All IBM Thinkpad Owners

[roguerower]

I'm gonna be movin away to college next year (sniff, sniff ) and I am seriously considering buying a Thinkpad (T42 or a new T43 for engineering). Has anyone ever been let down by them. They seem to crank out pretty good notebooks. Any recommendations? Thanks

 

[xcrunner51]

make sure ya get a 14in model. My 15in SXGA+ T42 gets about an hour less of battery life than a standard 14in

 

[jdiddy]

My x31 is a tank I've had it since May of '03 and its still works like a champ. The battery lasts for 2.5 hours no dead pixels even though I've dropped it on carpet from about 5 feet twice! I also had a Thinkpad 760ed from 1997 that I just installed Win98se on and gave to my needy cousin. The battery is that bad boy still lasts about an hour. Basically you can't go wrong with IBM

 

[wisdomtooth]

Originally posted by: roguerower
Has anyone ever been let down by them.

Never been let down here.

And I've had four Thinkpads over the years: 701C (486 with pop-out keyboard), 600X (Pentium-II), X31 (Centrino Pentium M), and my current T41.

IBM's support has been stellar throughout. Fixed my Thinkpads, no questions asked, even after I did something stupid like accidentally drop one on the floor and crack a hinge.

I've never had such consistently good support from the other brands I've used at various jobs, and that includes HPs, Compaqs, Apples, Dells, Gateways, etc.

 

[edtsui]

I have a T42 and I love this thing. Only gripes are lack of firewire, windows key, and an unnecessary parallel port which could be left off in favor of a couple of more usb ports or firewire. But other than that, its fantastic

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: edtsui
I have a T42 and I love this thing. Only gripes are lack of firewire, windows key, and an unnecessary parallel port which could be left off in favor of a couple of more usb ports or firewire. But other than that, its fantastic

What he said! I've had my T42 (1.7 P-M, 512MB, 40GB 5400RPM, 15" SXGA+, a/b/g wifi, 9600 64MB) since last August and I love it. As the other guy mentioned, battery life is kinda blech. On average I get 3 - 3.5 hours with the 6-cell :thumbsdown:
Get the 9-cell whatever you do and if you find yourself with an extra $120, buy the UltraBay battery; combined you should get ~7 hours

Depending how long you can wait, the T43 is supposed to be SWEEEEET; but they don't ship for like another 3-4 weeks and will be mucho $$$$ for a while. BTW, once they start shipping there will be a review on the T43 at the website in my sig; I CAN'T WAIT

EDIT BTW, the T43's are supposed to get slightly worse battery life than the T42's if that makes a difference. Check out forum.thinkpads.com, the community there can answer any Thinkpad question you have.

 

[WackyDan]

Let me list the ones I've had..

701c, 380, 600, 600x, t20, t21, t22, t23, a31p, t40, t41p, (2) t42p's, and soon to have a t43.. hopefully a 'p'.

Don't ask why I've had so many... it's a work related thing, I get a new one more often than I like actually.

The only one to ever let me down was the t20 with a hard drive that developed a problem with it's boot sectors. I was able to recover most of my data however.

I travel weekly all over the world, but mostly within N. America, and through numerous drops, scrapes, and all kinds of other situations, my thinkpads have never let me down as much as some others brands we've had on our team, or that I've personally carried.

 

[RichieZ]

never by the thinkpad itself

but just today I had to call and see why my new laptop says shipped and the tracking number still doesn't work 2 days later. And I got somebody in India, damn usually when I call its always IBM support in Atlanta Georgia, first time I've even been outshored when talking to IBM

 

[RonS]

Originally posted by: xcrunner51
make sure ya get a 14in model. My 15in SXGA+ T42 gets about an hour less of battery life than a standard 14in

It's generally agreed that the 15" has better build quality than the 14" version. Also, the 15" displays are "flexview" and much higher quality. You can read all about it at http://forum.thinkpads.com

 

[fbrdphreak]

