Just received my IBM thinkpad t41 - Page 2

i just got my t40p and it looks brand spanking new (not used once)!

i have to change some file before i boot winXP (something to ease installing linux) for the first time, so i'll probably do everything tonight (bed time for me now). i took pics of the package/everything ala sagerforums style.

first impressions before booting up:

surprised me how little the box weighted
high pedigree/solid construction look and feel
light smell of new hardware (chemical smell)
it has a large battery that sticks out a little
excellent keyboard

hope everything will be ok. see you guys later

PS:where in th web can i load some pics?

hard drive protection

For those of you with the t41 and the hard drive protection feature. Has anyone noticed that when it is enabled, even a slight change in position on the desk can set it off? I've noticed this and had to turn it off. Also where do I get benchmard programs and once you bench your computer, do you remove the benchmark program?

a small follow up

no dead pixels
beatiful screen
harddrive and fan are quiet (very quiet overall)
everything seems to work so far (like new condition)

there is a paper that says that the laptop was released from IBM on 12/08/2003, so it should have all the recent drivers. early on today, i call IBM and they are sending me the recovery CDs (for free) just in case.

installing redhat9.0 + xp (will update to fedora soon)

the laptop is supposed to be fully compatible with linux (using the latest drivers) if you don't do anything when you first boot up for the first time, xp will use NTFS. i had to delete a convert program (hidden in win/sys32 folder) and the file system now is vfat. with vfat, you can access all your xp files from linux. i left 20 Gbs for xp and the rest for linux.

Nice. I actually threw down for one of the t40p 2373G5U's this morning after hearing about your transaction. It seems this store's having no problems selling them as I saw 7 listed last night, but as of now there are only 2 left.

I'll say this for them, they sent out my laptop pretty damn fast (I won/paid for it today, and got an Airborne Express tracking# by the end of the day). Seeing your follow-ups give me confidence that this is probably the best deal I've ever got in on... heheh

gongrats nakasan!



yeah, they were quicker in your order than in mine. i ordered mine on Friday 1:00 pm and tyey delivered it on Monday 6:20 pm. i guess it was a rush weekend! plus you got the intel pro mini PCI (it is supposed t be better than the IBM a/b). i think you got a terrific laptop/deal (same i). i took mine today in my backpack and you can already see a small paint rub created on the edge of the stick-out battery. the 9 cell battery makes the laptop wider. also, the laptop seems to very easily pick up specks of dust and the black paint amplifies them. my main concern before i got the laptop was the dead pixels issue. IBM's policy is seven dead pixels before replacement. hopefully, yours will be dead-pixel free like mine. good luck.

i discovered that the keyboard has a built in light! that's right, you can use the laptop in dark places. to make the light come on, press Fn + top-right corner key of the keyboard.

i found out that you can download from IBM the same repair manual they use on their repair shops. you can also buy any spare parts for your laptop. for example, you can buy a new keyboard for only $30. that's nice.

it comes in a brown double card-board box. nothing fancy. the good stuff is inside

when are you expecting to receeive your laptop?

i've put some pics of the IBM T40p here:

http://www.geocities.com/llkklll2000/

dang!

a delivery guy just gave a pouch with 4 CDs from IBM. man, that was fast

just for the record, this is the IBM support page for my T40p model (with latest drivers). go to your model page to find yours.

http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/si...hEntry=2373g3u

and this is the IBm linux portal

http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/

happy holidays to all

Can you make them pics a bit larger maybe? And more is always better


cheers

The est. arrival date is 12/31/03, which is ok by me since I'm going to be out of town till then anyways.

Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on it. It puts my Dell Inspiron 8100 to shame in just about every aspect except the res.; but for up to 7hrs of batt-life, I think I can live with SXGA+. heheh

in this page you will find 4 reviews with closeup pictures. they are for the T40, which has the same chasis as the T40p (and i think the same as the T41p):

http://www.aaltonen.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9

for example (*edited link):

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...cid=14&aid=775

i'll be installing fedora tomorrow. do you want a special picture in particular?

nakassan, so i guess you will be getting a new-years present then

i just read in a magazine (nuts and bolts 1-2004) that the thinkpad laptop has made history. IBM has sold 20 million! since 1992. that makes the thinkpad line of computers the most ever sold laptop.

Thanks for the links arpia! Whats Fedora?

'fedora' is linux distribution (from Redhat), which i have already tested in the T40p and it works really nice. the games (tax racer, chromium) play really nice too. this laptop turned out to be very addictive, it has glued on me. i put a small picture here:

http://www.geocities.com/llkklll2000/des.jpg

sorry for the bad quality, but if i put bigger pics then they'll probably shut down the website (since it is free).


enjoy your holidays ! (i am )

If you want, I can host those high-res pictures. Email me (oliver at aaltonen dot us) if you're interested.

hi oaaltone!

thanks for the offer. i tried to email some pics but the email didn't work for me. i just went ahead and put more pics on the site:
(be careful if you use a modem, it will take a while)

http://www.geocities.com/llkklll2000/

looks like they haven't shut it down yet


to those who just orderd a thinkpad:

my drivers were not updated by IBM before leaving the factory.

IBM does a lot of driver updates! i had to go to the IBM site an update them myself. there is a small trick you should know. rigth now my BIOS driver is 2.11. the driver is very easy to update (.exe program). before you update to 2.11, you need to update some embeded chip firm. so this is what you need

update to 2.10 (found in the 2.11 bios page at the end of the page)
update the chip firmware (i don't remember the number )
update to 2.11


the lappy plays movies great!!

Hey Arpia - about the Thinkpad...

I am also into software development and need some nice graphics. Plus would be nice to be able to run high end 3d apps.

The Thinkpad 41p with the the Fire Gl2 looks like a dream, but I have one big concern:

How is the display? I ask becuase I would be coming from a Toshiba 5105 type model (those multimedia ones with built in subwoofer) and I gotta say in my latest laptop shopping, Toshiba's LCD have hands down the best clarity, contrast, colors, dynamic range. Dynamic range is key- I saw the GateWay M505xl (the one with the 9600 radeon) and while the machine is truly very nice, particularly for the price, the dynamic range when viewing my digital photos kinda sucked.

I know IBM's R51p is advertised as having an UXGA "flex view" with "ultra density" which strongly suggests their UXGA display must look very nice indeed. I am concerned that the T41p SXGA viewing angles and dynamic range might be sucky....

Can you please comment on this? I am trying to see where IBM has a dealer that has these machines so I can check it out for myself but no luck. If you know where I can find one...

I was really (still am) torn between a 9000 w/ 32 megs vram model and a Fire GL T2 model... the price difference is scary :-) But I am thinking I should really go for "the gold here" - everywhere I read puts the machine as something really nice.

Anyway, your comments much appreciated (or from anyone else with this model).

Thanks!

- Raist

Raist3d

I have a T41p and a guy in our office has the Toshiba lappy with the CSV (or some such thing) screen. The IBM is not as bright, but the screen is not disappointing at all. I use my continuously - at the office it serves as my desktop when I use the Port Replicator II with a 21" DVI LCD. The only disappointing thing is that it will only support 1280 X 1024 in DVI pass through... which is ok if you are using a 19 inch LCD with DVI, but the Samsung LCD I use supports 1600 X 1200.

Even at 1280 X 1024 it's not bad. And you won't find a better docking solution than the one that IBM offers.

You'll like it...

yeah - I just sent my first T41p back to IBM (problem with the graphics card - wouldn't redraw the screen) and am expecting a replacement in a few days.

The 1400x1050 LCD on the T40 series *is* nice - but will not have the contrast or viewing angles that I think you're expecting.

At the same time - you won't have a problem with it. One of the best systems I've ever used in the field for photo editing was an G4 Apple PowerBook. The LCD quality of the T41 is pretty much equivalent.

