Site revamp!

Dietcokefiend had the first post on the new Thinkpad site, he noticed some warranty options are gone.

Myself I have been waiting for months to pull the trigger on an X60s. I noticed in the X-series section they have added two new bundles as jumping off points for customization, one with WWAN and one with bluetooth. These were both previously just options so I don't think this is too new.

They have also added a 1.83GHz LV processor for X60s, this is new right? The last time I checked all you could get was the 1.66 for the S model X60.

The list prices have been bumped up about $100 but adding the 8-cell battery is now only $10 instead of $100. You can actually shave $40 going from the slim 4-cell to the standard 4-cell, not sure if this is new. And 1GB of memory is free/ 1.5GB is still $99, which is where it was a week ago (albeit on special).

The worst change -- Microsoft Office Basic is no longer an option!! The cheapest Office you can get on there is $450 for the full small biz edition. MS Office Basic can be bought elsewhere for $170 but I think this is about $40 higher than Lenovo used to offer, plus you have to go to the trouble of installing it yourself.

Maybe this will be changed by the end of the weekend.

I am also kind of ticked that they dropped many of the in-person warranty service options (the three-year version, which I had been planning to order) and the 3-year protection plan.

 

Technology has a bizzare life cycle.

 

If you can do without office for a couple months, I recommend you do so. Office 2007 is coming out.

 

When is 2007 due to be released?

 

January IIRC (they are trying to match it to the release of Vista to end-users). http://reviews.cnet.com/Microsoft_Office_2007_RTM/4505-3524_7-32143052.html?tag=cnetfd.mt

 

Unless you have a specific need, OpenOffice is free compatible with Microsoft Office and works quite well.

 

Yea, its pretty nice, but has its oddities that takes getting used to. Some settings are in different places. I really wish they would make an Outlook compatible thing to go along with it

 

It is an easy choice for me, but everyone is different.

 

If you need MS Office, the Student and Teacher Edition (with Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint) frequently sells for less than its list price of $150.

 

Thanks for the Office thoughts.

I actually prefer the older office, just as I prefer to buy XP right before the Vista launch. I would rather have the mature, debugged older version than the shiny, v1.0000 (defacto beta) version of the OS or Office suite.

The nice thing about this is that you can take advantage of clear-out sales (this may not work with Office but certainy laptops that are a little underpowered for Vista will be going on sale, or all of them since none have it preinstalled, I think if Vista had shipped on time we would not be seeing the $150 discounts from Lenovo).

As for the open version, after spending $2k on the laptop, I don't mind dropping another $150-200 for a decent office suite, esp when it includes a nice email client ;->

 

Do you think new machines will come with Vista once it is released? Or will the transition take a bit longer than that?

 

The price change was actually in my favor...

I'm no longer forced into the Titanium cover, the camera, and the fingerprint reader, none of which I wanted on my Z61t

 

Zachtib me too! Whats your configuration going to be, and when are you ordering it? Im thinking of doing the 5500, 1gb, 80gb,cdrwdvd,black lid, pretty basic, i want it lightweight.

 

I may only order 1GB of ram for starters, and the 802.11G card if I have reason to expect that the N card will give me troubles on Linux

 

Yes I believe they will. I remember reading that the release to manufacturers would significantly precede the release to customers. The idea is that companies like Dell and Lenovo get Vista 1-3 months early to test on their systems and create disk images from so they can start installing on new systems immediately on "launch."

That way MSFT gets maximum impact from all the advertising and free publicity at Vista launch. If new Vista systems were not available, just DVDs for consumers, it would be mostly wasted since vast majority of Vista sales will be via new systems.

I have no idea if Vista has been handed to vendors yet.

 

I guess the Vista license [for manufacturers] will be the same as XP, and thus we won't see a raise in the price per machine. [Maybe Vista machines priced more however, similar to XP Professional vs XP Home].

 

Wow vista is buggy!!! Ugh!!!!
Early word is fortune 100 corporations will avoid it like the plague!
Will same be true of office 2007?

Remember how Win98 was a catastrophic OS until the second version was released....

Looks like deja vu all over for Vista... wait til the second release when many of the unacceptable bugs should be worked out.

 

Good advice, I don't plan on converting over until I really HAVE TO.