Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

I've always liked Thinkpads, though recently they've become a bit pricey compared to Dell machines.

At the moment, I'm toting 3.6 pounds of happiness across South America, in the form of an old ebay'd Thinkpad X60. It was top of the line a few years back, with its 1.8ghz core duo. Now it's $350 off ebay, plus $100 total for a 320gb 7200rpm drive and 3GB ram to bring it up to the speed of the dev laptop that I was using just one year ago.

It took some getting used to to run the IDE in 1024x768 (12.1"), but at compile time the thing simply flies. And I know for a fact that my 17" Dell would have been monched a dozen times over on buses by now, assuming my back survived lugging the thing around for this long.

Give the X301 a few years to drop in price, and I'll pick one up as my next "disposable road machine."

I've been using an x60s as my only machine for 3.5 years now. Been pretty happy with it, although the fan had to be replaced and I think my system board is having issues (I get the dreaded ThinkPad beeps sometimes). I've only got 1.5GB RAM though (max on the x60s is 2GB). Perhaps I'll follow your route and eBay myself an upgrade?

Try reseating your RAM modules, if you haven't already. My X301 would beep itself to death every once in a while, and the problem was solved by unseating and then reseating the RAM modules.

I have an x200 which I recommend highly. It was quite a bit less expensive than the x300 when I bought it and more powerful. You don't get an optical drive or a trackpad, but that suits me perfectly. It's a full powered laptop with a great keyboard but is only 12.1" and 3lb.

not to mention that the X200 (X301 too) has got an excellent keyboard and is built like a tank

the only thing I don't like about mine is the poor quality of the screen (low maximum brightness and contrast). for a laptop that's intended to be used on the go, under different lighting conditions, it's a little unfortunate.

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