Please help deciding on a R51

[Val]

Hi, new member, thanks for the great forum. I thought I had posted this message yesterday but I surely made a mistake, so here I go again:

I am deciding on getting my first IBM after years with Dell laptops. Since my budget runs to about $1,600 or so, I have chosen a Thinkpad R51 1.50Mhz/14.1. Its competition would be a Dell Inspiron 600m, but after comparing my son's new Latitude 600D to his old R31, the IBM keyboard, screen and freebies won the day for me.

Its main purpose will be business use with quite a lot of air travel (that's also why no widescreen), and I will use a port replicator plus a 17" digital LCD at the office. I have a few questions:

1. This basic model has integrated graphics that I know has less performance than dedicated cards, but I don't do games or heavy graphics work. Compared to a 32MB card, would typical business graphics and text quality still be similar?

2. I would prefer to use my LCD's DVI input instead of the analog connection. I understand I can use IBM's port replicator II for this, right?

3. I intend to purchase a Hitachi 60GB 7200 and use the factory 30GB for external backups. I don't know anything about IBM's hidden partition, rapid restore, etc., but I have already read a couple of interesting threads here about reinstalling XP. Could I just copy the original image by using CasperXP or Norton Ghost (both of which I am familiar with), or is it more complicated than that?

Thanks again for any information.

[K. Eng]

Integrated graphics are no different than discrete GPUs as far as 2D business applications are concerned. You have nothing to worry about there.

I'm not familiar with the port replicator or the ghosting stuff.

[lophiomys]

If you do a lot of travelling you might consider to buy a second battery
or the 9-cell battery (instead of the std 6-cell).
My R51 1829 EHG with 15" SXGA+ LCD and 6-cell akku
does run only less than 3h under normal workload
with all powersavings possible.

If you should care about high pitched noise, expect the 7200rpm HDD to be noisy.

If you are dependent on a reliable backup image, I recommend you to practice the whole backup/resotre cycle yourself with the backup solution of your choice. Only then you can be shure that it will be functioning when you need it.

[jon]

1. This basic model has integrated graphics that I know has less performance than dedicated cards, but I don't do games or heavy graphics work. Compared to a 32MB card, would typical business graphics and text quality still be similar?

There will be no difference in quality at all. Video memory has nothing to do with image quality/clarity (either the size of it, or whether it is shared or discrete).

2. I would prefer to use my LCD's DVI input instead of the analog connection. I understand I can use IBM's port replicator II for this, right?

Yep. Only trouble with the PRII is that it only has a single USB port on the back of it. You can still use the laptop's ports but that kinda defeats the purpose of port replication. I ended up buying a USB hub.

3. I intend to purchase a Hitachi 60GB 7200 and use the factory 30GB for external backups. I don't know anything about IBM's hidden partition, rapid restore, etc., but I have already read a couple of interesting threads here about reinstalling XP. Could I just copy the original image by using CasperXP or Norton Ghost (both of which I am familiar with), or is it more complicated than that?

Yes you can make an image of the installation yourself if you need to keep that copy of Windows. Then you can disable the 'hidden' partition in the BIOS to make it visible to partitioning tools, and delete it to reclaim the space if you like. You will lose IBM's 'pre-desktop area' which is a graphical front-end to the BIOS and includes a few diagnostic tools, but they're nothing special and don't need to be kept.

[Val]

Your answers opened up the option of buying a T42 (2378DTU) for about the same price (without the port replicator) and using the notebook's analog port to my LCD. I think I would then have a lighter and more rugged laptop for traveling, which is its main purpose. Not having the newer 715 1.5MHz CPU doesn't bother me at all, as even my old Dell Inspiron 7k is plenty fast for what I do.

Thanks again,

Val

[Matt_]

Its main purpose will be business use with quite a lot of air travel (that's also why no widescreen

I wasn't sure if you were referring to the 15" thinkpad or to other brands that are widescreen and greater than 15".
The reason I mention this is that I've been using an Rseries thinkpad with the flexview screen, and I love the picture quality, brightness, and viewing angle.
For $1499 there's the 1836H8U and the 1836H9U for $1599

There are some pictures comparing the 14" screen with the 15" flexview screen here

[calloftheblade]

Well If your budget is $1600 and ur interested in the R51, you can get a really good configuration off of the VISA ibm site:
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/store ... logId=-840

Specs:
15" 1400 by 1050 flexview, 32mb radeon 9000, 1.6 ghz pentium m, 256 mb ram (add $100 for 512)

1519 + 100 = $1619

[Matt_]

Do you know how much longer that Visa discount is going to last ?
Thank you

[calloftheblade]

From what I understand the discount will last indefinitely because of a deal between VISA and IBM. IBM also has a deal with mastercard I think.

[G-Man]

Visa discount: http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/visa
MasterCard: http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/mastercard
Discover: http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/discover
American Express: http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/amex

Regards,
G-Man

[Matt_]

Thank, you G-Man, for your help.
Much appreciated.