Are these the right reasons to buy a T42p?

[Photoshopped]

I'm a photographer and I need a laptop for an around the world trip. After days of (painful) research, I've decided on a T42P 2GHz 1600x 1400 flexview for the reasons below. Please tell me if this logic is valid:

1) I chose a thinkpad over Dells, Toughbooks, and others because:

• 1a) I do a lot of Photoshop and Photoshop likes to use a hard drive seperate from the one Windows runs on for virtual memory. Thinkpads are one of the few that allow you to have 2 HDDs using the with the HDD adapter (Those outlandish laptops with RAID and/or dual drives desktop replacements are out of the question for portability reasons).
  1b) Durability of Thinkpads over Dells
  1c) I want to be able to use my iGo power adapter with my laptop. Dell's new Latitudes have a stupid "feature" that blocks anything but a Dell brick from charging the batteries. I think the iGos are OK with the Thinkpads?

2) I chose the T series over the Z series because:

• 2a) Better screen resolution - Wide format is a gimmick IMO. If you can only get 1280 pixels across, it's not going to be better than 1600 x 1400. I don't mind small text and I need the resolution for when I pull up apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver that have a lot of pallets.
  2b) Better Battery life
  2c) I like the little LED keyboard light;)
  2d) I have a lot of PATA drives. Not sure if the HDD adapter on the Z series is SATA only?

3) I chose it over the T43 series because:

• 3a) Although the T43's dual channel memory would have been a plus with a memory intensive app like Photoshop, Sonoma is reported to offer little benefits elsewhere and ate into battery life
  3b) I need a CF and SD card reader. Since the T series doesn't have any built in, I planned on using my CF and SD PC Card readers so I will need 2 slots. The T43s only have one PC card slot.
  3c) I plan to upgrade the hard drive to the Seagate 100GB 7200 rpm Momentus. I hear the T43's BIOS give you errors if you use hard drives not on their compatibility list.

[tom2517]

Sounds pretty good to me, and frankly, T43p or even the newst 2.26Ghz T43p do not offer much performance advantage over the 2Ghz T42p.

[pphilipko]

Sounds pretty good to me, and frankly, T43p or even the newst 2.26Ghz T43p do not offer much performance advantage over the 2Ghz T42p.

I agree, the process advantage is minimal. However, the T43p has a much more powerful graphics solution.

[mzd]

The two advantages I found on the newest 2.26Gz T43P (15inch model):
1). Much more solid design, like an old IBM laptop.
2). The screen also seems better.
3). Although the processor is a little faster, the new 100G hard drive seems to be faster than that in the T42P.

[Photoshopped]

Thanks for the replies. I agree about ther performance judging from the results of the photoshop test I posted in this forum.

[RonS]

It's so nice to see somebody get it right!

[hoya]

The two advantages I found on the newest 2.26Gz T43P (15inch model):
1). Much more solid design, like an old IBM laptop.
2). The screen also seems better.
3). Although the processor is a little faster, the new 100G hard drive seems to be faster than that in the T42P.

mzd - do you know the firmware revision of the 7K100 drive in your T43p? I bought a 100gb 7K100 from ZZF but have been getting the 2010 error message.

back to the topic - I agree with all of thos points and have a GVU (14" T42p) on order. The 2373H6U I've been using is completely silent so it will be interesting to see if the GVU is equally silent.

[redskin]

i don't know about you guys. but i had t43p 2668-Q2U it's a good lalptop, until i traded with my brother the hp nw8240. all i can tell you is that it's much better performance than the t43p. 1. thinner laptop, 2. slightly lighter laptop, 3. no battery sticking out in the back, and with extended battery use together you can get a full 8 to 9 hours max, 4. graphic card is much faster, i mean much faster for 3d rendering, and autocad, 5. screen is way brighter when ambient light sensor turned off, 6. higher resolution being 1920 x 1200, 7. firewire port, 8. layout is similar to z60m, which is much better than t43p, 9. last but not least, the fan is so quiet to almost dead silence during regular use such as web surfing word processing, etc, which is a lot quieter than t43p.