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[nycphp-talk] [OT] notebook recommendations - time to retire the Thinkpad t42p... anyone know Lenovo's t61p?

Justin Dearing zippy1981 at gmail.com
Sat Aug 9 08:39:55 EDT 2008


I personally like the lattitude D820 my company gives me to use. The
D830 models are out and I don't think much has changed other than
ram/cpu configurations.

I never ran linux on it or vista on mines. The D830s seem to run vista
fine. My laptop screen has a higher resolution than either of my 20"
flatscreen monitors that the docking station is hooked up to.

Yes its big and heavy, Thats' something I don't care about.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 10:25 PM, Michael B Allen <ioplex at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 7:14 PM, inforequest <1j0lkq002 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
>> On the (excellent) advice of the PHP community almost 4 years ago, I bought
>> a Thinkpad t42p. I still love it but it's time to plan retirement.
>>
>> Can anyone recommend the Lenovo t61p as a replacement, or is there something
>> clearly better? No, I'm not going to switch to a mac. Thanks.
>
> I recently got a T61 15" widescreen 1600x1050, Intel video and Intel
> AGN wireless (model 6465-CTO).
>
> I let it "age" a while before installing Fedora 9 which ran on it with
> very little help. IIRC Fedora didn't install the wireless firmware
> out-of-the-box but I think that was about it.
>
> Originally I got the lower resolution screen, hated it, had to send it
> back and Lenovo charged me a 15% restocking fee. So pay close
> attention to the screen resolutions. If you like smaller text, make
> sure you upgrade the screen.
>
> On a related note, note that the T61p (which has the highest
> resolution) requires the Nvidia chip last I checked which non-Windows
> systems do not support as well (Linux uses that driver wrapper
> business).
>
> I was a little disappointed with the screen. If you move your head
> back and forth it looks like there are shadows behind it. It's fine
> but it's definitely not as *consistently* bright as my now quite old
> T30.
>
> The lid is somewhat hard to open and now it seems I can rock the
> hinges a little in the open position. It's not a problem. It just
> makes me wonder if there's an engineering flaw that might become a
> problem later.
>
> I think the machine is a little big. I don't know if Lenovo designed
> the IBM Thinkpads but it seems to me they could do a little better job
> squeezing things into smaller spaces (note that I'm talking about the
> widescreen version).
>
> Finally, I'm a little worried about Lenovo. I could be wrong, but for
> some reason I don't think IBM would have charged me a restocking fee
> for a "I don't like the screen" kind of problem. But then again, the
> prices have really come down over the past year so I guess we end up
> paying for things either way.
>
> Despite the above mentioned minor issues, I looked closely at
> alternatives and there simply were none. I don't understand how anyone
> could buy anything other then a Thinkpad. ALL the other offerings out
> there are more expensive, have fewer features, and are bigger /
> heavier. The only contender is Apple because OSX gives you a UNIX
> based OS, a really nice desktop and very sleek looking hardware. But
> Apples are much more expensive and have fewer features so if you can't
> really use OSX (e.g. you want to dual boot w/ Windows) or you don't
> care about weight and sleek design, it's not compelling enough to
> usurp a Thinkpad.
>
> Mike
>
> --
> Michael B Allen
> PHP Active Directory SPNEGO SSO
> http://www.ioplex.com/
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