What other manufacturer would you consider besides Lenovo?

I've been a happy T61 owner for quite a few years now. But its XP is now a liability (I started a thread about that a few months ago). I'm just going to get a new notebook and not just upgrade to W7 on my aging rig. Faster CPU, better graphics, USB 3.0, W7 or (gasp) W8.1. Don't really want a touch screen. That said...

I don't want to sound negative about Lenovo's latest offerings but it seems like the glory T61 build/keyboard/touchpad/4:3 screen days are over. Compromises seem to have been made. Whichever Lenovo I might buy these days just won't be the same, not that that's a bad thing it just means I can't just now buy a T61 with modern innards. Refurbished, yeah, but I've been warned away from that on this forum.

Anyway, there are a lot of notebook manufacturers these days. If you were to look at someone else's lineup, who would you look at? HP? Asus? Acer? Toshiba? (let's not consider any Apple products, thanks). I'd love to have a Track Point, I think HP used to offer those? I never use the touch pad, only the Track Point or a mouse.

Or even a few year's old Lenovo that still emulated the venerable T61. Ya know, pre-new touchpad. Thanks.

 

If you want a new laptop, Dell and HP business lines are what you should be looking into. HP's trackpoint is quite good, especially with a ThinkPad cap. Dell wins on the keyboard in my opinion.

As for older ThinkPads...T61 was the last 4:3 model, so anything newer will have to be a widescreen unit.

I'd suggest testing both T420 and T430 - the former has the "old" style keyboard, the latter a 6-row island one - and take it from there.

Or - if you can swallow a larger machine - W520 and W530 with FHD screens are something that you may want to consider.

None of them has the same feel as T61, though. You may want to prepare yourself for having to step down from what was arguably - nVidia issue aside - one of the finest moments in ThinkPad design.

Good luck.

 

The world of Windows laptops is really uninspiring these days. I still see Lenovo as being on my short list of brands to consider, and near the top of that list. I also like some of the Dell XPS models, such as the XPS 13.

Sent from my KFTHWI using Tapatalk

 

Using the Dell Precision line and they seem to be pretty good as workstations!

 

I don't recall any of the 14" SXGA+ LCDs being anything special and personally I'd rather have a a quality 16:9 screen over a poor 4:3 LCD, though 14" SXGA+ is the best resolution ever.

The notebook I like the most right now is the Dell Latitude 14 e7440. It's 3.5 pounds with a 1080p IPS LCD, it's upgradeable and has a stick/center button. What else do you need? Had Lenovo ever made the original X1C with an IPS that would be a strong contender. I'd be interested in the T440p and SSD/HDD setup had they not messed with the stick.

 

sad when a guy with probably 20+ thinkpads uses something else but I did move to the latitude, got the smaller version of the e7440. 3lbs 1080p touch, upgradeable ram, hd, removable battery, docking port. Only thing I missed was the track point and center button. Learned to live with it and enjoying it. Still use my t61p, x61t, and w520.

The t61p with middleton bios, a new intel 6235 BT 4.0, SSD, 8gb ram, t9300 still runs Windows7 with 3 virtual machines very well. The wuxga and 120 extra vertical pixels is wonderful. Though it's definitely a bit warmer than the newer laptops. I think if you found a t9300 t61 it would still be very useable. I find it very responsive and I'm pretty picky when it comes to laptops. I find the t420/t420s an excellent t61 replacement, good keyboard, 1600x900 resolution is ok,, if you go with msata and filler for the dvd drive it's decently light. Sandy Bridge is still very fast imo. I don't notice a lot of difference between sandy bridge/ivy bridge/haswell in terms of speed.

 

I think the differences were intended to be mainly power efficiency improvements. It is nice, however, to hear such good things about Latitudes. We migrated from Latitudes in my office to Thinkpads about six years ago because of quality issues. We do have a Precision M6600 for general use that everyone likes.

 

While I don't have any real experience with newer Latitudes, I've owned M4500, M4700 and M6700 Precisions and all of them were very well-built machines in my book. With that said, Dell's implementation of trackpoint leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion, and I'm way more comfortable with EliteBooks in that respect.

I honestly don't believe that most people noticed the difference, apart from benchmarks or when compared in some very specific types of workloads/applications.

My "newest" laptop is an Ivy Bridge non-ThinkPad, and I have yet to be feel any real difference in speed between it and my Arrandale-based T410, let alone a Sandy Bridge machine.

My $0.02 only...

 

precisions and elitebooks, even latittudes/probooks have been pretty well built imo and I've ordered a lot for our users. But what you get with thinkpads is the smartest and most knowledgeable user base of any PC. TP community has solved more problems and work arounds than any other community. Hell I can't even get a good fan control program working properly for my latitude. Though I haven't dissected the newest thinkpads all the ones in the past were very well thought out in terms of modular design, fixing and replacing parts, easy of access etc. Recently helped someone with an Asus gaming laptop which is designed for the enthusiasts, just to replace thermal grease on the cpu/vid card heatside requires you remove every screw and pop off the motherboard. Such a huge pain.

 

I have to go with Microsoft Surface Pro because is indeed a powerful laptop on top of being a tablet and the specs of the new 3 will make me ditch the Thinkpad.

 

I'd agree the Surface is very intriguing, but I've heard it's not all that great while using it you lap. If it had a docking keyboard like the Venue 11 Pro, it would be more interesting.

 

Asus, apple

 

Considering Thinkpads aren't quite what they used to be......when it's time to get a new machine, pretty much ANY model that has a TRUE dock available will be considered. It kind of amazes me that true docking capability never caught on as a norm with laptops in general. Especially in this day and age where laptops are powerful enough compared to their desktop counterparts but also small and light for mobility. I love having a well performing small laptop for on the go that I can simply pop onto the dock connected to full size keyboard and mouse, large monitor, decent speakers, etc to use as a desktop at home when I don't need the mobility. I mean there are those generic expresscard and usb type 'docks' that will work with about anything, but those tend to be pretty buggy at best and don't get the job done like a true dock.

I like to update my laptop every 2 to 3yrs. Luckily hardware has well exceeded what most people would notice doing everyday tasks, and as such I am still happy with my X220 with no desire to swap it out in the near future despite already being beyond my usual cycle. Might not be the thinnest machine or the best battery life compared to what's available now, but it still does the everyday stuff as well as anything else.

 

After having used the Dell for a while now, the thing I've noticed with regards to the trackpoint is it works pretty well if you're on the sweet sport, but the sweet spot on the Dell is much smaller than a ThinkPad. I can use a ThinkPad trackpoint on the side and it still works well, but not the Dell. It's also sunk into the keyboard, which on the one hand is nice because it doesn't mark the screen, but is harder to find in the dark, which is why I ordered the backlit keyboard. It would have been nice if they had differentiated the stick buttons so they're easier to find by touch when you're not looking at them.

 

I'd recomment going with a T/W -10 -20 or -30. It's cheap, and already the -10 machines came with Win7 (and W510 even with USB3). That way, OP can at least stay with a familiar keyboard (on -10 and -20), and non-monster touchpad, and real matte screen.
At least for me, the most noticable difference when switching between a T61 and a W510 is the screen format, but as OP points out, there's currently not much that can be done about crappy 16:9.

 

I'd love to get a T430 with FHD IPS LCD, but as far as I know, none exists. The don't even offer a decent screen like the X1C.