New T42 owner looking for advice

[philpem]

OK, maybe the subject line is a little misleading. My first laptop was a Thinkpad 701C, and I deeply regret getting rid of it (for a Toshiba T2130CS - ick). The 'butterfly' keyboard was probably one of the nicest keyboards I've ever used. Shame the battery was stuffed though.
Since then I've had a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 (which has blown two LCD inverters and a backlight) and am ready for an upgrade. The company I bought the 4600 from had this on a 'previous customers only' special offer:

IBM THINKPAD T42
- Centrino platform
- Intel Pentium-M 1.7GHz
- 14.1" TFT LCD
- 1GHz RAM
- 40GB HDD
- Windows XP Pro
- DVD-ROM
- A few months of the IBM warranty left (anything from end of August to middle of October)

... for £299 (about $600), down from £429. The machine itself is a 'Grade A' refurbished machine (read: they've cleaned the keyboard, wiped the hard drive reinstalled XP), and what I've posted above is all I know about it. I'm hoping it comes with the Atheros wifi card, my Toshiba 4600 has the Intel 2200BG, and that thing has a lot of trouble with my Netgear access point. Another family member has a newer Toshiba laptop (company-provided) with the Atheros chip, and that connects to the AP fine.

So, based on what I know, was this a good deal, or have I been fleeced?
Is there anything I should know about these machines? Any special care-and-feeding instructions, or tricks I need to know?

My first plan is to ring IBM (or whoever handles these machines now - I guess that would be Lenovo?) and get the warranty extended, if it hasn't been already. After that? I'm not sure.. probably image the hard drive, make a set of recovery CDs, repartition and then install XP Pro and Fedora Linux 7 in a dual-boot configuration.

What I would like an answer to is a question on upgradability. Obviously I can upgrade the RAM to 2GB if need be (but 1GB is still twice what the Toshiba has, and the CPU is 1.7x faster based on clock speed) but what about the DVD drive?
Ideally I'd like a DVD writer - can the optical drive in an Ultrabay caddy be removed and replaced with something else? Obviously this puts paid to the warranty on the bay, but I'd like to know anyway.

I suppose I could always buy an "Ultrabay Slim" DVD rewriter, but I'd much rather swap the original drive back into the Toshiba and steal the rewriter in there for my IBM if at all possible.

One more thing - the AccuPoint II trackpoint stick on my Toshiba has a tendency to 'stick' - as in you let go of it and the cursor continues moving (usually in the opposite direction to the movement). Is this a common thing with joystick-type trackpoints, or just a 'Toshiba thing'?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the arrival of my machine - hopefully it'll work quite nicely as a software development box, and for VMware work.

Thanks,
Phil.

[Johan]

Congratulations with your (perhaps soon-to arrive?) new T42!!

As to whether it is a good deal or not, this partly depends on the LCD (in my opinion); is it an XGA or a SXGA+ model? Also, of course, it depends on your budget! If you search e.g. eBay (in the UK and/or in the USA), or check the Marketplace in this forum (try search for T42 there!), you will get a better impression of prices on used/refurbished T42's. I believe you may find T42's with better specs and at cheaper prices in the USA, but if you import such a ThinkPad to England, you'll had to add postage (around $50, if insured) and in addition you must pay import duty/VAT upon arrival into UK. Still, I would expect that better deals are possible in the USA...

Test the display, or get someone to do it, before you receive the laptop!! You'll probably be somewhat disappointed if it has one or more dead or stuck pixels, and/or it has scratches etc. Try to get information about your rights of return, if you are not happy with the purchase! Best of all would be to actually try and use the machine before accepting it... does it satisfy your needs?

Also, try check the battery (if possible!); is it new or completely worn out (having many cycles on it, holding almost no charge?), then the deal is less good...

If it only has an XGA display, you can in principle upgrade this to a SXGA+ (see this thread, post of Sun Jul 29), but I am not quite sure it is worth the money/trouble... it might be a better deal to wait until another user/refurbished T42 shows up having better specifications. If you don't know whether it has XGA or SXGA+, get information about the particular model, then go here and check the specifications.

As to the possibility of upgrading the DVD-drive, I suggest you check this thread: T42 Upgrade Possibilities and the links therein.

Warranty can only be extended (and/or upgraded) while the ThinkPad is still covered by warranty; once it runs out, you're on your own. About warranty, check this thread: Extended warranties, buy now or later? and this (see the post of Wed Jul 04 in the latter where you'll find links to various ThinkPad warranty upgrade and extension options).

