[ltp] New Thinkpad Advice - X models

[Heiko Rosemann]

Hi,

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Ken Firestone wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am thinking of replacing my old TP240 with something newer, and I
> would like some advice/opinions.
>
> First; X40 vs X31? What are the advantages, disadvantages of each?

The X40 is a little thinner and smaller, is less heavy. And it has the IBM
active harddisk protection, for which there will be a driver for linux as
well (at least the IBM guy on CeBit this year told me so, and he sounded
quite sure about that fact)

> Second; what about older X series Thinkpads that show up on eBay? Any
> models to avoid?

My X30 works quite well. Suspend to disk works with both APM and ACPI
(swsusp2), wireless (Cisco) works, sound works (alsa drivers), modem works
(slmodem drivers) and all the other stuff like ethernet, parport etc. work
as well. I have no equipment to test the firewire and I have not yet come
that far with the IR configuration (no time at all) so I cannot tell
anything about these two. Ah yes, and currently with 2.6.6 my
3D-acceleration does not work. It used to with 2.4.26, but again I have not
fiddled around with it since my kernel update.

Apart from those facts, if you don't depend on processing power, it is
probably a good and maybe much cheaper alternative to an X31. It does not
have USB2.0, it has a slower VGA (830MG vs. 855MG iirc), it has slower RAM
(PC133 vs. PC266DDR), can only handle 1GB of RAM and it has a P3-Mobile with
1200MHz vs. those Centrinos beginning at 1300MHz.
But it has almost the same battery life (4 hrs. compared to 4:30 on the X31,
from the net), has the same weight (1.6kg), same size, same case actually,
same 40GB-hdd etc. And I was offered my new X30 for only EUR1300, whereas
the X31 would have cost EUR1800 with all my student rebate.

HTH, Heiko
-- 
 * WARNING! The USB documentation is downright evil. Most of it
 * is just crap, written by a committee. You're better off ignoring
 * most of it, the important stuff is: [...]
               -- 2.4.24's drivers/usb/host/uhci.c  (full ack!)