IBM ThinkPad T30 advice/guidance required

[drriviera]

Howdy all,

For the past 2 or so years, I've been using a desktop pc (amd athlon xp 1800+, 768mb pc2100 ddr ram, 64mb vram, 80gb hdd ata100, 19" monitor, windows xp).

This has served my needs for;
- web surfing using ADSL, including file sharing
- web design (Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash)
- Adobe Photoshop
- Vinyl LP to CD transfers (Adobe Audition)
- Microsoft Office Word and Excel
- CD/DVD ripping and burning
- iPod management

I've now decided my next computer is to be a laptop. The idea is that my younger bro gets this desktop PC. I'll set up a wireless router system (probably higher spec 802.11g) so both my bro and myself can access the net, and to allow basic file sharing if need be.

Why do I want a laptop? Downsizing, more portable, easier to take from room to room. Will be mostly plugged into AC power. I can take it out to the garage so I can interface it with my ham radio gear.

After researching, I'm at a dilemma here. I'm finding that the best spec ThinkPad for my needs is a refurbished T30. After the T30 (T40 onwards), there is no serial port (a must). No stereo audio line-in jack (also a must). No parallel port (another must). And they are well out of my price range (up to $900 australian dollars).

I figured that the T30 would probably be on par with the performance of my AMD desktop, but I'm a little uncertain on how my various programs would handle the 16MB VRAM (ATI Radeon 7500). I don't care for games, Solitaire will do me just fine thank you Mr. Fraghead.

Basically, I'd like to know if the T30 is a suitable desktop replacement. Will the T30 (and laptops in general) be suited to long periods of on-time (ie. LCD screen only on standby, overnight downloading)? Will overheating be an issue?

And another one re the T30, the memory slot problem. Are there any pictures (jpegs) which actually show what to look for at the base of the laptop? A picture paints a thousand words, so they say, and would help me greatly.

Many thanks in advance.

Rob C.

[chubes]

I think I might be able to help you answer this question.

I bought my T30 at the start of college nearly four years ago. It's a very solid machine, and its withstood all the abuse I've given to it in these four years. Around two years ago I had money to burn, and built a pretty decent desktop:

3.06ghz Pentium IV
MSI 875p Neo Mainboard w/ RAID, Sata
1.0Gb System RAM
WD Raptor 10K RPM 36GB Hard Drive
SB Audigy 2 Soundcard
ATI Radeon 9800 Professional 128mb Graphics card
Water Cooling System

After getting further and further into my major (computer science) I had so much less time to spend on playing games and wasting time with this desktop. This is where I also seemed to pick up my pet peeve on noise. I simply can't stand noisy computers at all, no exceptions.

So I threw linux on my T30, threw in 1GB of system memory, and have been using that for pretty much all of this school year. I have it attached to an external 17' LCD on a docking station along with my IBM Model M Clicky keyboard. It's a perfect desktop replacement!

While it was a little bit slow getting used, nevertheless I'm very happy that my huge terrible desktop simply sits in my room. I program on the T30, web surf, e-mail, play with my website, read forums, mess with the Ipod (fun in linux), and do everything you have listed. Nothing you have listed is an issue at least for me. I take the laptop to class sometimes, and the battery life is still pretty good for a four year old machine. Heat isn't a problem either.

Buy it, you'll get a much better deal than what I payed for it...