Best ThinkPad Crippled by A Flaw....

[Medessec]

Also I don't think lenovo pick the worst screens on purpose, there are several requirements, same height, similar brightness, non-glare, similar DPI (remember we don't have windows 10 back then, and even now windows 10 is a pain in the a**), the structure of the secondary screen push mechanisms would not allow a HV150UX2 in it (unless they make the structure much less durable).

Well, I'm not saying we should modify a UXGA into the second screen's mechanism (as much as that would be the coolest thing ever...) I'm well aware that the second screen mechanism went through QA and testing to mount the exact dimensions and weight screen that it has. But I'm sure there's other 10.6" screens that match the DS screen profile-wise... and isn't there just some screens that could be a straight swap? Screens made around the same time that employ roughly the same tech... I'm just speaking off a hunch, so if Lenovo actually did it's own pinout for the DS screen, then that's obviously out the window, but ANYTHING has to be better than some of the second screens I've seen... just look at this:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 162255.jpg

And still it's a long way to go to change the GPU in W701(ds).,which is definitely more important than the secondary screen. An Iris pro will smack the crappy Quadro FX3800m that W701 carries.

I am in agreement- but in the threads I've seen, it seems that there's a lot more to how the W701 interfaces with it's video cards than with other laptops with MXM-III. I have a Clevo D900F, and it seems that a BIOS update (by Eurocom themselves) was required to upgrade from a GTX 285M to a 680M, and it resulted in some funky BIOS screen discoloration (Eurocom says to deal with it, it's no problem). But the modding community would have to come up with something of their own similar to this... and it doesn't look easy at all. Someone has to have the time, and the knowledge to modify BIOS and add VBIOS data, and have the knowledge to rescue a BIOS or a motherboard in case something goes wrong.

And also, modify the position of USB ports will come before the secondary screen as well

This I'm not sure I agree with. I would give you that they're in quite funky places, but 2 on one side and 3 up front on the right- it's better than most Thinkpads, and the 3 up front on the right is quite convenient for flash drives and all the rest. Do you personally like USB ports to be on the back? Because then you'd have to worry about the W700 V2 Minidock...

[TonyJZX]

I had an interesting discussion about what features you need in CPUs today with the increasing demands the internet has on systems.

Are there certain features in CPUs that you need?

I'm not a huge proponent of VT type features in your avg. dual core machines. Eg. I have a few i5 1st and 2nd gen units and they have VT-X VT-D etc but I'm not about to virtualise on a dual core laptop so that's useless to me.

But I heard that VT features may be used in everyday things such as JVMs so it might be useful outside of VMs,

One other feature you might need is AES NI.

This feature is for encryption. So who needs that? Well you know how every page seems to be a https now? That uses AES.

[kfzhu1229]

I think you definitely need MMX, SSE, PAE, SSE2 and NX. SSE3 and intel64 are also recommended but judging how aged my T43 is it is not necessary

[TonyJZX]

Iits not a terrible deal without aes.

I have higher speed Core 2 Duos on Win7/Win10 that seems to soldier on fine without it.

[kfzhu1229]

In fact a Pentium 4 5xxJ/6xx runs Windows 10 x86 just fine if coupled with a workable graphics. Pentium M 780 also runs fine but sometimes it heats up crazily when doing updates. A Pentium D should work with x64 just fine. An Optiplex 960 desktop from my school currently has Core2 duo E8400 @ 3ghz and 8gb RAM it works like a charm under Windows 10 x64

[Medessec]

In fact a Pentium 4 5xxJ/6xx runs Windows 10 x86 just fine if coupled with a workable graphics. Pentium M 780 also runs fine but sometimes it heats up crazily when doing updates. A Pentium D should work with x64 just fine. An Optiplex 960 desktop from my school currently has Core2 duo E8400 @ 3ghz and 8gb RAM it works like a charm under Windows 10 x64

Any Core 2 Duo, both Conroe/Wolfdale and Merom/Penryn of mobile CPUs, should run a clean-kept copy of Windows 8, 10, and for the most part... 7, just fine for basic tasks such as word processing, low-level applications/data-entry and basic web, email, page browsing(*cough* Thinkpad forums).

Pentium 4s and Pentium Ms in my experience primarily struggle with any task beyond the basics. Having background-running programs (anti-virus, a browser download, audio or video playback) will severely cripple your ability to multitask. The computer will have a very hard time running multiple tabs in a browser or playing a slideshow.

