Slashdot Mirror
IBM ThinkPad T22 w/Linux Review
Augustus writes: "LinuxHardware.org has just posted the first review of IBM's ThinkPad T22 with the LinDVD software DVD player that was mentioned on Slashdot back in April. The T22 should finally be available to consumers and it's a fine piece of hardware at a decent price. The review covers the basics: software, support, price, and especially the hardware."
Well Thinkpad is the king of laptops!
What, me worry?
Mirror anyone?
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
I prefer the A series. Even though I can probably count on my hand the amount of times I have used the floppy drive in the past year, I still like to have them both. If you're going for the lighter aspect, then the X series is the way to go.
Eeek!! and that's not even the worst of it! First, LAN isn't even a standard feature. Second, this puppy comes preinstalled with "Caldera Openlinux", later on referred to in the article as "Corel Openlinux". <shudder/> Which is worse, the laptop being reviewed or the half-assed job of reviewing it?
Funny how the review bellyaches about a Winmodem as a resource hog and a pain in the neck. I remember way back when (oh, maybe 6 months or a year ago?) if the modem was a winmodem, you didn't even bellyache about it being a resource hog. It just plain didn't work.
One thing I wonder about, though, is what kind of support comes with this laptop? Normally you don't get support from Corel unless you bought the product over the counter, and I wonder if IBM will give it's (Linux) laptop buyers the same kind of support as its desktop buyers. A lot of established Linux users scoff at using customer support, but that is the sort of thing that convinces businesses to buy, say, 500 units for their sales force.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
I have pretty mixed feelings about IBM.. I bought an IBM laptop (390) about a 18 months ago and within 2 months, the hard drive failed. I got it replaced on warranty but half a year later, it failed again. Meanwhile, I had bought an IBM hard drive for my desktop computer, and a few months ago, that one failed too. So three IBM drives in just over one year. I know I've had extremely bad luck, but with an experience like this, you can understand that I won't recommend IBM laptops and/or drives to anyone. Well, the laptops themselves are *very* nice, but the hard drives.... :/
The most ironic thing is that I bought an HP 6000 Omnibook to replace my IBM laptop about half a year ago, and guess who the maker of the hard drive in it is; IBM. DOH! If that one fails within a year or two, I'll never buy IBM again.
Debate over the modem/LAN specification aside, if you're swapping a $400 (retail) M$ OS/office suite for a $30 (retail, with discs) Linux distro, then you've just bought yourself $370 of retail margin right there to spend on goodies, or to leverage at point of sale.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If so then maybe I will take another look at IBM for my linux laptop.
Anyone get a chance to mirror?
Cheers, Tim
For those of you wondering as to whether the site actually goes down during a slashdot effect or not, I just thought that I'd let you know that the server has never died during a slashdot posting and that I simply do not have enough bandwidth on the site. We are currently looking for a hosting site to increase the available bandwidth from the measily 500kb connection we have now to at least enough to handle a slashdot. If you know of a hosting faqcility (preferably in the Atlanta area) that would be willing to donate bandwidth to the site please have them contact me at augustus@linuxhardware.org.
Thanks,
Augustus (LH.o Site Manager)
Alright, so the site is slashdotted. I've found a short LinuxHardware article about LinDVD on ThinkPad in Google's cache. Here are the specs of that T22 beast on IBM's site.
... You know, I realize we'd need a Karma Whore moderation for certain posts, that mods the post up without giving the poster karma. Just an idea...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Is the distribution choice. I just plain do not like caldera :) I'd prefer something else (without being specific what).
I am also disappointed that I cannot buy lindvd yet, separate from the laptop.
And the winmodem...well, ok, fine, it works, but geeez. How much more is it per unit to just use a normal modem?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Ugg, talk about speaking out of your ass. Because the gui is the same means that everything else will be? Why would that be again? Speaking from first hand experiance (I was on the lsdvd team) the underlying code is entirly differenet. Heck other then the "skin" on the gui it to is probably a re-write too. There are many many spisific things that Linux is a part of that affects the end result that have nothing to do with the fact that it "has the same ui" The entire unerlayer (unless they ported direct show) is different then what was there before.
