Thinkpads Forum

I'm trying to decide between one of these for my next laptop. There have to be others on here that were in a similar situation, so please share -- which did you choose and why?

I'm currently a T60 user and that has served me well for the last 4 1/2 years. Nothing wrong with the machine yet, but I don't want to wait until that happens.

I've never used a mac, so I'll have a learning curve there, but I figure that should be fun. I have a few apps that only run on windows, but I could probably live without those. Plus getting a unix shell prompt straight out of the box is cool!

My reasons for considering a mac is that everyone I know that has one swears by it -- never crashes, great battery life, etc.

From my preliminary research, it looks like:

macbook wins in the areas of:
- Significantly longer battery life.
- Better display brightness.
- Better overall quality (although some people seem to be complaining about sharp edges).
- Better mouse (but I would probably have to learn how to use it to get the most out of it).

T410s wins in the areas of:
- WEIGHT!
- Slightly better display resolution.
- Familiarity with Windows and all of my apps would just run (although I'd be new to Windows 7).

I haven't checked prices on the T410s, but when I configure one on the web, it gets be be more expensive than the macbook pro (I'm trying to get the best configuration with respect to graphics and SSD on both, and I believe the 410s has an option for better graphics than the macbook pro). I can get the IBM retiree price if such a thing is still offered, so that may drop the price a bit.

I would get the 3 year warranty with either.

Please share your thoughts on all of this. Also let me know if there are any gotchas that I haven't considered in my decision process.

I have been there almost exactly, having had both. Long story short, I sold the Macbook (13" unibody, 2009 model) and kept the Thinkpad T410s, but this is a very personal decision. I am a long-standing (25 years) DOS / Windows user and cannot live without Windows for professional reasons, so that also factored into it.

Ultimately my main reason for choosing the T410s was the keyboard. I'm used to the layout, even though slightly changed on the T410s. I have software that makes use of the function keys and find the gap between every 4 function keys, missing on the Mac, extremely helpful for blind typing. In general there are also keys missing on the Mac keyboard. Pause/Break, Print Screen (as far as I remember), Insert. No Delete key, you have to press Shift-Backspace instead. Add to that the awful chiclet design - I kept missing keys - and I felt quite badly hampered by it.

The touchpad by comparison is a joy under Mac OS. Things like the palm check and two / three / four finger gestures work very reliably. The inertia-based two-finger scrolling is, like I said, a joy. The touchpad of the T410s is quite simply poor by comparison. This probably has less to do with the hardware, but is a limitation of the drivers and the OS, which was Windows 7, 64-bit, by the way. The gestures were a bit of a joke, as it couldn't reliably distinguish between you using your fingers and the palm-check. Quite frequently the touchpad wouldn't react to your fingers when it should, or would react to the palm when it shouldn't. No tweaking of driver settings cured it. It was fine for single finger operation and what I'm saying applies equally to every other Windows laptop, I imagine. Apple are simply way ahead here.

Luckily the T410s also has the trackpoint, which is what I use, so the above was really a non-issue for me. An annoying thing about Apple's touchpad was the typical touchpad disease: Despite it's size you'd easily run out of space while dragging and dropping. Here the Apple was actually really bad, because the cursor would stop when you reached the edge of the touchpad. There was no coasting option that I could find.

This, by the way, illustrates a general feature of Mac OS. It is really well set up out of the box, but when you wanted to fine-tune something, it seemed to have less depth in the user interface than Windows has. You can drop down to Unix, of course, but things suddenly get very user unfriendly ... and undocumented. One example is a Mac OS feature called Spotlight, the equivalent of Windows' indexing service. Let's say you have an external disk that has a lot of data on it and you connect it to a Mac, then Spotlight immediately decides it needs to index the disk and will absolutely kill performance while it does that. Think of USB sticks. You can exclude disks / directories from Spotlight for privacy reasons, but only after you've connected them at least once, by which time Spotlight has begun it's task. It's a Catch-22 and really stupid.

Since I've never been a fan of full disk indexing - what you gain in search efficiency, you loose in ongoing performance and privacy issues - I wanted to disable Spotlight altogether. At that point you run into the pig-headed, "we know best" side of Apple. Basically you have to know your exact version of Mac OS (mine was Leopard, 10.5) and fiddle with a bunch of system files that only the user community has figured out. There is a lot of contradictory information about it on the Net, or at least different ways of doing it. Compare that with simply disabling the Indexing Service via the Windows UI.

