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Hello,

So, in other words, it is an updated copy of Lenovo's 15th anniversary "Reserve Edition" ThinkPad? http://www.notebookreview.com/...

Meh.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

I used to be a dedicated ThinkPad user. They were perfect for running open source operating systems such as Linux or BSD. Thinkpads are well-supported with open source drivers, detailed specifications are available at http://psref.lenovo.com/, and spare parts are available at https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/partslookup. Many models are also built to military standards of reliability (MIL-STD-810G).

But within the last several years the hardware has become less appealing. Only Lenovo-approved wireless cards are allowed. The keyboards aren't as excellent as they used to be (although they're still pretty good). The clickpads are horrible for work that requires precision. (See http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-thinkpad-w540-mobile-workstation-review/.) And fewer options are available for customizing the hardware. (Do you want a laptop without a built-in privacy-invading webcam? Well, you probably won't be able to purchase a Thinkpad without one. Do you want a DVD drive on a 14-inch laptop? Well, you can't get that either.) Lenovo also revealed itself to be untrustworthy in the Superfish scandal:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/two-weeks-on-superfish-debacle-still-causing-pain-for-some-lenovo-customers/

For my next laptop, I'm seriously considering HP, instead. I can purchase a 14-inch HP with physical buttons below the trackpad, without a webcam, and with a DVD drive. I can't get any of those features on the current generation of Thinkpads.

Kaby Lake CPUs didn't come out at all until October 2016 and, when they did, all of the quad-core SKUs supported 64GB of RAM. That's irrelevant, though, as the Kaby Lake CPUs aren't what's in the 2016 MBP. The two prior generations (at least) supported 32GB. That includes the i5-6360U in the lowest-end 2016 MacBook Pro.

So, what's the excuse, again?

So, I went back and re-read some of the articles that came out at the time the 2016 MBPs were launched, and it turns out that I was sort of right; but not exactly right.

The real issue was that (if I got this right, synthesizing from a couple of different articles) the CPUs that were due to come out, but didn't, were due to support LPDDR4 (low-power DDR4) RAM, and when they didn't come out as promised by Intel, Apple chose to use a memory controller that supported LPDDR3 RAM (because that's all the CPU would support?), but limited it to 16 GB due to concerns with battery-life.

And that is a legitimate concern; because, if you visit the product-forums for the laptops that do support more than 16 GB of RAM, you will find scores of complaints about hideous battery life, whereas, Apple just got praised for being the only laptop manufacturer who actually generally meets or exceeds their battery-life claims.

All I can think of is this http://www.notebookreview.com/...

...let me save you some time. Don't bother updating the laptop to Windows 10. It has driver compatibility issues that cause the laptop to freeze minutes after you boot the machine.

My mom has one, and I spent six hours over the 4th of July weekend trying to upgrade it. After a bunch of searching online, I came to the conclusion that some geeky workarounds like disabling the network port and using unsigned drivers was just not the right solution for mother. Instead, I just installed an SSD into the spare drive bay and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7. She says it runs like a brand new laptop. I figure that will buy her another two, maybe three years.

It isn't too unusual, do a search for "diy vidock" "diy external gpu" or just look here:
http://forum.notebookreview.co...

They used to make really cool, quality stuff

True. I bought a HP 8510p, 5 years ago, and it's still my main work laptop. As a web developer, I use Visual Studio, Photoshop, etc. and have SQL Server, IIS and a bunch of dev tools running continually. It also plays Dishonored and Metro Last Light reasonably well. Amazing little machine, easy to open up and maintain. Not a single dead pixel, not single failed part. The only down-side is a limit of 4GB RAM, but even that's not too much of an issue.. on XP. :)

It was probably one of the first "good enough" laptops that didn't need to be discarded for something faster, but it also happened to never break down (crazily easy to open up and de-dust). My deep satisfaction, however, doesn't make a computer manufacturer any money. Which is another reason for pushing tablets and "laptop-replacements" like the Surface Pro - they're an emerging tech, which means the good-old, lucrative "upgrade cycle" starts all over again for these companies.

We need reliable hybrid drives with 120-160+ GBs of flash memory, instead of the ridiculously worthless 4-8 GB ones we have now.

