Hi-res refurb Dell laptop. Comments?

[Digimer]

On 08/03/2012 12:36 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 12:00:36PM -0400, Digimer wrote:
>> DDR2 is going to be hard/expensive to find.
>>
>> It's nowhere near the price point, but if you're looking for more
>> power, I've been rediculously happy with my Thinkpad W530. The new
>> keyboard layout bugs me, but that's because I'm a traditionalist.
>> They keys themselves are very responsive and have awesome feedback.
>> The screen is a dream, too. I opted for the 1920x1080 screen. It's
>> upgradeable to 32GB and supports the i7 quad core. I swapped out the
>> HDD for an SSD after receiving it (their prices was unreasonable to
>> do it at build time).
>
> What specificly is wrong with the W530 keyboard?  I have never seen one.
>
>> Anyway, an option. As for Dell quality; I have to echo Lennart. My
>> experience is very poor with Dell as a former support tech. I hated
>> working on them.

Until this generation, the Thinkpads still had a mostly traditional 
104-key keyboard layout, except that the insert key was moved to the 
left to make the del key double-height. The pg up/pg down, home/end and 
other keys were all in the usual 2x3 grid at the top-right of the 
keyboard. While every other OEM was moving to the macbook style 
"chicklet" keys, Thinkpad stayed traditional.

So when the current xn30 line came out, like the T430 and W530, they 
mentioned they were changing to the chicklet-style keys as well. I was 
extremely concerned because the keyboard was always one of the biggest 
selling features of the thinkpads, to me. Every macbook (or similar key 
style) keyboard I have used sucked.

I decided to give it a try anyway, after reading about the insane R&D 
they put into the new-style keyboard. The tactile feedback from the keys 
is amazing! I was very surprised at how nice it feels.

I do still miss the traditional layout though... The 2x3 layout is now, 
in order, home - end - insert - delete on the top-right row and pgup and 
pgdown are directly above the left and right arrow keys, respectively. I 
got used to this pretty quickly, but I do still find myself hitting 
backspace when I want delete, and vice-versa. I'd still prefer the old 
layout, but it's not the show-stopper I had worried about.

Something long-time thinkpad users and new converts might like; The Fn 
and l-ctrl keys have always been left/right, where almost all other 
laptops have l-ctrl on the left and Fn to it's right. Now you can swap 
the keys in the BIOS. I'm used to it, as I've used Thinkpads for >10 
years, but it was something I had wanted back when I first started with 
them.

As for the rest of the laptop... I could still fend off a small army 
with this thing. It runs very cool, even under load. It's missing eSATA, 
which is sad, but I suspect that's a gamble on USB3 taking over.

Lastly; Fedora 17 "just works", save the fingerprint reader. Do note 
that I immediately disabled the nvidia gpu, as I prefer battery > 
graphics. That said, Gnome3 runs brilliantly on the Intel GPU.

-- 
Digimer
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