George Wright's Blog: New laptop

New laptop

gwright@kde.org (George Wright) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 01:51:00 +0000

So over the last few days the fan on my T43p has been playing up, and as I’ve had it for about 3.5 years now, I decided it’s probably time to get a new one.

After a quick trip down Tottenham Court Road today, I managed to find a reseller selling the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 which I’ve been pining for ever since its release, and after some bartering managed to get hold of one along with an additional 3-cell battery to replace the CD/DVD drive with.

First impressions of the machine are really positive. The machine weighs less than my X40 did and the screen is much nicer. It’s nowhere near as good as the FlexView UXGA screen on my T43p, but I can’t get everything! Black colours aren’t great and the viewing angle vertically isn’t that good, but for a portable laptop it does the job just fine.

The keyboard is really nice - it gives a decent amount of tactile feedback (it’s better than the one on my T43p I think), and the addition of a touchpad is really helpful (I’ve always preferred them). I especially like that the keyboard is now a full sized one instead of the annoying almost-full size on the earlier X series machines.

In terms of speed, it seems to be pretty zippy. The 64GB SSD is nice and quiet and the performance seems reasonable.

Regarding the build quality - this is the first ThinkPad I’ve owned which was designed by Lenovo instead of IBM. As such, I’m new to such “features” as having a Windows key, an RF switch etc. The case, though, is rock solid and looks incredibly sleek whilst retaining the classic ThinkPad look (which I love). I’m not convinced I like the addition of the LEDs around/under/beside the buttons above the function keys, but I can probably live with that.

I don’t think I’m going to see much of a performance hit going from the 2GHz P-M to this new 1.2GHz C2D, especially given that my usage pattern doesn’t tend to involve single threads munching the CPU for a long time. We’ll see how it fares in due course.

All in all, a very happy bunny and I’d like to say this is the best ThinkPad I’ve owned yet, but it’s probably too early to say.

Next up - Ubuntu installation. Vista angers me.

"New laptop" by hp storage servers

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:46:45 +0000

X300 is a very nice Thinkpad, even better and more feature filled than the T400 although lacking performance obviously. Nice one.

"New laptop" by George Wright

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:08:18 +0000

ThinkPad because they’re the only machines that can stand up to the usage (abuse) pattern I put them through. That and the wide number of configuration options (including possibly the best keyboard ever made) justifies them to me as the only viable laptop.

The place I got it from was Shymatronics and I got the X300 and the bay battery for £1300 incl VAT.

"New laptop" by Jon Pritchard

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:20:14 +0000

How much did you pay for it in the end?

You don’t happen to know the shop’s name?

X300 is a very nice Thinkpad, even better and more feature filled than the T400 although lacking performance obviously. Nice one.

"New laptop" by ethana2

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:54:27 +0000

You paid for Windows? We got two Inspirons with Ubuntu preinstalled, a 1420n and a 1525n, they’re nice– the 1525n is a work of art, it almost doesn’t look completely shameful next to a macbook. Why a ThinkPad?