From the profane to the mundane... This guy really loves ThinkPads. And I completely understand. Having used a ThinkPad for about 6 hours a day, almost every day for the past 3.5 years, and even though I burned out a screen and a hard drive, I can't imagine using anything else.
When my wife needed a laptop, getting a ThinkPad was a no-brainer. When I started getting ready to buy a personal laptop and hand over my trusty T23 to my successor at work, I flirted briefly with an iMac (I was inspired by the joy my iPod brought me, but my test sessions at the Apple store proved disappointing), and with a Dell (I was tempted by the low prices, but a little online research convinced me that there were too many problems with the chassis I wanted--like scorching hot palmrests), and I eventually came back to Big Blue, err, Tai Lan Yan Se. (Actually, it sounds like the Feds are going to kill the deal, which is fine with me.)
IBM's high prices are tough to swallow, but a great alternative to buying new is their certified reconditioned program. They don't promote it extensively, but you can find some very good deals right on their site:
IBM.com > Products > Clearance Corner > Certified Used Equipment > Notebooks
There you'll find a list of available ThinkPads, all competitively priced. I picked up a T40, WinXP, 40 GB hard drive, 512 MB RAM, 1.5 GHz Pentium M, integrated wireless card, CD/RW-DVD, yada, yada, yada, and an 18-month warranty, for $1,150. With an extra battery that swaps with the CD-drive (the batteries that ship with used ThinkPads are notoriously close to end-of-life), plus tax and 2-day shipping, the whole damn thing was about $1,400.
Comparable to anything similarly equipped from another manufacturer, with all the good stuff that just makes ThinkPads nicer to use, particularly the rock-solid keyboard and chassis. And if I feel like shelling out a few hundred more, I can still get IBM's next-day, on-site service deal.
So far, so good with the new T40. I had an initial bout of hair-rending and teeth-gnashing when it appeared that downloading WinXP Service Pack 2 had created an irresolvable conflict with the integrated wireless card, but IBM's telephone service was actually helpful! (Well, they batted .667. Call Center Dude #1 was an uber-geek who put me on the right path, told me to download and install some new software and call back. Dude #2 was dumb as a goddamn rock and put me on hold in the hopes I would just hang up and go away--which I did. But then Dude #3 called me the next day to see if everything was OK. Long story short, it is.)
A few minor gripes: the display on my old T23 was much brighter than the one on my new T40--however, that's not really a fair comparison, because the T23's original display burned out and had to be replaced. And the T40's hard drive is a little noisier--again, not a fair comparison, because the T23's first HD also died and was replaced. And the T40's chassis, while thinner, is also slightly creakier.
Those are quibbles, but remembering the dead screen and HD I suffered through remind me that I really should get the extended on-site service deal. Like health insurance, it's money well spent.
UPDATE: Although I fixed the WinXP SP2 conflict with my wireless card the first time around, I subsequently screwed things up again by changing too many configuration settings in order to network the XP T40 with my old Win2K T23. I got the little LAN set up, but then couldn't get the T40 back up on the wireless network. Tried everything, everything failed. So I went for the complete factory restore. Shouldn't have been that big a deal, really, since there wasn't much installed software on the machine--but I was just fried at that point, and it wasn't much fun, either.
So starting from scratch I updated the wireless card's drivers and IBM's Access Connections, and I'm not going to install XP SP2--instead, I'm just going to switch to Firefox.
