DVD/gaming on a T42

[fireracer7]

I am looking into buying a T42 with the ATI Radeon 9600 with 64mb of RAM. I was wondering how DVD movies and games look and work on this laptop. Also, I know nobody buys a laptop for its speakers, but how does the T42 do for sound quality?

Thank you in advance!

[lvlolvlo]

okay in all honesty i think it's great! i've heard people complain about how they can't watch a while movie like The Last Samurai without their battery finishing off, well i can! also as far as the sound is concerned, if you expect to hook it your notebook up to a projector and play your sound from the tp speakers don't expect to hear too much if you're sitting far away. as long as your infrot of it or within 5ft of your notebook you'll be fine. you can always just buy external speakers and hook those up.

[fireracer7]

With regards to DVD's, I more specifically wanted to know the viewing quality (any skipping, jumping, ghosting, etc.)?

[juancferrer]

no skipping, no jumping, crappy laptop speaker sound (just hook up to external speakers and you'll be fine), slight ghosting on fast scenes.
If you really enjoy your DVDs and videos, try to get one of the thinkpads with Flexview, because the viewing angles of the nonFlexview screens are not as awesomely good as the flexview screens.

[Nabeel]

I haven't had any problems with ghosting or anything. I have a 2378FVU

[austin785]

I notice heavy ghosting in high action sequences in games and video.

AKA, go into a FPS and spin around. Lots of ghosting.

I hear the LCDs in IBMs have 60ms response times.. any confirmations?

[GZheng12]

no skipping, no jumping, crappy laptop speaker sound (just hook up to external speakers and you'll be fine), slight ghosting on fast scenes.
If you really enjoy your DVDs and videos, try to get one of the thinkpads with Flexview, because the viewing angles of the nonFlexview screens are not as awesomely good as the flexview screens.

I tried to hook up external speakers to my T42 2378FVU, but it does not work. I am wondering whether I must have a mini-dock to link the speakers with my laptop. Thanks.

[darrenf]

AFAIK, the ghosting is only a problem with the FlexView screens. I have one on my desk (19") and it makes games unplayable. People with ThinkPads that have the FlexView don't seem to mind as much, so perhaps it's exagerated in my desktop screen. I game on a 2378FVU (14" non-flexview 1400x1050) and there is no ghosting at all. HL2, FarCry and Doom all play great for hours at a time and I don't get headaches or nausea. I've heard that some desktop gamers are even experiencing nausea with HL2. I can't even watch the CS:S timedemo on my FlexView without feeling a bit queezy.

All laptop screens that I've used (ThinkPads included) seem to show a less saturated image in games and movies, but perhaps that can be corrected with curves. I hear that the FlexView has a more saturated image, but I haven't gamed on a FlexView ThinkPad so I can't swear to it. The FlexView on my desk is a desktop screen and they always seem to be much brighter/vivid than laptop screens.

-darren

[rocky01]

available at best buy near you:



Todays thinkpads are made to play movies well (not so even with highest end machines of a few years ago) and have progressed well enough to play all but the latest games (Some newest of the new games play just fine, others don't), so you can certainly do more than office-related projects -- and usually quite well. The sound is less accomplished than on earlier thinkpads. Small powered speakers are called for and reach for bettter ones, that also happen to be svelte for best results. Unless you are docked and don't need to be mobile. Fooling with bulky, cheaply made ones will drive you wild in no time.

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