... bang for your buck ...

[smugiri]

This is a T4x thread ( for a bit at the end ) so bear with me ...



My name is Steve and I am an addict.

Here's my problem, I will not leave my Thinkpad alone and just use it already.

First, it was a Thinkpad 500 that my father gave me as a present when I was still in high school ( I guess this lets the cat out of the basket and lets everyone know how old I am ). I use the heck out of it, upgraded from the huge 85mb drive it had to a monster 200mb and run everything on it. I especially loved Doom on this. I remember hating having to reboot with a special autoexec.bat each time I wanted to play to get enough RAM to do so. Even today, when I think back to this machine, I have nothing but good things to say about it.

When that machine finally died and I was done with the obligatory 40 day mouring period with no food and water, I moved to a Toshiba Satellite that happened to be cheap and available just then and that was also just a complete waste of my time. It ran hot enough to keep the house heated without turning on the heat, only did VGA, Then, to add (literal) injury to insult, I had the LCD break the first time, I dropped it. Hated it and still hate it even if it is now gone. When I had had enough of it, I think I simply left it sitting on my desk until someone stole it.

So, I got an second-hand A20mon eBay and the upgrade genie came back with a vengeance to haunt me.

First, I boosted RAM from 128mb to 256mb. I had started with a 6gb drive that I tossed out and replaced it with a 20gb drive that I thought I would never ever fill. Sadly, just about this time, I discovered laptop mode linux and divx movies and that fantasy evoparated when I started getting those Windows messages that I dread - "You.are.running.low.disk.space.on.drive.C"

I decided to feed the beast and do some more upgrades so I got a DVD drive for the A20m. That was not enough to satisfy the cravings. In quick succession, I added a HD caddy with another 20gb, an ultrabay ZIP drive and a wireless card.

It was about this time that my wife stopped talking to me and started communicating to me via email since " I was always on that [censored] computer"

But, as I found out, you can never have enough. Once a junkie. Always a junkie.

After being good for a couple of months, I managed to convince my wife that she needed the A20 and that I needed a new laptop. When she finally agreed, I got myself an R31. Not a bad little machine and almost top of the line at the time. DVD/CD RW combo, 40gb drive, 256mb of RAM, wireless and modem, 3.5 hour battery life. I loved it. My wife saw it, fell in love too and we got her one of exactly the same thing too. This kept me satisfied for quite a while. I finally succumbed to the upgrade bug after about a year when a friend made me an offer of more than two its worth while on a trip to Kenya. It was a good deal both ways since it would have cost him a third more to buy it there. That left me looking once again and for a while, I actively looked for an A31p but eventually settled on a T40pwith all the bells, whistles and trimmings that I wanted or needed at a price I loved.

Anyway, on to the point of this post. Over the last month or so, the bug has been back and I have been itching to spend money on my thinkpad. Last week, I finally succumbed and went out and got an toshiba 4200rpm 80gb laptop drive. After a quick install, boot, windows install, I realized that this [censored] THING WAS MADE OF MOLASSES

SLOW SLOW SLOW

Long story short, I decided to do a stupid ( what I call an impulse buy ), ran right back to the store and switched for the 100gb Toshiba 5400 with the 16mb cache...

I am just loving it, I think it beats the 512mb of RAM that I originally wanted to get and I am as happy a camper as can be.

My eye is still keeps wandering over to the SXGA T43p with the 128MB Fire GL. Although the call is there, I think I am at the point where I am willing to wait for the next generation of thinkpads since I just fed the beast.


Any other junkies in here?

[PrincipalValiant]

That is a truly wicked story,

Before I lost all my free time I used to make a hobby out of upgrading old computers to the max. I once threw together a Cyrix 5x86 140mhz with 64mb ram and 3x 540mb scsi drives in a modified mid tower case with about 8 120mm fans, 8mb s3 video card, 200watt psu, sanded down and spray painted glossy black, of course, oh and a bunch of those little LEDs that used to show clockspeed set to "99." I had it working as a router for a while. I've got a whole post and pics of it I made a while ago for another bbs.

I've got an old 350c that I always wanted to upgrade but parts for it are so scarce I haven't had much success. I need to find a replacement cmos battery. I swapped the drive for a 4 gig toshiba, but it can't see the whole thing, and it isn't really usable till I manage to find some ram for it. Right now its only got 8mb. I've managed to get it working with and old parallel zip drive and a 10/100ethernet and 56k modem pcmcia card so hopefully I'll work out something cool to do with it, maybe get it running as a dumb terminal to monitor something or other in a far room in the house.

Right now I'm working on finding parts for my t23, I'm looking for an SXGA+ screen, preferably one with the wireless antenna) and a better processor (only have a 1ghz PIII). A faster hdd is too expensive for my blood right now. I've put the ram up to 768mb and a 40gb 5400rpm drive. I'm also looking for a cdrw/dvd drive and maybe an ultrabay battery. I'm really interested in finding one of those huge docks (not just a port replicator) that you can add drives and fans and stuff into. Hopefully I'll come across someone's broken machine and get spare parts for cheap.

Sorry if this doesn't relate to the t4x series, but this post was too good to let go unanswered.

[smugiri]

Way overkill on the "bling bling" and I can only imagine that it must have sounded like 8 747s' running though your house with the 8 fans going at once. I have to agree with you on the LEDs though. That is another weird addiction of mine, I cannot stay away from LEDs and am always opening stuff to switch out LEDs.

