I have seen the future.

You can pry my Lenovo Thinkpad T410 out of my cold, dead, hands.

:)

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What's the resolution like?

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The one you don't like - 1440x900 :/

But I have the 9 cell battery, I get a good 4.5hours of *actual* use (wifi, 2 usb devices, flash video, max brightness and 80-100% volume).

I popped an SSD and 8GB of ram in it as soon as it showed up, creams Autocad Revit (I'm building a house and thus playing around with things on it).

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1440x900 is teeeeeeeny. Dammit.

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*shrug*

When i'm in the office, its docked into dual screens (22in + laptop). When i'm out and about its enough to do what i need (its not like 800px high which cuts off a lot of config menus in windows server etc).

When i'm at home, it displayports into my U3011 and drives 2560x1600 :)

It's easily the greatest laptop i've ever used.

Edited Date: 2011-03-26 02:46 am (UTC)

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I swap constantly between offices. I am using the lapdog screen and keyboard and stuff. I don't have the luxury of setting up a reliable dock/port replicator.

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Keyboard on thinkpads is just downright awesome. Not to mention 4 usb ports + eSata.

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Don't Thunkpads have a Fn key where Control is supposed to be?

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ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com

I used to have a laptop, and it was nice while it lasted. Then I spilled a bottle of water on it and wiped the hard drive. I got a new hard drive for it, but it was never the same after that. Eventually I just gave it to my brother and I've stuck to a PC ever since. It's a lot less portable, but a lot harder to screw up if you spill something on it.

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kafziel.livejournal.com

Do you expect to want to game on this thing, or is this mostly for work? Also, what kind of price range are you looking at?

And what's the weight on your current machine, so we know what's too much?

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This is my work machine. No/minimal gaming and I don't do CAD, so I don't need a discrete graphics card. I *do* want a high-resolution screen because low-res screens suck and I will be spending 8 hours a day for the next 3-4 years on this thing.

Price range: Price *really is* no object, here. Buying a constant-use work laptop is like buying a bed - you pay the price for the really good one. Also it's tax-deductible for me AND it's a business asset that saves me money on taxes for three years into the future. So the laptops I'm looking at so far have been in the $2000-$3000 range, because those are what gets me the specs I want.

Current machine's weight: 1.8kg (4 lbs), For, again, a 14.1" laptop. I'm not carrying this ON MY SHOULDER all day so weight can be compromised if I need to, but I don't like the 15.6"s because they feel clunky.

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I've been meaning to ask you;

When the iPad first came out, you compared it to a laptop that HP released a few years ago, which came out on top in pretty much every regard. I can't find the post in question, though. Do you remember what the laptop was?

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It was an HP tablet from 2002 - and the comparison I gave specifically DID NOT account for two important things: Optimisation of the OS to handle the weaker hardware, and price. The HP tablet was groaning under the crushing weight of a full Windows install, whereas iOS doesn't *do* anything most of the time and so isn't slowed down by minimal hardware, and that HP was in the range of $3000.

(These days, Fujitsu makes entire full tablet computers will full laptop power and working full Windows 7 that are just as fast as a normal-sized laptop and run everything, and that are smaller and lighter than the iPad. But, again, you're looking around $3000.)

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Thanks. I've been thinking about getting an LCD tablet (I find ones where I have to look away from my hand extremely difficult), and it seems like the only ones being put out at the moment are by Wacom, whose pricing often relies on you having a rich company who'll buy their products for you.

So I've been thinking about alternatives. Thanks for the link.

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As a *drawing device*, Wacom's Cintiq are the best in the business, but yes, stupidly expensive. And require a computer to attach them to. A convertible tablet PC (a laptop that swaps into a tablet by flipping the screen) is STILL expensive, but you'll generally get the entire machine for roughly the same cost as the Cintiq alone.

Fujitsu makes the best "performance tablets" on the planet, but even their cheapest still starts at $1000 and only has a 12" screen. (http://store.shopfujitsu.com/ca/EcomCA/buildseriesbean.do?series=TH700) Try to make that into a powerful machine, the kind I might want to run Photoshop on, and pretty soon I've spent $3000 without even getting a discrete graphics card.

At that point, unless ultraportability is a requirement for you, you're much better spending your $2000 as $1000 for a kickass desktop machine and $1000 for a Cintiq.

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Found an HPTC1100 for £200 on Ebay, bought it. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for the advice!

