Just noticed on Staples.com

Toshiba A15-S129 Notebook computer w/ Intel® Celeron® processor 2.4GHz

Price $950 with a $200 rebate on top of that.

Only 6.0 lbs/DVD-RW/40GB etc

http://www.staples.com/Catalog/Brows...True&bcSCatId=

Just bought an IBM T41 2 weeks ago. 1.6 Centrino, 512MB ram, 60GB HDD, XP Pro, Gigabit ethernet, the whole enchillada. This unit is excellent, many thanks to those who recommended it. It weighs about half what my old tank did...my laptop bag also thanks you for this, as does my right shoulder...battery life is also great (it came with a spare for $69 and free shipping for everything).

Display is awesome, keyboard solid, it has that new hard drive "park" feature that protects the HDD when the unit is running and senses a tilt or fall. So far, this is the finest built laptop I've ever used. Wireless pickup is flawless with the dual antennas. The only thing I don't like is that there's no "Win" button for shutdown...or maybe I'm just stupid and haven't found it yet

Have been through 5 (count 'em) HDD's, one system board and one CD-RW/DVD combo drive (which still only works when it wants to) on my 11/02 purchased Toshiba 5205-S503. After dealing with Toshiba numerous times (who no longer will accept any responsibility for this POS and will have to be taken to pro se court), I can only say do not buy their products. Even their depot repair facility manager told me last week that they are bleeding cash and their products are going down the tubes...fast. After testing Toshiba M35 and A25 models earlier this year, IMHO the build quality is garbage.

Same goes for the Dell 5100 that I tried out in May of last year for 2 weeks - sent it back. As far as Macs go, everyone says they're wonderful, but I'm just not an Apple guy. Bottom line IMO (and I used to hate Big Blue), spend the money, buy the quality.

quote:
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....."The only thing I don't like is that there's no "Win" button for shutdown...or maybe I'm just stupid and haven't found it yet".....
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I am unclear what a "Win" button is but on my nice IBM T-40, you can designate the "On/Off" button to totally shut down the computer, put the syatem into standby etc.

MisterNice

If you are considering this screen resolution, check it out before diving in. I find it too small and anyone else trying to look on would be worse off. When one changes the resolution to something lower, like 1024x800, it gets pretty blurry in my opinion.

So, check it out at a best buy, before buying.

Increasing font size may help. Windows lets you adjust the size of many items. I'll confess to using 1024x800, but many are very happy with higher resolution after playing with it a bit.

Dingo, I also run a D600 and the screen does goes blurry as hell is you change the res from the native 1400x1050. Anything else looks crap.

I am running SQL server on XP pro. I have 1GB of RAM and all works well. I am very impressed by the wirless strength it is much better than my old netgear card.


Battery life is also pretty good.

The "win" or "windows" key is simply that; it has a picture of the "flying" four paned Windows symbol on it, which when pressed, activates the "start" button. From there, I'm just used to typing U, S to put the system in standby, U, R to restart (soft boot) or U, U to shut the laptop down. There is no such key on the T41 (that I've found yet). I'm just too lazy to drag the mouse arrow over to the start button, I guess. Time to teach the old dog a new trick...

If there's no win key, hold <ctrl>, then hit <esc>. Does the same thing.

Cool, thanks!

Sorry to stray a little off topic - can anyone tell me why there are IBM T41s with and without Centrino?
My T41 is 1.7 Pentium M - does not have Centrino.
How does this compare to 1.6 with Centrino, performance wise and price wise?


Thanks

Your IBM probably didn't come with the Intel-based wireless ethernet built in. That would be the difference.

Yeah, is that still the Intel-badged wireless that was neither designed nor built by Intel or have they got their act together and come through with their own wireless chipset?

I agree with CT-UK. You have to get the D600 with a native screen resolution that matches the one you want to run. Don't buy an laptop with a 14 inch SXGA+ screen unless you want to run it at 1400x1050. If you want to run a 14 inch screen at 1280x1024, buy one that has a panel that runs with SXGA as its native resolution. Ditto for 1024x768 and XGA/XGA+.

BTW, if you have a D600 and use it in a dock and you think you have USB stability problems, apply the patch in the following windows update. Search for it in the Microsoft KB.
WindowsXP-KB822603-x86-ENU.exe

BTW, I suspect that your wireless problems have to do with antenna design/placement. I don't know of any sites that test/review that sort of thing.

Another strong recommendation for IBM Thinkpad based on 5yrs of "hard" use of 3 "T" systems. Agree with T41, latest one with Centrino is the way to go, having run a T40 myself for some time now.