Does IBM even make a laptop? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Seriously.
Alright, Toshiba is going to support the drive. They’ll wipe it in the process, it will take 10 to 30 days to be returned, and they won’t give me an update on its progress, but, hey at least I get a free HD.
Huh? You’ve got to be kidding me.
It used to be the 2 top dogs in the lappy biz were IBM(top dog), and Toshiba(second fiddle). The Toshiba Portege has dropped off in both build strength and quality as well as human factors like useability. The IBM is still the best made unit on the market, IMO, and Toshiba is still number 2, but there are now other contenders like Sony who make a generally acceptable product for laptop users.
IBM has just sold off it’s manufacturing arm for computers, so who knows where that will head, and they already sold off theiur hard drive manufacturing a while back, so IBM isn’t shit anymore. Kinda sad.
I still have an old IBM Laptop. It’s a 133MHz unit, and it still works well albeit slow as molasses.
Sam
Anyone see that new pimp Viao?
No part of it is thicker then a pencil. Looks like a dustpan.
$3,000 though, but one can dream, or rob a bank.
So, to extend my point a bit, I built a Compaq 2200 at hpshopping.com and an IBM ThinkPad T42 at the above link, both with 15" XGA screen, both with 40GB hard drives, wireless networking, Pentium M processors (HP’s at 1.6 GHz, IBM’s at 1.5), 512MB or ram, and CD-RW/DVD-ROM drives.
The Comaq model was $1,103.00. The Thinkpad, $1,778.00. Which of those do you think is built better, with sturdier parts? HP has horrible margins on most of their PCs (like, the division averaged 1% last quarter), so they could probably build something as solid as a Thinkpad for what IBM sells it for, but that’s really a niche market these days, when everyone wants the cheapest thing.
-lv
When I came into the pit, it said “Fuck HP!!!” - most recent post: LordVor
yuk yuk yuk 
Oh, duh. The “Thinkpad.” For some reason, I was drawing a blank on seeing “IBM Laptop” ads. I could picture Dell, HP, Toshiba, even Sony but couldn’t see IBM. That’s odd. I wonder what IBM’s marketing dept would say about that.
Anyway, I thought that all name brands (e.g. Toshiba, HP, IBM), were pretty comparable and that the the $399 off-brand computers were the low end. I didn’t realize that IBM was the Toyota of computers.
We’ve also got some old Think Pads knocking around. All are still going very well. Very good build quality on IBM machines. I worked for the company and all I ever got was concerns about quality not quantity. Every company I’ve ever worked for talked about quality first figures second, IBM were the only company that I believed. Screwed them competitively but they made great work horses.