[ltp] My next ThinkPad

[Stephen Ryan]

On 7/7/06, Timothy Murphy <tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
> I'm a recent convert to ThinkPads (from Sony PictureBooks),
> and have a T20 and T23, both of which I am very happy with.
> (Actually my wife uses the T23.)
>
> I'm thinking of getting a third ThinkPad,
> and am wondering what people would recommend.
> I've very fond of the "touchpoint"
> and not so keen on "touchpads".
>
> I'm planning on looking at eBay,
> and wondered what the natural progression is,
> after T20 and T23?
> I should say that both of these are perfectly adequate for my needs,
> so it would make sense to get another T23 -
> but I thought I might splash out on a newer (not new) model.
>
> Any advice or suggestions gratefully received.

What other features do you care about?  The T30 is faster than the
T23, but also much hotter and less power-efficient, so my friends
advised me to avoid that one completely.  The T40 is faster, cooler,
more power-efficient, and (unfortunately) correspondingly more
expensive.  From the outside, the T40 and the T23 are *very* similar,
in size, weight and appearance.  Since I was after cooler and more
power-efficient, I ended up spending the extra for the T40.  How much
those features are worth to you is a different story.  Since you're
happy with a T23, it's unlikely that anything past the T40 will be
interesting, since those are likely to be more than double the cost of
a T23.

*If* you care about light weight, you might consider the X series
ultraportables as well; enough people do care about that to make it a
viable product, but you do give up a couple of inches of screen size
and the built-in optical drive.  One important thing to note is that
though the X series generally corresponds to the T series, the X30 and
X31 do not correspond to the T30; IBM apparently realized that the P4m
processor was just too much for a 3-pound system and put a PIIIm in
the X30 (like the T23) and a Pentium M in the X31 (like the T40).