Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

Well not just 1 hour ago I purchase a 2623DDU (found here: http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/L ... DU/J49847/) and came to this forum and read that the 4:3 may be discontinued lol.

Here are my thoughts and concerns, it was a very tough decision between the current 4:3 T60Ps or one of the brand new Core 2 Duo HP NC8430s with nearly identical specs.

What made me decide on the Lenovo was the the FlexView is an incredibly good looking screen, and I spend alot of time in PhotoShop thoughout my day. I was really leaning towards towards a WS display, but the HP's screen was no match, so I said what the hell and purchased the T60P.

So I am just wondering, do you think I jumped the gun and purchased to soon? or am I in good shape since a WS version of a FlexView panel will probably not be as good as a 4:3 version due to the longer distance the light will have to travel in a WS format.

Ahh I am just confused, maybe a bit of buyers remorse heh, I have been debating on which notebook to get for a few months oddly enough, and finally pulled the trigger just now.

I needed the most reliable portable PC I could find, it will contain sensitive data and business information. It will also be my PC sitting next to the Mac I work on. I have plenty .NET based apps I run in a day and also spend a great deal of time working in Excel.

I guess for Excel the WS would be much better than a standard 4:3, but its the quality, name and screen that made me choose.

So I ask you.. Did I make a mistake?

Thanks in advance.

Unequivocally, no -- you did not make a mistake. Quite the contrary -- your unit is practically a perfect machine. The Thinkpad and the HP are hardly the "same machine", identical specs notwithstanding.

according to that intro to marketing class a few years back, this is called "cognitive dissonance"

made a decision, and immediatly questioning it.

if you always do this, you have, what i coined as, CDD, cognitive dissonance disorder.

what made you shop on that website and not direct from lenovo?

Thanks for the replies,

I do not normally question my purchases, but I have been in a months long debate on which systemto go with and finaly did it and then read that the systems will change, but ahh well, I am sure I will love it regardless.

The reason I shopped there rather than Lenovo was the fact that Lenovo is not offering the 15" screen, and the price is about the same, then take into the fact they are over nightining the machine to me, lenovo would make me wait for the machine.

I had read about that company in a review online, they had nearly 300 of the model I chose in stock in their own warehouse not drop shipped, so it seemed like a decent way to go.

Cheers!

SFLA99 wrote:So I am just wondering, do you think I jumped the gun and purchased to soon? or am I in good shape

Greetings and Welcome to the Forum!

Your in very good shape! I will assure you that not only did you choose the finest laptop available but there will not be an issue should you need a warranty replacement of the display years down the line. That is one of the strong points of the ThinkPad brand is service, support and parts availibility. So in the event that there is a rather swift and complete move to widescreen displays at some point, it will have no effect on your machines warranty.

Because of the type of work I do on my T60p, and the fact that it's the best ThinkPad I've had, I just ordered another one today (from an authorized reseller) as insurance in case this widescreen situation plays out earlier rather than later. In addition, the 4x3 format is far and away my favorite format and I find it the most useful.

SFLA99 wrote:I needed the most reliable portable PC I could find, it will contain sensitive data and business information. It will also be my PC sitting next to the Mac I work on.

More good news... you just purchased the best engineered, stable and reliable laptop on the market today.

My only reservation is you mention that it will be sitting beside your mac. At first when I put my ThinkPad on my desk next to my PowerBook they fought like cats and dogs, it was really a problem. However after I trained them to get along, now they play well together.....

Because the company you purchased from is an authorized Lenovo reseller, you are covered on all points and there is no downside to your decision.

Enjoy your new ThinkPad and don't forget to report back to us, as to your impressions.

Cheers.....

Thanks for the excellent reply,

I guess my concern was that I just bought a technology that is old before I even got the notebook I had spent ALOT of time researching and trying to ask the right questions to make my decision, I hope the t60p is everything I hope it is.

My only slight concern is that spreadsheets might be a bit of a pain at times due to the 4:3 however the res is high enough that it may still give me a similar viewing space due to the pixels of the screen.

I also love the SIPS panels, they look fantastic for giving acurate colors and smooth transitions which is good for PS use.

I just purchased the new backpack style case from Lenovo to compliment my machine.

Cheers!

I do a lot of photoshop work as well and I don't think you made a mistake. Personally the UXGA screen has plenty of resolution for me. At 1600 pixels wide, it is fine. Widescreen to me is best for watching movies but that is about it.

You mentioned seeing more columns for Excel. But don't forget with a 4:3 screen you see more rows. To give you an idea, when I open a blank document in Excel, I see columns A-X and rows 1-58. Most documents are still printed in letter/portrait format so to me it is better to have more height than width. Sure there are instances where wide would be better but I just find that for me anyway, it is more common to want tall.

If you really do miss a few extra pixels width, you could always rearrange your tool menus. Perhaps move them across the bottom of your screen and give youself the whole width of the screen to work with.

Then there are those that say with wide screen, you could put two portrait documents side by side. Well you can do that with 4:3 screens as well as there are often document menus and buttons on the top. Sure the width of each doc will be a tad smaller. In order to fit both documents, I have to reduce the page size to 90%. But with this view I also see the entire height of both pages and the text is crisp enough to read just fine. On a widescreen, you would not see the entire height of the page without reducing the page size.

I think once you see the crispness and quality of the flexview screen you will definitely feel you made the right choice.

As for widescreen on the T60's, that is so far just a rumor. Also, the Flexscreens are made by just one company and I doubt that there will be an IPS flexview screen in widescreen. They are a very niche screen and the other vendors that use the IPS screen use the exact screen so I doubt they could split the demand up and create different versions simply because they are such a small niche.

