Classic poly-thinkpad users poll

[L29Ah]

I'm looking at the current state of the laptop market and it feels bad. So I thought I may be able to retrofit some good old Thinkpad with a modern ARM Cortex A15/A5x SoC to make it sound again. But it seems Thinkpads are different in terms of design quality a lot. I've thoroughly touched only T23, T60, R500, X201 and X201t, so I can't decide which one should I base my motherboard design for. So I'd love to hear which Thinkpad do you love most (except for the motherboard, of course), and why. As for me it seems like T60 is a good choice, but it comes with lots of pretty useless stuff like cardbus and cdrom bay, so it might be X60 that I'm looking for.

[Cigarguy]

T60

[rumbero]

As for me it seems like T60 is a good choice, but it comes with lots of pretty useless stuff like cardbus and cdrom bay, so it might be X60 that I'm looking for.

I beg to differ! While i do agree about the sentiment that an integrated optical drive is pretty useless nowadays, one of the main reasons apart from the screen height goodness I still stick with these T6x's is because of the availability of the Cardbus slot and the UltraBay allowing for a secondary HDD or an additional battery.

The more modern those shiny and blazingly fast Thinkenpaddens become, the less flexibility they offer. For me, the attractive balance of the feature set which formerly characterized Thinkpads is pretty gone nowadays.

[ajkula66]

T60

+1 right here.

[brchan]

Agreed with the T60. But, If it wasn't for the chassis flex at the palmrests, I would choose the T4x series if possible. Best looking thinkpad IMO.

[L29Ah]

As for me it seems like T60 is a good choice, but it comes with lots of pretty useless stuff like cardbus and cdrom bay, so it might be X60 that I'm looking for.

I beg to differ! While i do agree about the sentiment that an integrated optical drive is pretty useless nowadays, one of the main reasons apart from the screen height goodness I still stick with these T6x's is because of the availability of the Cardbus slot and the UltraBay allowing for a secondary HDD or an additional battery.

What Cardbus devices do you use these days? I've never seen these in use in Russia for more than 15 years :/
I don't quite understand why would anyone install a second SATA device into a laptop today when one can plug in her SSDs into minipci, SD card slot or Odroid-like EMMC, for instance.
I think about putting a second battery in the freed up space.

[rumbero]

What Cardbus devices do you use these days?

I still use these on a regular basis:

- SD card reader (see ebay.com/itm/221311978226)
- Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS for audio recording (see ebay.com/itm/201174701351)
- DVB-T recording (see www.satelco.de/htm/shop/mobilset/index.htm)
- SCSI adapter (see www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/scsi ... apa-1480b/

I don't quite understand why would anyone install a second SATA device into a laptop today when one can plug in her SSDs into minipci, SD card slot or Odroid-like EMMC, for instance.

This is the most convenient way of backing up data to an external hard disk and to swap around huge amount of data between various machines without relying on any slow network connection.

[ScottyBoy]

T60

+1 - The bulk of my 'older' relatives have the T60 in the 4:3 and WS models & they are solid as a rock. Unfortunately I will more than likely get lumbered with upgrading them soon (ah feck!) with increased RAM, replacement SSDs, secondary HDD storage (data backups as they are terrible for not backing up they're respective data), cheap Intel 6205 WiFi Cards and Windows 7 Pro...god save me from 'wonderful' relatives!

PS - The worst bit of course will be dis-assembling them all to give them a good clean out along with the keyboards!

[RealBlackStuff]

In a T60 there's no point to put in 4GB, they can only use max. 3GB RAM.
As to cleaning: just remove the keyboard, use a brush to clean the dirt of the fan blades, then put e.g. a toothpick between the fan blades, and use compressed air to blow out the rest.
Without toothpick you can create enough voltage from the fast-spinning fanmotor, to blow the motherboard!
If you also need to replace the thermal paste, you only need to also remove the keyboard bezel, so that you can remove the fan.

[ScottyBoy]

In a T60 there's no point to put in 4GB, they can only use max. 3GB RAM.
As to cleaning: just remove the keyboard, use a brush to clean the dirt of the fan blades, then put e.g. a toothpick between the fan blades, and use compressed air to blow out the rest.
Without toothpick you can create enough voltage from the fast-spinning fanmotor, to blow the motherboard!
If you also need to replace the thermal paste, you only need to also remove the keyboard bezel, so that you can remove the fan.

Agree but in the case of my relatives they really need to be given a good cleaning & overhaul (the ThinkPads, not them! ), as I was planning to do this last year before everything cropped up - it was cheaper for me to buy the RAM in bulk as 4GB (2x2GB DDR2) bundles as a fair chunk of them are running with 2x512MB DIMMs in them.