If the Thinkpad keyboard wins over the Mac, it's exactly the opposite with the screens. Apple tend to ship decent color-calibrated screens with, from mid-2009, good contrast ratios (500:1 measured) even on the 13" models. The T410s screen on the other hand is atrocious. Seriously, worse than anything including bargain-basement netbooks. I have written about my impressions here, posting as FH:

http://www.thinkpads.com/2010/08/19/dea ... /#comments

As I mention, I am still using my 7-year old Thinkpad T30 at present. The T410s is on standby for when that dies (of which there is no sign). If you like your, presumably 4:3 aspect ratio, T60 screen, I'd almost recommend to simply keep that machine and wait for the industry trend to somehow reverse itself. They don't make them like they used to. Sigh. Or of course, get a laptop from Apple, who somehow, magically, are able to score decent screens ... if you can live with the glossy finish, that is.

Your requirement to possibly run Windows applications shouldn't stop you from getting an Apple. There are virtualization solutions - Parallels, Vmware - that will allow you to run Windows inside of MacOS. In fact, if you get a Windows 7 based Thinkpad, you'll be doing exactly the same thing, if your applications won't play ball with Windows 7 (example: various older Oracle versions) or with 64-bit (example: Cisco VPN, until very recently). It's called XP Mode and it's nothing else but Microsoft Virtual PC. That said, if you need to heavily use those apps all the time, I do not recommend a virtual machine. The processor in my Macbook apparently had some of Intel's latest VT-x extensions, but performance still took a noticeable hit. I ended up using VMware and there were also issues where VMware would sometimes consume all available processor resources, particularly when running Flash animations inside a Windows browser, until reboot. My advice would be to use these virtual solutions only when you have to. Another alternative, by the way, is to install Windows on the Mac using Apple boot camp. You will not likely reap the reliability benefits of the touchpad though, since these are probably Mac OS specific.

ghanwani wrote:
My reasons for considering a mac is that everyone I know that has one swears by it -- never crashes, great battery life, etc.

A few things to consider here:

1) Many Mac users are not technical people. They're often people who don't know the difference between an operating system issue and a hardware issue. Apple hardware is no more reliable than most other PC hardware. Yes, the default OS install tends to be a bit more tolerant of user-induced foolishness, but nowadays (since Vista) there is no practical difference in stability between OS X and Windows.

2) Many Mac users have a relatively limited basis of comparison. If you ask most Mac users about what other systems they've owned, I suspect you'd hear something along the lines of "Well my first machine was a Dell/HP/Sony, but it (kept crashing/broke/sucked) so I got a Mac." Rarely will you hear something like "Well I used a bunch of different PCs for 10+ years, and found Macs to have the best build quality, etc."

3) In my experience, every single Mac user I've met who raves about their machine's battery life does so by comparing it to their previous machine. Often, it goes something like this "Well I used to have this Dell (etc.) and that only got like 2 hours of battery life -- but my MacBook gets 6!". Of course, the bit that is rarely mentioned is that the previous machine was purchased c. 2005, and the "massively improved" battery life isn't really a function of any Apple magic as much as it is of the forward march of technology.

4) ThinkPads (and... well... most every other laptop) have removable batteries. Battery dies in the middle of a flight? Swap in a new one. Battery fails? Buy a new one from the outlet, swap it in, recycle the old one. Macs (at least modern Mac laptops) don't. Battery dies in the middle of a flight? You're SOL. Battery fails? Gotta ship off your Mac to Mother Apple and pay a fixed price (or use a third party and kiss your warranty good bye.)

Other things to consider:

1) Macs are PCs. It's true! There is exactly one difference between Apple hardware and modern PC hardware (at a fundamental level): Macs use EFI instead of a BIOS. This means that they cannot run a number of operating systems, and have far flakier support for the ones that they do run. They're great if you want to run Mac OS X and only Mac OS X, and a lot more trouble if you want to run anything else.

2) Macs aren't built any better than ThinkPads. Sure, the fancy metal looks more solid, but it's really a lot more vulnerable. If you've ever dropped an aluminium MacBook onto a hard floor (as I have), you'll become acutely aware of two things: 1) a solid metal block is not the most shock absorbent material and 2) a plate of real glass in front of an LCD is a particularly shock-sensitive design.

3) AppleCare is great... except when it isn't. You can't get accidental damage coverage at all, and a surprising number of things are mysteriously chalked up as customer-induced. Since there's no onsite service option, you run the risk of ending up arguing with some phone jockey about whether or not a repair person some couple hundred miles away will deem it acceptable to send your machine back without you footing the bill. EasyServ isn't perfect on this front either but a) it's a lot better in my experience and b) it's not your only option.

