Laptops
Written by Barry Warsaw in technology on Wed 02 December 2009.
I really need a new laptop. While I love my 3.5 year old Mac Book Pro, it's by now showing its age and the abuse I've given it. It runs Fusion to give me an Ubuntu desktop, but because the disk is almost full I have to run that from a USB drive, so it's slow. I know I can upgrade the disk, but the machine is a Core Duo only, so that probably wouldn't help much. I also have an old IBM Thinkpad X40 which has an excellent form factor, but a small screen, and the motherboard power jack has an annoying habit of screaming at a high pitch when plugged in, so it lives in its dock, making it heavier and much less portable. And this thing is really slow.
What to do? Well, I've been looking around and with Cyber Monday (do you hate that marketing term as much as I do?) I knew there'd be some great deals around. One of the best, which if you're reading this the same day I post it, is on Lenovo computers (formerly IBM), including steep 35% discounts on Thinkpads. I know, I should get one of those!
I looked at the x200s and the x301, the former being closest to the X40 form factor, but with a WXGA+ 1400x900 screen (yay!), no trackpad (boo), and no built-in webcam (boo). The latter has the same WXGA+ screen (yay), a trackpad (yay), a built-in webcam (yay) and default solid state drive (yay). It's still under 3lbs (yay) and only .5lbs heavier than the x200s in its stock configuration. But it's about $800 more before you start customizing it. Still the discounts really bring both computers into the realm of possibility, especially for a work computer that I'll be using constantly …