I recently picked up a ThinkPad X60 on Ebay for pretty cheap. Even though it came with a 32-bit processor, 1 Gb of ram, and an old HDD, it had plenty of memory and speed to run my standard workload. Maxing out the ram, swapping out the wifi card, and flashing Libreboot even let me play 720–1080p video with reasonable performance. I get around 6 hours out of it with a new battery.
/g/ machine in the wild
I replaced the palmrest and old, damaged keyboard with non-OEM parts. Surprisingly, they came in excellent condition and greatly improved the appearance of the laptop (the fake Chinese keyboard is actually better than the IBM/Lenovo manufactured one).
The main problems with the laptop are the thermals and the 32-bit architecture. (Although 32-bit Parabola runs just fine, its repositories aren’t nearly as well maintained as their 64-bit counterparts.) Since repasting would require I remove the motherboard altogether, I decided to pick up a 64-bit motherboard to repaste and install. The Libreboot docs have a decent guide on X60 dis- and reassembly.
I just received the new motherboard in the mail, and I’m planning on installing, and flashing, it this weekend. We’ll see how it goes!