4) If you ever decide you want to move on from Mac OS X -- perhaps when you get sick of the short release cycle forcing you to upgrade your OS or risk being compromised or perhaps when you start to discover all the bugs in the less-publicized features of the software -- you'll have one hell of a time getting your data out of Apple's applications. If you think Microsoft is the king of lock-in, "you ain't seen nothin' yet" (to commandeer an old phrase.) That slick setup may look great in the commercials, but it is about as far from inter-operable as it gets.

5) Unless you game, graphics really don't matter that much. Even integrated GPUs are overkill for most desktop apps nowadays, and both the current ThinkPad and MacBook line-ups offer more than enough graphics muscle for everything but modern gaming.

6) Apple really, really, *really* doesn't like to support old systems. How old is old? Well let me give you an example that stung me recently: in 2006, Apple was shipping MacBooks with 32-bit processors. In 2008, they released Java 6 as a 64-bit only install, leaving those MacBook customers out in the cold. Another example: while Microsoft only recently stopped supporting Windows 2000 (released in 1999), Apple dropped support for Tiger (10.4, released in 2005) with the release of Snow Leopard (10.6, released in 2009). If you're interested in making the most of your investment, you might want to think twice before dropping a grand or more on an Apple computer.

7) Windows 7 (and Vista) are worlds better than XP. Yes, all the snarky, smug commercials about Mac OS X are correct... assuming you're comparing a modern version of OS X to Microsoft's OS from 2001. When you compare Snow Leopard to Windows 7, however, you'll find that the commercials are only really accurate in one regard: the Apple spokesman really does do a great job of representing many vocal Mac advocates: he's smug, not terribly technical, and hellbent on shilling a product that's more expensive than a number of superior alternatives.

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Ok, so that did end up being a bit of a rant. But given that I regularly use all three major OSs (OS X 10.5/10.6, NT 6.x, and a number of Linux distros) across about a dozen machines (a few ThinkPads, some Apple hardware, and a couple misc. boxes) I feel I have a pretty good basis for comparison.

I had Windows 7. What's so great about it? At the end of the day, the OS just needs to get out of the way and let me run my software. Windows 7, well probably the Intel display driver, blue-screened my T410s twice. Hadn't seen that in years. Some things I really liked, for example the previews in the taskbar and the Start menu search feature, but the scrolling Start menu itself was a major step backwards, I thought. In general neither MacOS nor Windows gets it right for me.

When I was a teenager, my parents generously gave me the attic of the house to live in, a big space. I would drop all my stuff on the floor, leaving the room cluttered to the point where it was difficult to navigate a path from the light switch to the bed. My parents naturally did not approve, but to their amazement I remembered exactly where everything was. That's the same way I feel about my desktop. It might be cluttered, but as long as I put things in a certain place myself, I remember where I left them. I'm convinced I'm not alone in being that way, but neither Microsoft nor Apple truly cater for me, other than via the desktop itself. I find the Apple dock quite unintelligible. Anything that automatically shrinks or expands, that auto-arranges icons, tries to work out my favorite applications and/or re-shuffles that list is quite useless and annoying to me. It is akin to my parents tidying up my room for me, which perhaps brings out the rebellious teenager, but also simply means I can't find something where I last saw it. Neither XP, nor 7 nor MacOS truly hits the mark, although I'll freely admit that I don't know what my ideal UI would look like.

Anyhow, for someone coming from XP - actually from Windows 2000, until recently - I also found the Windows 7 control panel a hopeless mess. Too many wizards, too many ways of accomplishing the same thing. This may be helpful for the casual user, but it positively gets in the way when you want to spend a bit of time to learn of the available features. There are possibly two divergent ways of writing a user interface, task-oriented and tool-oriented. Windows 7 has gone the task-oriented way, screens that are either wizards, automating a task, or they at least pull different settings together with a particular task in mind. I'm more of a tool-oriented person myself and I think that's the way user interfaces have been in the past. Such interfaces will focus on the available features and group them logically together without much duplication. The ultimate expression of that approach is perhaps the Unix command-line, where tools have a very narrow focus - no simultaneous compression and archiving, for example - but are easily combined. It's not a great comparison, since a Windows UI is not a programming language, like the command-line almost is, but I do think a tool-oriented UI will teach you much better about the structure of the underlying system. Funnily enough I found the MacOS control panel, with it's perhaps older roots, better than Windows 7.

I find the metal corners to be sharp on the macbook pro (my friend has one), and if you wear a metal watch, the laptop will wear out a gouge before the watch does. It was dropped from a couple of feet, turned off and in a case, and it dented the metal frame, and killed the hard drive.

I also dislike OSX because there is no true "Maximize" function. Sure I can type in the middle of the screen, but I like being able to make the page as big as possible. The screen is also the glossyiest thing I have ever used, and whenever I used it I had to position it so that there would be a blank wall behind me so that there would be no reflections. YMMV, but I prefer the durability, high-res screens on thinkpads.

craigmontHunter wrote:I also dislike OSX because there is no true "Maximize" function.

