oh great laptop gurus

Posted on by Luis Villa

Oh great laptop gurus… is there any Lenovo T-series or combination of T-series that isn’t in some way evil unsupportable (ATI, atheros, etc.?) I was about to get Krissa a five pound apple when I remembered there was  a five pound Lenovo that I’ve heard does not set people’s laps on fire or make the baby RMS jebus jesus cry.

(Ideally one that is 1400×1050 and available with warranty… IBM’s ebay shop seems to have gone away, and as far as I can tell I can’t buy a 1400×1050 without an fglrx-only ATI in the T60 series.)

(And man, does Lenovo/IBM’s website suck- you can search for old models, and they’ll let you configure them, and then… throw a mysterious error when you try to buy them.)

(And no, don’t bother trying to convince me that Apple isn’t evil.)
(Yes, too many parentheses.)

Published by Luis Villa

24 thoughts on “oh great laptop gurus”

  1. Luis, If you can still find the ThinkPad T43 around, it would seem to be a perfect fit for your needs. It’s 1400×1050, has an ATI X300 SE in it (supported by Free drivers, including DRI), and the wireless is Centrino, which only has the firmware problem.

  2. Luis, If you can still find the ThinkPad T43 around, it would seem to be a perfect fit for your needs. It’s 1400×1050, has an ATI X300 SE in it (supported by Free drivers, including DRI), and the wireless is Centrino, which only has the firmware problem.

  5. I got my hands on a T60 with an Intel 945 with 1400×1050 and an Intel wireless card. However, they don’t officially exist. I’d try calling up Lenovo and telling them what you want…

  6. I’ve got a T43, using the ati OSS driver at 1400×1050 and an intel wifi.

    basically, everything works out of the box with dapper without selling (much of) your soul.

  10. jorge: eenteresting. Will definitely look at the Zs- pretty good for Krissa’s needs, I think.

    Marting: they seem to have them around on the website, but I can’t find an actual *order form* that has them. Which, you know, makes buying it hard ;)

  11. If you want to go lenovo, z61t; I got it a while back and it rocks. Number one it’s sub 5 pounds (even with big batter). Number two 14″ wide screen 1400×900. Number three, intel GMA 950, so you get free drivers and it’s speedy enought for compiz/aiglx business and a mini-pci intel wifi card. Best bet to get a lenovo is to call them (their site/service well sucks compared to the old ibm service). There you can acctualy a barebones model you can customize (over the phone) with what you want and leave the wifi card out and buy whatever your heart desires later, for info on doing that look at http://www.notebookreview.com IBM/Lenovo forums.

    I love this machine, here’s some info I wrote about the laptop when i got it originaly:
    http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2006/06/18/new-laptop-hotness/

    And i just realized that jorge already posted all of this. I’ll fire anyways, hope something helps.

  14. I personally have an x31, and love it, and will almost definitely buy an X60-series tablet whenever it is released (December?) but for Krissa’s needs the extra price and smaller screen don’t make sense.

  15. If you want to go 15″ just get the z61m, same thing as the z61t excpet you get an extra inch on the display. And with the z61m i think you get a choice between GMA 950 & an ATI card on some models.

  22. […] Luis, If you can still find the ThinkPad T43 around, it would seem to be a perfect fit for your needs. It’s 1400×1050, has an ATI X300 SE in it (supported by Free drivers, including DRI), and the wireless is Centrino, which only has the firmware problem. The only thing wrong with it is that it’s a behemoth both in size and weight compared to my dainty little X40, but I guess that’s what you wanted if you were asking for T series recommendations. […]

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