A hybrid with a 1:30 or 1:20 ratio of flash to platter (200 GB for 4 TB for instance) would pretty much be perfect for anyone, even enterprise applications if RAID controllers cooperated with the hybrid caching properly.

We do not need 100% flash, just give us a practical median.

In fact, I guarantee if someone made a hard drive with a controller with an mSATA slot for adding a SSD and offered the controller to be setup as pass-through (act as two drives) or caching (SSD keeps a cache of platter), it would sell like crazy.

An mSATA would fit easily beneath a standard 3.5 inch platter hard drive.

http://www.notebookreview.com/...

Perhaps it was just really bright in his office.

First link: three years old. Accelerated or not, my ten year old tower loads a page faster than my three year old Win 7 notebook.

Second link: Linux != Ubuntu even though Ubuntu == Linux.

Third link: SEVEN years old. Your info is REALLY out of date. It's like you're arguing against Win8 using an article about Vista.

At the end of the day if EVERY SINGLE RETAILER ON THE PLANET avoids your product like an STD even though it would allegedly save them piles of money?

But it doesn't save them piles of money. The pittance they pay for Windows (compared to what you pay) is overcome by being paid to install Windows crapware like toolbars and weatherbugs. And it isn't RETAILERS, it's OEMs.

How about over 200 current show stopping bugs with all major hardware from realtek to Nvidia?

Narod.ru?? Nice citation there... lets see...

I want to make one thing crystal clear - Windows, in some regards, is even worse than Linux and it's definitely not ready for the desktop either. Off the top of my head I want to name the following quite devastating issues with Windows: Windows rot, no enforced file system and registry hierarchy (I have yet to find a single serious application which can uninstall itself cleanly and fully), no true safe mode, no clean state, the user as a system administrator (thus viruses/malware - most users don't and won't understand UAC warnings), no good packaging mechanism (MSI is a fragile abomination), no system wide update mechanism (which includes third party software), Windows is very difficult to debug, in too many cases when Windows stops booting no normal user will be able to solve this problem, Windows is hardware dependent (especially when running from UEFI), in most cases you cannot safely upgrade your system (there will be thousands of leftovers), etc.

What a stunning endorsement of Windows you posted.

Oh, and what's this?

I'm guessing you thought I wouldn't follow your links. The last one?

"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.

Yeah, what a ringing endorsement of Windows.

Now, WTF is this "harryfeet challenge" you speak of?

I was actually curious about the power consumption so I went poking around and found this(Sorry I couldn't find the original article. The power consumption is markedly different....not sure it's enough to COMPLETELY offset the cost, but certainly makes it easier to swallow.

Second that. Don't overlook the ODMs. You're bassically buying from the companies that actually make the laptops for Dell, HP, etc anyways. You can usually get better deals and/or quality or at least more customizability. Lots of resellers some of which have the usual service/warranties available that you can buy from a Dell, HP, etc. www.notebookreview.com is a good resource.

Here ya go, since you can't do it yourself: http://airodump.net/hewlett-packard-bios-hacking/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-pavilion-notebooks/600275-dv6-7-6xxx-series-wlan-whitelist-hp-authorized-wireless-cards.html
Now once again,
FUCK OFF
There is no benefit to crawling around anonymously asking for citation when the answer is both available and not my job to provide to an AC. If one is to be a citation pest, do it while logged in so I can see your UID and see how many times per day you make such ridiculous requests -- and so I know I'm not wasting my time.

That was some tangent!

Here is a picture where both power buttons are visible, for the curious (it gives me shivers, I actually covered the second button after the second loss):
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/10236.jpg

Interestingly, googling for some information on the Media Center (or Media Direct) I see almost nothing, as if there were never any issues with it or as if nobody ever used it!

just look at the thing http://www.notebookreview.com/shared/picture.asp?f=61197.

Typically I'm not a form over function type of guy, but looking at that thing I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

All right, I'll bite.

M14x has a 14" display, not 15".
Its battery lasts around 4 hours in standardised tests, not 7 hours.

