Just ordered a T42 2379DXU - some questions:

[Jeremy31]

Boy am I excited! I just ordered a Thinkpad T42 2379DXU. I ordered it with a 15" screen, Pentium M 735 1.7, 1 gig of RAM, 64 megs of video ram (ATI Mobile Radeon 9600), 60 gig hard drive (7200 rpm)and it comes with Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. Some questions:

1) I know IBM says that one can get around 4 or more hours of battery life on the standard battery. Given that I chose the 7200 rpm hard drive, will this drain the battery quicker? Any ideas how many hours I'll get out of a charge?

2) The machine comes with Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG - is this better than "IBM 11b/g WIFI wireless" or are they the same thing quality and feature-wise?

3) As I mentioned, this model comes with a Pentium M 735 1.7ghz processor, 1 gig of RAM, 64 meg video card, 7200 rpm hard drive. I'm curious.. the desktop I currently own has an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67ghz processor with 1.5 gigs of RAM, a 128 meg video card, and a 7200 rpm hard drive. Would one expect me to see a noticeable increase or decrease in performance in the Thinkpad in comparison? I'm assuming games would run better on my desktop, but will they be acceptable on the Thinkpad?

4) How is the sound quality of the audio card and speakers?

5) I have a 2.4ghz cordless phone - has anyone had trouble with WIFI interference from cordless phones? I'm wondering if I should have got WIFI type a since it runs on 5.0ghz instead of 2.4...

6) What is a token-ring card-bus adapter?

7) What do people typically find effective for security solutions? The IBM website seems to sell a whole bunch of options...

Any comments re: this model? It looks like a great set up to me, I'm excited to get it! I am a little concerned it will be loud given the fan and the 7200rpm drive..

Any goes at any or all questions would be appreciated!

Jeremy

[ryan]

1) the 7200RPM has its own p-m speed step-like technology (ABLE). so you won't drain much more battery on it then say a 5400 60gig. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... 200_3.html

2) i haven't had any trouble with the 2200BG, and i figure most centrino notebooks are being outfitted with it, so it's good enough

3) probably neither much of an increase or decrease with gaming. processor: the p-m will be a bit faster. ram: there's little difference between 1gig of ram and 10gig of ram for gaming purposes atm imo. video card: depends on the models (a 9600 64mb is much faster then a geforce2 mx 128mb for instance). games will definately be acceptable on the thinkpad.

4) i don't have great ears, but sound works fine for me, better then average.

5) i haven't had any trouble with our 2.4ghz phone.

6) no idea

7) a lot of people have good things to say about the kensington microsaver for laptops for theft protection

it's nearly dead queit during normal use. during gaming you can hear the fans up to only a few feet away, so it's not terribly loud.

[admsteiner]

Can't answer all of your questions, I have a 14.1" 2378-FVU, but...

2) My 2200BG card works very well. I don't know if the IBM card is more sensitive than the Intel card, but I haven't had any problems, in fact, I've been detecting connections where friends of mine on their Sony's and Dell's haven't been able to detect. That might be the card, the built in antenna, or both.

3) My major concern with the thinkpad for games would be the refresh rate. I run my 19" Flat CRT at 85Hz while my Thinkpad runs at 60Hz.

4) Sound quality is noticeably worse on the thinkpad than on my desktop. But that's not really fair, I have an Audigy 2 Platinum THX sound card and Inspire 6600 6.1 Speaker System. I doubt a laptop will be made in the next 20 years that could match that. But the sound is pretty good and loud enough.

[stgreek]

Can't answer all of your questions, I have a 14.1" 2378-FVU, but...

3) My major concern with the thinkpad for games would be the refresh rate. I run my 19" Flat CRT at 85Hz while my Thinkpad runs at 60Hz.

I believe you refer to response time, as ALL LCDs "run" at 60Hz, since refresh rate doesn't really have a meaning when using LCDs.

[admsteiner]

Correct. Misspeak on my part.

[Jeremy31]

Thanks for the responses!

I believe my desktop videocard is an NVIDIA 5200 with 128 megs of RAM. I'm assuming this is probably a lot better than the ATI Mobile Radeon 9600 with 64 meg..?