I so agree with this one, only I had forgotten about it. There is a button that changes the size of the window, but I'll be [censored] if I know what it does. I found it quite useless. One of those features too smart for it's own good. Apple products are renowned for their simplicity and it's curious that Windows has the simpler and, IMO, better solution here. Also, for a Windows user, the fact that the Close / Minimize / Mystery (Maximize) buttons are on left hand side is a major annoyance. No option from Apple to move them to the right hand side ... that would just be too easy.

FragrantHead wrote:I so agree with this one, only I had forgotten about it. There is a button that changes the size of the window, but I'll be *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** if I know what it does. I found it quite useless. One of those features too smart for it's own good. Apple products are renowned for their simplicity and it's curious that Windows has the simpler and, IMO, better solution here. Also, for a Windows user, the fact that the Close / Minimize / Mystery (Maximize) buttons are on left hand side is a major annoyance. No option from Apple to move them to the right hand side ... that would just be too easy.

And indeed, this is indicative of the biggest problem that many people face with Mac OS X: it's great if Apple's definition of "ideal" matches yours, and it's insanely frustrating if it doesn't. Now all modern desktop environments have a number of "smart" features, and it's not uncommon for their way of doing things to fail to resonate with some users. The difference is that, unlike with the software found on Windows and Linux desktops, Mac OS X software often takes the route of "my way or the highway". Want to change the position of the menu bar? Tough. Think the window should maximize itself to cover the entire screen? Well you'll have to put it that way yourself, 'cause we disagree. Don't like the "spring loaded" feature of the Finder, or want to tweak the behavior to match your preferences? Too bad. We decided it's optimal, so you'd better get used to it.

The main UI problem that I found with OS X was, quite simply, it was written by people who seemed to think that they knew what I wanted better than I did.

Now I actually like OS X as a dev. environment. Hell, I think it's superior to a lot of other systems in that regard. Apple has a stellar API in the form of Cocoa, some great UI development tools, and a solid Unix foundation. But for everyday computing, I think it's a far worse fit for far more people than the fans would have you believe.

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And one quick rant: Apple is *very* deceptive on a number of points regarding OS X security. They claimed NX support, and crowed about how it improved their OS's security, yet they didn't have a full implementation in Leopard -- and what they did have was effectively meaningless. They bragged about ASLR (address space layout randomization), except their implementation was blatantly flawed and easily-bypassed. They brag/bragged about having no viruses, but conveniently ignore/ignored the fact that there has been malicious OS X software in the wild for a couple years now. They crowed quite loudly about the security of FileVault, touting it as having the strength of 128-bit AES, and made no mention of the fact that requiring a "Master Reset" password reduces the effective strength of the cryptosystem to that of a 1024-bit RSA key.

Now that sort of thing may not matter to a lot of folks, but it grated on me quite a bit.

Oh, and one last example of shadiness: they claimed the Time Capsule was "server-grade". It's not. It's a regular laptop drive in a poorly-ventilated enclosure that's prone to heat failure. Talk about a massive design failure for a backup system...

Having just purchased a new T410s, and using my wife's older Macbook regularly for years, and friend's and family's newer Macbook pros, I will say that if I was not buying my Thinkpad for work, I would buy a Macbook Pro. I've been using Windows computers for over 20 years, I am a sys-admin for our relatively small network at my office, and I have pushed us from Dell to Lenovo over the past several years. Some things about the T410s are great - super light weight, with a SSD it's extremely fast, and the screen is very bright and the battery life, especially when adding the ultrabay battery is fantastic. That said, I am left feeling like the build quality is perhaps deteriorating somewhat. My headphone jack is flaky from the factory. The screen, other than being bright, is terrible. The gestures, including 2-finger scrolling on the trackpad work so inconsistently they are useless. That's fine, as I generally prefer the trackpoint, but having used Apple's excellent trackpad and gestures, I know what I'm missing. I would gladly pay an extra 20-30%, perhaps more, to see a Thinkpad built like this with serious attention to detail. Lenovo just doesn't seem interested in playing in that market.

In general, the great thing about Apple is that attention to detail, and the tight integration between software and hardware. Other than low resolution on some models, the screens tend to be excellent. The mag-safe power adapter is genius. The trackpad is wonderful, and the keyboard is second only to a Thinkpad. Sleep and wake work FLAWLESSLY on a Mac. They somehow consume much less power than a pc when sleeping, and turn on so fast you'll think it must have never gone to sleep. I would expect the battery on a new MBP to give my two-battery T410s a run for the money, especially in normal (non-optimized) use. There is a learning curve to the software, but it's minimal for most people and worth the effort. OSX does not generally slow down over time - my mother has Macs that have been in daily use for 6+ years and never seen any significant sys admin work, let alone a re-install.