Yes it's cheaper, but you're not comparing like with like. Also, at the risk of facing derision from the tough (blinkered?) Slashdot crowd, just look at the thing http://www.notebookreview.com/shared/picture.asp?f=61197. When I'm choosing where to spend my disposable income, two of the factors are how the thing looks and feels, as you suggest. Not the most important factors, but definitely on the list.

I've ordered a 2.6GHz Retina machine, with 16GB RAM, plus the Ethernet dongle and the MagSafe2 adapter. Other than one very old Compaq laptop at a previous employer, I have never felt the urge to upgrade RAM or storage in one of my machines so I couldn't care less about the lack of upgradeability. The battery can be replaced by Apple if that's an issue (I've taken advantage of that with one previous machine). It will be used, like all of my machines for: coding (Vim/Netbeans), system management (Solaris, Linux, MacOS, Windows servers, Cisco and HP network equipment), photography and film (LightRoom, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro X). It replaces a MacBook Air which has served me well, travelling around the world with me, tucked into a Tenba Roadie II Universal case. The MacBook Air shuffles over to my wife, to replace her 1st gen MBP15 which I'll donate to whichever friend or family member needs it most at the moment.

Yep, I'm in a happy Apple bubble. I like the simplicity, style, look, feel and quality of Macs. I love the functionality of OSX. And I certainly don't fit into the moronic image that other replies have alluded to (Starbucks, hipster etc.). I'm a systems and networks guy for a hedge fund, working from home, and the Mac hardware has been the right hardware for me and my job for many years now. I may not get 730fps on Diablo III, but I do have reliable, sturdy, smart and well-designed computers that do the job for me.

Your mileage obviously varies, your criteria for computer selection differs from mine and I can respect that. But I do buy a Mac because of the hardware - that Retina screen is a hell of piece of kit and for photos/film it was enough to get me to order on day one. Similarly, the MacBook Air had exactly the right mix of performance and portability.

Lenovo Thinkpad X60, 2006.
Not as flat, but already the form of a wedge.

add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

Apple's biggest design flaw is that they use the same name ("Macbook") for all of their laptops, year after year. So a Google for "macbook battery" or "macbook screen" returns every rant anyone has ever posted about every Apple laptop ever sold.

All the other manufacturers keep changing names so you can't keep track. HP has added "Envy" and "ProBook" to the "Presario" and "Pavillion" and "EliteBook", plus they add random model numbers like "dv5000." Makes it a lot harder to keep track. Dell does the same thing: What the hell is a Vostro? Is it like an Inspiron or a Latitude? It's certainly not an XPS, right, because that's the line they built to compete with Alienware, except now they own Alienware, and use that name, too.

Changing names often helps to encourage the short memories of consumers. I don't know anyone that's had a problem with a Vostro or an Envy...because I've never known anyone whose owned anything other than an Inspiron or a Pavillion.

add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

I'd recommend a Dell, if you can stand the hardware - their NBD warranties kick ass. You can practically (ab)use the hardware for anything except hammering fenceposts & they'll replace it for you. Plus there's the data recovery option, might be worth it if you're special enough to keep important data on a laptop.

Here's one from half a decade ago:

HP tx1000

I'm guessing you don't follow the computer industry much beyond Apple's keynotes.

--Jeremy

Sorry they actually changed the settlement to a $250 Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX with a single core 2.3ghz AMD V140.

If you're replacing a $1300 HP TX1000 Tablet with AMD 64X2 2.0GHz you may choose a $450 ASUS Eee PC Tablet with Atom N570 and 1gb ram.

Note you do have to mail in your old laptop to receive one of these and there are no other laptops to choose from, you either get a $250 laptop or if you had a tablet you receive a $450 Asus Eee PC.

Nvidia won, customers lost. I hate Nvidia

There sure is, and it's 100% legal.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/428068-legal-windows-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

We over at notebook review have been working on an external GPU solution for a long time now. While at its current state, it does not lend to a lot of portability, but some great custom enclosures are being put together. Also, the price is far less restrictive than the Villagetronic solution.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html#post5324240

I have gone as far as getting rid of my desktop since my docked HP Elitebook 8460p with second-gen i7-2720qm with 8gb ram and GTX460 is faster at just about everything than my old Intel Q9300/GTX 460 system. The only downside RIGHT NOW is there are no PCIe 2.0 compliant parts yet, so we are seeing limited bandwidth. Even Villagetronics parts are having trouble working on 2.0 compliant laptop(Lenovo x220)

My experiences
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences-464.html#post7750576

Once 2.0 compliant parts are available, I am switching to a GTX570 for gaming on the internal LCD at friends, and my 24" LCD at home.

