First Post on thinkpad forums

[futurethinkpadowner2]

Good evening and forgive me if this is an inappropriate area to write a post. I really do not know how I became interested in the Thinkpad. I have reviewed various sites regarding the Lenovo Thinkpads and the IBM Thinkpad. I know NASA has used them on the Shuttle and on the ISS so I told myself if they are good enough for Nasa they certainly would be good enough for me. I dont want to insult either IBM or Lenovo. One thing I think I want is the keyboard that IBM used. I see the majority of users love the old style keys as opposed to the island style.I will be running linux. My old HP ze5300 just died. I think it overheated and will not turn on as well as the battery is shot. I could get a new power brick to see if it will still work but I think this is the opportunity to buy an older TP. I installed a new 80 gb HD and installed 2 GB RAM. Running Peppermint OS 4. I love Linux because its a nice change from Windows and I wanted to have a challenge in learning. I would like at least a T60 or X 61.
Any helpful comments are welcomed.
Thank you
Stu

[Cigarguy]

The older Thinkpads are wonderful machines. IMO, their classic keyboard was and still is the best. Don't care much for the new chiclet style keyboard myself. Any T420/X220 or older machine had the classic keyboard. Screen resolution and quality is also important to me. Some T60 had the really nice Flexview screen which was and is a beautiful screen. Unfortunately Flexviews were no longer available starting with the T61 series.

Of all of my Thinkpads, my two favourites is the T60 with Flexview screen and T400/T500 series. T60 are getting old in the tooth. The chipset on these will only accommodate 3 GB of DDR2 RAM. Having said that for web browsing, Office use and general computing it's still very capable. T400/T500 usually comes with a more powerful CPU and if you get one with switchable graphics is still more than capable. It takes DDR3 RAM which is a lot cheaper than DDR2. Get one with a high res screen and your all set.

Whatever laptop you choose, budget for a SSD. More than any other upgrade this will give you the most bang for buck.

In general, the other things I love about Thinkpad is availability of a maintenance manual which makes working on these machines quite simply. There is a lot of community support forum, with this forum being the best. Parts are easy to source and are readily available. Thinkpads are also durable machines and, for a laptop, can accommodate many configurations and upgrades.

[mrj47]

I recently upgraded my x61s/x61t to a x201 with a wxga+ screen (x200s/x201s), it's wonderful. This was the kind of laptop I was looking for when I bought my x61s.

The pros: core processor, (1440x900 res, not sxga+ but its acceptable), ddr3 (cheaper buying 2x4gb ddr3 than ddr2).

I run linux on my thinkpads and regardless of what model you choose the support for it is great. Cheers!

[ZaZ]

You might help your cause if you said what you're looking to spend.