2379-DXU Ordered 5/25 Arrived 5/31!

[stuffinder]

Just thought some of you might be interested in this info. When I ordered the machine I was quoted a delivery time of June 17! The order processed the 26th, shipped from Hong Kong the 27th, spent Memorial Day weekend in Customs at Louisville and arrived here 1028 EST May 31! Lenovo seems to have the kinks worked out!

I ordered the machine through the EPP plan and Tony Morsillo (dtmorsil@directlenovo.com), who was mentioned in dfumento's wonderful FAQ (RIP!) handled the order.

It's a great machine and a distinct step upward from my 900Mhz T22.
These aging eyes are having trouble with the 1400 x 1050 LCD and I may have to sell it or send it back. I'll play with Liquid View, re-sizing the display, etc. before sending it back.

BTW the 7200 RPM HD and fan don't appear to be any noisier than my T22.
Haven't checked for keyboard origin and probably won't as it feels fine and the SANYO battery and DVD/CD seem to fit fine. Overall the quality appears to be just as good as my last 5 TP's! (3 560's, T20 &T22)

[The Weissman]

I have "aging eyes" too but I sure do appreciate the additional screen estate of a 1400x1050 display over the 1024x768 I used to have. After installing the the ClearType PowerToy, I'm comfortable with the display. (I tried LiquidView but didn't find it necessary to make me happy.)

My 2379DXU shipped with an ALPS (Chinese) keyboard; I have since tried the Chicony (also Chinese) keyboard, and only days ago swapped it out for the NMB (Thai) keyboard; and I'd be hard-pressed to cite much of a difference between them all.

My favorite thing is the FlexView display. It's so bright, it makes my Dell 2001FP look dim by comparison. And fan noise? Not a problem here.

All in all, I'm a very happy camper with my new laptop! I hope you find as much joy in yours!

Steve

[stuffinder]

Thanks for the tip about ClearType PowerToys! The results are an improvement over Liquid View. While Liquid View is interesting in it's ability to scale some things like Taskbars, Headers etc. it doesn't do much if anything with the material within an application or I'm not using it correctly. One of the main things I would like to do is increase the size of the Font in the Contacts portion of Microsoft Outlook. I would like to be able to pull off at a Rest Stop while driving, flip open the T42 and see a person's Phone # in contacts without squinting or having to pick it up. I must sound old and feeble but I can read a roadmap OK so I'm not blind! Thanks again for the Cleartype tip, I think we're on the road to useability!

[Sand]

I've had my 2379-DXU just since February, and also have 'aging' eyes and would like to know what is meant by 1400x1050 display? Is that to make the font larger? And how do you get to ClearType PowerToy and what does that do for the font?

I click on 'View' to enlarge the font, and for some reason, many times it will not make any difference on some websites.

I use the Fn and spacebar sometimes to enlarge the text, but sometimes that is too much to use for very long.

I think I may have the Thai keyboard, as I read that you can tell if the directional keys look 'blue' underneath.
I would be interested to continue discussion to learn anything about this machine because I am so computer un-knowledgeable, and esp. laptops. this is my first one, and I think I made a good choice with IBM.

I need to purchase a printer, flat-bed scanner, etc. and wish someone could tell me the best choice for a laptop. I would like to exclude HP as I have had so many problems in the past with them.It's just left a bad taste with me and I would like the best quality, as with the IBM.

tia,

Sand

[MSR_Steve]

Well I can take a stab at some of this...

1400x1050 is the screen resolution - the picture on your display is made up of a grid of dots, called pixels (like a TV). In this case, there are 1400 pixels in the horizontal direction, and 1050 in the vertical direction. Higher resolution (more pixels) per screen size results in more being displayed on the screen. So if you have two 15" screens, one at 1024x768 resolution, and one at 1400x1050, everything on the higher resolution screen would look smaller as more pixels are jammed in the same area. Thus for some people, high resolution screens can be hard to read as the text is displayed pretty small by default.

ClearType is a Microsoft Powertoy, go to microsoft.com and search for "cleartype powertoy", it should pop up. While it does not affect the size of text, it does smooth the edges of letters, making things much better looking and easier to read, IMO.

Changing the text size in a web browser does not affect all text due to how certain websites are created, I believe. Basically, some text is not really text, or something like that.

As for the printer, as I mentioned in the other thread, I have had good luck with Brother machines, and am currently quite happy with the MFC-7420 (b&w laser, flatbed, fax, copier).

[Ted_E]

[
I need to purchase a printer, flat-bed scanner, etc. and wish someone could tell me the best choice for a laptop. I would like to exclude HP as I have had so many problems in the past with them.It's just left a bad taste with me and I would like the best quality, as with the IBM.

After watching and querying the newsgroups for a while and talking to my son, I bought a refurbished Canon i850 printer. It has lived up to or exceeded all my expectations. My son worked for an outfit as their computer guru. They had hp, Epson, Lexmark and Canon printers. He said that the Canon cost less than half as much to feed compared to the others. I've had the i850 for over a year now. One of my daughters needs a printer and checking the current market, it looks like the Canon iP4000 is a real winner.

I recently bought an Epson 2480 scanner since I wanted 2400 dpi or better and wanted the ability to scan slides and film strips as well as paper documents and photos. It's a good unit at a good price. Yesterday I scanned a photo and printed it on three different papers. The best results (but only by a small margin) were on Canon Matte Photo Paper. That one was slightly lighter than the original but with the same color ballance.

Ted