Unfortunately, my Elitebook has no TB port or I would perhaps go that route simply for a cleaner, less work intensive solution.

We over at notebook review have been working on an external GPU solution for a long time now. While at its current state, it does not lend to a lot of portability, but some great custom enclosures are being put together. Also, the price is far less restrictive than the Villagetronic solution.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html#post5324240

I have gone as far as getting rid of my desktop since my docked HP Elitebook 8460p with second-gen i7-2720qm with 8gb ram and GTX460 is faster at just about everything than my old Intel Q9300/GTX 460 system. The only downside RIGHT NOW is there are no PCIe 2.0 compliant parts yet, so we are seeing limited bandwidth. Even Villagetronics parts are having trouble working on 2.0 compliant laptop(Lenovo x220)

My experiences
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences-464.html#post7750576

Once 2.0 compliant parts are available, I am switching to a GTX570 for gaming on the internal LCD at friends, and my 24" LCD at home.

Unfortunately, my Elitebook has no TB port or I would perhaps go that route simply for a cleaner, less work intensive solution.

If you're unlucky backups won't save you from this:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25491097-Dell-Laptop-and-SSD-Time-warp-issue

yesterday I spent over an hour fomatting, re-installing windows and everything else I needed.

Also updated windows fully, customized everything to my liking... in short, a good 2-3h of work.

This morning, I open up the laptop and surprise... EVERYTHING's back to the pre-format. I have no idea how this is even remotely possible.

OCZ is calling this the time warp issue, and is related to the sandforce controller...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/552728-fresh-os-install-ocz-ssd-r3.html

any firmware before 1.29 can result in you experiencing what OCZ refers to as "Time Warp" (you lose all info stored on drive since last boot - happens at random). 1.29 decreases likelihood of this happening, but does not eliminate the possibility.

The big problem with this failure mode is the drive still appears to work. So if you are unlucky to not notice that the pricelist/tender document you are about to send or commit to is no longer showing the corrected figures/information, things could get way more painful than if your drive just didn't work (in which case work would just be delayed while you restore from backups, or if you have no backups you would just have to deal with the data loss).

"The Thinkpad W700ds had two displays, and that ugly behemoth is no longer sold. "

two displays, but not two monitors. W700ds had a second 10" display that added a worthless 760 pixels of horizontal real estate. I'm use to 1920, what are you suppose to do with an extra 760 pixels? That's not even wide enough to display most webpages!

Not only that but the screen's weren't matched:
"The second display lacks the more highly reflective coating of its high-end companion, and with 280 NIT brightness (versus 400 on the primary display) and a narrower reproducible gamut, colors definitely don’t pop as much. Never mind annoying backlight bleed coming from both sides of the screen, poor side-to-side viewing angles, and a serious mismatch on black depth (true black is reproduced much lighter and bluer on the secondary display by default). Combined with color discrepancies courtesy of different calibration and profiling (more on that in the next section), power graphics users may well ask, “What’s the point?”"

To pick just one example, do you know of any CF cards which compress all data on the fly in order to increase effective flash lifespan by reducing the total amount of data written?

You shouldn't be calling people morons "with shallow expertise", because if you actually understand how and why things break you would realize that your remark actually supports his point: which is all that fancy stuff makes it more likely for you to lose data.

Or worse, lose data without realizing it, see this: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25491097-Dell-Laptop-and-SSD-Time-warp-issue

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/552728-fresh-os-install-ocz-ssd-r3.html
To quote:

any firmware before 1.29 can result in you experiencing what OCZ refers to as "Time Warp" (you lose all info stored on drive since last boot - happens at random). 1.29 decreases likelihood of this happening, but does not eliminate the possibility.

