T400 or W500 or what?

I'm in need of a new laptop. Given my role in my small organization (CEO/CFO/CIO/CTO/... - everything but COO), this machine winds up being 'mission critical'. I'm partial to Thinkpads and am moving off a T43 (which has spent the past 2+ weeks on a repair bench -- constant re-booting). I need something to run MS Office along with Publisher and Photoshop, and be able to handle multiple windows (I'll use an external monitor when necessary). I'm down to a choice between the T400 and W500. Price is not really an issue. The weight of the W500 doesn't bother me since I'm used to lugging the T43 daily which weighs about the same. Am I missing another Thinkpad option?

Given the 'mission critical' nature of my role, any thoughts how to avoid any downtime? Buy 2 and keep one for spare (the old Jaguar adage)? Image the hard drive daily? Something else?

 

how about the T400s.. which has a displayport and e-sata port on the machine, it is small compact and more than enough for your daily usage. Also the displayport allows you to use an external DVI monitor, while you can output to the second display using the onboard vga, all without a dock. If you are feeling that you need more monitors, you can get a lenovo usb2dvi converter, which allows you to output to another additional screen for a maximum of 4 (or is it six i can't remember, but not advisable since this will tax your GPU too much).

Even with the X4500MHD integrated graphics card, it would handle the Publisher and Photoshop with little problem, since they are more CPU and ram dependent. Also, i would stay away from discrete gpu laptops for ultimate reliability, for the fact that failure rate of discrete gpu laptops are higher than that of the integrated model due to the higher heat output.

Obviously, W500 and T400 are also a good option, but if i am you i would get either the W500 and T400s.

But love your multiple job title, must be hard work.

 

Next day on-site warranty.

 

I think you only need the W500 if you need the UWXGA screen. Honestly it sounds like any thinkpad would do if the T43 was meeting your needs.

I can tell you though that you really need two thinkpads...my laptop is also mission critical, if it isn't working than I'm not able to work. Therefore I have two laptops. Not only can I use them both throughout the day if I wanted to, what's really nice is if I have to send one in for service.

I would recommend getting a couple of T400's (which are really cheap considering) with a good 3 year next day warranty and you'd be set. You can even get one configured just right and use a program like Acronis True Image to clone your good setup over to the other one so they are configured exactly the same. If you wanted to take it one step further you could even put a second drive for data in place of your cdrom so that if one fails you just pop the data drive out and put it in the other one and away you go.


Kevin

 

If you are lugging it around daily and have an external monitor, I see no reason to not go with a smaller and lighter machine - the tasks you perform will all be handled very well by really any Thinkpad.

So, I suggest that you look at the T400s, X301, and possibly the X200/X200s if you are not too concerned with the lack of an optical drive and touchpad.

 

I do keep a couple of thinkpads around me, just in case things happen. I have one under my car seat right now, one in the laptop bag, two in the back of the boot. I can't imagine if i am a gun collector, i will be carrying around alot of full automatic weapons and maybe a small nuke just in case things go pear shaped. Just a joke.

 

Agree with this wholeheartedly. Additionally, next day on-site warranty with a good backup solution [e.g. NAS or online data backup] is probably more than adequate.

Also, in my experience the smaller machines are better built and more resilient.

 

I agree. Plus you might want to get accident coverage as well. As others said any modern Thinkpad will do since the CPUs have gotten so powerful and the amount of ram you can put in them these days is insane. If you provide us more info on what your requirements are that would help us to narrow it down better for you . Are you looking for a particular screen size? What resolution screen? etc So far the tasks you listed can easily be accomplished with any Thinkpad with a good amount of RAM(3+ GB) and a solid Core 2 Duo CPU. If you are doing 3D work like CAD, modeling then I would look into something like the W500 which has a strong graphics card. If not, then you can look at a machine that has the Intel 4500 GPU.

 

Glad you added the joke part... not really easy to figure it out especially with that avatar

 

I say T400s. The ATI graphics of the T400 isn't that good, it's about as good as the Intel integrated graphics on the T400s. The W500 seems kind of overkill if you just want to use Office and Photoshop.