My old Lenovo R500 runs perfectly. But 
for some reason, I got it in my head 
that I needed a new(er) laptop with an 
IPS screen. I decided on the ThinkPad 
L440, because it has a socketed CPU, 
so upgrades are possible in the 
future. But like I said, I really 
didn't need it. So I'm being punished 
for buying something I didn't need. 
Karma. Sigh.

I should have known right away. The 
first one I ordered was beautiful. It 
was in pristine condition. I doubt 
that it had ever been used. But it was 
clearly corporate off-lease. It had a 
supervisor password in the BIOS and 
none of the settings could be changed, 
including the setting to enable 
virtualization. I frequently run 
virtual machines, so I sent it back. I 
should have stopped there.

But I didn't. I get these obsessions 
that must be followed through. I 
ordered another one, this time from 
the U.S. It arrived in good shape. 
There are a few light scratches on the 
outside. The inside is pristine. No 
wear at all, even on the keyboard. 

So then I ordered an IPS screen from a 
supplier in Vancouver. The screen 
replacement was easy. ThinkPads are 
great that way. Power it up. Beautiful 
new IPS screen. Great colors. 
Spectacular viewing angles.

And one. dead. pixel. Right in the 
middle of the screen. 

So I'm trying to arrange an exchange 
with the merchant. New ThinkPad 
sitting downstairs on the workbench 
without a screen, as I type this on my 
perfectly good, 10-year-old R500.

All of these transactions were 
conducted through eBay. I try to avoid 
Amazon as much as possible, but I live 
in a small town, the old mail order 
companies (Sears, Eatons, etc.) are 
all gone, and there aren't a lot of 
alternatives. I don't live anywhere 
populous enough to have a good local 
buy n' sell site, so it's hard to buy 
locally.

In any case, I don't know if it's 
just me, but eBay seems to be a fount 
of bad replacement parts these days. 
Perhaps they're factory rejects. I 
don't know, but the parts I've 
purchased for phones and computers 
lately are really hit and miss, and 
there's a lot of miss. It hasn't 
always been that way.

I've also noticed that there are very 
few private sellers on eBay anymore. 
Almost every seller appears to be a 
merchant. A for sale posting by a 
buying-selling, small-feedback-count 
regular human being is a rarity. 

I kind of miss the way it used to be, 
but I think the high fees really drove 
individual sellers away.

        *     *     *

I've noticed the conversation on 
privacy going on lately. Interesting 
stuff. I think that I might have 
something to say about that later.