I have bought four Thinkpad 600s from auction sites. The first, a plain 600, failed about 6 months ago, but I had had nearly 5 years use out of it. I now have two 600Es, which have the larger screen. One has a DVD, one has a built in modem. I bought another 600E and set it up for a friend on the Coast. It had a built-in modem, supported by Linux, and has Debian 3.0 on it. A bit of an old distro, but he's pleased as punch.
Thinkpads crop up all the time on TradeMe, at various prices. They appear on Ebay's Australian site, and many vendors there will ship to NZ. I have had no trouble with auction sites in general, but do your research! The 600E max CPU is I think 400MHz. Max memory is 2x128Mb PC100 SODIMM (+32Mb on board). Later BIOSes allow 2x256Mb. Batteries are usually knackered, but can be bought seperately if required. Under Linux, USB works, PCMCIA works, APM works- Meh! It all works. The 600 series has a good reputation- good specification, robust, reliable, and tastefully put together. You might be in the market for something a bit more grunty than the 600 though. Some other Thinkpad models are a bit quirky, but Google is your friend. HTH Andy -- Now playing: Mono - Life In Mono (Alice Band Mix)
