Saturday, September 22, 2007

My love, finally she's out!

More than a year back, when I wrote about her, some of you guessed it, but many didn't have a clue as to what's coming. After failed attempts, they stopped inquiring.
Finally, time has come to introduce her! This relationship has been a little older than a year, and I know it's very late to introduce her, but better late than never!!!
I fell in love the first day I saw her, at IBM, probably. Mesmerized by her beauty I was wondering if I'll ever get her! Finally, now, I HAVE her! Albeit wasn't easy doing so! With sleek body, amazing features, rugged yet beautiful, unbeatable built, sexy... Oh GOD, I can't stop appreciating her! I have been wanting to write about her, but haven't the peace of mind and time to do so, until today. This is my best attempt do justice to her beauty...
Presenting before you none other than my IBM ThinkPad T43!
~~~claps and applauds~~~
come on guys, show some respect! The only real competitor to her was Sony Vaio! Making the call between them wasn't easy! In retrospect, T43 still won hands down!

Originally designed in Japan, ThinkPads have had a legacy that's been difficult to break. I'm not sure how well Lenovo will keep the name up, but fortunately, I have the T43 originally designed and assembled by IBM (Japan, I guess).

So? What makes me love this machine so dearly! Before that, I'll tell you what's my configuration:
0. 512 MB blazing fast 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
(That was the fastest available, but today it's succeeded by 666 MHz I guess)
1. UltraSlim Matshita UJ-822S DVD-RW (this costed me a fortune!)
(There apparently is only 1 maker of DVD-RW of 9mm thickness)
2. Breathkaing SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) resolution
3. HDD: 80GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K100, 7200 rpm
4. ATI Mobility Radeon X300 Graphics Card
5. Mobo: Intel 915GM
6. Display Size: 14.1"
7. Wight: 5 lbs
8. Keyboard: Full size Thia NMB (the BEST kbd out there!)
9. 1.86 GHz Pentium M
A. WiFi: Intel PRO/wireless 2915 ABG
B. Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet
C. Fingerprint Reader


So what makes me LOVE this beauty!
Don't know where to start...
Ok! Simplicity of her design scores highest on the charts! Extremely simple, superlatively no-nonsense design is what took my heart away! I believe I have a thing for Japanese designs (ref. Head over heels). No unnecessary bells-n-whistles. It immediately projects an impression that I mean business! Titanium body gives it all the sturdiness a laptop can acquire. 1+ year of usage and it's steel hinges still don't show a sign of any play. If you have handled some poorly built plasticy Dell lappies, you will understand what I mean. The steel hinges doubles up as heat dissipating element. Genius, isn't it!

Keyboard is one of THE BEST: NBM Thai made keyboard. There are many varieties of kbds on TP, and thank GOD that I'll not bore you guys about it. But, of course, if you planning on buying one, do email me back. And NMB is THE BEST! Of course you don't have a choice of getting your first kbd, but I was lucky to get the best one. You might even get a cheaper Chicony or some other poor kbd. This beauty has spoilt me now, I have never liked any other kdb after I used this one! Kbd has all the keys in RIGHT place, no brain-dead rearranging of home-del-pgup-pgdwn & cursor keys. And trust me, really really trust me when I say it's frustrating to find key on kbd when you are dying to meet your deadlines! Only the Fn key in place of Ctrl requires a little adjustment. But hey, anything for this beauty.
It's trackpoint is amazing! I hate the touch pad, its darn tooooooo slow to be used. And if you happen to press the touch pad a little too hard while navigating, you might end up dragging a whole lotta shit!!! Not to mention, if you have selected a zillion photos to be moved and while you are dragging, your tap gets registered as double click! BTW, you gotta be stupid enough to move files on GUI, but still! Once you get used to this trackpoint, you won't ever want to come back to touchpads! Ask any TP user and you will understand what I mean. Besides, using the trackpoint (that revered small red dot at the center of my kbd) gives me enormous speed in moving the pointer, enough to impress anyone around! You gotta believe me on this. I have had a couple of friends gasping in frustration: "What the !@$# are you doing, I didn't get a thing! That was too fast!" Kbd has absolutely no unwanted Play/Rwd/Fwd and other absolutely frustratingly brain-dead and useless multimedia keys.

Screen: The SXGA+ give whooping 1400 x 1050 of screen resolution. Once you see a movie/picture on this, only Sony Bravia can spoil you! It's crisp and 1400 x 1050 is a LOT of screen real estate. Some ppl find it irritating working on high res, but I find it amazingly cool.

I bet I did miss a lot, maybe I'll keep updating this!

All in all, ThinkPads are is THE pinnacle of notebook designs! Touch Wood!
Special Thanks to:
ThinkPad forums where I kept reading posts, queries, problem reports, solutions, etc. It's moderators and users for replying promptly, Chris in particular. To my Uncle, to be kind enough to buy it on my behalf from US. A similarly spec'ed TP here would have costed my twice as much and still wouldn't get everything I got! And special thanks to my bro for letting me keep this beauty, while originally intended for him!


Choosing a Laptop.
I have spent endless hours reading posts after posts, reviews after reviews for more than 3 months before deciding the exact config and model. Like me, if you don't have unlimited money resource to buy a laptop, you would want to be maximize your value for money!
So, I'm going to make another post to address that concern. And also on after-sales-service. I've had a horror story there.

--- edit---
Here you go: Choosing a Laptop/Notebook


3 comments:

Sagar Bhanagay said...

Lol! Yeah, I've seen this black-beauty! And I've seen u falling head over heels for her ;)

Anonymous said...

ha ha cud guess it wud b sme gadget only......congrats on ur first luv dude :)

Sheetal Kamat said...

When you wrote last year i didn't think that it would be this :) anyways congrats :) but personally i think IBM notepads have more of plastic - toy kind of look.. i like apple loook :) or vaio - coloured books :) esp the red/pink one :)