Times have changed - from T42 to the T61

I was cruising this forum for reviews of old Thinkpads, check out what Andrew said in his T42 review back in 2004:

And here we are, complaining about expired coupons and bezels popping when we squeeze them.

 

3 hours would be pretty good on the T42 15 inch, which was typically a power hungry IPS panel driven by a Radeon 9600 card as I recall. The good T42's cost more like $3000. Up in canada, the entry level T42's began at $2400. And in britain, it was 2400 pounds LOL. But that was when the cheap crap in the big box stores were still nearly $2000 after tax. That was awesome value compared to the tech boom

I have thinkpads in my basement I was given for work new from IBM in the 90's that originally cost $10,000 up to even $20,000 each. Even for like a 25mhz processor with 40mb drive and a few meg of ram. But ahhh those were the glory days when teens & brats weren't on the internet because most families couldn't afford it yet.

In contrast... the T62p will be available for well below $1000 next year.

 

My family bought a Sony VAIO desktop with 15.1" CRT XGA monitor back in 1997. It had 32MB EDO DRAM, 2 GB Western Digital HD, ATI 3D Rage graphics with 2mb RAM, Windows 95 and most imporantly, Pentium 200mhz (w/o MMX). All for the low, low price of $1,999.

And to think I just bought a ThinkPad for $1058.

 

Competition is a wonderful thing, but as always a double edged sword. When you pay more thing like support, return policies, quality, etc. tend to be better.

 

+1

Support and returns tend to SUCK now imo ymmv imo imo