The Best Laptop

[Bob Collins]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2004, Dag-Erling Smrgrav clacked the keyboard to produce:
> Bob Collins <bobc at anything-inc.com> writes:
> > Wow, considering that, I had no issues other than having to use
> > OLDKERNEL to get my pcm slots working, my TP600X runs 4.9 perfectly. So
> > much for the above.
> 
> I've had three ThinkPads, including a 600E.  All of them had problems
> running FreeBSD.  The 600E even had problems running Windows 2000 and
[snip]
>

I have seen the battery issue, however under warranty IBM was generally
pretty good about replacing them. The BIOS issues seem rather odd to me,
as I have never seen or heard such until now. That does not mean it does
not happen, I just have never heard of it. YMMV.
 
> That's disingenuous.  Both IBM and Dell have a variety of models, some
> designed for performance and others designed for low weight.  The
> Latitude C and D series belong to the former category, as does the
> ThinkPad 600 series.  My ThinkPad 600E and my Latitude D600 both weigh
> slightly less than 6 lbs, while a Latitude X300 weighs less than 3 lbs
> according to Dell's website.
> 

I am not trying to be disingenuous, but rather pointing out from my
somewhat limited actual use/empirical evidence, the Dells, even in the
lightweight configurations (albeit none of the latest models) have always
been a trouble too me and never really all that great for portability.
And yes I understand about the system specs and all that, but my
personal experience has been that the TPs tend to be lighter and better
packaged. And I am quite bummed to read from you so many issues with
TPs. I guess we all gravitate to the hardware that we know works well
for each of us.

[subjective mode on]
And another thing, as a licensed Architect, I find the physical design
of the Dells and most others excluding the Thinkpads and Apples, to be
quite poor. Now that comment is purely subjective as all design is
subjective. I think the flow of the machine in the older Dells and such
is not there, it looks like the case was an afterthought while the TPs
and Apples try to encompass the hardware with a rather sexy case.
Admittedly the new Dells are getting better in design.
[subjective mode off]

As a side note, I am replacing my 600X with a very nice pre-owned T22. I
look forward to installing FBSD on it and using the heck out of it.

-- 
Bob

"Play is the work of children. It's very serious stuff. And if it's
properly structured in a developmental program, children can blossom."
-Bob Keeshan aka `Captain Kangaroo'