Comment by CaptainMorgan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CaptainMorgan | Hacker News Reader

If it were me I wouldn't go with a Celeron; for performance and cache reasons the Pentium M is the wiser decision. Maybe if you're preferring wattage and battery versus overall performance you'd go with Celeron. I run IDE's, profiling and debuggers galore so I need what the Centrino offers.

All great points mentioned here. Lightweight; you can get real light these days without being a DR. I love widescreen ever since I bought my new Thinkpad T61p and the poor displays on the Thinkpads are a thing of the past. I highly disagree that Thinkpads are ugly - they're made for efficiency and professionalism, not for show. Linux; my machine came with SLED of which I partitioned for my love of Ubuntu - gotta have Linux for kernel hacking and that obsessive need for ultimate control of your OS.

All that said, I'm a power user and by that I literally mean I handle my laptop ruggedly(and I'm sincerely not a klutz). For this reason I need a Thinkpad for always on the go and durable performance. They take a beating and their customer service(warranty related) is the best in the business. Had many other brands that crapped out after six to eight months on average - Thinkpads last on average three years before I call in for warranty service(high resale value). My T61p is both lightweight, high performance, widescreen, and allows up to 4 GB of RAM, rugged and goes with me everywhere while taking bumps and bruises along the way. Need a new keyboard because your hackin skillz have worn away the home row, space bar and number row? Call in a service ticket and get a keyboard shipped out and arrived to your door in less than two days(Bigtime priority).

Once you go Thinkpad, you never go back, at least for me anyways.

Most people I give PC buying advice to really don't think like I do -- either they want a $400 computer, or they want some $2500 thing with some gimmick feature set (custom color lid? who cares? lightscribe blu-ray burner? do that at home! Vista turbo-memory? Why?). For this reason I sometimes over-discount my own opinions about them when I'm advising others.

I personally agree about Thinkpads not being ugly (when I made that comment I was referring to my wife's perception of them initially -- now she's a T61p WUXGA convert as well).

I also agree about Thinkpad reliability, but I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, and everyone's mileage varies.

I disagree about the T series weight. The T grew to fill the void left by the discontinued ~7 pound A series. Yes it's lighter but I feel sorry for any floor it might land on... but the computer will most likely survive.

I fancy myself a power / heavy professional user as well: I have a very low tolerance for hardware related BS. I run minimalist installs of the OS of my choice (XP at the moment). I expect to be able to throw my computer around (while off -- I'm not a sadist) and not scuff or break anything. I disable or order machines without gimmick features (Bluetooth is disabled on my T60p, I got one without the fingerprint reader), and I don't use the full (software-integrated) versions of drivers for anything I don't have to.

With this recipe, my Thinkpads have been very faithful to me over the last ~10 years, and Lenovo's going to have to really screw it up to lose me as a customer.

Depending on what you're looking for I'd say that IBM/Lenovo is ahead of even Apple on build quality. In my opinion Apple pushes too hard on fine design (fine lines and edges, thin case designs) where the Thinkpad team designs their machines to take abuse first and foremost.

If you're the type of person who values these properties I believe a Thinkpad should be on your short list.

> custom color lid? who cares?

I care. I have to use the machine(s) every single day, sometimes for hours on end. If it's ugly, I don't want to look at it. Same goes for accessories. It's impossible to find a half decent non-black or pink womens laptop bag (I believe there's a special and separate level of hell just for the color pink, that's how much I hate it). I just stick with nondescript messenger bags, which don't always fit the occasion but oh well.

My black MacBook has an engraved lid (http://flickr.com/photos/chix0r/2490375769/). The biggest benefit is that it sticks out like a sore thumb so I know it's mine, since so many people don't do anything to their MacBooks after getting one. Very convenient when you're in a sea of Apple laptops..which used to happen to me at WWDC but now also happens at pretty much any tech conference nowadays.

It also makes a great conversation starter with lots of people who are very tempted to touch it..everywhere from airport security waiting lines to the apple store and all.

I used to think so... and I was (like you) thinking that my (6.77 pounds) T61 was "lightweight". I finaly replaced it by a Portégé R500 (my first non-Thinkpad laptop in years). Less screen real estate (12"1), obviously not as rugged and sturdy, but I could pack no less than four of those R500 in my bag, and it would still be lighter than my old Thinkpad! Get used to it: Thinkpads (most of them anyway) are really heavy by today standards.

Your requirements are obviously different than mine. And I'm not sure where you got yours, but my Thinkpad runs at about 5-5.5 lbs... far from close to seven. By your response, it appears you misread my requirements. I agree it's not the lightest, but maybe I should have said it is a dream compared to my previous T43 which feels more like a weighted brick. But emphasis in my post was on ruggedness... which I'll take any day over weight. In that bag of four Portege's or one Protege and whatever else, I'm more concerned with picking up that laptop where I left off - in top condition, which is tough to say when you got a bag stuffed and who knows what could happen to it in transit. Thinkpads have good investment and therefore resale value and I'm not looking for laptops that are fancy on the shell, not coming close to the levels in durability that a Thinkpad does.

My main point was that the ruggedness and superior build quality of Thinkpads used to have limited drawbacks: they were at worst 10 to 20% heavier than alternatives (and sometimes even lighter, like the 560 around 1995). Not so anymore, especially in the smaller and lighter models: the X200 (and X300) are 120% (and 70%) heavier than a R500. That's why I finally reassessed my longstanding commitments to Thinkpads. But you are right to point that it may be less of an issue for the T series than for the X series: I would probably have stuck to Thinkpads had I been looking for a 15+ inches screen.

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