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View Full Version : I should've bought a Thinkpad.



macogw
February 26th, 2008, 04:06 AM
This is the 3rd time my Gateway has had to be serviced. Once it was overheating because they put on crappy thermal paste. Once I had a short circuit in the power jack on the motherboard. This time the short circuit's back, the optical drive is dead, and the hard drive is going.

I thought Thinkpad's were really expensive. Guess what? You get $89 off if you choose SuSE instead of Windows. Now, I wouldn't use SuSE, but I'd be a lot less likely to use Vista. And I wouldn't be supporting Microsoft.

So once you take that into account, for $30 more than I got my Gateway, I could get twice the memory, 64bit capabilities, bluetooth, and a fingerprint reader. The DVD-R would also be dual-layer. The screen's an inch smaller, but that just means it's easier to carry around. Seriously, that sounds like more than $30 worth of upgrades. Just the memory upgrade is worth more than $30.

I totally got pwned by Gateway.

Oh and for $70 less than my 3-year accidental-damage Circuit City extended warranty, I could've gotten a 4-year warranty where they come to me instead of me sending my laptop away for 2 weeks. I think if this Gateway breaks once more, I will have to get a Thinkpad to replace it. My mom seems to be wondering about how well this thing's going to hold up. She asked in December if my laptop needed to be replaced, probably because she heard me complaining about the optical drive and she paid for it last time the mobo broke.

argraff
February 26th, 2008, 04:10 AM
I have a Lenovo, and L O V E it. Do it! :)

Gateways are among the worst brand I've ever seen (or had to perform emergency surgery on). Worked for a chamber of commerce one summer, and we had three hard drives go in a month. Useless.

macogw
February 26th, 2008, 04:12 AM
I have a Lenovo, and L O V E it. Do it! :)

Gateways are among the worst brand I've ever seen (or had to perform emergency surgery on). Worked for a chamber of commerce one summer, and we had three hard drives go in a month. Useless.

See, I heard that Gateways were POS, but I have one that's 10 years old now. It has never been serviced due to brokenness. The most servicing it's got was "the new scanner says we need more than 8 bits of color, so lets install a new video card" and "XP is slow on Pentium II's...I'll go get some memory." They're quality has dropped dramatically in the last decade.

hhhhhx
February 26th, 2008, 04:36 AM
i personally like the VAIO's, but my friend has a brand new thinkpad, and its great!

Palmyra
February 26th, 2008, 05:06 AM
I couldn't bring myself to buy a Thinkpad. They is ugly. This is the kind of Thinkpad I find ugly:

http://jefke.free.fr/writings/thinkpad_t43/thinkpad_t43.png

macogw
February 26th, 2008, 05:10 AM
All Thinkpads look like that. Ugly and working v. broken/useless and pretty....I'll take the one that's useful. Computers are for using. if you want pretty, buy some flowers.

jrusso2
February 26th, 2008, 05:12 AM
Gateway ane E Pc merged and the quality went way down. Now Gateway is under Acer but I don't know if the laptops are acer models yet or still E PC.

Anyway I have had this Thinkpad for two years, it has had zero problems.

It dual boots xp and linux works great.

Also the keyboard and screen are awesome.

lank23
February 26th, 2008, 05:16 AM
use an old t23 ibm at work for that machine is one tough sob.. I have dropped "couple times", got it totally wet in the rain, dragged it on the ground in the dirt and the thing still works fine. Best thing is it runs Ubuntu :) All for Thinkpads

zmjjmz
February 26th, 2008, 06:25 AM
I should of bought a Thinkpad too.
I have two anyways, but they're both old.
Really old.
I'm inheriting my Mom's soon (she's getting a new one from Lenovo, unfortunately not with SLED [I tried convincing her that there aren't any compatibility issues because of the MS-Novell deal, but...]) and I've already tried IceBuntu LiveCD on it and everything works out of the box :D

Cloudy
February 26th, 2008, 12:32 PM
My girlfriend sings the praises of the ThinkPad often, her school provides students with laptops that they have to buy at the end of a certain period of time and she's had hers for something like a year or a year and a half now, with no problems whatsoever.

