[ltp] Buying a T41p

[Cameron McCormack]

[Performance:]

  Morris, Joseph C:
  > Well, having an R40 myself, I can't comment much on anything but the
  > processor.  Pentium M clock speeds are very misleading, the things rock!
  > I've got a 1.4 GHz and it is so much faster than I expected.  I would
  > equate its speed with my Athlon 2200.  This is a very good processors,
  > and I easily get 4 hours+ battery life because of it.
  
  Rob Browning:
  > I think other people pretty much covered this, but the P-M is a lot
  > more efficient than the P4 (per Hz).
  > 
  > FWIW, in the tests I've run, my t41p with a 7200rpm-drive beats a
  > XP2100 with a 10k raptor that I have here.
  
  Vincent Touquet:
  > Yes. Actually the Pentium M is a better processor design than plain P4.
  
  Sebastian Riedel:
  > Speed is awesome! I would say it equals to a P4 2.6 GHz.
  
  Aaron Mulder:
  > 	On some Java compile/build benchmarks I did, I got the following:
  > 
  > Test #1:
  >    Laptop P4-M/1.8: 23s  (T30)
  >    Desktop P4/2.4:  17s  (800 MHz bus)
  >    Laptop P-M/1.6:  15s  (T40p)
  > 
  > Test #2 (including much code signing and other nonsense):
  >    Laptop P4-M/1.8: 2m 35s
  >    Desktop P4/2.4:  2m 11s
  >    Laptop P-M/1.6:  1m 53s

Well this sounds great!  My housemate has a plain P4 2.4GHz Toshiba and
it seems a bit sluggish.  If these Pentium Ms are much better and lower
power, why don't they use them in desktop machines?


[VGA out:]

  Aaron Mulder:
  > 	(On the T40p)  Never tried the S-Video out.  The VGA seems fine
  > for a projector or CRT.  VGA->LCD may be good or bad, depending on the
  > monitor.  Using the port replicator with DVI output, an LCD looks
  > excellent (but may or may not work at 1600x1200).
  
  Sebastian Riedel:
  > Only used VGA out once, but it worked fine, nothing blurry.

Cool.


[Release of next model:]

  Aaron Mulder:
  > 	Well, Intel's releasing the next Pentium-M chip during the week of 
  > May 10.  Your guess is as good as mine as to when IBM will release a 
  > machine around it.  It took kind of a long time to get a 1.7 chip out the 
  > door, but there was probably less urgency since it was a fairly minor chip 
  > upgrade.
  
  Vincent Touquet:
  > I had to wait quite a while till I could get my T41p. I don't think
  > that the T line will get disrupted by an entire new model soon.
  > The next big upgrade wil be the Dothan processor (2Mb cache instead
  > of 1 in the current models), but that is getting posponed by Intel
  > because of manufacturing issues.
  
  Sebastian Riedel:
  > Here in europe I heared it will be available during the third quarter,
  > but just rumors.
  > 
  > Additionally it took about 4 weeks until mine was delivered, so don't
  > expect to get one before the end of the year. ;)

I need the notebook before a conference in May, so I guess I won't be
hanging out for the next model.


[Hardware support:]

  Aaron Mulder:
  > 	The only hardware I haven't tried with the T40p is the bluetooth
  > and modem.  All the other hardware works fine for me on SuSE 9.  I haven't 
  > tried the a/b/g wireless, but the a/b works fine, and I think the same 
  > driver supports both.
  
  Martin Man:
  > I was yet unable to get Irda working, but it should be doable, some playing
  > with setserial, bios and irda-utils should make it work
  > 
  > bluetooth ok, usb ok, pcmcia ok, X11 ok, suspend/hibernation ok (APM), cd
  > writing ok, touchpad/trackpoint ok, special IBM keys ok, sound ok (has to
  > forcibly rmmod-ed from kernel before suspending), eth ok, wifi works with
  > ndiswrapper.sf.net (included in debian) or ipw2100.sf.net - both have some
  > problems with suspending/resuming, cpufreqd should be ok (didn't have a chance
  > to play with it yet), modem untested
  
  Rob Browning:
  > Over even just the past couple of months things have improved
  > dramatically.  I run powernowd, the latest madwifi wireless, and
  > kernel 2.6.4.  Pretty much everything seems to work (both suspend to
  > RAM and suspend to disk, though I haven't re-checked suspend-to-ram
  > lately), and though I haven't had time to verify, it seemed like the
  > machine actually suspended to disk (ACPI) sucessfully yesterday, even
  > though the ath0 driver hadn't been removed.
  > 
  > X on the t41p is still a little tricky (with the FireGL chip).  I
  > think I posted earlier about this, but if you want to use xfree86,
  > you'll need a more recent release than many distributions have
  > packaged, and they may not package it anytime soon until/unless the
  > issues surrounding the recent license change are resolved.  I just
  > built a copy of CVS from a couple of months ago locally, and at long
  > as it keeps working, I'll probably just leave it alone until Debian
  > sorts things out.  Also note that with the current xfree86 support you
  > won't get accellerated 3d, but the 2d support is fine.
  
  Vincent Touquet:
  > I just bought one some weeks ago, installed Knoppix in a hurry before
  > going on a business trip to LA and it works like a charm. Still need
  > to fully configure it and set standby etc up properly, but so far
  > everything is entirely to my satisfaction.
  
  > All works perfect for me, I don't use 3D acceleration and suspend/resume
  > yet though, but I don't expect huge problems in that regard.
  
  Sebastian Riedel:
  > Running 2.6.4, ACPI does not work without screwing up some things like 
  > usb. :(
  > APM works fine.
  > 
  > Wifi works fine with the Madwifi drivers but seems not to use full bandwith,
  > maybe just a bug. (The wifi led never worked)
  > 
  > If you want 3d accelerated X11, you have to use ATI's closed source drivers,
  > which don't support power management!!! (Suspend is really unuseable!) :(
  > 
  > Hope ATI will take their linux driver development more serious in the 
  > future,
  > today it seems nvidia has the pole position here.
  > 
  > The performance is good and enough to play Unreal Tournament 2004 with
  > full details at 1280x1024. :)
  > 
  > The T41p is a very fine machine, it is quite new, and i'm very confident 
  > most
  > of the problems will be fixed soon.

I probably won't be needing 3D acceleration much, so I'd happily trade
it for the ability to suspend.  So is there no difference in terms of
support between the two wireless cards I can get?  What is the
difference between cpufreqd and powernowd?


[Buying:]
  Aaron Mulder:
  > 	I've never seen one, but I've never been to Melbourne, either.
  > 
  > 	Finally, note that if you order direct from IBM.com, it seems that
  > you can get a T41 loaded for about $2400 if you "let me build it" -- all
  > the same stats as the T41p except it would have the 32MB graphics card and
  > cost like $500 less.  Again, not sure if this helps you in AU.
  
  Rob Browning:
  > Oh, and at least when I bought it, IBM's "Express Saver" laptops were
  > much cheaper than building the same configuration yourself.
  
  Vincent Touquet:
  > Yep, they are called thinkpad centres. Call IBM Australia and see if
  > they have a centre you can get at.
  
  Sebastian Riedel:
  > Here in europe i never saw a T41p in a shop.

What are these "Express Savers"?  I can't see any mention of them on the
IBM site.

Thanks everyone for your valuable advice!

Cameron

-- 
Cameron McCormack
|  Web: http://mcc.id.au/
|  ICQ: 26955922