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Thought I'd give a brief update if you/anyone stumbling across this cares; Really happy with this purchase. Using it more than my Intuos 4, though I've not really got used to that thing yet. The reading can occasionally feel low-grade (when drawing straight diagonals, occasionally I'll get a wiggle, but it's very rare) but for the price you can get them for these days, I'd recommend it as a drawing tool. I've got mine running XP and Photoshop CS3 with the basic RAM it comes with, going to double that sometime soon (afaik, that's the max the computer can take).

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Here. (http://devilsworkshop.org/files/2010/07/iPad_vs_HPTC1100.png)

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fourgates.livejournal.com

I share your goals re screen space, and your frustration at the lack of options. I believe there are some potentially viable screen dimensions having higher pixel densities that not actively produced because a) screen price is driven by volume, b) too many people who want lots of dots also don't mind the larger 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200) displays. I'm hoping Apple drives a transition toward Retina Displays for larger screen sizes.

Seriously, the main reason I've avoided the iPad is that I don't think any screen is worthwhile at less that 1280x720.

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gygaxis.livejournal.com

I drag mine on location for landscape painting and for taking to school and other places where I want to use photoshop on a laptop screen, I wouldn't dream of doing any less than 15.4 1920x1200 and have been doing so since 04. My dell is like 6ish pounds w/ 9cell battery and is fine to hike around the woods and other obnoxious shit to get to painting locations.

No reason to not have a pile of cores, ram, and an SSD on a 15.4 either, esp since it's a tax write off. Wish I knew if anyone was using IPS screens in their laptops.

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netdef.livejournal.com

Supposedly Lenovo is offering IPS on their new x220. I've not yet seen it actually available to buy . . .

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4211/lenovo-announces-thinkpad-x220-series-12-ips-with-sandy-bridge

And for those that are keyboard picky, the Lenovo is about the ONLY choice left. Seems all the other new models for other brands are migrating to the "chiclet" style keypads, which drive me nuts.

And yes, unfortunately the Fn key is the left/bottom most key on Lenovos, although one does finally get used to that.

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gygaxis.livejournal.com

I suppose that explains why my cursory "wtf is up with tablet pcs and so I want one yet?" shows the x220 and eee slate as the top contenders.

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I sympathize, but the Free Market and/or the Illuminati seem to have decided that the 3:4 aspect ratio must be ground under the wheels of Progress.

You can hang out with the luddites who like CRT monitors for their better color fidelity and other such freaks.

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gygaxis.livejournal.com

3:4 is for suckers. 16:10 on the other hand, that's something we can all stand behind.

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I don't really care about the aspect ratio, I just want more than a piddly thousand vertical pixels on my 14.1" laptopen.

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1400x1050 is a 3:4 ratio. Any time you're asking for more vertical pixels in a smaller relative size, you're asking about aspect ratios.

Me, I can see why vertical screen space is desirable, but widescreen on a small package and vertical space are nigh diametrically opposed.

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Any time you're asking for more vertical pixels in a smaller relative size, you're asking about aspect ratios.

Uh, no, not unless you think 1360x768, 1600x900, and 1920x1080 are different aspect ratios, or that the pixels on a 15" 1920x1080 are the same size as the pixels on a 52" 1920x1080.

The fact that my beloved 1400x1050 is a different aspect ratio doesn't change that I still want more than a thousand vertical pixels *regardless* of the aspect ratio. And it doesn't look like that kind of monitor, which DOES exist, is something that anyone makes as a standard any more.

(I would happily take 1600x1200, 1680x1050, 1920x1080, or 1900x1200 if I couldn't get 1400x1050. I don't care about the SHAPE of the screen. I want vertical room. Unfortunately, people don't seem to make the screens I want for the prices I'm willing to pay, any more.)

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Higher pixel density is a more expensive option, so much so that I dismissed it out of hand because I thought that would be understood. You're stuck with questions of aspect ratio.

I look forward to the days when pixel density is so high that we can have variable-DPI displays that aren't a joke, but that is far off.

Me, I like 4:3 screens on laptops because I use a laptop to view documents more than movies. The assumption that wider=better is knee-jerk neophilism whose silliness will become apparent over time.

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I don't care about "more expensive". More expensive is doable.

I care that no matter what I want to pay, I can't get it without calling up Fujitsu or someone and ordering a truly custom computer.

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