New Thinkpad T42 or T43 - Questions for the GURU's

[revolutionary_one]

Hello, all, as you can see this is my first post to this excellent resource for anyone both in the market for laptops and those who have made their purchases and love raving about how cool thinkpads are....ive been reading here for about a month now before i actually registered

I'm currently in the market for a thinkpad...

These specs are definately something that needs to be in the base system -

1.6+ p-M
256MB sodimm [one dimm, will be upgraded with a seperate 512MB stick]
DVD-CDRW combo
64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 [for the ONE game that I play CounterStrike: Source]\
14.1in. screen [sxgaor xga will do, assuming i can get either to run at 12x10 comfortably]
6-Cell batteries
5400 RPM Hard Drive [either 30 OR 40 will do, but for me 5400 is the sweetspot and is a requisite]
IBM 3-Year warranty with accident [Thinkpad?(R)] Protection

Variables in the purchse -

1)intel b/g vs. ibm a/b/g
-i plan on running linux, ibm is favorable, but is it really worth the extra 50bucks??
2)sxga+ vs. xga
-how comfortably, and what degree of distortion can i see with a normal xga lcd with a native res of 10x7 running at 12x10
3)warranty levels
-what's the difference between: "Thinkpad Protection for Global Model Plus Machine" and "TP Protection - 3 years plus 3 year Depot servicepac"...i honestly am comfortable with just being able to ship it in at IBM's expense [as i know is done very well an timely], and dont need "Depot" service...but Warranty is a biggie for me, as is accident protection, maybe illucidate some of these for me...


Also it's important to know that i am a student at a US university and have access to a education discount

4)how does this compare with an EPP discount which i *MAY* have access to...

5) I'm on a strict 1600-1750 budget...i know its definately possible

6) And finally [for now] - what is USUALLY the best time to buy a thinkpad directly from IBM, ive been calling in and comparing prices quoted for various models, and after deciding on a T42, but im baffled by the degree of specs vs. price differentials accross the board on the t42's ive been surveying since December. Who here has broken the IBM marketing techniques code, other than Bill

I know this is a long post, but it's fairly crucial to my purchase before July , thanks everyone, take care

Regards,
Ajay

[pphilipko]

most of the answers are on the forum. There is an especially useful button called "search".

[Kenn]

Welcome to the forums Ajay! Below are my thoughts, I'm sure others will follow with their own:

1.6+ p-M
256MB sodimm [one dimm, will be upgraded with a seperate 512MB stick]
DVD-CDRW combo
64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 [for the ONE game that I play CounterStrike: Source]\
14.1in. screen [sxgaor xga will do, assuming i can get either to run at 12x10 comfortably]
6-Cell batteries
5400 RPM Hard Drive [either 30 OR 40 will do, but for me 5400 is the sweetspot and is a requisite]
IBM 3-Year warranty with accident [Thinkpad?(R)] Protection

Off the bat it sounds like a T42 would be a good place to start - the MR9600 seems to be the same or better than the X300 that ships with the T43.

1)intel b/g vs. ibm a/b/g
-i plan on running linux, ibm is favorable, but is it really worth the extra 50bucks??

Who runs 802.11a? Apple sealed its fate, thankfully. Your major concern here should be driver support under Linux, which I can't really help with.

2)sxga+ vs. xga
-how comfortably, and what degree of distortion can i see with a normal xga lcd with a native res of 10x7 running at 12x10

SXGA+ is a world of difference better than XGA, but it does add to the cost. I'm not sure you can effectively run an XGA screen at 12x10 - the default behavior is to do the "scrolling virtual desktop thing" and even if you find an app that scales the image, small text would be impossible to read. If your budget supports it and you are used to running at a resolution higher than 10x7, go with SXGA+ and you won't be sorry.

3)warranty levels
-what's the difference between: "Thinkpad Protection for Global Model Plus Machine" and "TP Protection - 3 years plus 3 year Depot servicepac"...i honestly am comfortable with just being able to ship it in at IBM's expense [as i know is done very well an timely], and dont need "Depot" service...but Warranty is a biggie for me, as is accident protection, maybe illucidate some of these for me...