[kfzhu1229]

Pentium 4s and Pentium Ms in my experience primarily struggle with any task beyond the basics. Having background-running programs (anti-virus, a browser download, audio or video playback) will severely cripple your ability to multitask. The computer will have a very hard time running multiple tabs in a browser or playing a slideshow.

Agreed. I never use antivirus, a browser download and video playback must be treated as a task and cannot be ignored under P4 or M. Audio playback with Spotify does not hurt the performance that much as long as you keep that app minimized. Do not open more than 4 webpages at once. Disable automatic updates and add all the roots of the drives into the Windows Defender exclude list to prevent it from eating the CPU power. For a T43, make sure you do not put it on your bare lap when doing things more than basic stuff and word processing. The start-up time is still fast for those machines though. When watching 720p on YouTube, no other things can be performed parallelly and also pause before you switch to fullscreen back and forth. Some 1080p can be done on Pentium M 780 but you do see it struggle at times even though the result is completely bearable. That's all the things I have in my mind when using my T43 as daily driver

[TPFanatic]

I can't watch 720p Youtube on my T42p (didn't try it on Z60m which is more or less the same as T43p). Is the speed increase that dramatic between T42p and T43 or is there some optimization I need to do to accomplish this amazing feat?

[ajkula66]

I can't watch 720p Youtube on my T42p (didn't try it on Z60m which is more or less the same as T43p). Is the speed increase that dramatic between T42p and T43 or is there some optimization I need to do to accomplish this amazing feat?

My experience has been that T43p struggles with 720p content, in some OS environments worse than in the others, but I have yet to achieve buttery smoothness in *any* OS...

My $0.02 only...

[kfzhu1229]

I can't watch 720p Youtube on my T42p (didn't try it on Z60m which is more or less the same as T43p). Is the speed increase that dramatic between T42p and T43 or is there some optimization I need to do to accomplish this amazing feat?

My experience has been that T43p struggles with 720p content, in some OS environments worse than in the others, but I have yet to achieve buttery smoothness in *any* OS...

My $0.02 only...

My experience is if you want a smooth 720p24 YouTube experience, LOWER YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION!! Before I upgraded the RESOLUTION to UXGA from XGA it barely had any glitches at all

[ajkula66]

My experience is if you want a smooth 720p24 YouTube experience, LOWER YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION!! Before I upgraded the RESOLUTION to UXGA from XGA it barely had any glitches at all

Thanks but no thanks. If I can't watch something in native resolution I'll pass on it altogether.

[kfzhu1229]

Also when i say it does play 720p24 YouTube video it doesn't mean it will play with ease. IT HEATS UP LIKE CR*P. You'd better not to place that thing on your bare knees when doing that playback or else... You get the point.

[axur-delmeria]

My experience has been that T43p struggles with 720p content, in some OS environments worse than in the others, but I have yet to achieve buttery smoothness in *any* OS...

My $0.02 only...

I agree wholeheartedly. If you want 720p without relying on GPU acceleration better go dual core. Even a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo L7500 is more than enough.

[kfzhu1229]

And in the case of video playback integrated graphics does better than discrete graphics whose GPU acceleration doesn't work without CPU's help. When you say more than enough, does it heat up a lot on a laptop? Even under a Pentium 4 650 and integrated graphics 720p plays fine because its thermal energy does not affect you and on my Dell OptiPlex desktop it never, ever overheats nor throttles

[micrex22]

380Z/560Z are nice machines for their time but their use of EDO memory rather than the new PC66 was an unfortunate limitation (only 160MB could be used on the 380Z/560Z while if they went with SDRAM PC66 they could have gone to 288MB instead, with 32MB on-board and a 256MB stick)

Hah! It's been awhile since I've last seen someone talking about 128MB EDO SODIMMs (most people don't know those even exist). If IBM used two RAM slots, then 256 MB could be achieved by two EDO SODIMMs... but they never did that and even cheesed out slots on one of their desktops with EDO DIMMs.

Oh well....

[kfzhu1229]

I mean at least that is better than the P4M machines other than A31 series which are very prone to broken RAM slots... My school has a Dell Latitude P4M machine which also has a broken RAM slot but the good slot is somewhere inside so now it is stuck with 256mb...

[RMSMajestic]

This I'm not sure I agree with. I would give you that they're in quite funky places, but 2 on one side and 3 up front on the right- it's better than most Thinkpads, and the 3 up front on the right is quite convenient for flash drives and all the rest. Do you personally like USB ports to be on the back? Because then you'd have to worry about the W700 V2 Minidock...

Those ports are particularly bad if you wanna use flash drives and mouse.
I don't have a very long arm like Luffy :/