Hi!

I'm not a very active user on this forum, but this post is to say goodbye everybody.

Today I realized owning a ThinkPad doesn't make any sense anymore.

I'm not going to look for thinkpad news/offers anymore. From now on, my laptop brand will only be Asus.

I've been looking for a good laptop for the last 4 to 6 months. And I didn't find a good one (or at least, one I can afford).
I'm not rich, and I just can't spend 1000-1200 € on a thinkpad (which nowdays isn't even worth anymore).

In particular, I was wondering between performance (ThinkPad T410/T420, about 1100-1300 €) or portability (HP Folio 13, 900€ or user ThinkPad x301, ~600 €).

I owned an awesome Asus A8Jc H6006H in high school, it's six years old now and still rocks hard (my brothers uses it now). I also owned a ThinkPad T42 and... It's just dead.


But... today was walking in a big computer shop (its name, here in Italy, is "MediaWorld", something like BestBuy in the USA) and I got folgorated by a single laptop: Asus U36SG. Intel core i7, 2.8 Ghz (up to 3.5 ghz with turbo boost). Nvidia GeForce 610M, 1GB dedicated memory (nvidia optimus, so intel card is available too). 4GB ram (which you can actually upgrade). 500GB hard disk (sata, magnetic, that one you can actually upgrade if you want, and you won't have to sell one leg to pay it). Magnesium chassis, 8-cell battery, 13.3 inches display (1336x768, just link thinkpad x1). Bluetooth, usb 3.0. And a real keybord (not completely cichlet, not completely old-scool. i'd prefear an old-school keyboard). Matte display panel (the kind of display you can actually use in the real world, outside home). 1.66 Kg weight.


Just awesome, just perfect. Price of this marvel: 799€.


And then I realized. That's the laptop for me.
I'm not going to look for thinkpads anymore.

So, bye thinkpads.com forum too.

Sounds like a nice bit of kit, good luck with it.

As you can see from my sig below, you can easily upgrade the RAM, hard disk, etc in the Thinkpad - I've upped the machine to 16gb of RAM, have a 120 gb SSD and a 750 gb 7200 RPM in the ultrabay and I still have the mSATA slot to add a third drive if I chose to. However, it sounds like the Thinkpad purchase options / experience / pricing is much different in Italy than in the USA.

Enjoy your new machine, sorry to see a forum member leave.

If you can bear a keyboard without a trackpoint (which is a deal breaker for me), then your choice seems good. Asus is a good brand.

To me it seems like with every new version they are going backwards in both design and quality. Never say never but I do not plan on buying another one in the future.

I sincerely disagree with the quality part of your critisizm. Ive own T23, T60, X300 and now new x120e. The newest version has by far the best quality. T23 and x300 both had lots of flex on the keyboard. x300 had flex on the panel above the keyboard. T60 had melted hole by the touchpad and it's side panels started coming off after 2 years of use. My new x120e which suppose to be a netbook got actually a better quality than any previous thinkpad that I owned. They new chicklet keyboard has ZERO flex.
As for the price, I completely agree E1200 is way to much for a laptop but you got to blame EU for setting up VAT at 20-30%.

Agreed 100% about rigidity of the X120e. The build quality is excellent--I have to go back to the X30 to find a Thinkpad that didn't have squeaky, flexable plastic pieces. In order of the machines I've owned:

IBM X30 - great quality, no flex, only hindered by USB 1.1
IBM T41 - ATI flex issue
IBM T42p - ATI flex issue
IBM T60 - GPU was always HOT, otherwise great build quality
Lenovo T61 - squeaky plastic in the palmrest, there was a bulge in the plastic between the keyboard and monitor
X60s - flex in keyboard, plastic piece separating PC card slots broke
X61s - right palmrest was hot to the touch
Lenovo T400 - squeaky plastic, which was embarrassing to try to explain when the person to whom I was selling pointed it out, after I had just spent 5 minutes raving about Thinkpad build quality

X120e - no squeaking plastic, no flex, fan almost never on, GREAT keyboard. The only thing missing is the rubberized cover and the thinklight, which I'm willing to live with (obviously) because this machine is so sturdy. If the X230--which does have the Thinklight and rubberized finish--continues with the same build quality started with the X120e, I can't help but imagine that it is the best Thinkpad released almost a decade. Unfortunately, it is beyond my price range.

Note: I am not slamming Thinkpads at all -- despite the problems I listed, I still think it is the best machine on the market, and the quality is only getting better. Consider other machines I've owned:
Elitebook 2530p - cheap keyboard, fan was always running, clicking sound from the hard drive (see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-comp ... 2530p.html)
Macbook Air 11.6" - the palmrest is so thin that under normal use of the touchpad, the entire aluminum frame ends up becoming warped, and eventually the touchpad will not register a click (see: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/30 ... 0&tstart=0)

Or forward to the T420.

As for the price: just wait a bit. The X220 and T420 are already obtainable for under $500 and when the first couple of waves of ex-fleet machines hit the used market that price is only gonna come down, and fast...

yup, im glad im not the only one seeing this pattern. by all means if x120e came with IPS screen it would have been the best thinkpad ever built. and the 6 row keyboard, while feeling a bit flat it has ZERO flex. i'd rather have a decreased key travel than flexing in the center or far right like in X300 or T23.

I have started to realize that it's actually better to have a somewhat decreased travel, because that's easier on the fingers. I recently replaced my two main desktop computers' keyboards with ones having low-profile keys. One of these new keyboards is actually chiclet, and many people here are going to find it crazy to replace a conventional desktop keyboard with a chiclet keyboard. True, the chiclet keys felt strange at first and I am still trying to get used to them, but I feel much less strain while typing on both of these new keyboards. In fact, they may even have increasd my typing speed somewhat, perhaps because my fingers don't have to travel as far as on the old keyboards.

IMO, Lenovo's migration to chiclet keyboards is a good move. They weigh a tiny bit less, allow the laptops to be thinner, are easier to clean, look prettier and more modern, and after you have gotten used to them, you may actually type faster on them. On the other hand, messing around with the layout is a crime.

Not sure chiclets are actually easier to clean. With a traditional keyboard, you can remove all key caps and access anything that fell down. With a chiclet, there is also the top plate itself, and there is a tiny gap between the key and the plate. So while it's easier to clean if things are not deep down there, if they are - it maybe even more annoying, as it seems that chiclet caps are harder to take off.

Interesting. I actually did the reverse: I used to type on an Apple Aluminium keyboard (and before that one of the disembodied T4x keyboards that IBM used in those LCD/KB rackmount things) but eventually made the switch (back) to mechanical keyboards. The difference this time around was that I learned to type without bottoming out. That took a while, but once I did learn to do it I was able to type every bit as fast as on a "chiclet" board but without the impact of each stroke.

In fact, once I learned to press only just pass the activation point, I found that a buckling spring keyboard was incredibly pleasant to type on, since the bottom half of the stroke gently cushions your finger and absorbs the excess energy. The trick -- the one that took several weeks to learn -- is that you have to get a good sense of where the activation point is, otherwise you'll end up wasting a huge amount of energy bottoming out the keys *and* still wind up with the shock of bottoming out.

I use a board with dampened Cherry MX Browns at work and a Unicomp Ultra Classic at home, although I'm seriously considering selling the board with the Browns. They're nice, but the activation is just too smooth for me to reliably sense it.