The responses to my blog entry about Thinkpads have been overwhelming. This is great and yet another proof that the Debian community is one of the greatest assets out there. Thanks to all who have replied!
I am have decided for the X series since I am looking for a
light carry-on, rather than a workstation. Moreover, I am going to
get the X40 and not the X41 because the X41 features a Broadcom
NetXtreme NIC, which I’d rather avoid in favour of the
eepro100 in the X40. The X40 also is said to provide
and additional 30 minutes of battery time over the X41, due to the
slower processor (1.5 GHz) and front side bus.
So I went to check it out again yesterday, and in the words of several people on IRC: “The X40 is love.”
Anyway, here is the condensed summary of the points people rose in their replies, which have influenced my decision:
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Get one without an ATI card as they have failed to release power management specs, are badly supported, and generally suck. The X40 has an Intel card which works fine (1000fps), and even though it’s not a rocket, that’s all I ever need. One person reported “limited driver support.”
-
Get the universal bay for the X4?, it’s a minimal addon but gives you the choice about flexibility vs. weight before you leave the house/hotel every day. I am not sure about that one yet. The only real purpose for the universal bay I see is to hold a CD/DVD drive. Together, that’s an additional $400 or so. I could get an external USB drive for way less, but I wonder: does the external drive drain the battery more? And if it’s USB, isn’t it bound to cause trouble and elicit raving fits of madness, when I can’t watch the movie I want on the plane because the Linux USB subsystem decided (once again) to pretend it’s not listening?
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If getting a T4?, buy the long-life battery for 6 hours. With the X4? and the 8 cell battery, you get 7.5 hours (maxx says 5 while working). You can buy an additional battery to mount on the universal bay for another 2-3 hours, but I’ll go with a second 8 cell and a quick suspend-to-disk to switch between. That’ll be 10 hours of battery life, non-idle.
-
Try to get an Intel wireless chipset, instead of the Atheros one. While the first only requires non-free firmware, the latter requires a non-free driver.
-
THe T4? DVD drive is listed as \
DVD-RAM\, which is apparently a dead format. However, it seems that the actual drive (\MATSHITA UJ-822S\) does support DVD+/iRW. The write speed seems to be slow, but digital audio extraction capabilities appear to be good.
I was also told to look at the X3?, which is slightly bigger than the X40, but easier upgradeable because of the 2.5” Hdd, not the 1.8” one (which are expensive). Not sure whether I can, since the university will not buy used stuff, and IBM doesn’t have them anymore. X31 and X32 still exist, but their website sucks. Plus, the special offer by the university doesn’t apply to the X3? series.
Finally, there is a Thinkpad Wiki, and that is cool!
So, the X40 it is. Add the bay and a DVD drive, a second 8 cell battery, a Kensington lock, 512 Mb of RAM for a total of 1 Gb, and the 3 year on-site world-wide warranty service, and it comes at around 2150 € incl. shipping. That’s expensive, but I find it an acceptable price for what seems like one of the best travel notebooks out there.
