Looking for a new laptop: Thinkpad?

[Yuri Lukin]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:30:03 -0500, Bill Moran wrote
> My old Thinkpad is starting to act a bit weird.  Battery isn't always
> charging right ... sometimes it doesn't wake up ... CD-ROM is dead.
> 
> So, I'm thinking it's time for a new one.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience (good or bad) to share regarding the
> new Thinkpads?  I'm considering either an R or T.

I have a T61 with Core 2 Duo T7300 Widescreen with Nvidia Quadro NVS 140
running fine with RELENG_7. I specifically ordered mine with the Atheros-based
MiniPCI card so wireless worked out of the box with the ath driver. Bluetooth
works (BCM2045B), just need to add ubtbcmfw_load="YES" to loader.conf. 
Running Xorg 7.3 at 1680x1050 using nvidia driver from nvnews.net. Have not
yet tested built-in firewire (fwohci) and LAN (em) ports but assuming they
work since they are detected by the kernel. The only thing that doesn't work
is the SD/MMC card reader (Ricoh chipset) but there was recently some noise in
freebsd-mobile@ I think so it looks to be a work in progress. Mine also came
with built-in WUSB but afaik there's no support for it yet. I get about 2
hours on the standard battery and have not played around with power settings
just yet. You can load acpi_ibm for some additional knobs, have not looked
into very much so not sure what you can do with that.    

> Also, anyone have any experience getting a Windows refund after 
> buying one of these?  Mine will _not_ run Windows, and I'd like to 
> get refunded for their monopoly.  There seems to be some bullshit where
> Micrsoft claims that the hardware vendor has to refund, and the
> vendor claims that it's MS' job.  Anyone have any experience with
> this?

I didn't realize you could do this, that's why I ordered mine with the
cheapest configuration: XP Home. 

 Yuri