[ltp] Buying a New Thinkpad

[Steven J. Owens]

Folks,

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 02:05:11PM -0400, Robert Tomsick wrote:
> > Hmmm, but who wants to use swap for anything else than hibernation, 
> > considering that its possible to equip a T520 with 8 GiB of RAM for a IMHO 
> > quite low fraction of the price of the complete laptop?
> 
> Because every once in a while you need to do something that uses a whole
> ton of memory?  Or at least I do.  I've run into swap on my workstation
> before, and that has 12 GB of RAM.  It's not *that* hard to do if you're
> running a big IDE plus a couple VMs for testing.  IMHO, hitting swap is
> preferable to OOM kills.

     I'm waiting for a callback on the T520 I ordered (something wonky
about the payment going through, guess my bank isn't used to seeing
that large a transaction - then again, I think the last time I had one
that large was when I ordered my T43p, 5+ years ago).

     I'm reluctant to swap the mechanical hard drive *or* the optical
drive for the SSD.  I've read that a good approach is to install the
system on the SSD and keep the bulk data on the mechanical HD.  I've
also read rumors of higher failure rates for laptop SSDs, so I'd be
happier if I could have something automatically backing up critical
data from the SSD to the mechanical HD.

     The T520 has a space for an internal mSATA drive, like the intel
SSD 310 or 320.  According to the lenovo rep who handled my order, the
W520 is bootable from the mSATA/WWAN, but not the T520.  I'm not sure
what implications that has, beyond the obvious that you can't speed up
the boot process by booting off the SSD.

     Some reviews I've read contradict the lenovo rep, but those same
reviews were given both a T520 and a W520 and seemed a bit ambiguous
about whether they were talking about the T or W.

-- 
Steven J. Owens
puff@darksleep.com / (412) 401-8060 cell 
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