Thinkpads Forum

I've never owned a Thinkpad, but I've always wanted one. With Lenovo restyling and killing off the classic Thinkpad keyboard....now seems to be the time. Right now my primary laptop is an ASUS UL30VT, which gets excellent battery life with its CULV SU7300 CPU and large 84 Whr battery. The performance of the CULV is pretty much enough for me, so I'm not really looking for anything fasther.

I'm trading between a few options on eBay at this point:
X61T, XGA Screen - ~$168
X61T, SXGA+ - ~$200
X200T, WXGA 19:10 - ~$200-250
X220T, Used, - ~$580
X220T, New/Warrantied - ~$750

There's nothing...wrong..with my current laptop, so this is *really* just for the sake of having a classic Thinkpad before they aren't around anymore. Whatever I get will probably get its RAM maxed out and an SSD installed. That said, I'd like to try out Windows 8 , and battery life is a pretty primary concern to me - I hate having to be plugged in.

The XGA X61Ts are very inexpensive. To play around with in W8 and Linux, this seems like a cost effective option. The SXGA+ X61T seems like an interesting and unique option. I've never had a laptop with anything above XGA or XWGA. However the older chipset in the X61Ts lacks the DXVA decode acceleration for H.264 that, combined with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, makes the C2D+GMA4500MHD combo good for watching movies and such... I'm also not sure how these would work with Windows 8. The digitizer is likely pen-only

The X200T seems to have the best battery life of the 3 with the 8 cell batttery and Low Voltage/TDP Core 2 Duos. The screen is 16:10 which seems to be an advantage over the later 16:9 models. It would be at least as fast as my UL30VT which I might consider selling at that point. I've seen comments that these work okay with W8, but the most prevalent digitizer is again pen-only.

The X220T is the last "classic" model, would be an upgrade to my current laptop, and would have the best longevity going forward. Battery life with the i5 seems to be a bit less than the X200T from reviews and posts I have read, but still pretty good. These are all IPS/multitouch.

It seems like the best "bang for buck" is the X200T but I'd be interested in everyone elses thoughts..... Especially folks who have owned more than one of these.

I was in a similar situation myself earlier this year. I have an XGA X61T and an X200T.

The X61T was just less than £50 on eBay, with digitizer pen, disk but no charger, sold as faulty since the pen digitizer did not work.

The X200T was £100 from eBay, no digitizer pen, hard drive, charger.

I specifically wanted a used X series tablet for the combination of these reasons: IPS (or at least non-TN) panel, build quality of ThinkPads, modularity of design/ability to upgrade standard parts easily, and cheap upgrade. While I could afford £1000 on a laptop I don't consider that expenditure worthwhile.

I am keeping the X61T as my test/spare system. When new opensuse Linux releases come out I'll test on there first. The XGA resolution is a bit too low for comfortable regular use now in my opinion. Other downsides of the X61 now: DDR2 RAM so more expensive and 4 GB limit (2 x 2 GB), my screen colour seems somewhat yellow (may be just mine, may be an age thing) even with ICC profile used, not a widescreen (4:3 not great for film use), battery I got had about 33% wear (so 67% left, not bad given > 5 years old but an inherent problem with older laptops).

The X200T is my Windows 7 machine, not multitouch. It replaced an older Samsung Q45. Improvements versus that are: IPS (or FFS) screen, much better than a TN panel (same resolution and size as the Samsung), DDR3 RAM so can go up to 8 GB if desired, L9400 CPU is a ~50% gain over the Samsung's T5450, idle power just under 10 Watts (lid closed, was 17 for Samsung). Luckily for me the battery shows a wear level of 0%, though I have an X200s I use for travel so battery is only as a UPS on this machine really. It has an Intel SSD taken from previous build and I consider an SSD essential as the boot drive for any system I use now.

In terms of the X200T versus the X201T (you forgot to list that, though it seems to have limited availability) versus the X220T: the X201 and X220 have faster CPUs, though I agree with you a reasonable C2D is already sufficient for all general use, and CPU power savings can't me more than 1 or 2 Watts if at all. The 220 can support 16 GB of RAM, but 8 GB already above what I need. The X220 has an mSATA slot, useful if you want two disks.

I also concluded that therefore the X200T was the sweet spot, the X220T is not three times better at three times the price.