So Rob, we basically agree, I think. Now we've got that established, let me play Devil's advocate. There are reasons for Apple to think they know best. Without it, that personality trait of the man at the top, Steve Jobs, Apple wouldn't be where they are. Their products generally work well, because they are the result of one man's vision or, well, the individual visions of their designers in their field of responsibility. Sometimes that goes wrong, but without the balls to design an antenna wrapped around the outside of the phone, Apple probably wouldn't be where they are on the whole.

What's interesting, I think, are the things we don't complain about. Menu bars, right-click context menus, radio buttons, tick boxes etc. Those have established themselves as de-facto standards and, though mostly not invented by them, Apple were among the first to popularise these GUI conventions. I bet the Mystery (Maximise) button dates back to that time, pre-dating Windows. In that sense Apple may be justified not to change it. Even if the button failed to elevate itself to a universal UI convention, at least Apple have to cater to their own user-base, who presumably find it useful.

Of course it wouldn't hurt to have an option to change it, or would it? I have a colleague who really reconfigures his Windows desktop. Task bar at the top, a weird color scheme and ... a Dvorak keyboard layout. The latter makes his machine virtually unusable to me (how do you switch the [censored] keyboard layout at the logon prompt). That's an extreme example, of course. Thankfully it is not what I see when I dial in to a customer machine, mostly servers, admittedly. Those all have the taskbar at the bottom and vary remarkably little from the default Windows install. I'm grateful for that lack of customisation. It means I can find my way around easily and help the customer.

Making sure to create the right, simple, UI is very important for companies like Microsoft and Apple, and the only way they can do so is by sticking their neck out for what they believe. Are Apple the most extreme in doing that? It seems without question, but they are still merely on one side of a spectrum running from Apple, through Microsoft to, I guess (not having used it much), Linux.

Have a range

OS X: Lots of handholding but limits advanced functionality. You really can't screw up here unless you're doing something horribly wrong. It also means you need to go to extra lengths to modify small aspects of your system.

Windows (7/Vista): Intermediate step. You can go really far or have a fairly simple system relative to older setups like XP. You do lose a little ease of advanced setting configuration but hey, you have GodMode in Win7. A lot more casual user resistant here.
Windows (XP, 2k, extends far back too): Less friendly to casual users but people who have lived along Win systems back to the 95 days will be comfortable here. Less stable than 7. You also can screw up *really* badly here.

*nixes that are made friendly to the casual user: Little harder but if you know what you're doing then you can get along fine here. You can screw up *really* badly here.
*nixes that you have to take care of yourself: Hope you know what you're doing, oh and enjoy your computer cluster.

Edit: I won't include my comments on Apple hardware design (negligence or total lack of care, Apple actually doesn't go out of their way to force product obsolescence on the hardware end) flaws in this post. Too many problems exist for me to describe with today's schedule.

Navck wrote: *nixes that are made friendly to the casual user: Little harder but if you know what you're doing then you can get along fine here. You can screw up *really* badly here.

I'd contest this. I've configured Linux machines for users who were former Windows and former OS X users, and in both cases it's a *lot* harder for them to screw up the configuration. Yes, if you follow some random forum troll's advice to find the terminal, log in as root, and run "rm -rf /" your machine will be hosed -- but that's no different than with Mac OS X!

What's interesting, I think, are the things we don't complain about. Menu bars, right-click context menus, radio buttons, tick boxes etc. Those have established themselves as de-facto standards and, though mostly not invented by them, Apple were among the first to popularise these GUI conventions. I bet the Mystery (Maximise) button dates back to that time, pre-dating Windows.

Indeed. And I thank Bud Tribble, Burrell Smith, Jef Raskin, Susan Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, and others for that.

That said, all that has little to do with the strengths and weaknesses of OS X today. Heck, OS X shares precious few UI conventions and even less code with the "classic" Mac OS.

Apple may have had a bunch of really smart people working for them in the 1980s -- they still *do* have a bunch of really smart people working for them -- but that doesn't mean that their products are inherently good today.

The 13.3" Macbook Pro can run Windows 7 if you buy a license for it, I have a 13.3" Macbook Pro and a T410 at the moment, and I use both regularly.

Build quality: The aluminum unibody is solid, but so is the T410, mine has no creaks and no flex on the keyboard. The glass touchpad is amazing to use, I'm starting to like it more than the nipple mouse possibly. Nothing beats a trackball/mechanical keyboard though.