Where are the test disk? Motion menu's? Subpics? Stream tests? This is not a DVD player review by any means.
There is bit all about scsi vs ide. This is a very very moot point. It may be an issue under windows, but not linux. There is nothing special about saying that it can do both. Kinda like me saying I can boot off of both. Woopie.
The all important LinDVD performs quite well but not perfect. With most DVDs you will notice no difference from that of a standard hardware decoder but there are a few points on some "action-packed" movies that will skip a bit. Keep in mind that this is still a software DVD player on a laptop and the first iteration of the Linux version.
This is no excuse. They are running 2.4, A 900mhz machine and they are using video acceleration. Cough my 450 cough... Unless the problem is with pthreads (which it might be if they didn't fix that) I would say that they have some work to do.
So here are some real questions that I want to know about. How about macrovision? Is it there? Can you take screenshots? Is there an video out? How about the kernel. Does the dvd player use a spesific kernel to run? Can I upgrade to 2.4.9 without it blowing up? What about changing distrobution? Will it blow up then? Are only Cakdera linux 2.4 binaries provided? What about the defacto red hat 6.x?
What about CSS, I presume it is kernel mode. Does that app barf when you run gdb on it? Did you test out the player with a large number of dvd's to see if any of them would fail? What about region changing. How well does it support that? Do you have to mount the drive before playing? How much cpu does it use while watching your average film? Can it play files? Can it play vcd's? How about SVCD? Does it do Kariokee mode? Can it play regular pcm (wav) file streams? How does the audio sound on the laptop? Can you pump it out to real speakers? Can you run more then just the DVD player at once? Does the ui play frendly with the rest of the desktop (kde, gnome, etc) How fast can you fast forward it? Can you make it go slow? Can you frame advace? Do multiple angle's work? Can it handle cool things like the Ghostbusters msk3000 subpic overlay and not loss performace? Can it handle non-css content (i.e. porn). Can you use 2 cpu's?
Sigh this isn't a review this is just a add for linuxhardware.org
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
why caldera? what advantages does tis offer over say redhat (I though IBM were in bed with rh).
:-)
also do I need a business desktop? wtf is a business desktop? are we talking an easy to use/install desktop encapsulating some raw power in order to acheive ease of use?
do I have one? assuming emacs is not the ultiamte business desktop
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
i'm not an underclassman so i never was forced into buying a laptop (so i'm chained to my office)
they've had them for at least a week now. aren't we special?
Special? Not really; I've had a T22 for more than a month; Our lab bought two at the cmu computer store in late July. And it's happily running Debian.
A while back people were chatting about the possibility of developing some open hardware standards. I want to buy a new laptop but vendors all have proprietary designs and can charge mega-$$$$ for upgrades and replacements. Has there been any new effort towards developing open hardware specifications?
...what's the deal on the good IBM laptops? Some of their machines have 1.13 Ghz chips and up to 1024MB of RAM, which in these days of really cheap RAM, should be a minimum.
Has anyone put linux on one of those puppies?
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Hmm... How to respond to this:
On his first point about the UI thing. I was mearly stating that a) the GUI is the same and b) it performs about as well as the Windows one. It was not one point, it was two. I worked for a company that was using Intervideo's LinDVD and have spoken to the primary developer on numerous occasions. The Linux player does use the same codebase as the Windows one and only the parts that attach it to X and Linux are redesigned.
On the SCSI vs. IDE point, it IS an issue under Linux. If you write the low-level calls in ATAPI then you would have to rewrite them for SCSI. If you write them in SCSI to begin with then you can use SCSI emulation on IDE drives.
Finally, this is not a review of LinDVD! If it were then, yes, all of his questions would have been answered and he would be perfectly in line to be pissed. If you want a review of that then we'll see what we can do but remember that it is LinuxHardware.org and we review the hardware first and foremost. The software is secondary to the excellent job IBM did in giving users a laptop where every component actually works. LinDVD is a key component on the DVD side but I was not reviewing LinDVD.