Re: the slower response time with LCD displays, does this suggest that games might lag when I play them on the T42 screen but if I connect to an external monitor they'll run/look better?

What is the kensington saver?

Thanks,

Jeremy

[ryan]

i think the ati mobile radeon 9600 64mb is actually a bit beter then the nvidia 5200 128mb.

the slower response time won't really cause lag, it'll just make things that move fast blurry (called ghosting).

the kensington saver is a security device that attaches a notebook to a table.

[GoldenKing]

7200 rpm hard drive certainly drain the battery quicker

[ian]

Are you sure about this? I realise it's what I would have thought too but I remember seeing, on the old forum, a comparison between the two HD (5400 and 7200) which actually suggested that the faster drive had LESS battery drain than the 5400 rpm due to improved mechanics etc.

[Flightvector]

1. I have a 2378DXU, 60Gb 7200RPM HDD. I was on "High battery performance" preset (2nd contrast bar), 600MHz. Drainage averaged 11-12 Watts doing usual web browsing, no games, no movies. I got 4:05 with 96% charge at start.

3. You should find some improvement since Pentium M processers generally outperform even PC processers of higher frequency, but other than this few things compare to a PC with its sound card and GPU. with your model (2378 and 2379 differ only by warranty), I got 2800 with 3DMark03, but unfortunately you can't turn off FSAA or AF (would be near 3000 then). Lower resource (pre DX9) games will be good, but I have one issue... The CPU gets hot! I was topping off 72 degrees Celsius (165+ F), and this is a game that runs at 40 fps with a GeForce Ti4600 and 512 ram (IL2 Sturmovik flightsim). I doubt it will be very acceptable for games that your desktop is just acceptable for with 512Mb of RAM and a pre DX9 card.

4. The sound quality is better than other notebooks Ive seen by a little bit, but certainly it wont do for a mild audiophile (nor would one use it as a primary music player). If you currently use standard low-wattage desktop speakers, you should have no qualms. I mean we are not close to ability like the Audigy 2 in notebooks, but I don't think we really need that. If you do however, consider a USB 2.0 Extigy external sound card/unit (though it will slow processing speed).

5. I have had Wifi interference with a Panasonic 2.4 GHz phone, but only the router had this issue, never a laptop, I guess it is possible, but I never seen it.

7. Best feasible security solution, is a hardware firewall. After that, a software firewall, it stealths ports and is more useful than an antivirus IMO.

It really doesn't seem loud at all, much quieter than the Dell Lattitude which sometimes is as loud as a refrigerator. the drive does not have a large range in sound output, I actually can't distinctly hear it when it isnt loading, and even then it is such a slight clicking sensation. I also have yet to hear a fan RPM spike. It really seems most of the noise is just the sound of airflow and the HDD is quieter than this (maybe that is the HDD, but I can't actively tell if it is the fan or not either).

[etherelithic]

The GeForce FX 5200 is considered one of the worst performing newer-generation cards on the market. It doesn't matter if it has twice the VRAM buffer because it can't process the data fast enough! the ATi 9600 mobile chip is actually quite the performer, beating out the Geforce Mobile 5700 by more than twice the framerates on a half-life beta version. I think I saw the benchmarks on anandtech or something. the 9600 mobile chip is toted to be one of hte most power ful mobile video chips out right now, bested only by the 9700 mobile chip.

[phat_mats]

7) for security ... get a firewall (zone alarms pro 4.5) and use an antivirus as well.

[Mofongo]

7200 rpm hard drive certainly drain the battery quicker

Where did you get this information from?

Go to the Hitachi website and compare power requirements for the 5K and 7K drives. You will see that they are practically identical except that the 7K uses slightly more power to spin-up. In the real world, their power consumption is essentially the same.

Mofongo

[astpaul]

6) What is a token-ring card-bus adapter?

"Token Ring" is a network technology that was created by IBM in the late 80's.
In those years, it was the best technology in town that was competing with Ethernet.
Ethernet was managing 1Mb while TRing reached the raving speed of 4Mb!!!
Connectors were quite bulky and obviously expensive.

Supposedly some IBM (probably mainframe) customers are still using that techno as of today.