Yeah, warranties are very important for expensive and fragile machines like laptops. I can't tell what the difference is between these, but I imagine it's just for different models. Depot seems to have an OK reputation, as long as you remove your HD/PC cards/anything else that isn't broken before you let them touch it.

Also it's important to know that i am a student at a US university and have access to a education discount

4)how does this compare with an EPP discount which i *MAY* have access to...

Your EDU discount depends on your school. I stumbled on a way to apply any school's edu discount to the entire range of IBM notebooks before, but I doubt that's a legitimate tactic If your school has a deal with IBM, they'll likely have a link to the school's IBM store page (or possibly a 3rd-party vendor store). Some schools, like UC Berkeley, UPenn, and Harvard have the maximum ~30% discount, which is awesome. You may be constrained by the available models the school offers, too. Check with your school store.

5) I'm on a strict 1600-1750 budget...i know its definately possible

Yep, especially if you go with the T42.

6) And finally [for now] - what is USUALLY the best time to buy a thinkpad directly from IBM, ive been calling in and comparing prices quoted for various models, and after deciding on a T42, but im baffled by the degree of specs vs. price differentials accross the board on the t42's ive been surveying since December. Who here has broken the IBM marketing techniques code, other than Bill

I know this is a long post, but it's fairly crucial to my purchase before July , thanks everyone, take care

No idea on this one, but over the last couple of months, T42 prices have been dropping quite regularly as the T43 takes over available inventory. I assume pricing decisions are based on a secret sauce mixture of inventory, popularity, parts contracts (like LCD display types), and market anticipation (models that are getting superceded by replacement T43s etc.) And there's always the Express "turnkey" discount. I'd say that now would be a fine time to get a T42 before the selection gets scarce.

And last of all, check with Bill - his prices and definitely his selection can be competitive with a lot of school's edu discounts.

Good luck!

[JaneL]

Who here has broken the IBM marketing techniques code, other than Bill ;)

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Bill is an authorized IBM VAR and runs a small business selling ThinkPads to customers all over the world. He places high value on providing personalized service (such as the dead pixel check for a small fee) to his customers.

[Skywing]

last time I checked, the max a 10x7 LCD can run, is 10x7. Thats the entire point of a native LCD resolution. You cant add more pixels when they simply arent there. And get the SXGA+ screen, you simply will not regret it.

[asiafish]

I'll second that on the screen. My last ThinkPad (T22) had an XGA and the SXGA+ on my T42p is like night and day. I love it so much that the XGA panel on my PowerBook (the very small one) has become annoying to use, even though the individual pixels are actually larger.

[Kenn]

last time I checked, the max a 10x7 LCD can run, is 10x7. Thats the entire point of a native LCD resolution. You cant add more pixels when they simply arent there. And get the SXGA+ screen, you simply will not regret it.

Right, I think he's asking about the possibility of interpolating the image, or resizing a native 12x10 image DOWN to fit a 10x7 screen, much like a photoshop resize. While the results of this could theoretically be good (as any bicubic image resize shows), LCD scaling never is. Also, this may be simply moot, since I've never seen an LCD screen that tries to resize a larger resolution to fit a smaller screen without resorting to the scrolling virtual desktop.

[Skywing]

real time interpolating of a 3d game? not possible at all, and as i said higher is always better

and hi2u fellow 3VU owner

[rickslate]

Definitely find a friend with a laptop running at 1400x1050 to see if you can tolerate that on a 14" screen.

[revolutionary_one]

Seems ill be checking out prices for Thinkpads once inventory issues clear up w/ the education discount, maybe snag a deal then...

otherwise for now im looking at older thinkpads and trying to find warranties and thinkpad protection for them...psh, i can always run CounterStrike:Source on the desktop

Thanks for the advice guys....

Ajay

[davidlg16]

what do you mean by inventory issues with edu discount?

I bought my T43 with edu discount at the end of march and it shipped beginnning of may, have been using it for about 3wks

[revolutionary_one]

go have a look, under "Texas" there are basically NO variety int he number of models available....preconfigured, and they dont even have an option for an express build anymore...

[davidlg16]

you dont need to go under Texas, just go to http://www.ibm.com/education/us/ and click on "student PC purchases" on the right column, then on the next page click on "Thinkpad Notebooks" on the right column, and there you have it...

I get the same discount from this general edu page as my california edu page.