Display: Macbook's glossy display is awesome, but not for everyone. I do not think it's tooo glossy, though reflections can bother some.

Keyboard: They're both pretty good, the Thinkpad's keyboard offers more functionality however.

I have dumped Windows since 2004(well, I keep Win 7 on a desktop because Windows is pretty good for gaming, not much else though... for me ) and have never looked back, though this Macbook is my first Mac, I have ran Unix/Linux systems for the past 6 years for work and getting the full blown Unix shell in Mac OS X is a plus, however Thinkpads take real well to Linux anyways.

Macbook has better battery life, very tight integration but so does Windows/Linux on the Thinkpad.

Let us know which you decide to go with! Go to an Apple store and play with the Macbook Pro some and see if you like it.

Create a gif at native resolution for your T60, set to some colour, say black, and create a band in some other colour, say grey, at the bottom, such that the black portion is 800 pixels high. Set as your Windows desktop background image. See if you can live with using your T60 without letting windows occupy the grey bit I think even 900 is a bit of a stretch when you're used to 1050, 800 would really irritate. YMMV, of course.

One final thing to consider is the range of software available on each platform. With Mac OS X, you may find that you only have one or two choices when it comes to software to do a given task. Take small-business accounting, for example: when last I used a Mac, there was a choice of Quicken or... uh... pencil and paper. Heck, even Linux has two full-featured solutions to that task! (KMyMoney and GNUCash)

Now that may not be a problem for you at all -- it depends entirely on what you need -- but it's something to consider before you invest in the platform. (And you *will* have to invest in the platform if it's going to be your primary machine.)

Basically, my reasons for moving away from the Apple ecosystem can be summed up as this: it was very pretty and a fair bit of fun, but it ended up being far more expensive (in the long run) yet no more productive than alternatives.

Easy:
* If you are going to install your own OS, get the T410s.
* If you are a non-technical user, get the Mac.
* If you got locked into Windows you don't have a choice.

I'm just gonna say that I don't like the MacBook keyboards. Conventional mechanism FTW. XD

ThinkRob wrote:Basically, my reasons for moving away from the Apple ecosystem can be summed up as this: it was very pretty and a fair bit of fun

While I liked my Mac as something different, I wouldn't say it was much easier to use than a PC. I had to relearn some stuff that I had forgotten. It was fun, but I moved on.

I have to agree with everything FragrantHead said above.

I bought a T400s about 5 months ago but had to return it because it had the worst LCD screen I have ever used. Contrast was atrocious, and the viewing angles were so bad that colors inverted at the top and bottom of the screen. Only in the middle 1/3 of the screen were the colors "normal." From what I've heard, the T410s is just as bad if not worse.

I hope that someone finds a 3rd party LCD panel that could be used in a T410/T410s, because it doesn't appear that Lenovo cares about screen quality.

I use a Macbook Pro 13" right now. My biggest gripes with it are the chiclet keyboard (which isn't terrible), and the mouse acceleration when using an external mouse. Using an mouse is very frustrating because of the difference between Mac OSX and Windows mouse acceleration. And there's no Apple API to adjust it. Using the integrated glass trackpad works great, though, the problem only manifests with an external mouse.

The Macbook LCD is 100x better than the Lenovo.

[quote="ThinkRob"]
I'd contest this. I've configured Linux machines for users who were former Windows and former OS X users, and in both cases it's a *lot* harder for them to screw up the configuration. Yes, if you follow some random forum troll's advice to find the terminal, log in as root, and run "rm -rf /" your machine will be hosed -- but that's no different than with Mac OS X![quote]

I'd say otherwise because I don't imagine every Linux machine setup for users is done with similar competence levels as you have. Especially if they're setting it up for theirselves/themselves. (Funny how English works.)

Navck wrote: I'd say otherwise because I don't imagine every Linux machine setup for users is done with similar competence levels as you have. Especially if they're setting it up for theirselves/themselves. (Funny how English works.)

Ever done a Windows XP install from scratch? If you give the average user an Ubuntu install disc and a Windows XP install disc, they stand a far, far better chance of ending up with a fully-working Linux install than they do a fully-working XP install. At least that's been my experience, and yes, I have actually done this test.

If a user is capable of reading on-screen prompts and following the directions, it's really not hard for him to set up a modern desktop distro. Ten years ago they didn't stand a chance. Five years ago, maybe -- and even then only if they were willing to do a bit of Googling. But nowadays? In 2010? For a user with no previous administrative experience with either OS, it's easier to set up a new Linux install than a Windows one.