EDIT: Which ThinkPad offers SuSE as a choice?

mr.propre
February 26th, 2008, 02:06 PM
They are expensive, but its worth it, there are stable and strong machines. If you take your laptop to work/school/other places, than a thinkpad is a good chose.

People say that they are ugly, but I find them looking more professional than a colored DELL. To bad IBM soled it to Lenovo. :(

handy
February 26th, 2008, 02:16 PM
All Thinkpads look like that. Ugly and working v. broken/useless and pretty....I'll take the one that's useful. Computers are for using. if you want pretty, buy some flowers.

:lolflag:

regomodo
February 26th, 2008, 02:25 PM
I couldn't bring myself to buy a Thinkpad. They is ugly. This is the kind of Thinkpad I find ugly:

http://jefke.free.fr/writings/thinkpad_t43/thinkpad_t43.png

Aesthetics is subjective. Sure, the mba looks good but i'd much rather have something that is fast, rugged, light, useful, than something that looks good and screams "steal me".

mips
February 26th, 2008, 02:57 PM
I couldn't bring myself to buy a Thinkpad. They is ugly. This is the kind of Thinkpad I find ugly:

http://jefke.free.fr/writings/thinkpad_t43/thinkpad_t43.png

Personally I think less is more. I hate the current trend of shiny stuff with coloured lights etc. Way to much bling for my liking.

Besides that I think functionality and reliability is way more important than looks.

machoo02
February 26th, 2008, 03:07 PM
There is a thread somewhere here in the cafe where aysiu talks about Mac pricing, and the difference between something being expensive and being a good value. Thinkpads are definitely a good value. Mine has been rock solid for the last 2+ years.

Polygon
February 26th, 2008, 03:09 PM
I will keep a thinkpad in mind when i get a laptop for college next year

K.Mandla
February 26th, 2008, 03:50 PM
I couldn't bring myself to buy a Thinkpad. They is ugly. This is the kind of Thinkpad I find ugly:

http://jefke.free.fr/writings/thinkpad_t43/thinkpad_t43.png
What?! That's a thing of beauty, friend. Here's another.

http://xs121.xs.to/xs121/07485/IMG_0485.JPG.xs.jpg (http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs121&d=07485&f=IMG_0485.JPG)

550Mhz of pure muscle (http://kmandla.wordpress.com/hardware/). :mrgreen:

P.S.: xs.to is acting up right now, that thumbnail might not appear for a while.

LaRoza
February 26th, 2008, 03:53 PM
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=645208

I love my Lenovo ThinkPad R61i.

Specs:
* Intel Core 2 Duo
* 2 GB RAM
* 160 GB Hard disk

Wireless and video worked flawlessly in Linux. Have OpenSuSE 10.3 64 bit on it now, but Ubuntu used to be on it.

(Cost me less than $1000)

Vadi
February 26th, 2008, 03:54 PM
I had a ThinkPad before.

But I got a system76 serval on the latest purchase :)

macogw
February 26th, 2008, 05:36 PM
My girlfriend sings the praises of the ThinkPad often, her school provides students with laptops that they have to buy at the end of a certain period of time and she's had hers for something like a year or a year and a half now, with no problems whatsoever.

EDIT: Which ThinkPad offers SuSE as a choice?

R61i 14" Widescreen. It has Intel graphics, so no fighting with binary drivers :)

LaRoza
February 26th, 2008, 06:14 PM
R61i 14" Widescreen. It has Intel graphics, so no fighting with binary drivers :)

I have an R61i, great machine.

As for people saying they are ugly, they are not. They are well designed. They aren't flimsy shiny things.

I personally find those sort of laptops to be ugly. They look like toys, not computers.

Steve1961
February 26th, 2008, 06:22 PM
I've had a thinkpad R50e for the last 18 months and it's given me zero problems. I work as a mobile IT tech and it gets dragged in and out of the back of my car every day, bumped and knocked about frequently, and generally used and abused. Personally I like the way it looks, but that's personal preference I suppose. Needless to say, it runs Ubuntu perfectly. I installed Dapper originally and it's been dist-upgraded over time to Gutsy. My next laptop, if this one ever goes wrong, will also be a thinkpad!!

