feedback wanted from developers using X61 to X230

[Georgeolivergo]

hi,

In my endless quest to find a suitable replacement for my x41t I've been looking for developers describing their usage experience of the X-series from the 61 through to the X230. Seriously, I wish Lenovo would just let us design our own 3D printed machines and this whole problem would be solved...

If you use an X-series for compiling, VMs, and that sort of thing I'd appreciate any notes on how well your laptop works, especially if you can compare it to an earlier X model.

For context my own little list of X-series pluses/minuses goes as follows...these are not all performance related but just general tradeoffs:

X61: has 4:3 (good)
X200: no touchpad (that's good)
X201: i-series cpu
X220: 'more powerful X200'
X230: 'more powerful X220', has new style keyboard (probably not good but not sure)

But since I've never used any of these I'm trying to expand on my knowledge of which really could work for me. If the X61 would be good performance-wise I would get that, but it seems unlikely.

edit:

Thought I would add the PassMark cpu scores, fwiw, using mid-range cpu options for these models (these are all for tablets, which I'm most interested in):

x41t: 350
X60t: 585
x61t: 880
x200t: 1391
x201t: 2058
x220t: 3491
x230t: 4037

[mrj47]

I used a x61t for development and while I loved the SXGA+ resolution, I felt like it was definitely starting to show its age.

Resolution is important to me and the next best high res x series with modern specifications was the x200 series. Went with a x201 and swapped the screen for SXGA+ from a x200s. The new high res screen and a full i5 processor made it the perfect thinkpad for my needs.

[force]

An X220 works pretty well running a Linux VM for web development, although it's nothing too intensive (simple PHP/database stuff). The downside is that the screen is only 768 pixels tall in a comparatively short physical package (compared to a X61) and doesn't show as much text as I would like. It's also got that silly oversized Del key to which I'm still not fully accustomed (shift+ins/del copy/pastes).

I really like the X60/61 keyboard layout and am fine with the small keys. The X200/201 is effectively the same layout, just wider.

If you're not CPU bound, the X200/201 with the 1440x900 screen would be my recommendation. I got to try one briefly and it felt like a stretch version of an X60s.

[wolfman]

I spent a summer using my personal X61 at the office doing development in a room with 3-4 other developers hooked to a projector. The X61 had an Intel X-25M 80gb SSD, 8gb of RAM and was running Linux and IBM's Rational Application Developer (Eclipse based IDE) and WebSphere Portal. The biggest issue was the lack of screen real estate - I was constantly maximizing and minimizing the source editor to have enough lines on the screen to be useful. Performance wise, it worked great.

However, I upgraded to a T410 with 1440x900 display and again, for 16gb of RAM, to a T420 with 1600x900 resolution. On my T420 I run a number of virtual machines and it does a nice job. I have an Intel 520 series SSD that I boot linux from and, using VirtualBox, run a number of VM's from my 750gb 7200 RPM drive in the ultrabay. I could also use an mSATA SSD if I need more space later.

In an X220 / X230 you could do a similar thing by booting off an mSATA SSD and using either a large SSD or mechanical drive in the main drive bay for VM's or other storage. In one of my use cases, I run an IDE on the host (IBM Integration Developer) and 3 linux VM's: one running a deployment manager WebSphere instance, one running IBM Business Process Manager v8 with 4 cluster members and a third running an instance of IBM DB2 v9.7. This takes a good bit of resources, but the T420 handles it well enough. A quad core processor would likely do much better. Running the VM's on an SSD may help a good bit as well... but this set up works well enough for me vs. cost.

Out of the machines you have listed, I'd lean towards an X220 or X230 and target an i5 processor near the top of the i5 line, e.g., 2520M, 2540M or 3360M - something like that. Much better bang for the buck when paired with an SSD than paying a premium for the Core i7 dual core processor.

Either way, I keep my T420 in a dock most of the time hooked up to an HP ZR24 S-IPS display at 1920x1200, a separate wireless keyboard and mouse and it works great in this setting. If you go with an X model, I'd consider a dock and external monitor for long development sessions as a good compromise between cost and productivity. If that's not an option, take a look at the T420s or T430s as it's not much bigger than the X model, but lets you have a 1600x900 internal display (which while not IPS like the optional premium display on the X, is a more reasonable resolution for IDE's).

Hope that helps...

[Georgeolivergo]

That's really good information everyone, thanks a bunch.