Thinkpads Forum

I'm always amazed at how helpful people are. Every time I get a new thing, there's a forum of help - amazing!!

Now for a couple of questions.

1) With my older eyes, and almost total business use of the computer, some grahics, but no games... currently using XGA is a good sized resolution with clear fonts, but when I reduce XGA to 800 x 600 the screen is NOT very clear. Now shopping for a new machine, would there be any advantage to getting SXGA and setting it back to 1024 x 768 - would that be clearer than an XGA screen running at its native reolution, or would it degrade the image? 15" screen.

2) Just bought my daughter a well equiped and priced R52. Now I'm jealous and need a TP for myself. I see a similar equiped T43 for a few hundred more. What's the meaningful difference between the 2 models? I don't mean that the T43 is a little lighter and a little thinner - that's insignificant for my use. Is there any real quality difference between the two?

3) Is the fan noise significant on the T43 vs the R52 (I'm not noticing much noise on her machine)?

Thanks a million...

Anything but native resolution looks blurry on an LCD. The degree of blurriness may differ but it's always there.

Besides, you pay more for SXGA+. Seems silly to get it and drolling down for XGA. If you are comfortable with XGA - get it. It will definitely look sharper than SXGA+ running at XGA.

No quality difference between an R52 and a T43. Not sure about the fan noise. Some T43s have fan noise problem, but definitely not all.

ed-lep,

The only difference to most buyers (should size and weight not be an issue) is that most all R52's have 4200rpm HDD's while T43's have 5200rpm HDD's as a minimum. The difference is meaningful to some but not to others. Your call.

Oh, and may I include a shameless plug that I have a couple top-of-the-line XGA R52's for sale in the forum here?: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=18526

Yak

brainpicker wrote:The only difference to most buyers (should size and weight not be an issue) is that most all R52's have 4200rpm HDD's

That's not true. The majority of the R52s have 5400RPM hard disks. Although some do have 4200RPMs.

While I wouldn't knock the R-series, it was brought to my attention recently that some of the R-series models have non-removable optical drives.

The T43 is picky about the hard drive used. Use a non-IBM approved drive, and you will get a 2010 error on boot-up. Even with the error, you can still boot up and use the drive, but it can be an annoyance.

GomJabbar wrote:While I wouldn't knock the R-series, it was brought to my attention recently that some of the R-series models have non-removable optical drives.

Wow, if true, buying one of those models would be a real bummer! I'd make sure the model I was buying wasn't restricted like that.

I only recently became an R-series fan as I received a good buy on some R52's to satisfy my wife's need for laptops with touchpads, and the R52 is a wonderful machine! We love ours, and will likely never buy T-series again when the use will be for carrying room to room in our home (non-travel). It seems (to me at least) to be built to the same fine standards as the T-series I own, and really just looks like a thicker version of a T-series. It's also a wee bit heavier. Using it as we do as desktops in different rooms of the house I couldn't tell you it WASN'T a T-series as in USE it's the same to me, though again just a bit thicker & heavier. It has the same keyboard as my T's, the same battery (and battery life) as my T's, the same "feel" as my T's, and slightly better performance than my T40/42 models (though that performance "feel" might be at least in part attributed to our R52's having a bit more RAM too). I don't currently own a T43 as I sold mine a while back, but I would compare it favorably with any XGA T43 from what I remember. It uses the same processor as in a basic T43 and the video is super. I mean the ATI X300 is probably even overkill for a 14" XGA screen as I've seen some of the T43's with integrated video on thier 14" XGA's and they are fine. Lenovo uses this same chip to run a T43's 15" SXGA+ screens so I'm sure in my 14" XGA I have plenty of graphics power to spare. Yes I know from other's comments elsewhere in this forum that the R-series is supposed to use "lesser parts" in construction as compared to a T-series, but if their are "lesser parts" I can't tell from my experience over the past few weeks. I'm quite impressed, and will now be buying R's for home use (and of course X's for travel).

My suggestion would be to take your daughter's R52 with you to a store that sells T43's and compare the feel of the two. Then judge the dollars saved against any perceived difference and make your buying decision. I don't think there is enough of a difference in what we all chimed in on here to make that decision for you.

Good Luck! Whatever you choose will fill your needs for a long time I'm sure.

Yak