T40, T41, T42, T43: Comparison of "non-performance"

[feklee]

Today I saw a *new* T40 (incl. two years of IBM warranty) on sale at a German dealer for about 1060$ + VAT + S&H, The machine has the following major specs: 1.5GHz, 14.1" XGA screen, 40GB 5200RPM HD, 512MB RAM, six cell battery, Radeon 7500. For a little more than 200$ more I could get a T43 with 1.86GHz and Intel 900 graphics. However, I've heard here and there that T43s get pretty hot, that they're noisy, and that their battery run time is low,

Now, I wonder: does anyone have any comparisons between the T4x models: Which ones do you assume to be the coldest and the most silent ones? Also, how does build quality differ between the series?

[christopher_wolf]

Well, I have compared my T43 against my Friend's T42 and haven't noticed much, if any, difference. I have also used a T40 and, again, besides the T43 performing better in terms of Compute power and the fact that the T40 didn't have the Fingerprint reader and the Bluetooth on my T43...no difference at all. In terms of quality, they have the same chassis and I haven't heard any bizzare noises continue for any period of time. It also does well on heat, as did my T40 and my Friend's T42, and runs WAY Cooler than most other laptops with comparable Power Consumption and Chipsets. I can't give you a direct comparision to the latest in the R series, but I imagine the performance is similar...but then again the T4xs have the Form Factor and Weight in their Favor and thus have the Edge in Mobility. The Screen also compares well across the T40 to the T42 and my T43, once again..can't see any difference.

Hope that helped

[deviousalex]

Whoever complains that this is hot or makes too much noise has obviously never had a desktop computer. It does not get that hot, and even if it does get a bit hotter than a lot of laptops so what? The noise isn't bad at all. Besides startup I can't really hear the fan at all! The battery time is decent. The power manager allows me to set everything extremely low when running on battery. CPU time being the lowest, LCD display brightness being 1 on a scale 0-7, etc. Off that I get about 3 hours. I guess it's not that great for such low settings, but it's decent.