product somebody could do

Well, mine is not any of the plastic laptops but a real one, made from the good stuff (metal):

What I really like is that they don't change models on every little whim. More like the Land-Rover of laptops. For me robustness counts a ton more than being super-modern, I depend on the machine at clients.

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My ThinkPad has a titanium cover and is pretty well built. Unfortunately the drivers are the pits. Apparently Lenovo has totally screwed up the entire lineup. This is likely the last ThinkPad I'll own.

I don't travel all that much, but we did have our two ThinkPads with us on our weekender in Atlanta a few days ago. I'll look into the DuraBooks as a replacement. I haven't seen any laptops I like.

I am impressed that the LiIon hasn't lost any noticeable capacity in over three years. Maybe they did the right thing and keep it a little under 4.2V. But be warned, this is a "mil-style" laptop. Very heavy and the fan makes one heck of a racket, very loud. Not something you'd want to run in your home office all day long.

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[snip]

Hmmmm? I have an X61s. No problems whatsoever (once I uninstalled the NAV that came pre-installed).

What drivers have you found problematic?

...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
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I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I noticed that the display is pretty meager too. External VGA only and I didn't see any docks or port replicators. Not good.

Not sure really. Seems everything has been going downhill since I bought it a couple of years ago. My original T60 was a mess when I gave it to the kid. He stripped everything Lenovo off it and it worked OK (the screen is now on its last legs though). My wife has a newer T60 that hasn't been too bad, despite having a Vista preload. This T61 has been a nightmare. When I dock it, sometimes it'll power itself off - hard. Only removing the batteries will bring it back. It often loses the keyboard and mouse, requiring a reboot. The Dock quit working (no display, internal or external) until I left it (the dock) powered off for a week. Power management is the pits.

around

Well, this isn't a laptop for full living room media performance, it's a plain workhorse. One of the really important points for me was that mine has a RS232 port.

The display is fully sufficient for me. Main thing is that it's rugged. And no, I don't think there's a docking station. I've never needed one of those.

Oh, and the sound from the speakers is absolutely horrid but that didn't matter to me either :-)

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semester

into

OK.

around

I don't need a "living room multimedia" PC, but do like lotsa dots. It makes things much easier to read, or allows one to read more.

I really only want one PC, most of the time living on a desktop but I

*do* want to be able to take it with me. The DuraBook didn't support any DVI. My ThinkPad doesn't have a DVI port but its docking station does. My 24" display is happy with that situation. It does *not* like VGA.

I don't care about that either, though a decent sound card is somewhat important.

[...]

Then the Durabook is not for you, the fan racket alone would drive you or your wife nuts. Nine years ago I also had the idea of having one powerful (well, back then...) laptop for office plus road. Didn't work because that means short battery life plus it can never really rival a big deskptop.

Out here it often goes like this: Client calls right after lunch on a hot summer day, some big problem. SPICE gets fired up, it's a balmy 85F in the office. Fans in the big PC come on full bore, lots of warm air streams out the back, by late afternoon the problem and a fix is found and the office temp is above 90F. I don't know how a laptop can possibly survive that for long. One one of them I wore down two hard drives.

What I like about it is the rather quiet input. It has found noise that big name brand analyzers couldn't see.

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