... otherwise, browse and search this extremely useful forum... it contains tons of useful advices and user reports about whatever you might run into or would want to ask about!

Good luck!

Kind regards,

Johan

[philpem]

Congratulations with your (perhaps soon-to arrive?) new T42!!

Yep, it's due to arrive tomorrow, via UPS Overnight Express. I hope the keyboard is as good as it's hyped up to be - that's my biggest problem with current machines, the keyboards are usually pretty dire.

As to whether it is a good deal or not, this partly depends on the LCD (in my opinion); is it an XGA or a SXGA+ model?

I'm actually in two minds.. on the one hand it'd be nice to have the SXGA+ resolution, but I doubt my eyesight is up to reading text off an SXGA+ 14.1" screen. I can handle XGA on a 14" though (that's what my Toshiba is).

Also, of course, it depends on your budget! If you search e.g. eBay (in the UK and/or in the USA), or check the Marketplace in this forum (try search for T42 there!), you will get a better impression of prices on used/refurbished T42's.

My budget was £500, and it came down to either buying a used Thinkpad or a new Acer or Dell. I figured I'd rather have a three-year-old Thinkpad than a new Dell, based on manufacturer reputation. What's that old saying, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?

I believe you may find T42's with better specs and at cheaper prices in the USA, but if you import such a ThinkPad to England, you'll had to add postage (around $50, if insured) and in addition you must pay import duty/VAT upon arrival into UK. Still, I would expect that better deals are possible in the USA...

Ha! You forgot the 'clearance fees'!
About £15 for Parcelforce (who handle USPS airmail parcels in the UK), or £50 for UPS... That pretty much nulls out any possible saving.

Test the display, or get someone to do it, before you receive the laptop!! You'll probably be somewhat disappointed if it has one or more dead or stuck pixels, and/or it has scratches etc. Try to get information about your rights of return, if you are not happy with the purchase! Best of all would be to actually try and use the machine before accepting it... does it satisfy your needs?[/quit]
I did raise this with the supplier - their definition of 'grade A' is:
Physical condition: Perfect. No visible scuffing, cracking or damaged case components
Display panel: No dead pixels
System hardware: All fully functional. Drive wiped and clean Windows installed from manufacturer recovery CDs (not included)

Also, try check the battery (if possible!); is it new or completely worn out (having many cycles on it, holding almost no charge?), then the deal is less good...

There's not much about the battery on the website, but their usual sales terms say batteries are 'not guaranteed to hold a full charge, but usually hold enough for around 90 minutes work'. IBM batteries don't seem to be that hard to get, though. I'm hoping it's a 9-cell, which should have a bit more usable capacity left in it.

If it only has an XGA display, you can in principle upgrade this to a SXGA+ (see this thread, post of Sun Jul 29), but I am not quite sure it is worth the money/trouble... it might be a better deal to wait until another user/refurbished T42 shows up having better specifications. If you don't know whether it has XGA or SXGA+, get information about the particular model, then go here and check the specifications.

Nope, I think I'll keep the XGA (assuming it's XGA). It's what I'm used to, and old habits die hard.

As to the possibility of upgrading the DVD-drive, I suggest you check this thread: T42 Upgrade Possibilities and the links therein.

Oh, so a DVD writer is available. Cool. Shame they're £100 new, though I suspect used drives are pretty common on eBay.

Warranty can only be extended (and/or upgraded) while the ThinkPad is still covered by warranty; once it runs out, you're on your own.

Yeah, I read about that. The 'a few months left on the IBM warranty' note on the sales page caught my eye, and just about sealed the deal. Like I said - if I can, I will.

... otherwise, browse and search this extremely useful forum... it contains tons of useful advices and user reports about whatever you might run into or would want to ask about!

I'm going to be spending a good few days doing that!
The ThinkWiki is also pretty good - there seems to be a lot of useful info on there about setting up Linux on Thinkpads, which might be very useful.

I'm a bit worried about the 'BGA soldering' issue, as my laptops tend to get moved around quite a bit and often not in the best of conditions (I've got a Port EVA laptop case that the machine goes into, then the case goes into my backpack). I don't like carrying 'proper' laptop bags, because they're too distinctive. Around here, carrying a laptop bag seems to be as good as a sign taped to your back reading 'please mug me, I have expensive toys'...

[wearetheborg]

How did you fix the backlight on the toshiba ?