Cloudy
February 26th, 2008, 06:51 PM
R61i 14" Widescreen. It has Intel graphics, so no fighting with binary drivers :)

Ooohhh.. it's quite a good deal. I wish it was there when I bought my laptop; spent $537 on a used laptop that's given me a fair bit of trouble.

emshains
February 26th, 2008, 08:28 PM
All Thinkpads look like that. Ugly and working v. broken/useless and pretty....I'll take the one that's useful. Computers are for using. if you want pretty, buy some flowers.

Thats harsh :D.


But ive used a 3 year old thinkpad and a brandnew dualcore toshiba. Guess which one i'd choose right now ?

THINKPAD, always ready to go, durable, and has only the stuff you need, instead of flashy lights and slim designs with no perfomance/durability at all.

lank23
February 26th, 2008, 11:55 PM
Work on Trains all day long Funny thing is one of the units runs an embedded ******* NT 4.0 and it is always having issues......luckily this unit is not that important for the operation of the train, could you imagine what would happen if the operator got a blue screen of death...LOL.

lank23

jrusso2
February 27th, 2008, 12:01 AM
I don't think Thinkpads are ugly at all the have purpose built look kind of like the space shuttle. Its called bento box the design was taken from those japanese lunch box things.

Anyway its a function over style modern type styling that never looks dated.

If you see a space shuttle flight video you will often see the astronauts sitting in front of Thinkpads.

mmichalik
February 27th, 2008, 12:01 AM
I had a T22 think pad for almost 6 years before it finally died on me. GREAT little rugged computer.

I now own a Lenovo 3000 N100 and love it. Ubuntu worked right out of the box and it's a sturdy machine as well.

I've said it in other posts and I will say it again, for business purposes, the Lenovo / IBM's are the best choice.

Whiffle
February 27th, 2008, 12:07 AM
So sad that someone linked to a picture of a T43 as being ugly...

I happen to love the looks of my T43. Its black, its not shiny, and its incredibly functional. It gets lugged around in my backpack more often then not. Its pretty much never shutoff (i just put it to sleep). I open it up, it wakes up, I work. No ifs or buts about it.

But yes, you should've bought a thinkpad. Oh well, theres always next time.

K.Mandla
February 27th, 2008, 03:14 AM
Do any newer Thinkpads come with Ubuntu installed? Mom wants a Linux-only laptop in the next few months; she's had Dells before but a Thinkpad might be a better option. She's used to Gnome Ubuntu but I don't know if that would be an issue if they come with another distro preinstalled.

Time to do some surfing.

Edit: Never mind. I just read the other thread about Thinkpads. Cheers, all.

LaRoza
February 27th, 2008, 03:24 AM
Do any newer Thinkpads come with Ubuntu installed? Mom wants a Linux-only laptop in the next few months; she's had Dells before but a Thinkpad might be a better option. She's used to Gnome Ubuntu but I don't know if that would be an issue if they come with another distro preinstalled.

Time to do some surfing.

Edit: Never mind. I just read the other thread about Thinkpads. Cheers, all.

My thread?

They come with Suse.

I put Ubuntu on mine, an R61i, and Ubuntu (and others) work perfectly.

jimrz
February 27th, 2008, 06:59 AM
Another ThinkPad lover here. Current one is a T42 + I still have/use my old (10 yrs.) 600x. Have NEVER had a problem with either one and they both "just work" with Ubuntu (and pretty much any Linux distro). In my book, you just can't beat them.

LaRoza
February 27th, 2008, 07:00 AM
Another ThinkPad lover here. Current one is a T42 + I still have/use my old (10 yrs.) 600x. Have NEVER had a problem with either one and they both "just work" with Ubuntu pretty much any Linux distro. In my book, you can't beat them.

That is wrong, you can beat them, but they will still work. :-)

Bubba64
February 27th, 2008, 08:39 AM
I have an ancient think pad A21m an IBM 750 MHz runs Gutsy like a champ.

unbuntu
February 27th, 2008, 11:53 AM
my friend has a Gateway and I have a Thinkpad. We both worked on a project for one week straight and his Gateway burned down (fan damaged) and my thinkpad is healthy as ever

smbm
February 27th, 2008, 07:07 PM
I have an R61. It's superb.

Almost everything works on it.

