[GTALUG] Thinkpad choices today?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 04:14:06PM -0500, Steve Harvey wrote:
>   Back in 2007, I bought a new T60 for ~$1800.  Four years later, I
> decided to buy another T60 ($400 used) as a spare instead of any of 
> their latest offerings, all of which sported the trendy wide-screen 
> aspect ratio which I dislike.  It appears to me that laptop manufacturers
> seem to think that everyone prioritizes the watching of videos.  Since
> then, I've needed to replace the screen on one of them and a motherboard
> on the other.  There are a few repair shops around town that focus
> on this market.  How long parts will remain available is yet to be seen.
> 
>   Both of my T60s are at 1400x1050.  There are 1600x1200 screens out
> there, but they are rare.  
> 
>   Considering today's ratio of high-end laptop prices to the average IT
> salary, I wonder if there might be enough latent world-wide demand for 
> an upgraded Lenovo "Classic" to make it feasible.  Maybe it could happen
> if enough people were to band together to have some "reverse marketing"
> clout.
> 
>   I'd love it if I could have 16GB of RAM, an onboard SSD as well as a
> HDD, keep the DVD drive, get rid of the PCMCIA slot and modem and give
> me an HDMI port along with the VGA.  Give me a 2048x1536 (or even 
> 2800x2100) matte screen in a rugged 15" form factor with the traditional
> hardware UI and indicator lights.  Add bluetooth and IR ports and hide a
> 9 pin parallel port on the back for people who want to do really low 
> latency stuff.  Keep it as thick and heavy as required to provide this
> functionality.  I don't care about touch screen or trendy ultra-
> slimness or having to be cloud-dependent.  Make sure that it runs well
> (addressing ACPI, UEFI/BIOS, and video issues especially) with Linux as 
> well as Microsoft Windows. 
> 
>   One feature that I would like to be possible with this laptop is to
> be able to use it with active shutter 3D glasses for stereoscopic
> viewing of images such as landforms, simulated molecules, ...  The
> hardware needs only to be capable of producing a correctly timed
> strobe signal over a suitable interface.

Well my laptop covers _most_ of those things.

I have 1920x1080 screen (yes it is wide screen, but at least the vertical
resolution is good) and it is matte.  You are not going to ever get
4x3 aspect ever again as far as I can tell.

I have 24GB ram (max is 32GB).  I have a DVD drive.  I have a 16GB SSD
as well as the harddisk.  Also fingerprint scanner and display color
calibration.

Bluetooth of course, but no IR (who ever would want that crap anymore?
So unreliable, and besides I imagine a USB IR gismo exists for cheap).

I have VGA and displayport outputs (for which cheap adapters to DVI and
HDMI exist).  I have proper LEDs for disk and network and such.

You don't get parallel ports in 9 pin.  They are 25 pin, and besides USB
to parallel adapters are cheap if you really need that.

The built in screen can't do 3D, but an external displayport connected
screen can use nvidia's 3D stuff (or a dual link DVI if you use an active
adapter which is not that cheap).

Linux runs quite well, although there are a few features that I haven't
bothered to figure out how to get working with linux yet.

ACPI and UEFI seem to be done right.  Linux is able to use the optimus
intel to nvidia and back switching of graphics.

PCMCIA and modem?  No, but you do get expresscard and SD.

So in this case, that's a thinkpad W530.  Unfortunately the W540 is not
the same at all.  Hopefully the W550 will restore sanity, and perhaps
even offer screens better than Full HD.

-- 
Len Sorensen