[ltp] Purchasing New Laptop

[Andrew Biggadike]

Most of you folks with T40 laptops seem to have the T40p.  I am
currently looking into getting a T40 and, while the T40p models have
some nicer features, they don't seem to be worth the extra cost. 
Depending on which specific models, the price difference seems to be
about $700 to jump up to the T40p.

>From what I can gather, the main differences end up being:
o 1.6 Pentium-M rather than lesser GHz
o 1400x1050 resolution rather than 1024x768
o ATI FireGL 9000 (64mb) rather than Mobility Radeon 7000 (32mb)
o Gigabit Ethernet capable
o 9-cell battery rather than 6-cell
o IBM a/b card rather than INTEL b card (and neither is Linux-friendly
at the moment)

Do these improvements really warrant the extra cost?

Any comments on why someone chose the T40p over the T40 (or vice versa),
and their resulting experience, are much appreciated.  Thanks,

Andrew

On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 15:15, Joel Ebel wrote:
> I considered all the ones you mention, and I settled on the T40, as 
> evidenced by me being on this list.  Most of the hardware in both will 
> be fine.  The Dell 8500 is not pentium-M based, and so the chipset 
> hardware is currently better supported, but mainstream support for the 
> pentium-M stuff is on it's way.  If you want the best 3D support, then 
> the Dells with the Nvidia graphics are better.  If you want to use 
> internal wireless at all, you should get the IBM.  The Dells use 
> chipsets unsupported by linux.  The T40 will work wirelessly with either 
> the cisco card, or soon, the IBM dual band card.  Not really a linux 
> issue, but the T40 is, in my opinion, a much nicer feeling laptop.  It's 
> smaller, thinner, and lighter.
> 
> Joel