The people I'm around have installed XP by a series of results known as "trying harder." I'll see if I can hand these people an Ubuntu (Any specifics you want me to include? Make them run it off the disk? Actual install? Leave them alone for a week and see if they've accidentally deleted system files?) disk and see how well they're going to flail.

I would bring up a little bit of the older part of the internet to describe how much I trust these people on computers:

http://web.gnuer.org/blog/uploads/pictu ... amouse.jpg (I loaded this up when I was on dialup, unless you have a 14.4k modem I don't see why this would be "huge" to you.)

All products except maybe the monitor to frustrate them.

Navck wrote:The people I'm around have installed XP by a series of results known as "trying harder." I'll see if I can hand these people an Ubuntu (Any specifics you want me to include? Make them run it off the disk? Actual install? Leave them alone for a week and see if they've accidentally deleted system files?) disk and see how well they're going to flail.

Running from the LiveCD would inevitably result in a win for Linux, as Windows doesn't have that capability at all!

You can't get much easier than "put in the disk and wait 'til the desktop comes up."

All products except maybe the monitor to frustrate them.

For a lot of users, that's spot on. And for some, even the monitor is a source of problems. That's why I don't think there's any serious differences between Linux and Windows usability any more: most users are totally incapable of managing either system, and those capable enough to manage one are almost always capable of managing the other.

I have a good friend who used to hand out LiveCDs to some friends to convert them to linux so he wouldn't have to format their XP systems every time they did something stupid and accepted a prompt.

He still has tales about how they took a fragment of the disk to him and asked for a new one on a monthly basis. Let me say that some of these people should not be operating a motor vehicle and they represent "average user" in his area.

Thanks for all the detailed feedback. You guys are great, but I remain ever more confused. It does sound like the display on the T410s is pretty bad. For me, the display is a big deal.

So let, me try and respond to a few issues that have come up in the responses.

- I will be mostly using the machine for surfing the web, but it will also be my primary storage for all my personal data (taxes, word documents, presentations, photos, music). All of my music is still on CDs, but some day when the planets align, I will figure out the optimal way to digitize them (WAV, Apple Lossless, etc.), buy an iPod, and use that for all my music. [If you have a favorite way for digitizing and archiving your music collection, I would love to hear about that.]

- I would classify myself as an intermediate user. I do some amount of customization, for example to the command prompt, and I use some cygwin apps.

- I'm not locked into Windows in any way. I store everything in a directory structure under "c:\home" - taxes, photos, and when I get to the music I expect the same. I would like to continue to do something like that even if I get a mac. This is perhaps the only thing I haven't looked into in detail, but I was guess that given I have a unix prompt, in the worst case I could create symbolic links from "$home" to wherever Apple likes to store my files. The only app that I have that doesn't run on Apple is the Savings Bonds Wizard by the Treasury Dept. That's not a big deal because I can move to tracking my bonds online. I like the whole concept of being able to run a unix shell.

- Someone here mentioned getting locked in to Apple as a concern...can folks shed some more light on this? This is probably the thing that bothers me the most.

- I've played with the Apple a little bit in stores. I don't like having to click the entire touch pad (too much pressure required), but I understand that's configurable, so I figure I can work around that. Other than that the keyboard feels fine...not as good as the Thinkpad, but not a big deal.

Thanks,
Anoop

Yeah, the screen on the Macbook will almost certainly be better. Honestly, you sound like a pretty good candidate for an Apple. The integration of everything is really appealing, even as a 20+ year Windows user and Windows Systems Administrator. Any chance you can stop by an Apple store and spend some time with one? That should help you make up your mind pretty easily. If you are used to the command prompt, having a fairly unix-like Terminal available is a big plus for Apple. Things are generally stored in the individual user Home directory, so you should have no trouble with that. One of my favorite parts of OSX is how programs are installed. Very seamless, with very little 'mess' left over when you remove them.

Regarding the digital audio, don't use WAV, as it takes up excessive space and is not able to be tagged like other formats. If you would like to retain full quality, Apple Lossless or FLAC are good options, although only the former is compatible with Itunes and iPods. Personally, I have my entire CD collection archived in Apple Lossless (ripped with Exact Audio Copy using their verification database to confirm the rips) which then streams to my various systems around the house via several Airport Expresses. This is a great gadget that can be added to your existing network, and then stream full quality music around the house, outputting either a digital signal (which I have connected to an external DAC in my best system) or an analog signal (attached to bedroom systems, etc.) If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, you can control the entire thing right from that device including switching speakers, controlling volume, etc. It's a great system. Also, iTunes now has an option to down-convert your music on the fly when syncing with your iPods, to save space at the expense of quality, keeping only the original Lossless file for play at home.

zhenya wrote: Regarding the digital audio, don't use WAV, as it takes up excessive space and is not able to be tagged like other formats.

