Buying a new laptop

[Greg Troxel]

Until you said $1000, I was thinking about a Thinkpad T60 with the
ath(4) part instead of intel wireless.  I run NetBSD, and aside from
ACPI suspend it is mostly ok.  The other problem is that the cardbus
slot doesn't do pcmcia right, but cardbus does work.  I realize you
want to run FreeBSD, but odds are that what works with NetBSD works
with FreeBSD.

I'm like Randy - I pretty much just buy IBM/lenovo.   I've had good
repair experiences (something breaks, fixed and returned to me in 3
business days), and reliability has been good.  (I have had ~50 such
laptops in projects, including some that were borderline abused, so my
repair experiences are more numerous, but don't make me think the
hardware was unreliable).  I was worried about Lenovo, but a) repair
post-lenovo has been the same excellent experience and b) the T60
seems very well built, more like the venerable 600 series that never
die than the earlier T series which were merely good.


  From: Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com>
  Subject: T60 status report with current
  To: port-i386 at netbsd.org
  Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:47:28 -0400

  Two people asked me offlist how the T60 works, so I'm replying here
  because I suspect others are interested.

  I am on balance happy with my T60, which has the non-flexview
  1400x1050 screen and Core Duo T2300 (newer ones have Core 2 Duo) and 2
  GB ram.

  Things that work:

    X at 1400x1050 using VESA driver with in-tree xfree86

    builtin ath(4) (can be ordered this way, you get intel if you don't
    try)

    builtin wm(4)

    USB (card readers, USRP, serial adaptors, so both uhci and ehci are ok)

    cardbus slot (EVDO, additinal ath(4))

    external VGA, if there's something there when you boot.  Switching
    is no longer fn-f7, but something the os has to do.

    builtin kbd and trackpoint mouse with 3 buttons (disable touchpad in bios)

    bluetooth

    internal disk and cdrom via AHCI controller.

    ACPI to read battery status (sees ultrabay battery as well as main)

    sound playback (music, cute GNOME noises)

    Fn- keys to turn on keyboard light, change brightness, enable
    bluetooth, and volume controls

    dual processors work ok with GENERIC.MP

    speedstep seems to work at high/low speeds - no Core Duo table is
    present.  if booted on battery it's on low.

    size/weight/shape is very nice for the thin, not tiny, 5ish lbs class.

    hardware build quality seems quite good, better than T30, maybe a
    bit better than T42/T43, almost like the good old days of the 600E
    (my 1999 600E and 1998 600 are still going strong).

    thermal management is decent; it doesn't get scarily hot like the T30.

  Things that don't work

    ACPI suspend (locks up)
    after being in X11, switching back to text console  via C-A-F1 or
    killing X server results in expanded text that lets you see only ~
    first half of first half of the lines.

    builtin serial port :-)  Seriously, there just isn't one unless
    maybe you get some docking station.

    apm suspend (not present in T60)

  Things I haven't tried, mostly because I don't care:

    expresscard slot (don't have any yet)

    winmodem

    fingerprint reader

    Using touchpad at same time as trackpoint, but I suspect it is ok
    with the new synaptics code in current or patches from the list.

    microphone.  This is azalia(4) and there are some odd settings you
    need to poke, but I think it's really ok.

  So the big problem is ACPI suspend, which means I boot anew each
  session.  I got some hints from Jared earlier, but didn't get far and
  haven't hacked on it in a while.   I need to boot off USB to avoid
  fsck every time I lose or something.

  The text console bit is annoying, but I tend to stay in X once I go
  there, so it's not high on my problem list.

  All in all I'd choose T60 again because I don't know of anything
  better.

  Thanks again to all the people that helped me out with my T60 since
  last August when I started figuring out if it was safe to order.

      Greg