yeah, he motivated me to get a thinkpad over a macbook at the time.

That said, i'm getting tired of my T500 already. I don't see myself really needing expresscard as much as I was bent on it.

Overall, I've learned that ergonomics matters at the end of the day no matter what machine you use - meaning I care less about laptop screen size and more about bang for the battery life. I can't convince myself to buy a desktop either, so I'm considering getting a 13-14 inch laptop with the fastest processor, ssd, and gobs of ram instead.