[philpem]

How did you fix the backlight on the toshiba ?

I replaced the LCD panel and backlight.
I figured it was worth it, seeing as the LCD was pretty scuffed up anyway (and replacing it got rid of a few annoying dead pixels),

[lilserenity]

Not wishing to repeat what others have said but I'd say you got a good deal personally.

Converting £299 to USD will sound attrocious for our many American friends with the present exchange rate but with some T40s still going for that, and many T41s, then really what you paid was pretty average for a T42. In January I paid just over £200 (I can't remember exactly) for a T40 of similar specs except it had a Pentium-M 1.5GHz (which is more than enough for what I do, so a 1.7GHz Dothan your T42 will have should be great), 512MB RAM but it did have a DVD/CDRW drive. No warranty mind.

I have upgraded mine to a nice 160GB hard disk (Hitachi 5K160) and another 512MB and I couldn't be happier with it, and I am certain you will be very pleased with your T42 when it arrives. I personally run Ubuntu 7.04 on mine and it nips along more than well!

Vicky

[philpem]

I have upgraded mine to a nice 160GB hard disk (Hitachi 5K160) and another 512MB and I couldn't be happier with it, and I am certain you will be very pleased with your T42 when it arrives. I personally run Ubuntu 7.04 on mine and it nips along more than well!

Well, I would be pleased with it, if there wasn't a big grey splotch of either dead pixels or dust on the top right of the LCD panel. I've shone a torch on it, and it appears to be inside the screen rather than surface damage...
I think my supplier has some explaining to do, because this is the kind of thing that's blindingly obvious even on the first-boot screen...

It's under IBM warranty until December 20th, so I have a sneaking suspicion they'll probably tell me to take it to an IBM service centre...

For extra points, the recovery partition doesn't seem to exist - there isn't an option to boot the recovery partition on the Access IBM menu, and Trueimage didn't detect the recovery zone when I set it to 'Visible' in the BIOS...

*Mutter grumble grumble grumble*

EDIT: On the plus side, although it's only got a DVD-ROM and a 32MB Radeon 7500, it does have a 1.8GHz Dothan instead of a 1.7, so that's a plus...

[lilserenity]

Now that does suck

I hope the seller comes through on this one for you without you possibly having to get it immediately repaired by IBM/Lenovo.

I sold a T23 which developed this problem except unbeknowns to me I was the seller and I was away in the USA for about 3 months and came back, sold said T23 where this had happened to it. The buyer was not happy and neither was I as I had assumed all was fine still.

It turned out that a minute amount of moisture had got to the unit whilst the house was empty (and as such no heating of any sorts so it got a little musty) and the damp got behind the screen a little and little spots of mould developed on the underside of the screen so to speak giving the screen loads of black dots everywhere. At least that was IBM's explanation for said T23's condition at the time.

It could be your unit was in storage and this is what has happened. Depending on what you want to do, I would personally ask for another unit if there is one available for the seller, as it's a bit of a bummer to have to send it off straight away and really if it wasn't described, that's really unfair.

Good news on the faster processor mind. I would consider a 1.8GHz Dothan upgrade for my T40 but resolved that I have never once found the 1.5GHz slow. (I don't play games, edit movies, create music or do 3d rendering, I just do graphics design, writing and Internet with a splash of programming )

Vicky

[philpem]

Now that does suck

Yes, more than a black hole in fact.

I hope the seller comes through on this one for you without you possibly having to get it immediately repaired by IBM/Lenovo.

Well, they promise a response within 24 hours, so I'll see what they say. In any case, if they offer to replace it, I'll be requesting a machine of the exact same spec (i.e. a 2373-Q91). No doubt they'll want me to pay P&P to get it back to them, as seems to be the standard with computer suppliers :-/

It turned out that a minute amount of moisture had got to the unit whilst the house was empty (and as such no heating of any sorts so it got a little musty) and the damp got behind the screen a little and little spots of mould developed on the underside of the screen so to speak giving the screen loads of black dots everywhere. At least that was IBM's explanation for said T23's condition at the time.

Would I be right in thinking they didn't cover this under warranty then?
Put it this way, I'd be very surprised if they did...

It could be your unit was in storage and this is what has happened. Depending on what you want to do, I would personally ask for another unit if there is one available for the seller, as it's a bit of a bummer to have to send it off straight away and really if it wasn't described, that's really unfair.