Oh yeah - if you get one - at least get the ATI Fire Mobility 9000 - it will be worth it

The 128 Meg T2 model is sweet - it kills me that I got a bad one.

jffcpa and Durjaya,

Thanks a lot of answering the questions. jffcpa's post on this sounds encouraging but Durjaya does not :-) I have seen apple G4's and the LCD quality to me is sup-par to what Toshiba is offering particularly the CSV displays.

This is not to say they are terrible, but I can definitively notice that Toshiba's looks better. Since I am into photo editing now, to me dynamic range is also important. From the post of both it sounds like the display is probably better than the Gateway 505mxl contrast/dynamic range wise but under Toshiba's. I will have to see it for myself. I wonder where I could see a display like this around where I live.

I could opt for the R50 which does have an UXGA and "flex view" which I bet will be very very similar to Toshiba's, but one of the biggest appeals to me of the T41 is the size... that thing must look sweet indeed.

I will have to give this some thoughts. Any other comments appreciated. I want this machine for both work *and* gaming + digital photography.

Does anybody know exactly what is the contrast ratio of this display? I couldn't find it in the IBM's specs or website... thanks!

ONe more question: how much of hardisk space has to go becuase of the "restore" partition the machine has? Any particular "software extras" (works, office, one note, etc.) the machine comes with other than the IBM security/network/config stuff? thanks!

- Raist

arpia is yours covered under IBM's warranty? Also how long of a battery life have you been getting with it? Does that seller have anymore of that model cause I would definately be interested in it?

hello,

the warranty for a refurbished IBM is one year. the one i bought comes with an extented warraty for another three more years (which starts after the one year expiration of the IBM warranty). the extended warranty has worldwide overage and it is from www.mackcam.com


i have been using the laptop constantly (literally). the battery life is great, i can watch two DVD movies and have extra. the IBM comes with an app for a windows DVD movie player. i've notice that this DVD program does excesive read/writes to the harddrive (probably uses a big buffer), which i think wears out the disk. i have a dual boot XP/linux and for the linux operating system i use a program to watch DVDs called 'xine' that does not do all this read/write and the movies play nice.

the battery life makes the laptop more portable, though i haven't measured scientifically how many hours i can get. i go to the couch or to bed and i don't worry about having to plug it to the wall. this is a nice couch laptop. it is quiet as a church mouse. i have read people having small noises with previous models, but this one is super quiet (the 7200 rpm harddrive is as quiet as it can get). the only noticeable noise i heard was when i was doing a linux installation and then the harddrive made some small clanking noise. the laptop stays cool but when playing 3D games, the fan comes on but the noise of the fan is really faint (not noticeable). i guest that if you put an M10 graphic card, you will lose some battery life and the laptop will run hotter, but you will have better performance. so far i haven't seen any performance lag when doing 3D stuff (i have the ATI fireGL radeon 64Mgs -> M9).


the laptop i got comes installed (from IBM recovery CDs) with winXP pro, some IBM utilities, a DVD player called InterVideo, norton antivirus 2003, pcdoctor, and a CD with lotus 9.7 (lotus word pro, lotus1-2-3 spreadsheet, organizer, presentation and graphics, database, web publisher). i haven't installed the lotus applications. instead, i have installed openoffice (compatible with MS office), which i also use in linux . you can get openoffice for free download at www.openoffice.org. you can also get free picture program called imagemagic for windows (it is not as good as photoshop, but it does the basic stuff).

i am not sure how much disk space the IBM recovery stuff uses. i think i read it is about 8 Gigs. i have partition my harddirve to 20 Gigs for Xp and the rest (40 Gigs) for linux.

after using it for some time now, i highly recommend a thinkpad (if you can afford the high end model, go for it). you will be able to use it more because of its portability. in contrast, the other higher performance laptops will keep you glue to a table (weight, power, noise, heat, etc).