I've heard that a lot regarding tagging. Why should I be worried about tagging? Can you point me to something that discusses what tagging is, how it's implemented, and why I need to worry about it when choosing an encoding format? There's probably tons of stuff on the web but I want to make sure I'm reading the right stuff.

zhenya wrote: If you would like to retain full quality, Apple Lossless or FLAC are good options, although only the former is compatible with Itunes and iPods. Personally, I have my entire CD collection archived in Apple Lossless (ripped with Exact Audio Copy using their verification database to confirm the rips) which then streams to my various systems around the house via several Airport Expresses.

Did you use EAC on its own or via dbpoweramp? I did download a copy of dbpoweramp and found that every .wav file ripped is larger than the one ripped by iTunes. Apparently dbpoweramp stores some metadata as part of the file. Anyway, after a couple of CDs of noticing that, I wasn't sure if I wanted to use dbpoweramp anymore because iTunes started picking up some of the files (and only some of them). Would the apple lossless file be expected to be the same whether ripped by iTunes or EAC or dbpoweramp?

Thanks for all the info!

ghanwani wrote: - Someone here mentioned getting locked in to Apple as a concern...can folks shed some more light on this? This is probably the thing that bothers me the most.

Stay away from iCal, Apple Mail, iTunes, and the iPhone/iPod touch, and you'll probably be fine. Replacements: Thunderbird + Lightning, Songbird, and just about any MP3 player other than the iPod (since they all appear as a normal USB drive.)

Oh, and if you use iWork, don't save solely in its native format. *Nothing* can import that (that I know of), and you are in for a world of pain if your machine dies and you don't have another Mac handy to read important documents (I'm speaking from experience here.)

ghanwani wrote: I've heard that a lot regarding tagging. Why should I be worried about tagging? Can you point me to something that discusses what tagging is, how it's implemented, and why I need to worry about it when choosing an encoding format? There's probably tons of stuff on the web but I want to make sure I'm reading the right stuff.

One of the major advantages of using a music manager like iTunes is that it allows you to accurately tag your music with normal things like Artist, Album, Year, Genre, track number, etc. etc. You can then easily sort/browse/search via that information. The WAV container is not compatible with the standard id3 tags that are used to store this music. Also, given that you can create lossless versions that are bit for bit exact copies, yet use 40-50% less space, there is no reason to bother with WAV for your music collection.

ghanwani wrote: Did you use EAC on its own or via dbpoweramp? I did download a copy of dbpoweramp and found that every .wav file ripped is larger than the one ripped by iTunes. Apparently dbpoweramp stores some metadata as part of the file. Anyway, after a couple of CDs of noticing that, I wasn't sure if I wanted to use dbpoweramp anymore because iTunes started picking up some of the files (and only some of them). Would the apple lossless file be expected to be the same whether ripped by iTunes or EAC or dbpoweramp?

Thanks for all the info!

I use EAC with the ALAC add on as the encoder. The difference between ripping with iTunes vs. EAC or dbpoweramp using the AccurateRip database is that you can't know if iTunes has encountered a problem with the disc and just pushed on through. iTunes is generally the fastest, and EAC is generally able to create the most accurate rips. If you aren't concerned about bit perfect copies, copying with iTunes is generally more than adequate - although if you have scratched discs, you will sometimes end up with audible defects.

For ripping CDs, I'd recommend Max. Like iTunes, it supports tagging, etc.

Unlike iTunes, it:
- supports ripping into open formats like OGG and FLAC (lossless)
- integrates with MusicBrainz to automatically retrieve CD information
- takes advantage of multiple cores to speed ripping
- has an unobtrusive UI
- isn't slow as molasses
- is open source
- integrates with Growl to give you a heads-up notification of when your rips are done, allowing you to work in the mean time

ThinkRob wrote: Stay away from iCal, Apple Mail, iTunes, and the iPhone/iPod touch, and you'll probably be fine. Replacements: Thunderbird + Lightning, Songbird, and just about any MP3 player other than the iPod (since they all appear as a normal USB drive.)

Oh, and if you use iWork, don't save solely in its native format. *Nothing* can import that (that I know of), and you are in for a world of pain if your machine dies and you don't have another Mac handy to read important documents (I'm speaking from experience here.)

I use gmail for email...almost never open email software on my PC, although I do have some older archived email which is in outlook express format. Don't use iCal, but I am planning to use iTunes and an iPod (why would that tie me into a mac, though?). I tend to use google docs nowadays for personal stuff. I do have older office docs. Thanks for mentioning the bit about iwork...guess I will save those as office format files if I should use them.

Anoop