Hope this helps,
Augustus (LH.o Site Manager)
If they are using the same codebase as the windows team then they had to have ported Direct X to linux. Under MS's OEM clause all DVD players that want to be certified have to be using Direct X. An OEM wouldn't use one that isn't certified. If they did in fact to this and did it in a clean room way then they could release it open... But that is another topic. On the SCSI thing I am ruff on this ( my systems are now ide ), but I recall having no issues with working with SCSI or ide to access the drive. (But I could be wrong on this and if so then I can be spanked with a thousand nodles...)
Hehe, looking at the article again you are right, I guess I should have thunk about it for a sec. My appologies, sorry. It is much more a hardware review then a lindvd review. The title on the slashdot article made it to be a lindvd review more then a laptop review. I would be happy to write a review of of the lindvd player for you. I have about 400 dvd's I can test with(i.e. I cover all of the different things a dvd can do) here to test out the system fully. Just about anything you would want to test out on a dvd player with. Combined with my previous dvd development experiance I can dig up quite a bit for even the hardcore linux folks.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
It's pretty simple, actually. As soon as you buy your first hard drive Someone rolls a die and checks a table, choosing one or two manufacturers. Every time you buy a hard drive from that manufacturer, it'll die in some way.
As for me, I got Quantum and Conner, and to a lesser extent Maxtor (I think I got a bonus roll for some reason)....Seagate bought Conner, which became their IDE division, so all Seagate IDE drives now tank for me. Maxtor bought Quantum, which reinforces (but at least consolidates) that roll. Quantum was in my original Tivo, though, and I replaced it with a Maxtor. I'm praying I got a re-roll sometime in the past couple of years........
I've had a 390E for about the past 2 years as well, and have NEVER had a problem with the drive (or anything else on it, for that matter). Sounds like you just had a patch of bad luck...
I don't really like Caldera as a distro but SuSE 7.2 installed on both an A21m and A22m like a dream. It recognised all of the standard hardware without incident. I had some issues with the wireless card but that's more to do with having duplicate config files (/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts *and* config.opts? Why?!).
VMWare doesn't do full screen just yet and I'm fiddling with that. Bottom line? The recent ThinkPads work really well with Linux.
Those that have failed and those that will. Backup early and often.
Yeah, but it has that *horrible* touchpad as a pointer. Some people love them, but I hate them. :)
:)
IBM is one of the only laptop makers that I know of that makes a _proper_ laptop mouse. It has that little nub, and _three_ buttons!
Of course for some people it doesn't matter, and some people love the touchpads.
I'd kill^H^H^H^Hmaim for a TiBook with a Thinkpad style of mouse.
What bothers me the most about all these sort of reviews is the claim that 2.5 hours of battery time is "right up there".
It's not. I assure you. Running my Apple PowerBook with a MachBSD on it, I can easily run 4 hours on a single charge, no problem. In fact, I have often forgotten my charger at home and managed to eek out the entire day at work, about 6 hours. But that is REALLY pushing it.
Typically, when using Mac OS 9.1, I can get 4 hours, with no problem. So, how does 2 hours compare to that?
And, if you want a stable full featured Linux in a Notebook, get one of ther Macintosh Linux distro's. Or, perhaps get a serious business oriented OS, like openBSD.
You don't even need to go the full PowerBook route, you can use an iBook and get the same performance in a sub $2000cdn package.
And lastly, if I pop 2 batteries in, I can easily run 10 hours on a single charge. Enough to do an entire week long mountain expidtion, reviewing the days photos and saving them to a SuperDisk.
Later . . . . . . WebBug
I'm sick of all this BS about IBM being pro Linux. There is absolutely no reason why IBM can't atleast release binary drivers for all its hardware. Example: My A21p 2926HWU, the 3COM software modem does not function under linux. I am happy that 90% of my new laptop functions under linux but it still chaps me that a company that is supposed to be so pro-linux has any consumer hardware that only functions under windows. I realize that I'm a dumb ass for not making 100% sure that the modem functioned, but you can blame that on IBM's vague product descriptions on their website.
So the table says Caldera openlinux 2.4 and the paragraph on software says Corel openlinux 2.4. I think there is a typo, I think it shoudl be Caldera.
Unfortunately for me right now it is priced a little to high. I need a laptop for under 1000. Preferably around $500 would be awesome, and I could live without dvd for now.