The 15" Thinkpads that use the higher resolution SXGA+ and UXGA+ screens are "Flexview" screens, which offers increased brightness and near universal viewing angles. However, this does not come without cost and does increase the drain on the battery. However, I must say that I was just waiting for a bus and sitting outside on a cloudy day, I could barely see my screen at full brightness. There is an option where you can have the laptop run the LCD in a lower power mode (called Normal under the menu option) and then a full brightness mode. I flipped that on and I could see it almost perfectly. At the time my CPU was set at 600MHz and drawing about 15-16W, when I moved it up to high brightness my power draw increased to about 18W. So it does hurt battery life, but is awesome when you are using it out. :thumbsup:

 

[calyco]

Funny, I was just about to start a similar thread since I just bought a factory refurbished T30 off Overstock.com. The laptop comes with a 90 day IBM warranty, does anyone know if IBM has some kind of extended warranty plan that I can purchase in case in the future I decide I need it?

 

[fbrdphreak]

I believe they do. Call IBM with your serial # handy

 

[ViperSSD]

My brother and my dad both have IBM laptops that they got from the company they work for. Both have seen there T-series dropped on to floors, fall out of overhead bins, sit in hot cars, etc...

With their travel schedules, the laptops can take beating, however, my brother does not like the screen and/or graphics capability when compared to his other laptop. If you really dont plan on gaming excessively and are worried about the beating your laptop may take, IBM is a good choice.

 

[imported_CromsDog]

I gots me an ole 390tx with a PIII 450MHz and 196mb of ram. It runs XP fine for General purposes. I use it as a loner for people at my office for when they go out of town so you can imagine the abuse it takes. The battery on it went out a while ago and after replacing it it runs fine. These things are tanks. IBM corporate service is great, I have never personally dealt with there consumer side.

 

[calyco]

Ha, check this out:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=62733&highlight=thinkpad

 

[roguerower]

Yeah, i saw those the first time i checked ibms out. Ive looked at the website and seen some of the first t43s. they look tight. Ill probably spring for the extra video card. I wont be playing games hardcore since for the first year i cant have games or ill get my hard drive formatted. ill build a system sophomore year to do my gaming on. I've heard that the new Sonoma+Centrino can hold its own against a p4 and amd64. true?

anyone know what kind of vid cards ibm is gonna supply the t43's with?

 

[RonS]

The T43 will have three graphics options:

1. Integrated discrete Intel graphics
2. X300
3. FireGL V3200

 

[Tarrant64]

Just purchased a T42 for my dad for christmas(he was using an old dell latitude that is just...old now). He loves it, and takes it everywhere with him and says it's great for work. just read a few reviews on it as well, and so far it's one of the top business notebooks you can get out there right now, so it should prove to be worthwhile when it comes to engineering.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

IBM tech support is a fail. My first and only experience thus far it took them 4 days to reply to me, then EXPECT me to try and reply to their response within 24hrs otherwise their system would close the case and assume its dealt and done with.

The keyboard, while has a very nice feel to it, has been somewhat of a let down as well. Two of the keys fell off and I had to reseat them. Another two became mushy and lost it's clickiness.

 

[fbrdphreak]

And what Thinkpad did you have?
Did you e-mail them I assume? I called IBM Tech Support only once, to replace the poopy 6-cell battery after a month of use :|, I had an ENGLISH SPEAKING AMERICAN on the phone from their call center in Georgia with almost no waiting. He tried to give me the standard reply about battery life, but then promptly shipped me a new one. :beer: for IBM

 

[roguerower]

Now how will all of those graphics cards stack up in comparision w/ existing ones. Is the FireGL any good for gaming. Also, i thought the x700 was gonna be used with sonoma?

 

[fbrdphreak]

The graphics cards will perform slightly better than their AGP variants. The FireGL is decent for gaming, the big benefit will be the extra memory. I am not familiar with the PCI-E version, but I know with the AGP's that the 9600 is only a little bit slower than the FireGL T2 128MB; and sometimes it is slightly faster due to a tiny increase in memory clock speed. Overall, if you get the FireGL graphics card & use the Omega drivers for it, you will have one of the better gaming Thinkpads.
Also, the X700 will be used for Sonoma, but it is up to the vendors as to what card they use. IIRC, Sony will be using the X700 in their 15.4" notebooks. Look here