IBM T42 or Tecra M2?

I am deciding which one to buy for a college student (my son). The Tecra M2 is a 1.6 Pentium M with 512 mb of ram and a 40 gb hard drive. The IBM t42 is model number 2379dwu (1.5, 256 ram, 40 gb hard drive. The IBM costs about $180 more than the Toshiba (at newegg).

Is the build quality of IBM worth it or is the Toshiba M2 just as good? Reliability is a priority. What do you think?

 

I would buy the Thinkpad. I have seen a lot of the M2's come in lately with systemboard failures. Seems to have the same reliability as the Tecra S1, which also has a lot of systemboard issues. The M2 is probably one of better Toshiba laptops as far as quality, but Toshiba in general has had serious quality control problem over the past couple of years on their laptops.

The T40 series has a very good reliabilty track record. They are ideal for people who require good reliabilty for day to day use, such as business people or students.

 

Djay2001, thanks for the insight. Do you think it is necessary to go with a three year warranty? Do most problems (system board crashes, etc) occur within the first year? I had a Gateway and a Toshiba that malfunctioned after the first year. Is that the exception or the rule?

 

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