Most of the things that don't will be fixed in Hardy.

wirechief
February 28th, 2008, 09:14 PM
I have a thinkpad r61e after I re-sized the vista to as small a partition as it would go
I installed Kanotix and play with Ubuntu in a VirtualBox just to keep up with how it plays.
My thinkpad works nice with Linux, here are some specs.

Host/Kernel/OS "Newsroom2" running Linux 2.6.24-7-generic i686 [ KANOTIX 2007 Thorhammer ]
CPU Info (1) Intel Core2 Duo T7300 @ 4096 KB cache flags( sse sse2 nx lm pni vmx ) clocked at [ 800.000 MHz ]
(2) Intel Core2 Duo T7300 @ 4096 KB cache flags( sse sse2 nx lm pni vmx ) clocked at [ 800.000 MHz ]
Videocard Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller X.Org 1.3.0 [ 1280x800 @60hz ]
Network cards Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
Broadcom NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
Processes 128 | Uptime 3:59 | Memory 318.3/2018.0MB | HDD ST316081 2A,ATA HITACHI HTS54161 Size 280GB (30%used) | Client Shell | Infobash v2.67

hobo
March 1st, 2008, 03:52 PM
Lenovo is having a FIRE sale on the Thinkpad line. If you know a IBM employee they can legally give you the information to get to the site. I just bought a R61e with duo 2ghz proc, 2gB mem, dvd burner, 15.4 " wxga, etc for around $700 bucks, tax, free shipping and all. I can't wait.
BTW...Lenovo is dropping the Thinkpad name.

init1
March 1st, 2008, 05:08 PM
Yeah I think I probably should have gotten one too. I've got a cheap Compaq Presario C300. Although the specs are good, the keys are hard to get back into place, and wireless is difficult to configure.

macogw
March 1st, 2008, 08:07 PM
Lenovo is having a FIRE sale on the Thinkpad line. If you know a IBM employee they can legally give you the information to get to the site. I just bought a R61e with duo 2ghz proc, 2gB mem, dvd burner, 15.4 " wxga, etc for around $700 bucks, tax, free shipping and all. I can't wait.
BTW...Lenovo is dropping the Thinkpad name.
What? Awww no! I hope they aren't changing anything about it's quality... Changing the name is a very stupid move, IMO. The name "Thinkpad" is associated with very high quality systems. A new name won't have that legacy :-/

SomeGuyDude
March 1st, 2008, 08:22 PM
HP is also dynamite for using Ubuntu. Just to toss that in there, I got a sweet machine for aroudn $900 a year ago with all the trimmings. At Circuit City no less.

graabein
March 1st, 2008, 09:18 PM
Can I get a Thinkpad with a real 3D card so I can run games with (ugh) dx10?

LaRoza
March 1st, 2008, 11:06 PM
Can I get a Thinkpad with a real 3D card so I can run games with (ugh) dx10?

ThinkPads are not supposed to be gaming computers, perhaps you would be interested in a gaming laptop.

AlphaMack
March 2nd, 2008, 09:18 PM
I just ordered a R61i. They are dirt cheap right now! :D

Stew2
March 2nd, 2008, 11:18 PM
Aye, totally agree on the quality of the thinkpads! I am posting this on a prehistoric 600X that I bought on ebay about 3 yrs ago. I believe machine was made in 1999? Has been absolutely fantastic! No problems whatsoever although it is a little chuggy and long in the tooth :). Still a fantastic surfer and email machine though :). I have a big homebuilt for gaming, so I just use this old rig for the simple things .

Regards,
Stew :)

intense.ego
March 2nd, 2008, 11:44 PM
I have a thinkpad t60 and I love it. I have not had a single problem with hardware on Ubuntu. The build quality is excellent and it is very rugged and up for any challenge.

I, personally, think it looks better than any other laptop. Close it up and it looks even more superior because it is one solid unit. It is flat (the battery doesn't cause a bulge like on other laptops), and there are no irritating gaps or external parts.

unbuntu
March 3rd, 2008, 12:09 AM
What? Awww no! I hope they aren't changing anything about it's quality... Changing the name is a very stupid move, IMO. The name "Thinkpad" is associated with very high quality systems. A new name won't have that legacy :-/

Lenovo is definitely NOT dropping the thinkpad name! They're just adding another line of laptop named IdeaPad for "consumer laptops" as oppose to "business laptops"