I bought a T400 now what do i need

I have a 160gb hd in the laptop, do you recommend getting an external, should i invest in a cooling pad, and what about a neoprene sleeve

do i even need any of these things, the sleeve might be the only thing i consider getting cuz its going to be going in my backpack to and from school alot

 

Do you need extra storage? If not, only get external if you plan to use it for backing your stuff up. That's a pretty good idea though. Other than that... depending upon how you feel about trackpoint/trackpad mice, you might want a mouse to take around with you. A cheapo optical is good enough, provided you have space to carry it. And the sleeve is a good call too.

 

k thnks .. i might buy an external when it gets cheaper.. there cheap but i want one with the usb, firewire and esata ... that way its kinda futureproof

 

Here are some things off the top of my head...

1.) Microfiber cloth - to clean the screen without scratching it
2.) Sleeve - to protect the softtouch paint finish of your Thinkpad. Also keeps food and other crap off the machine while it is in your bookbag.
3.) Flash drive to transfer files to and from it.
4.) Wireless mouse - If you have internal Bluetooth, I would go for a Bluetooth mouse.
5.) Might want to do an external drive for backups but if you don't need to back up that much data, then just carry around a blank DVD to do your backups. Keep it simple.
6.) I would pass on the cooling pad. Just one more thing to bring and I find them annoying. Besides the T series thinkpads have very good cooling(Thinkpads in general have some of the best cooling of all laptops). I have a T61p and X200 and both stay pretty cool, with the X200 being very very cool.

 

Cooling pad - normal users shouldn't require one on a well designed laptop.

(Gamers aren't normal users - heavy users rather - especially on graphics)

Neoprene sleeve - I got one for my SZ, then found it too much of a nuissance and left it at home...
Result, screen cover (back) got scratched and no longer looks pristine - did before.
If you carry a laptop bag you may do without - but its your choice.

Edit: There are backpacks with deicated laptop compartments.

 

dont laugh but whats a flash drive ... those memory stick things with the usb on the end

i only thought of an external cuz of a separate desktop

 

Yeah, flash drive/thumb drive are the small solid state drives with the USB connector on the end.

 

The Fire Snake -
What is the purpose of doing a backup? Sorry if this is a noob question but I've never done backups with the desktop I've had for the past five years, and I will have a laptop soon so I'm assuming it's something important lol. I won't be doing much besides word documents and gaming. By "backup" do you simply mean just copying files (in which a flash drive would be sufficient in my case)?

 

Yup, some place to save data that isn't the HDD. Means that if you ever lose the machine or have HDD failure or file corruption, you don't loose all your data. Basically just insurance against disaster for your data.

 

Just as Sirmetman said. When I said backup I mean copying the files that are important to you from your machine to another device(ex: CD, flash drive, another harddrive). This is just incase something gets erased on your machine or your harddrive goes down, you won't lose that term paper you have been working so hard on, since you have another copy somewhere else
You can use a flash drive for a back up but I prefer CD/DVD or an external harddrive. Not sure why, but I like backing up more to those kind of devices, than a flash drive. I think of a flash drive as more temp storage, but that is probably psychological and not scientific.

It is a good habit to make regular backups. It can be a life saver.