Right now, I am thinking about opening up my T40p and switching out the green indicator LEDs at the base of the screen with blue ones ( or reds ones, or something different from what they are now ... )

2 problems though
- I do not have the tools, equipment or parts to do surface mounted components ...
Well, thats why you have a credit card, run out and buy the equipment ...

which is a great segue into problema numero dos...
- your wife will have your hide

Note to self, stop thinking that stupid, thats a great way to kill your computer AND get a divorce

I also had a similar project at one time. I built a Frankenstein with an IBM SFF Netvista body, 2 80gb hard drives, a DVD/CDRW, zip 100mb and a then whopping 768MB of RAM on one of those ubiquitous Gateway SFF PIII boards. The thing run like a rabbit on dark roast columbian breakfast blend which is FAST. I also put in all blue LEDs since those had just come out. When I was done, everything was wedged in so tight in that small form factor case that every time I opened it up to do something, the RAM or processor would be squeezed out of its socket and go flying across the room.

I think that I should also mention that the first time I started it, it went BOOM since I had about 18 amps of draw on a 95watt power supply.

It took me almost 2 months to find a power supply powerful enough to fit in the case and run everything inside.

Then I found out that the LEDs were the high intensity type and that they light up the room all my themselves. Even worse, that thing run so hot that it blue-screened at 15 minute intervals if the AC was not running with hardware errors of any variety it felt like - either "WIN_PCI_XXXXXX" errors or interrupt errors or one time, something that looked something like a "WIN_XX_OE_why do you have all this stuff in here anyway?" error.

Way too much PC in way too little case. In the end, I gave up and bought a bigger case.

[cliff320]

My eye is still keeps wandering over to the SXGA T43p with the 128MB Fire GL. Although the call is there, I think I am at the point where I am willing to wait for the next generation of thinkpads since I just fed the beast.

That one keeps catching my eye too. It's quite a bit out of my price range though

[smugiri]

I have to agree with that: I also think that it is just a little too far outside my price envelop. I also think that since I now have almost everything on it but the 128mb FireGL and the UGXA which I am not sure I like having tried out a T43p at linuxworld earlier this year in Boston, I am much better off waiting for a while to see what features in the next iteration of the Thinkpad will catch my eye ....

[tehsoul]

i'm a current t43p (with uxga and loving it btw) owner and as long as there's thinkpad t series like this around, i'll refuse to start using another brand (well, maybe a 12" powerbook as an extra laptop for my girlfriend once the intel apples kick in)

however

my worst fear is that in the next iteration of t models, lenovo will try to adapt its product line to the mainstream (that widescreen model may be clouding my judgement...). i dont want a non-black thinkpad model with bells and whistles

[Habakkuk]

I love my thinkpads. At first it was a 570 with the Media Slice, then a T20, then my beloved T23. Now I have a T40 which isthe best of the machines by all counts. However, I always was cuious about the Fujitsu Lifebooks. How are those? Does anyone have experience with their ultraportables?

[smugiri]

You make another great point "tehsoul", I did'nt think about that.

If the current production cycle is the last iteration of the "you can have any color you like as long as it's black" styled Thinkpad, then this might very well be my last Thinkpad ( which seems to be the case with the Z Series looking like a rebadged Dell/HP/Compaq/everything else on the market ) ... Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get the T43p now ...

That is one terrible nightmare...

[tehsoul]

well, you can always wait and see how the next models are going to turn out. if you don't like them, get a t43p and you'll be
a) sure that you wont feel ripped off
b) cheaper off since it wont be the top model anymore

[simms]

well, you can always wait and see how the next models are going to turn out. if you don't like them, get a t43p and you'll be
a) sure that you wont feel ripped off
b) cheaper off since it wont be the top model anymore

Says the T43p owner

[christopher_wolf]

Well, I have owned a T40, a T22, a T20, and still own a 701c as well as a T43; "Get the T43" says this T43 owner

[davidspalding]

Wow. If your upgrade genie would be interest in an older dock/port replicator (the T30 style), I've got a spare.

But I couldn't be happier than with my T43. A swank T42 was a close second in my shopping.

[smugiri]

The dock sounds very tempting "davidspalding" and this might be one of those times when I might actually get away with the argument that it is for my wfie rather than for me if it also takes an R31.

Could you post a part number please so that I can look up the spec ....

Remember people, you've got to feed the beast.

[davidspalding]

Search for posts by me in the "for sale" forum, you'll find my post there.

[Aroc]

Maybe feed the beast by promising to wait for the new p-model Ts with dual core! We may see those some time next year. I'm not sure if your T40p has a Pentium M or not. If it doesn't, it might be worth getting a T43p just for the better battery life of the Pentium M.

Otherwise I guarantee you will be salivating over the dual core models!

[smugiri]

Yep, I saw the review of the dual core Yonah at Anandtech I think and I can't wait to see what IBM builds around those puppies. Dual core, multiple threads, I think that the Yonah generation of processors will lead to some pretty interesting implementations and some pretty sophisticated laptops relative to whats on the market today ( although this has to be qualified in light of the fact that this is true of each generation of processors relative to those before it apart from the PIV compared to PIII families but that it one holy war I do not want to bring back from the dead ... )

I still would love to get a full 12 hours out of a laptop and it seems that the next generation of Thinkpads will get that right. Each generation of chipsets gets the integration and power management thing worked out a little better.

I am telling you though, I cannot bring myself to pull the trigger on a T43p .... its not looking ahead to the dual core, its the fact that I do not think that getting it will get me that much more in extra traction compared to the T40p that I have right now. I will wait a little for now but as long as they build them black and bad, I will be here.