If you don't notice that the drive has reverted, you might have bigger problems than if the drive goes totally dead. e.g. If the drive is dead, you restore what you can from your backups, tell everyone that you have a problem etc, whereas if the drive reverts, you might send the wrong info to a customer, or commit partially out-of-date code to a repository.

... but still use my favourite analog pointing device, thanks to ThinkPads and the awesome trackpoint-enabled ThinkPad USB keyboard.

Calculators that can play Doom

Netbooks running Crysis

Mass hysteria.

Skip the article and just look at the pictures.
Anti-Glare Matte Screen cover review

Yep, they have both. When new the nonconvertible is cheaper to buy, and as some people wanted the form factor and power without the extra cost of a tablet they don't use. I suspect the hinge is also stronger (The convertible version has one hinge in the middle that has to rotate, which is weaker than two on the side).

You can usually tell the difference by the hinges. The nonconvertible has two ones near the edges, the tablet one big one in the centre.

Have a look at the picture here to see what I mean (tablet is on the right): http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/23058.jpg

They sell them as the X61s and X61 Tablet respectively, but most people just put them down as X61, hence the confusion. Hope this helps :)

Back in 2008, Seagate was already fitting its FreeAgent Go 500GB USB HDD with Samsung hard drives: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/301553-seagate-freeagent-go-500gb-disassembly-samsung-hd-upgrade-laptop.html

I dunno, that Thinkpad X220 with 12+ hours of usable (!!! http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220.aspx?page=3, http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6056&p=4) battery life (and that's only with the internal 9-cell battery - the strap-under slice battery adds another 10 hours or so) is looking much better to me than any tablet or smartphone I've seen so far. I have a feeling that as soon as laptops start to catch up in terms of battery life and portability, ARM based tablets and smartphones will become much less appealing. It'll come down to a choice between capacitive touchscreens vs. hardware keyboards & pointing devices, and I have a feeling that far fewer people would be willing to choose the latter if it didn't come with much, much lower battery life.

I too own a high-end Android smartphone to go along with my subnotebook, but if I could get all-day always-on battery life out of my subnotebook, I doubt I'd pull out my phone even half as often...

Apparently the problem is with SATA ports 2-5, at least for mobile motherboards. Every desktop board is affected.

They've been selling faulty laptops as well.

Granted, the issue with several of their laptop models lies with the Nvidia GPU die packaging; Dell still refuses to extend extend warranties on some of the laptops that suffer from this issue.

For example, the XPS M1210 has this exact problem, and suffers from the die package over heading even more than other models because it's the smallest form factor (which means it's harder to keep cool).

I had a personal vendetta with Dell a few years ago because they refused to provide warranty extensions for the M1210. I had spent ~30+ hours on the phone, being handed off to one customer service department after the other like a game of hot potato.

Eventually I found somebody online who managed to somehow get the right tech support at the right time, and had their mobo replaced under warranty extension. I used his case # as a reference, and Dell finally gave in.

I then made a post here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/361004-how-get-your-dead-xps-m1210-fixed.html#post4611553 [notebookreview.com]

This is a listing of M1210's that have been fixed under warranty, and their case numbers. So if anybody here has this problem, reference these numbers and Dell will honor their fuck up.

Pay up the dollar, having worked on EVERY HP laptop model out there, the DV8000 was a tank that had full-travel full-size keyboards, a full centimeter of up and down movement with each key. Each key is full-sized.

The fkeys are not full-sized (squished vertically) nor Ctrl, Alt, Spacebar (all narrow) and the Arrow keys, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, Insert, and Delete (all short like the fkeys.) You may try again if you like. Otherwise, you may paypal me at my displayed email address, sucker.

(P.S. HP laptops with a button bar are notoriously unreliable, and difficult to take apart/reassemble. I watched an HP tech fail with one of mine; it at least powered on before he left. It had a die bonding problem and they finally gave me another one which was similar but newer, another EliteBook. I sold it and bought three netbooks. Asus++; Acer--; Gateway--;)

You know, this list of old netbooks (some of them several years old) might not be the right thing to compare to a product which literally has not even been released for purchase yet...

