Dear Mr Thinkpad

[Tannin]

Dear Mr Thinkpad,

I am not buying another one of your laptops. At least not this year.

Partly this is because the old one ain't broken. But mostly it is because you haven't done anything to make me want the new one. Fair dinkum, how can you expect me to shell out good money on a new laptop when, for all practical purposes, the new ones you are selling are the same thing as the old one I bought nearly two years ago now?

Traditionally, the thing that drives me (and other people too) into a new laptop purchase is the screen. Without a better screen, you are really pushing the stinky brown stuff up a very steep hill if you want to see my dollars in your bank this year. Stop stuffing about with this stupid damn shallow-screen .... er ... sorry, we are supposed to call them "wide screens" but that's a crock and we all know it, they are only good for DVD movies and who the hell buys a $3000 laptop to watch DVDs on?? Err ... where was I? Stop stuffing about with this stupid damn shallow-screen junk and give me something that gives me a bigger picture!

OK, sure, a proper 17 inch screen (1280 x 1024 minimum, 1600 would be better, normal aspect ratio, none of this ultra-wide, ultra-shallow consumer junk) won't fit in my briefcase. Hey, if you do that I'll have to buy a new briefcase. Well gee freakin wiz. A new briefcase will cost me $50 to $100. Do you think I care about that when I just spent three thousand bucks on the new laptop? What planet are you guys on anyway?

OK, so a better screen is too hard for you. Well, think of something else you fools! (Or resign yourself to not getting any dollars from me this year.) Whats on offer?

Faster CPU? Huh! I have a Pentium M 1.6 already and it's two years old. Where is the benefit in a 1.9? Not enough extra gunpowder in that one to make my eyebrows wiggle, never mind blow my hat off. DDR2? Who cares? Give me some real performance boost if you want to sell it on performance. (I dunno how, that's your job. My job is to hand over money and not brealk the computer. Your job is to make me want to do it.)

Bigger hard drive? Not even close. Your largest drive is the same size as the one I already have. Fujitsu have twin drive models, where is your one?

Better ergonomics? How about giving me a decent number of USB ports? The measly two I have now just doesn't cut it. Let's try for five, OK? And while you're at it, how about putting them in a sensible place? Think about it: what is the single most common USB peripheral in a laptop? Yup: USB mouse. 98% of the world uses a mouse right-handed, right? So what is the worst possible place to put your USB ports? Correct: on the left, at the back. And guess where my R51 has it's piddly two USB ports.

How about a hot-swap battery? You put a little tidgy battery into the system, just powerful enough to keep the thing alive for, oh, one minute would do it. Then, I can use a normal battery for three hours, run it flat, and swap to a second battery without losing my work. Simple. Practical. Not expensive. And not only do you get to sell me a new Thinkpad, you get to sell me an extra battery as well.

While you are at it, let me congratulate you on having such a fine range of docking stations that, in the main, remain compatible across different models. Really good move. But when are you goinng to move into the Century of the Fruitbat and give us more than one bloody USB port?! Sheesh! ONE! This is stone-age stuff, Mr Thinkpad. Get with the program.

But what have you added? What's out there to tempt my credit card out of hiding? Well, nothing really, just some useless gimmicks. Finger print readers. WTF were you smoking the day you dreamed that one up? Bluetooth? Maybe some people want it. I have no idea what I'd use that for, it's just extra complication. For the love of Mike, offer me something I actually want!

Looks like the old Thinkpad is going to soldier on for another year. Sorry Mr Thinkpad, you ain't getting any money this year.

 

[Mercutio]

T-series Thinkpads have 4:3 screens, swappable batteries and two USB ports.

 

[Tannin]

Sorry Merc, I don't follow you. You say T-series Thinkpads"

* have 4:3 screens (i.e., same as the R Series I wrote about)
* swappable batteries (I take it you don't mean hot swappable?)
* two USB ports (i.e., same as the R Series)

i.e., all exactly the same as the existing R Series Thinkpads, which is fine so far as it goes, but when the hell are they going to introduce something better? I mean we are talking two to three years since IBM / Lenovo actually did something to improve the Thinkpad line. That's an awfully long time to rest on your laurels in this industry. I mean, have they got something good in the pipeline, or do they plan to keep on stagnating forever?

 

[Mercutio]

Batteries on T-series are hot swappable, if you have an Ultrabay battery in addition to the standard one. Heck, you can go one further and slap on an Ultrabase, in the 12 hours or so total battery life you get, you can charge both your other batteries without shutting down.

My first reading of your previous post seemed to indicate that your laptop had only one USB port.

 

[Tannin]

That's the same as the R Series, Merc. (At least as I understand it.) You can hot-swap, but only if you sacrifice the optical drive (or, of course, plug it into the mains for as few moments, which sort of defeats the purpose).

Ultrabase? I am not familiar with the Ultrabase. (Pause while Tannin visits lenovo.com) ... Oh, OK. According to their site, there are three different Ultrabases, but all three of them are only compatible with various of the different X Series Thinkpads. (Whch have unusably small 10 inch and 12 inch screens.) Not suitable for R Series or T Series (unless the official site is wrong).

Maybe there is another one somewhere non-obvious on the site - they have such a massive range that it can be hard to find stuff. Especially stuff like spare batteries: it can take ages to track down the correct model for a Thinkpad. So much so that I don't bother anymore, I just go to a third-party supplier's site and click on the model number of the notebook in question and it directs me to a page that lists batteries to fit that exact model, and does not show anything that doesn't fit. They are a mile faster than the official channel too. I wanted a hi-cap battery for the R51 last week, spent an age figuring out which one it should be from the Lenovo and Ingram Micro sites (both of which are very unhelpful in this regard - you have to wade through a ream of irrelevant stuff and cross reference arcane model numbers with "this now replaces" some other arcane model number, and all the rest of it. Finally, I tracked down the Ingram Micro stock number - Ingram Niro / Tech Pacific are by far the biggest IBM wholesale distribution outfit in Oz, and probably most other countries too) and saw that they had no stock till the end of March.

Said "bugger it, I need it this week", and went to the third-party place I bought a different part from a few weeks ago. (I'd have gone there in the first place except that I couldn't remember their business name or website address.) This was lunchtime on Monday. I found the right product in less than one minute, placed the order, and had it express delivered to me here in Ballarat (~500 miles away) by mid-morning Tuesday.

My single USB port complaint was directed at the docking station. It's a weird design: so many good things to say about it (I have two of them and use them constantly) and clearly a quite recent design as it has a DVI outlet, but despite having lots of room, it has one USB. Stupid!

But there is some good news: I see that the T Series is starting to get dual core CPUs now, which might be worth considering. (But on the other hand, it's HDD performance that kills laptops more than CPU, so not all that interesting.) And also, they seem to have completely abandoned the Portable Room Heater chip in favour of the Pentium M now, which suggests that we could get some sensible battery life and decent all-round performance from the top models. Mega dollars, no doubt, but worth watching.

How much juice does a dual core Pentium M suck?

 

[Mercutio]

There have been Ultrabases for Tseries in the past.