As you can see, I'm a big fan of standard screens. But if I found a great laptop I wouldn't rule it out because of the screen dimension because it is so easy to adapt your workflow to the screen. Screen quality, portability, build quality, battery life, performance, service, etc. are all much more important in my opinion.

Now, if a widescreen format allowed more room to fit a standard keyboard with a num pad like the LG S1 then I may feel differently about widescreens

SFLA99 wrote:I guess my concern was that I just bought a technology that is old before I even got the notebook ;)

In my experience with technology, that's going to happen regardless of what or when you buy. Waiting to buy until the next big thing comes out means you'll wait forever since there's always something bigger, better, faster, lighter, whatever just around the corner. Best to just assess your needs, match them up to what's available at the time and move on.

Technology stuffs are improving everyday. You will not be able to always get the latest gadgets.

Hi all,

So here I am typing this reply on my new notebook. Just for a super quick "at first glance" type of impressions they are quite positive with a few unsures.

1. Build quality is beautiful as you already know, it feels like a business class notebook, looks like one and certainly has far too many security options lol, it takes a bit to get past all the security questions, but the fingerprint reader is a cool feature so its all good.

2. Screen is wonderfull, no bleeding of backlight as I can tell so far, black is deep which is great, it actually looks nearly like the system is turned off against a black background.

3. Battery, the system to my suprise actually came with a 9cell so it protrudes out of the back, I will order a 6 cell since I will be connected to the AC most of time, but its still nice to have it for those times I may need it.

4. Keyboard, this is a tricky one, I have no way of telling which one I have since I am scared to open this thing up lol, I can say for sure though that I have gone into both CompUSA and Office Depot and have tested T60s not P series there and the keyboards did not feel anything like what I am typing on currently. They felt loose and flimsy by comparison almost similar to a standard HP or Toshiba.

This keyboard I am typing on feels excellent, firm keys with no flex, excellent travel, I actually can fully tell that I have keyed what I was typing properly unlike some other systems I have used. It cant be my imagination, but this feels very smooth and sturdy compared to any other system I have used, so maybe I got one of the good ones?

5. Speakers - Now I know this is not a strong point but wow lol, for a retail value of $2799.00 before the discount to $2299.00 this thing sounds muffled and tinny, ahh well, I wont be using this for movies or games, but I use it for site traffic monitoring which has audible alerts. I am sure I will adjust, but yuck hehe.

6. Track pad, very nice, smooth buttons and good feel while working the mouse, I still need to get ysed to using the pointer.

7. Wifi - Wonderfull, easy to set up, shows nice little icons for things, good stuff.

8. ThinkVantage, I have yet to explore to be honest but seems like some very nice features.

9. Bloatware - I dont know if its just me, but this notebook has nothing on it, the only apps aside from the OS and the ThinkVantage stuff are, Symantec, something called Picasas, PC Doctor, NetWaiting, DiskKeeper and a folder titled Multi Media center which contains burning software. All in all, its a pleasure as compared to commercial notebooks available.

10. Heat/Noise - So far this notebook is extremely quiet, I barely hear the fan running if its even running, I hear no drive noise at all and it feels extrmely cool to the touch.

My only issue I have so far is that the native resolution of 1600x1200 is pretty odd looking. Its wonderfull how much screen space you get, infact it appears more than a WS format since you still have the added height, but fonts and overall display settings seems oddly small. I am trying to decide if its something I can get used to or something I need to tweak.

I spend most of my day on either 24" WS Eizo displays that run 1920 x 1600 or what ever that resolution is or on 20" Widescreens which make those high resolutuions seem nice for viewing even though the 24" leaves far to much space on the sides of web pages (great for PS pallets though).

All in all, so far I am extremely pleased with this unit, as I continue to type of this keyboard it truely is a beautful feeling machine.

Cheers!

EDIT:

I did want to add that I feel the palm rests especially on the right side around the reader has plent of flex and makes me a bit nervous, but there are no creeking noises or anything so thats a bonus

Cheers!

congrats. Mine is pretty new too and I'm going through the same learning curve issues.
Play around with ThinkVantage. It is very nice. Updates are super easy. You even do BIOS updates here. No arcane burning to disk and weird start up routines. I would go through and do all the important updates.

As to the keyboard, if you like it, I wouldn't even bother checking on what kind it is. If you really must know, you can go to the Lenovo site and have the system detect your system and it will tell you the parts in your PC. Armed with the keyboard #, you can then look up servicable parts and match the number. No need to open the keyboard. But again, if you are happy, no reason in checking or it may bug you.

For text sizes, try setting different dpi settings to find one you like. This is in the display control panel.

Not sure if you tried this yet but I find the quick zoom pretty nice. (fn+space). When you are zoomed in, the zoom icon appears in the system tray and you can set the zoom amount (130%, 160%, 200%, 250%). This can be a quick way to lower your screen resolution for something like tiny text on a webpage. Sure, the screen won't be as crisp and the text will appear soft but it is still pretty acceptable and quicker than manually changing display resolutions.

Picasa is a free image sorting/viewing app from Google that is pretty nice. DiskKeeper is a light version but also excellent for defrag. The lite version gives you notices you need to defrag whereas the full version can be set up to do so automatically. I personally get rid of PC Doctor and Symantec as I have replacements.

One quirk that someone here helped me figure out was the LCD brightness while on battery. It seemed that the brightness was lower on battery than on AC even with the setting to max. The fix was easy. I had to turn on high brightness on battery in the Thinkpad Configuration / LCD menu. I don't run at full brightness on battery but like to know I can

Glad you like the screen. Have fun.

Eh...

Why don't you decide yourself.

If you do a lot of video editing or something then I'd say you'd be better off with a widescreen... prefferrably HDCP compliant.


If not then...