Maybe instead we should go to a good review site and compare the iPad to current netbooks, especially ones in its price range?

The above post was also posted to http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5573605#td_post_5572662 with a little more detail. This post predates the other by a few minutes (assuming properly synced clocks), so I'd guess it was the same person who posted both of them.

There are currently three hits for "i8kspeedfan" on Google, all of them having the exact same text; slashdot, a slashdot syndicator, and the above notebookreview page. Maybe it refers to i8kfan, which is probably similar enough to Linux/*nix's i8kutils, which apparently has no project/home page. All I can find is Debian's i8kutils package (though its maintainer claims he is no longer maintaining it). The source is hosted with a direct tgz link from that page.

Say what? So if I created a device that emitted a smell so nasty it made you wretch you'd be okay with me waving it around you while you were trying to enjoy a meal, walk down the street, or sit on a park bench? Because hey after all you "assume the risk" of every moron around you doing something disgusting when you venture outside of your home right? Sounds to me like "the rest of us" is quickly becoming a minority and you don't like being one of them.

I'm all for personal freedom so long as it doesn't impinge too greatly on others. I don't blast my music, I don't let my dog poop on other people's lawns, and I try to be considerate of others. Cigarette smoke, frankly, makes me ill. If a person in the car ahead of me at a light is smoking I can often smell it and it can make me gag. When smokers come in from outside and share an elevator with me I'm forced to get off at the next floor because the stench is overpowering. I'm not alone in this, other coworkers have expressed similar issues. Sorry smokers but your habit effects others and there are finally enough of us speaking up about it to make some changes, it's not going to stop.

I used to live with smokers, my parents and grandparents all smoked. The film covered everything and every car ride was misery as I was forced to endure the smoke. I used to work in an environment where smoking was allowed in offices and I repaired the computers. I had to empty the keyboards of ashes, I had to clean the gunk off of the screens - inside and out, and I had to clean the crap from inside the boxes. The offices were often just nasty to be around, it was like a film covered everything. Like it or not smoking DOES cause damage to computers. In my experience the damage usually wasn't so bad it couldn't be fixed. No worse than dog or cat hair except that you can't use canned air to remove it. I recently inherited some clocks from my Grandfather, my Uncle smoked around them for a few years. When I wiped them down the brown gunk was disgusting. I had to clean and oil them inside to get them running again, these were mechanical clocks with little to no airflow inside of them and yet they were filthy. The evidence is pretty overwhelming really - smoking damages everything around it.

As much as I detest the effects surrounding smoking I'm not sure I support Apple's not fixing these computers. I guess I'd have to see just how bad these computers looked inside and it would have helped if Apple had made this a known policy. I CAN understand why they might want to have such a policy but before they begin instituting it they need to be a little more open about it. IF they had done that then sure, I can understand them rejecting claims like this if upon popping open a computer they found it contaminated with tar and crap...

Some interesting reading http://www.squidoo.com/cigarette-smoke-computer-damage and http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=176542 If you do some Googling on cigarette smoke damage you will find thread after thread of evidence of smoke damaging computers, guitars, stereo speakers, and on and on. Close enough to evil for you?

The single best laptop ever made.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2864

Pros:

• IPS display gives you nearly 180 degrees viewing angle -- no more of the annoying color shifts or inversion when looking at the screen off-axis
• Native 1600x1200 resolution in a 15" form-factor. Wide-screen displays are teh suck for coding. The T60p's "standard" display ratio and absolutely insane resolution means you can fit dozens of lines of code per page. Combine this with the beautiful IPS technology, and you have tiny-ass, legible fonts. A godsend for coding.
• 15" form factor-- pretty-much the best trade-off for "I need to read lots of code" and "I don't want to lug around a lot of weight." Additionally, the T60p is (like most ThinkPads) all modular. So you can leave out the optical drive and put in another battery if you like (giving you 7+ hours of battery life).
• ThinkPads are the greatest Linux-friendly laptops in the world.
• The processor/RAM combination is perfectly adequate (i.e., not some underpowered piece of shit)

The only drawback to the T60p is that they are discontinued, and Lenovo no longer carries the IPS LCD. Why not? Because the suppliers realized they could make more money using the technology to build TVs than replacement screens for laptops. More information from a Lenovo insider. And if the suppliers aren't making them, Lenovo can't sell them. Simple as that. You can still find them (rarely) on eBay, but they are some of the most price-drop-resilient laptops ever made.

