Thinkpads Forum

Firstly, I've owned Thinkpads for the better part of 10 years. Just discovered this forum and am amazed at the knowledge floating around in here. Lenovo needs to make this required reading for their Sales and CS teams.

Seriously contemplating upgrading to a T60p from a T42p. I make significant use of a docking station with my T42p and want to continue that with the T60p. I'm considering the WS T60p model that pumps out 1680 x 1050 armed with a FireGL v5250 w/256MB vram. Given that, I'd like to move to a widescreen external monitor as well, hooking it up to a docking station via DVI.

My question, Q1: Has anyone connected a ws external display to a TP Dock II (or any dock for that matter) via DVI and successfully gotten full ws signal on the external display?
When I look at the specs for the TP Dock II (287710U), they say the dock's DVI port will only support a max 1280 x 1024. I searched this forum and called Lenovo and to be quite honest, I am getting conflicting reports. One Lenovo sales rep told me that, yes the DVI port on the dock will pass the signal through to a ws external display BUT.... I'll only get the 1280 x 1024 max and will therefore see black borders on the left and right of a ws external display. A second sales rep, said.... no it works fine and I'll get full ws on my external monitor. Reading this forum, I see some folks saying that they do get a ws image on a ws external monitor via their dock, but I am not sure how they do it. Is it via DVI or VGA? Does one have to use an additional video card in the dock? Any guidance or shared experience in this would be greatly appreciated!

Q2: Intel PRO WirelessABG vs Thinkpad 11a/b/g/n?
Looking at two T60p builds (8744J2U vs 8744C9U). Both appear identical with the exception of the wireless card and OS preload (J2U comes with Vista Business and C9U comes with XP Pro). I've read some postings on this forum that some folks report a lower reception (some say more realistic) with the Intel PRO wireless. Just wondering how some of you would decide between the two.

Finally, Q3: Has anyone heard details/specs on a T60 successor? Is it even imminent?

Thanks all

There are posters on the forum using the DVI for high-resolution output, so you should not have trouble there, I think, though you might want to do some searching to verify specifics.

The Atheros ("ThinkPad a/b/g/n") wireless chipsets are generally viewed as being more robust and having some additional range, and are definitely a good choice.

There will likely be a T6 series update in the second quarter once the new "Santa Rosa" chipsets are available from Intel. Expect things like support for 4 GB+ of memory, faster FSB (assuming CPU update as well), flash memory cache support and HSDPA WWAN. ThinkPad specifics are subject to much speculation but little actual knowledge on these forums at this point!

My company purchases a great deal of IBM equipment, and we were told that the T61 was expected to be available in August. As we all know, that's no guarantee, but hey, that's the best we're going to get at this point.

Thanks tom and dgrey. Between your input, data on some of the other posts and some of the issues still pending with Vista drivers, I think I'll hold off on a purchase for now. I'll wait til the t61 comes out even if that takes awhile. Still happy with my t42p. Biggest driver for me looking at new one now anyways was that my fiance needed a laptop and I was going to give her the t42p.

Cheers