I'm not going to pass judgement on them yet. I bought the Toshiba from them, and that arrived with a screw missing - they sent them out pretty quickly, considering this was in the middle of the Christmas holiday.

Good news on the faster processor mind. I would consider a 1.8GHz Dothan upgrade for my T40 but resolved that I have never once found the 1.5GHz slow. (I don't play games, edit movies, create music or do 3d rendering, I just do graphics design, writing and Internet with a splash of programming )

Oh, most of the work I do on my laptop is programming work. It's just nice to have a fast CPU - faster CPU + more RAM = faster compile times.

The battery seems to hold a decent charge - on "High battery performance" it claims 2h 25m, and this is a 6-cell battery too. I wonder what a brand-new 9-cell could do...

[lilserenity]

I hope the seller comes through on this one for you without you possibly having to get it immediately repaired by IBM/Lenovo.

Well, they promise a response within 24 hours, so I'll see what they say. In any case, if they offer to replace it, I'll be requesting a machine of the exact same spec (i.e. a 2373-Q91). No doubt they'll want me to pay P&P to get it back to them, as seems to be the standard with computer suppliers :-/

Yes the return P&P cost seems to always be footed by the buyer these days which is a shame as you're actually spending more than you bought the machine for then!

It turned out that a minute amount of moisture had got to the unit whilst the house was empty (and as such no heating of any sorts so it got a little musty) and the damp got behind the screen a little and little spots of mould developed on the underside of the screen so to speak giving the screen loads of black dots everywhere. At least that was IBM's explanation for said T23's condition at the time.

Would I be right in thinking they didn't cover this under warranty then?
Put it this way, I'd be very surprised if they did...

The most important detail and I forget it!

Yes they did replace the screen. The house wasn't damp, it was just the minutest bit of moisture that managed to penetrate behind the screen; which I guess shouldn't happen but it did. This was in 2004, and IBM covered it then. Not sure exactly how it would go these days.

Oh, most of the work I do on my laptop is programming work. It's just nice to have a fast CPU - faster CPU + more RAM = faster compile times.

The battery seems to hold a decent charge - on "High battery performance" it claims 2h 25m, and this is a 6-cell battery too. I wonder what a brand-new 9-cell could do...

Oh for sure, a faster CPU does have uses definitely, just reiterating that the Banias/Dothan CPUs are really just excellent if you're not going to be trying to calculate some quantum physics as a matter of urgency on these things

My battery is shot that has to be said, about 45 minutes on the 6 cell with the screen brightness up and the WiFi on. I will get a 9 cell battery when I can afford it.

Generally with the brightness dipped and Wifi on, I would expect your T42 on a 9cell to get somewhere in the region of 5-6 hours if my memory serves right. In other words, pretty good!

Vicky

[philpem]

Yes the return P&P cost seems to always be footed by the buyer these days which is a shame as you're actually spending more than you bought the machine for then!

Well, in this case I called the seller on the phone after getting no response via email.
They've agreed to swap the machine.
They've also agreed to let me keep the battery and hard drive.
For extra bonus points, they've arranged for UPS to drop off the new machine, and pick up the 'iffy' one, at no cost.
They're also swapping the mains power cable, which is quite badly frayed (to the point where the wires inside are visible).

So basically they're sending me a T42, sans hard drive and battery, a different power supply and the matching "clover-leaf" power cable.

I missed the cutoff time for next day service, so they've arranged it for Wednesday. Assuming the UPS Man-in-a-Van turns up, I should have a different T42 waiting for me at home on Wednesday. Just means I need to make sure my brother stays in for the day, which might involve a bit of bribery.

As always, the old saying holds - the difference between a good company and a bad company is how quickly and how well they sort things out when something goes wrong!

The most important detail and I forget it!

Yes they did replace the screen. The house wasn't damp, it was just the minutest bit of moisture that managed to penetrate behind the screen; which I guess shouldn't happen but it did. This was in 2004, and IBM covered it then. Not sure exactly how it would go these days.

Hmm, well in any case it's not my problem

Oh for sure, a faster CPU does have uses definitely, just reiterating that the Banias/Dothan CPUs are really just excellent if you're not going to be trying to calculate some quantum physics as a matter of urgency on these things

Well, for the 'I need this compiling YESTERDAY' situations, I usually fire up the Toshiba laptop and the desktop machine (AMD Athlon64 3200+ single-core S963, 1GB RAM, 500GB RAID1) and use Distcc to distribute the compiling load. It absolutely rocks for stuff like kernel compiles - get the fast machines to do the work, then put it all together on the target machine. Add CCache into the mix and it goes faster still!