As the unhappy owner of a sony vaio VGN-FZ240, I was also a victim of sony's stupidity.

Not only I couldn't use the VT extension on my CPU; they also decided not to release hd controller drivers for Windows XP, which made it impossible to install XP instead of Vista.

I contacted their support staff for both issues, and of course, there was no solution from them.

After some yahooing I found how to enable VT:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=189228

If you own a Sony Vaio Z series laptop just follow the instructions in the thread and you will be able to use VT.

I was also able to install XP by creating a custom install CD with the drivers from a similar model.

Most of them can be re-enabled:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345282

Gnome on my Inspiron 1300 (512mb ram variant) isn't satisfying either. Neither is KDE(4). And I'm talking about their apps, too - and you can't avoid GTK and Qt apps and stay sane and productive on a FLOSS OS.

Most surprising is a certain "Fruit OS" sub-version 5.2, which is quite fast considering it was never meant to be ran on this hardware.

XP is ok (but this 2+yr old installation is yelling for attention in form of an MSDNAA-provided install disk).

I'm not using GNU/Linux for performance, definitely, but because of liberties it provides me. Not only philosophical or licensing. It's more about environmental and development liberties; I can do stuff I can't do elsewhere. And Vim works "as it should(tm)" only on GNU/Linux.

Vista is a horrible memory hog and I never installed it on aforementioned junk; still, when I hear that people advocate Linux because of less memory usage... I just go crazy. Come on! Gnome and KDE (esp. KDE4) eat more memory to me than Windows shell, and Iceweasel... well, either bigger or equal amount of RAM.

As much as I love AMD, I would like to know what the submitter was thinking calling it a battleground. It's only a fair fight for AMD so long as Intel's not interested - AMD (and their manufacturing partner née subsidiary) can't match Intel's manufacturing abilities. AMD doesn't have an Ultra Low Voltage chip; Intel has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo that runs at 10W, meanwhile it's murky at best for AMD's competing chip line, the Neo. The only specs given out to the press for the new fual core version, which is 18W for the 1.6GHz version, with the chip still being built on the 65nm process which hobbles AMD from the start. Bear in mind that the Neo is Athlon 64 based, which means that it's not clock-for-clock competitive with the Core 2 Duo (you'd need a Phenom II-based core for that). In other words, the Intel chip eats less power and gets more performance at the same time.

Mod parent troll. Do you work for intel or something? http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863_9864,00.html
There's a link for the AMD geode processor that pulls 1.1W.

So if Intel's serious about this, it's only a battle so long as they don't decide to crush AMD with products and pricing. Intel is light years ahead of AMD in the mobile space due to their process technology advantage. Even TFA points out that they expect 8 hours out of the Intel CPUs, but only 5 hours out of the AMD CPUs. It's entirely lop-sided in Intel's favor.

WTF? This argument only makes sense in the fantasy land where companies don't care about making money. Intel is doing everything they can in every space they compete in, including this one.

Now TFA does mention AMD will have Congo later this year, but even if that's 45nm (AMD has not commented on that matter), it's unlikely that they'd be able to meet Intel's power envelope. When you look at the desktop chips this stuff is derived from, the Phenom II takes more transistors and as a result power than the Core 2 Duo, and that's only to reach a clock-for-clock parity. Congo wouldn't change this.

Citation needed?

As much as I love AMD, I would like to know what the submitter was thinking calling it a battleground. It's only a fair fight for AMD so long as Intel's not interested - AMD (and their manufacturing partner née subsidiary) can't match Intel's manufacturing abilities. AMD doesn't have an Ultra Low Voltage chip; Intel has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo that runs at 10W, meanwhile it's murky at best for AMD's competing chip line, the Neo. The only specs given out to the press for the new fual core version, which is 18W for the 1.6GHz version, with the chip still being built on the 65nm process which hobbles AMD from the start. Bear in mind that the Neo is Athlon 64 based, which means that it's not clock-for-clock competitive with the Core 2 Duo (you'd need a Phenom II-based core for that). In other words, the Intel chip eats less power and gets more performance at the same time.

