ThinkPad X230 Refurbishment

My ThinkPad X230, in service for at least two years now, has been acting up lately. First the screen bezel took a hit and a chunk of it cracked clean off. Then the left button under the TrackPoint started failing intermittently. On top of that the stock SSHD already has bad sectors — file searches hang for ages. Nothing fatal, just a pile of small problems that need fixing.

So, since it’s a ThinkPad anyway, I bought a brand new keyboard and screen bezel off Taobao, plus a new drive, and while I was at it I stuffed in the RAM I’d upgraded out of the X250.

Prying off the screen bezel is a bit of a pain, but a credit card or similar makes it much easier.

The process went fine enough — the X230 is a lot easier to take apart than the X250. Everything got replaced in the end: the drive is now a 7mm 1TB, RAM is up to 16GB, and the keyboard with its worn-shiny keys is new too.

Not bad overall. Call it a New Year’s present to myself. Apart from the screen resolution being a hard flaw, the X230 is still pretty much perfect.