[PLUG] Thinkpad T61

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Fri Oct 19 20:33:03 UTC 2007


On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:00:56 -0700
Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 10:28:47AM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > In shopping for a new laptop the Thinkpad T61 is currently at the
> > top of my list (but the list order sometimes changes hourly). 
> 
> When I'm thinking laptops and not trying to be overly parsimonious,
> Thinkpads end up at the top of my list.  They're nice-looking,
> well-designed, not unpleasant to support, and usually run the OS of
> one's choice beautifully.  When I get a Real Job, I hope to replace my
> aging Dell with a Thinkpad X series.
> 
> > What features did you get?
> > What features do you wish you hadn't ordered?
> > What features do you wish you had ordered?
> 
> Out of curiosity, what's your answers to these for your last laptop?  
> I've never bought a new laptop, but my list of extras are high-cap
> battery + spare, power-supply, dock (if cheap) and a DVD-RW drive.
> Extra warranty, if cheap.

My current (still kaput) laptop is a Compaq amd64 (single
core). When I bought it I originally ordered the R4000 model, which came
with a larger hard drive and a CD/DVD+- dual layer drive. However, it
also came with ATI video. HP gives you a 30-day no-questions-asked
return privilege. On the 27th day, after hours and hours spent on the
video without being able to get better than 1024 x 768 VESA (including
hours of assistance at my first Clinic), I returned it. Instead I
bought the older R3240 model that has nVidia video. When it arrived I
tried several distros, none of which gave me any better video, until I
put an Ubuntu Hoary amd64 CD in the drive. The 1680 x 1050 video was so
stunning that I became an Ubuntu convert on the spot. Since then I have
occasionally tried other distros, but Ubuntu has won my heart.

Top of my list of things I was looking for when I bought the R4000 was
Linux compatibility, and people on the R3000 e-list indicated that they
didn't have any problems with their R3000 series laptops, so that is
one of the reasons I chose it. It was also cheap considering the
features. But the question, "what's your answers to these for your last
laptop?" isn't completely germane now. For example, it was my first
laptop, and now I'm going to check the weight of whatever I buy next.
I'm tired of schlepping its 10 lbs to PSU and back. I also know a lot
more about Linux and compatibility issues. I won't be getting a laptop
with a Broadcom wireless chip, even though I now know how to fix it
with ndiswrapper. And technology has advanced considerably - now I want
a Core 2 CPU and a SATA hard disk that's big enough to allow me 15 GB
for a Virtualbox guest OS and still have gobs of space for music and
linguistics stuff. And I also want something that has a good reputation
for quality and ruggedness. I don't know how many hours I've spent
fixing corruption on the hard disk because of the flaky connector and
learning how to replace keyboards, RAM sticks and hard drives.

> > Where did you get it, what is the best place?
> 
> Find a friendly IBM employee.  You just need their name and ID to get
> some great discounts at IBM's online store.

That's a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

After posting my question this morning it turns out I had to go to
Jantzen Beach. While there I went to CompUSA, Circuit City, Staples and
Office Depot. Closest to the T61 that I found was a retired demo model
of a T60 at Circuit City that was sitting in a cabinet down under the
display. They also had an identical one that was a customer return.
However, the demo was missing its battery, the other one had a dead
battery, and the clerk couldn't find the power brick for either one.
But at least I got to see the physical layout and it looked acceptable.

I also discovered a store locater page at lenovo.com, and evidently
Computek at 16th and Jefferson is a Lenovo laptop dealer. I called them
and they have a T61 on display. They're open 9-5 and 10-3 Saturday, so
maybe I'll swing by to check it out.

I still haven't given up on the Dell laptops, but I won't be getting
one of their Linux laptops because they are not adequate. 

Thanks to everyone for the responses. 



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