So if Intel's serious about this, it's only a battle so long as they don't decide to crush AMD with products and pricing. Intel is light years ahead of AMD in the mobile space due to their process technology advantage. Even TFA points out that they expect 8 hours out of the Intel CPUs, but only 5 hours out of the AMD CPUs. It's entirely lop-sided in Intel's favor.

Now TFA does mention AMD will have Congo later this year, but even if that's 45nm (AMD has not commented on that matter), it's unlikely that they'd be able to meet Intel's power envelope. When you look at the desktop chips this stuff is derived from, the Phenom II takes more transistors and as a result power than the Core 2 Duo, and that's only to reach a clock-for-clock parity. Congo wouldn't change this.

This is a common problem for the Dell XPS line. The authentication chip in the power adapter is connected to the motherboard by what amounts to an antenna. Both ends of the circuitry are known to fry at the slightest power surge or EMP. It's not that I literally *couldn't* fix the computer, but it doesn't make fiscal sense for me to buy a $200-$300 motherboard, then spend hours replacing it. His first Dell ended up with the GPU failure that's also well-documented. In both cases, we're talking internal hardware failures that isn't a 2-minute job like RAM or a hard drive. Even if I were to take matters into my own hands, there's not a chance that Dell would honor the warranty on either machine if I had manipulated the guts of the machine.

It's not beneath me to ask for help. I did call Applecare and did go to the Apple store. When I told them the problem, they're like "send it back to us", giving me no guarantee of data integrity. When it came time to do a disk image, the only two answers I got were "Time Machine backs up your photos and documents but I'm not sure what it does with your system files" from the "geniuses" at the Genius Bar, and "We don't officially support that, but you can check our forums" from the phone techs. That's how I found out about Carbon Copy Cloner, which I did try, albeit unsuccessfully.

The experience as I shared it is exactly how it went down. This chain of events happened last week, before the GP ever posed the question. It was never my intention to carry out an ad hominem attack on the GP. He asked the question regarding a specific example of something that took longer to do on a Mac than on a PC. I perfectly accept that a large portion of it is because of my unfamiliarity with the platform. That's no secret and I've admitted to that in my other response as well. However, I have no ill-intent toward the GP. I am not looking to embarrass him. I'm not looking to diminish him in the eyes of others. To the contrary, I will be taking a closer look at Time Machine and CCC. I'm also going to look into adding a Mac Mini to the budget for next fiscal year with the intent of trying all the different things listed here and hopefully learning how to better maintain the platform. If admitting my own fault and doing something to rectify it at the suggestion of the GP is embarrassing to him/her, then I apologize as such. But i have been accused of being a liar, an idiot, and intentionally committing libel the GP, none of which are true.

I looked up the MX1000. It was NOT listed in the mice section of the Logitech website, on the website it comes up bundled with the diNovo keyboard that cost $200.

I may be wrong, but I can't find a stand alone MX1000 that's Bluetooth. This board discussions claims it only comes with the keyboard in Bluetooth.

That Skytone machine still only has 2 to 4 hours of battery life. That's what the HP gets too according to this article. http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4818 The HP's CPU, northbridge, and southbridge don't burn > 10 W unless you're running the CPU, graphics core, audio core, memory, and SSD at nearly 100% access. The skytone has a 2 Cell battery, the HP has a 3 Cell. Clearly the HP is only using up about 50% more power on an average load. And at max load, who cares if the SoC is using up only 1 watt when the rest of the system uses up probably about 10?

As I do photography and graphics I need a pro card.

Bullshit, you didn't knew what I meant in the first place, the Macbook Pro DON'T have a Quadro card but it's still just fine for your purpose, nd so would a PC with a similar card.

This is Bullshit, photography does need a pro card. For print work at least. And my MBP has a GeForce 8600M GT which according to at least one person GeForce's and Quatro's are same card...just tailored to do different things..

Falcon

My information came from:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=309769

But maybe that was too early speculations then.