Only 'flamers' flame!
"Also of note that this model with Linux installed is exactly the same price as the with Windows installed. It's nice to see that Linux users aren't being punished for wanting their OS as an option."
Ok, so if Linux is a free operating system, shouldn't the Linux OS laptop be a couple hundred dollars *less* than the Windows OS laptop?
I wouldn't be surprised if someone over in Japan has already figured this sort of thing out...those people go nuts with their Apple laptops -- it's great.
I'm currently shitting while typing this. Thank God for laptops (wooo, that gets hot on the knees though).
I have got through 2 IBM stinkpads in the last year. I am really dissapointed by the construction and the performance of the machines.
I would check out http://www.reviewbooth.com/ before you make any major purchases on a notebook.
I've got IBM T20 which worked fine and then suddenly died on me. Then support told me they had the WHOLE BATCH of T20s with defected motherboards. Just imagine that! Got a replacement, and it rocks. Literally rocks. I just love this box. As of now I"m runing Win2000 but will be putting SUSE soon as well. The bottom line - don't give up on IBM.
Is it just me, or does linuxhardware.org run on a friggin dialup?
Shift happens. Fire it up.
What's the story with LinDVD? If it's not vapor, why doesn't Intervideo sell it to consumers (as they do in fact for WinDVD)? Xine and Videolan work quite well for watching movies, but it would be nice to have a player that can interpret the menus, special features, etc.
I recently purchased an IBM T21 800 MHz with Windows 98. The first thing I did with the machine was remove Windows and installed a linux distro (that I'm sure some of you hate so I won't mention it). I purchased the machine with Windows 98 rather than Linux because I wanted a better model than was available at the time with Linux preinstalled. I wanted that 1400x1050 screen dammit!
.com that bought it for me went broke and I lost my job.
My resoning was that as long as all the hardware was supported by Linux I'd be able to get it to work. I wasn't worried about the DVD player working or not, I've got enough DVD players already. I also thought, perhaps too optomistically, that I'd be able to get someone at IBM to send me a copy of thier Linux distro so that at least I could see how they did it.
As it was I had a hard time getting everything working properly. Video wasn't too hard to setup, I ended up using XFree86 3.3.6 because I found a copy of someone's configuration file on the web after a search and I'm lazy. I wasn't able to get sound working on it because none of the sound tools I looked at which supported the sound chip would work with the 2.4 kernel. I believe that has changed by now. I didn't bother fooling with the modem since I already had a PC Card modem that works like a charm. The NIC was supported by the kernel. No one I talked with at IBM was helpful. Ever. I was a bit suprised by that, but I'm young and idealistic and I believe that hardware vendors should help out the people who have problems with the hardware they purchased.
All in all though, I decided that I loved my Thinkpad anyway. It was fast, rugged, relatively light even though I had two batteries installed and that screen looks great.
I recommend the Thinkpad T series, I've had a number of Compaq, Sony, Dell and Toshiba laptops that sucked in comparison.
I hope that the Linux Preinstalled laptops from IBM and other vendors sell well so that eventually the linux community has a greater voice with Hardware makers. After that perhaps all of the valid concerns expressed in other posts will be dealt with. Of course, I'm young, idealistic and I don't have my laptop anymore since the
Where I work we have purchased a lot of T22's (not my choice). We have had nothing but problems so far. They have a tendency to really overheat. IBM patched the BIOS to make the fan run continuously, still they get damn hot. We use 3Com NICs, they will get so hot in the slot that they shutdown and you have to pull them out until they cool off, VERY hot to the touch, then they will work again. I thought that the Lucent modems that came with ours were hardware, mini PCMCIA, not winmodems, maybe not though. Can't be worse than the MWave IBM previously used. We used the 3Com modems before in our Toshiba's and our users are complaining of slower (sometimes half) the speed the 3Com got. Also the modems will a lot of times not work if the thinkpad is plugged into the port replicator. Also they occasionally stop working if they are _bumped_. Seriously. Not looking so good so far.
yeah, it's all about pixels. The next model down honly had a 1400xsomething screen.
hawk