NYCPHP Meetup

[Michael B Allen]

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/