My battery is shot that has to be said, about 45 minutes on the 6 cell with the screen brightness up and the WiFi on. I will get a 9 cell battery when I can afford it.

I think I've said this, but my plan is to spend the money on the top-end Lenovo CD/DVD burner and a 9-cell battery, and extend the warranty at the same time.

Generally with the brightness dipped and Wifi on, I would expect your T42 on a 9cell to get somewhere in the region of 5-6 hours if my memory serves right. In other words, pretty good!

The machine came with a 6-cell, and it reckoned two hours of runtime on a full charge, with the power profile set one below the lowest power setting ("battery optimised" or something like that).

I'm going to install DBDesigner4, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Apache on it tonight, then the hard drive and battery are getting removed and put in a safe place - the HDD+caddy+mounting screw is going in a hard drive shipping box I have lying around.

And on Wednesday night, if all goes well, I'll be revealing the name of the seller, along with my final verdict. But I've fallen in love with the T42. The keyboard's weird though - a bit like my desktop keyboard in terms of activation force, but with a shorter travel and less noise. Quite odd for a laptop, especially given the fairly large key size.

EDIT: But it still beats the keyboard on my Mum's Toshiba (which is, incidentally, a company-provided machine). That thing misses keystrokes. A LOT. As in, you have to physically hit the keys rather than pushing them. And even when you do that, it still misses keys.

Rumour has it there are two keyboards for the T42 - one made in China and one in Thailand (the latter rumoured to be much better than the former) - the k/b on my 2373-Q91 (the one that's getting swapped on Wednesday) is this one:
Mfg P/N 08K5017
FRU P/N 08K5046
Description KEYBOARD FRU

So which one is that?

[Johan]

... and extend the warranty at the same time...

If you check the very recent thread Warranty extension, and in particular read sktn77a's post of Thu Aug 02 (and subsequent posts), I think you will find a hint of the cheapest way of extending the warranty!

I am not sure whether this applies outside the USA, so it might not be usable for you in the UK? Anyway, the hint itself is for free, no matter where you are!

Best regards,

Johan

[philpem]

If you check the very recent thread Warranty extension, and in particular read sktn77a's post of Thu Aug 02 (and subsequent posts), I think you will find a hint of the cheapest way of extending the warranty!

I am not sure whether this applies outside the USA, so it might not be usable for you in the UK? Anyway, the hint itself is for free, no matter where you are!

Well, I've got IBM's phone number, so I'll give them a ring while I'm on my lunch break tomorrow.

The replacement's here - another 2373-Q91, so the same spec as the one I had before. I negotiated with them to let me keep the HDD and battery (i.e. they sent me a machine without battery and HDD, I swapped them from the old machine into the replacement and then sent back the old one sans HDD and battery), but they've sent me a machine with a battery and HDD anyway... Need to have a word with them as to whether they want the HDD and battery back... Which they no doubt will...

The trackpoint cap's a bit worn out too, but I can live with that. From what I can tell, they're about £5 for a pack of three, so not tremendously expensive.

No dead pixels! 1.8GHz and 1GB RAM! A nice keyboard! A proper 3D accelerator! Bliss!

Now I just need to grab the Kpowersave source code and patch it to detect ibmacpi. Blasted thing won't do auto brightness adjustment, 'cos it's done with an IBMACPI call, not a standard ACPI call! Grr!

[philpem]

The replacement's here - another 2373-Q91, so the same spec as the one I had before. I negotiated with them to let me keep the HDD and battery (i.e. they sent me a machine without battery and HDD, I swapped them from the old machine into the replacement and then sent back the old one sans HDD and battery), but they've sent me a machine with a battery and HDD anyway... Need to have a word with them as to whether they want the HDD and battery back... Which they no doubt will...

Nope, they didn't want the HDD or battery back.. which leaves me with a 40GB Fujitsu hard drive and a rather well-used 6-cell battery spare. Go me.

The trackpoint cap's a bit worn out too, but I can live with that. From what I can tell, they're about £5 for a pack of three, so not tremendously expensive.

Called IBM this afternoon, who told me this sort of thing is sold through their 'business partners'. Called a couple of the BPs - one of them only deals with business customers, the other wanted £17.95 plus VAT for the trackpoint caps, then another £14.95 for postage... WTF?!

And now I will leave this thread to die...