[ltp] What is the fastest Thinkpad I can get now?

[Chris Schumann]

On 03/22/2010 01:49 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> I have a T61 with 2 GHz Intel dual core, 320 GB SATA-2 hard drive
> (replaced the original 160 GB drive) and 4 GB of RAM. It's not fast
> enough.
>
> I do a lot of desktop publishing for print on Fedora 11 x86_64. I
> currently have Scribus open and it is using 2.2 GB of RAM. System
> Monitor tells me the total RAM usage at the moment is 3.4 GB (adding
> other open applications). On occasion I am swapping to disk. I'd add
> RAM, but my T61 is maxed out at 4 GB.
>
> I also need a faster CPU. Exporting to PDF from Scribus sometimes takes
> half an hour and longer. I don't care if it's Intel or AMD, just so it
> is fast. Of course, there are other issues that impinge on speed of
> CPU, like bus speed, etc. I don't care what it takes, I just want
> processing speed.
>
> I love the 15.4 inch screen at 1680 x 1050 on my T61, and want my next
> computer to have the same resolution, and I prefer nVidia graphics.
>
> So what is the most powerful Thinkpad I can get today?
>    
W700.

You need to look at where your bottlenecks are.

If your CPU is pegged while you're waiting, you need a faster CPU OR 
faster memory bandwidth OR both.

If the disk is thrashing, and you're swapping, you need RAM. Pretty much 
anything after the T61 can use 8GB of RAM.

If hard drive throughput is the culprit, you can get faster hard drives, 
or SSDs, or RAID, or RAID SSDs. The W700 has a hardware RAID controller 
and can hold three hard drives. You can get incredible speed that way. 
The W500 and T500 should be able to use software RAID and two drives.

It might also make sense to look into making the software faster. Since 
it's open source, you *could* pay someone to analyze the code to look 
for places to improve its efficiency. Since it seems like you do this 
for work, it could pay for itself... or a least for a new ThinkPad.

Chris