Which one to buy???

[guizado]

Hi, guys, after being a happy owner of a A20p, which is dead due to my own fault, ive decided on buying another Thinkpad.
After having a look on ebay theres some good prices for some thinkpads, so im here to ask your oppinion on which one to buy.
So heres the contenders.

T30 from £230/$460 1.8Ghz 256MB 40GB
R40 from £190/$380 to £230/$460 2Ghz 20GB 256MB or 40GB 512MB for the 2nd price
T40 from £230/$460 to £370/$740 all 1.6Ghz difference in 1GB Ram and Hdd

So, which one would it be reccommendable for me, im more inclined in the cheap T30 or R40.

About upgradability?? Do they all upgrade to the same max Cpu?? since they are all Intel P4.
Are these prices ok??

So any help would be greatly appreciated, regarding prices oppinions, upgradeability etc, Having in mind i have a Core2Duo Desktop and a T43 .

Thank a lot for Yourl help and time.

[tomh009]

The T41 actually is not a P4 CPU -- it has a Pentium M, closely related to Pentium III-M and the Core Duo. You can plug in a Pentium M 765 at 2.1 GHz, significantly faster than anything you can do with the T30 or R40.

The T40 would also be capable of a similar CPU upgrade.

[guizado]

i maybe be wrong, but the R40 and the T30 are 400MHZ 521KB cache, wich you can get a Pentium 4M 2.6Ghz with 400Mhz FSB and 512KB cache, so it would work right??
And for the T40 series yes they have more upgradeability, coz the cache is at 1MB FSB still at 400 for the T41 and T40, and 2MB for the T42 but thats out of my $$$ reach, and sorry my first post i meant T40 and not T41, gonna edit it.
Thanks

[tomh009]

Let's step back for a moment ... what do you plan to use your ThinkPad for? What are your priorities? Performance? Portability? Battery life?

T40 is lighter than T30 which is lighter than R40.
T40 has much better battery life than R40 which has better battery life than T30.
T40 can take up to 2 GB of memory -- probably a bigger difference than the CPU with today's environments.
All three have roughly similar graphics capability, I think.
T30 has Windows 2000 or XP, T40 has XP, R40 has Win98 or 2000.
All three have SXGA+ models, I think.

[ambientscape]

I would go for the T40 if I were you mainly due to the USB 2.0 support while the others doesn't have it.

[pianowizard]

guizado, make sure you check the screen resolution. XGA (1024x768) and SXGA+ (1400x1050) options are available for all three models. Most people prefer SXGA+, which is slightly more expensive than XGA.

[KristianJ]

Another vote for the T40 - because of the reasons already stated The T40 has 32MB of video memory whereas the T30 and R40 generally have only 16MB. However, some R40s are available with a Pentium M CPU and the 32MB of video memory, so if one of your R40 options has these components, may well be worth a look.

[underclocker]

No brainer, T40.

The T30 is an older design with USB 1.1 ports - forget about iPods, digital cameras, external disks, etc.

Some R40's are fine, especially with the Pentium M CPUs like the T4x series, but this one has a Pentium 4M - they run hotter and are less battery efficient. 2.0 GHz is OK, but much slower than a Pentium M at 1.6GHz.

T40 will run very well as spec'd plus is quite upgradeable. In the U.S., T40's (and T41's & T42's) with similar spec's are quite reasonable these days.

The only other machine to consider, in my experience, is an R50 or R51. These are nearly identical to T4x's and cost a little less. I have two - they are solid, upgradeable and reliable.