Thinkpads Forum

I am in the market for a good laptop for around $1000. Nothing lately on the board here - so I'm looking on eBay and at Lenovo for a good refurb. For that kind of money I can get a T41p from Lenovo (refurb). Good specs (1.7, 60gb 72k drive, BT, 128k video).

On ebay for about $100 less I can get a factory sealed refurb'd A31p. (2.0 P4, 60gb, 64k video)

Seems to me I've read mixed reviews about the T41 but the A31 seems to be a rock solid workhorse. The A can only grow to 1gb ram which is a concern. Bluetooth is no biggie - and the video isn't either - except I wanted something with more than an XGA (both these are).

I know the A31 doesn't have a true mobile pentium (centrino) but this will be a desktop mostly so even the size difference is a minimal concern.

Any recommendations from users one way or the other? Appreciate any experience you can share.

The T41p would be my choice as it is smaller, lighter, and faster than the A31p. The only thing I can see in favor of the later is it is a 3-spindle machine, i.e you get internal HDD, CD/DVD, and a floppy or 2nd HDD, etc.

I would choose T41p, as well.

faster, 1.7GHz P-M >> 2.0 GHz P4.
lighter, 5.4 lb (9 cell battery) vs 7.7lb.
faster memory bus, 333MHz vs 266MHz
128MB FireGL T2 graphics vs 64MB ATI FireGL 7800
7200rpm HD vs 5400rpm HD
USB 2.0 vs USB 1.1
battery life is better if you ever take it on the road.

The pros for the A31p is the 15" Flexview UXGA screen and the three spindles as mentioned before.

I've had an A21p before and I much prefer the much lower weight and smaller size of the 14" T4x.

p.s. I've sent you PM.

The T41p seems to be the better choice. It's just better in all specs.

BioHazard wrote: Seems to me I've read mixed reviews about the T41 but the A31 seems to be a rock solid workhorse. The A can only grow to 1gb ram which is a concern.

Both are true mobile workstations.

A31p can go up to 2GB RAM, in addition to UXGA FlexView display has two Ultrabay 2000 slots, built in Firewire, and even S-Video IN port with HW MPEG encoder. P4M CPU can be upgraded to 2.6GHz.
Downside is built in USB 1.1, weight, inferior GFX and battery life compared to T41p.

T41p is indeed excellent system in almost any aspect, downside may be lack of firewire (if you need it), and lesser expandibility compared to A31p.

Having personaly A31p I would recomend T41p unless you are not in specific field, eg video production where A31p is still unmatchable system. Would like to see A60p from Lenovo.

z
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A31p - 2.5GHz P4M, 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD, Gigabyte GN-WIAG01 (Atheros Super AG)

Well, I don't know if Lenovo is planning an A60p; but it looks like there will be two choices of which series to is going to be updated to match the projected role of the A31p nowadays; namely, the Z Series and the R Series. Both of them seem to lend themselves quite well to the aforementioned uses of the A31p as well as integrating features of the T Series (R system boards are very similar, Z60t and Z60m models for different types of use). There might be either an R60p or Z6Xp soon.

T41p.

I have used both.

T41p is indeed excellent system in almost any aspect, downside may be lack of firewire (if you need it), and lesser expandibility compared to A31p.

If that is the only reason I would go T41p, I use firewire a lot and have an IBM PCMCIA firewire card with two connections available! I used to keep the PCMCIA card in the dock at all times (PCI slot I had a 64MB video card), now that I do not have a True Dock for the T4X's I have to use the lappy slot.

The docks are comming down in price at a huge rate (2877), so with that he can use anything he wants!

Vote= T41p

I would go with the T41p