[[!meta title="X40 versus the T30" ]]
[[!meta date="2006-03-05 16:08:41" ]]
[[!tag wireless thinkpad apple t30 Debian]]
I am a little disappointed with the new Thinkpad X40 I have from work. I wanted a MacBook Pro, but their availability and price in Korea is bad.
Unplugging the mains leaves me about 2:30hrs. That’s almost the same as my personal T30 machine! My T30 has about 2 hours of battery life, although it also has about twice the CPU power (going by Bogomips)!
If I do processor intensive stuff like compiling and watching videos then we can half those times… (!)
My T30 also has better wireless performance after my little tests. I’m also wary of this little X40 keyboard. I don’t think it’s good for my RSI. Though it’s too early to tell.
You can get a bigger battery pack for the X40. But it will probably be expensive. :/
The X40 is brand new and is branded IBM thinkpad. The build quality is excellent, just like my other thinkpads I’ve used. It does say “Lenovo” on all the copyright stickers.
I whipped out the hard drive and I thought I might upgrade to a quieter Seagate Momentus. I was surprised to see a 2” drive that was about half the height. I didn’t know about this form factor! I’ll miss my T30’s roomy 100G.
It was tricky installing Debian without a CDROM. I managed in the end with an external USB hard drive and my experiences are documented in debian-boot threads starting here and here.
One major redeeming thing about the X40 is that I get 18371880.31 bytes/sec compared with the T30’s 959174.47 bytes/sec for USB throughput. That’s an amazing 20x speed up! So I’ll be using external USB drives to compensate for the tiny 30GB hard drive.
I am giving away my old T30 to my sister. I just wish the X40 fealt a little more like an upgrade from the T30. The X40 is my workplace’s equipment after all. I think I will aim to get a Mac Pro still if I visit Japan in the next weeks for myself.