two working, one in a pile of parts I'm going to throw out. They're bottom of the barrel cheap Windows 8 laptops, but unlike some others, I don't mind these too much. For what they are, Lenovo actually packed decent value in here. Yes, it's slow. Screen is low-res, but bright. Keyboard is very usable. Speakers are actually not terrible, which is a surprise for a laptop like this. They're mediocre, not very good at all, but liveable. Not bad Lenovo, not bad.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

This so far has been my favorite daily use laptop, ever. I've modded this thing with an aftermarket 1080p IPS converter board and LCD, and a classic 7-row keyboard, along with RAM and SSD upgrades, and it makes an absolutely incredible Windows 7 laptop, and doesn't do half-bad at modern Linux either. It's my main school laptop for the time being, and it's what I'm currently working on the site with. I honestly don't have any complaints about it.

Ok, well I have one. The spring-loaded lid latch doesn't spring. But that's just my unit.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

A low-end HP laptop running Windows 8.1. Normally, I wouldn't like this sort of thing, but I've installed an SSD in it and it boots wicked fast. I'm probably going to keep this one around until I get an actually good Windows 8.1 laptop, likely a ThinkPad T440p. Probably.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

This one wouldn't be so bad, but the LCD is EXTREMELY dim. I dislike this thing just because of this more than anything else. And from my research, this isn't just an issue with my unit.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Basically chromebook specs, but it's running Windows.

And it's blue!

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Pretty decent little Windows 8.1-era 2 in one. Does a pretty good job running it, though mine is a lower-spec model. I've quite enjoyed it so far.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

I had one similar to this a bit back, this is a different one. Works fine. Not sure yet what I'm going to do with it. One of the arrow keys is missing.

Status: Semi-Working

Condition: Poor

This one would be nice if it didn't just keep breaking. I'd need to replace the motherboard, keyboard, and the DC jack to get this fully working again. It boots now, but the keyboard is cooked, battery rarely charges due to the dreaded "cannot detect the AC adapter type" error, and the sound only works sometimes.

It's also a former daily driver.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

Formerly my daily-use on-the-go laptop.

I got this one for $20 from a garage sale as "dead" but it turned out it only needed a RAM reseat and a bit of persuasion to start again. Since then, I swapped the original god-awful 1366x768 LCD out for a 1440p touchscreen upgrade, and I also gave it a small SSD upgrade. I like it well enough.

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

One of my current daily-use laptops, alongside the T430.

Status: Working

Condition: Fair

My current main laptop. It mainly sees use for high-performance video editing and gaming applications, although I can take it out with me as well. Portable use is something that my ThinkPad T430 or my Latitude E7470 are perhaps better suited for though.

Year: 1984

Status: Dead

Condition: Very Poor

I got this thing for free from a neighbor. The Tadiran Lithium battery leaked on the motherboard, and the whole case was also rusty. I suspect it was stored in a VERY damp basement or garage for many, many years. Needless to say, it doesn't work.

I'm keeping it, and planning on repairing the motherboard and then restoring the case. The original power supply and the floppy drive both amazingly work fine.

Year: 1987

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

This one works just fine, but it needs a new hard drive. I really should get on that at some point soon.

Year: 1998 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Excellent

Nice little small form-factor tower. I think that it's funny that they stuffed a 5.25" Quantum Bigfoot drive into a computer this small.

Year: 2003 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Good

The most common desktop of the early 2000s, probably. I had to recap the VRM on this one.

Year: 2003 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Good

So common that I found one at the dump. I'd like to get rid of this one, as it's basically just spare parts I don't need, but it's a bit hard to get rid of a desktop. I could give it back to the dump of course, but then I'd feel bad. There's nothing wrong with it.

Year: 2003 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Good

One of my favorite tower designs. Being a 2003 Pentium 4 desktop, I had to recap the VRM (of course), but now it's fine. Unfortunately, I messed up and used the wrong drive rails to try to install an optical drive, and now it's COMPLETELY stuck. I genuinely have no idea how to get it out.

Year: 2005 (I think)

Status: Working(?)

Condition: Good

Media-focused minitower. It WAS working fine, but was not cooperating last time I needed it, so now I have to investigate.

Year: 2005 (I think)

Status: Working(?)

Condition: Good

Had to replace various caps to get this one to work again. Also was another dump rescue! The last thing I got from the local dump before they stopped allowing people to take things from it (data privacy was the cited reason).

Like the HP above, this one also didn't cooperate last time I had it on, so I now have to investigate what's up with it again. Probably more caps that have gone bad if I had to guess...

Year: 2007 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Good

A custom-built AMD tower that I got for free a while back from someone in the neighborhood. My next plans for it are to hot-rod it with a GTX 1050 Ti I have and then see how it can game.

Year: 2009 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Good

Actually a really nice Windows 7-era system. Mine's currently running Windows 10, and it even runs that pretty darn well. It's a great system.

Year: 2011 (I think)

Status: Working

Condition: Good

A less nice Windows 7 desktop. I'd also like to get rid of this one at some point, but, that's tricky.