Great Obelisk
Written: Nov 15 '02 (Updated Nov 17 '02)
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Pros: Design,Keyboard,Durability
Cons: Video Memory
The Bottom Line: Buy it.
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| brundleman's Full Review: Lenovo ThinkPad T30 2366 (2366G1U) PC Notebook |
T30/256Mb/40gb/1.8Ghz/1024x768
236641U
Clearing Things Up
I have read the reviews for the Thinkpad T30 on other sites, and found a few flaws. Just to clear up the nonsense, the thickness is 1.4 inches on both T30 and T23. There is not an expansion port on the top of the screen for the T30 model, unless it only has a trackpoint. Meaning that some models come with only a track point, others with a trackpad too.
Perforance Basics
Most notebook computers that use the new DDR memory have very similar system boards, the only performance bottleneck is either the hard drive or the video chip.
-Hard drive
IBM 'travelstar' hard drives use polycarbonate disk platters, which increase performance and reliability, through what they call "pixie dust" technology. Most IBM thinkpads have these drives, but sometimes they'll use Hitachi or Toshiba. The rotational speed is going to be 4200rpm or some models come with the faster 5400rpm drive, which increases almost every task on the computer. These can be easily upgraded, just download the service manual from the IBM website.
-Video
The video minimum would be one that is considered a GPU, like the Radeon 7500 in the IBM, others like Geforce2 go are great too. This GPU idea offloads some of the video burden from the software i.e. Windows, to the specialized video hardware. This is normally hard wired into the system board, unless you get one of the big desktop replacement notebooks, then you still need to jump through hoops to get the replacement, i.e. scan ebay every day or get lucky with a notebook manufactuer phone call.
-Battery Life
This seems to fluctuate based on usage, but with the screen dimmed I always get over 3 hours on a full charge.
Now onto my opinion.
The thinkpad design is similar to basically all two spindle notebooks. The plastic used on the top and bottom cover is reinforced with titanium, which creates a slate mineral look. The inside plastics are a higher carbon plastic than most other brands, which to me looks less toy-like. The basic theme throughout the entire notebook is high quality and intelligent design. A modern art of the 70's, (2001 space odyssey)'ish. The semi-famous Italian industrial designer Richard Sapper is to blame, or praise. I don't know who designs the aesthetics for Dell, but it might be 'Steven', from the looks of the wrist inserts on the inspiron line. Geez...,that comes from Taiwan not the good stuff like IBMs, Mexico,UK and Japan sources.
History
I have owned a few other notebooks, the Dells seemed toy-like, like the plastic on a Chevy cavalier. The Apple Powerbook was great, similar to this IBM. The Powerbook was/is perhaps the best designed. The joints on the IBM seem to be tougher though. Well enough rambling...
Shopping hints
The price for the IBM was about 100 bucks more than the Dell, similarly configured. If you shop around for the IBM and stick with a "real" place such as (ecost,pcconnection,buy,computers4sure).com, you should be able to get it for about 400->500 less than the ibm site and may cut out tax, if applicable. Just order the little things i.e. pcmcia,mini-pci,memory and such from other places. Make sure its not refurbished, they'll sneak it in the body of a paragraph sometimes.
Purchased 8/31/02
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2100
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
brundleman
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Location: TX U.S.A.
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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