I finally decided that it was perhaps time to finally upgrade my machine. While it certainly continued to offer satisfactory performance for everyday work (e.g. e-mail, web and "office" work), it was a bit slow when it came to scientific simulations.
So having figured all this out, it was time to look around and check out my options.
I've always admired the latest Apple Titanium Powerbooks. They have great design, fabulous battery life and a very nice operating system to boot. The first big question was "Should I switch?". As you may have guessed, I did not, for a few big reasons.
So those points, combined with the fact that I would have to migrate my data and documents, Apple fell out of the running. (Now keep in mind, that's just for me, your needs may be different and the issues I'm concerned with may not matter. I still think the Powerbooks, and Mac OS X, make a great combination).
Acer: A long time ago, this was in Texas Instrument's portfolio until they decided to focus on other things. They still make quite nice laptops, and I know a few friends who have one. Nice, and so far reliable. I get an academic discount on these laptops from the university. Rejected because they aren't outstanding in any particular way in terms of battery life or display.
Dell: Okay, I admit, I have a bias against these guys and their laptops, because I know it's basically a re-branded "white-box" laptop. There is hardly any innovation going on here. I know a lot of my colleagues who have Dell laptop's, including my supervisor. They have not displayed impressive reliability, and when my boss commented about how great the display was on my old laptop (compared to his new one), that sort of sealed the deal. (Mind you, his reliability problems and issues with the technical supported getting it solved didn't do Dell any favours either).
HP/Compaq: About half their models were born of Digital (DEC) before Compaq bought them out. They seem to be hard to get around here, at least the good ones. Also, there isn't any particular stand out feature. They have some laptops with great exteriors (maybe even better than Apple) and light weight and some laptops with great internals, but none that put the both together.
IBM: The incumbent because I've had zero problems with my old laptop. Apart from the weight, it's almost perfect. I've had the power supply blow out, but IBM shipped a replacement to me the next day, along with a pre-paid box to send the faulty one back. I also get an academic discount with IBM Thinkpads. As a bonus, IBM Thinkpads have always been known for their innovative features and OS/2 compatibility.
Let me tell you, the T40p is not a cheap machine. $4200 CDN from IBM Canada. However, as I mentioned, I get a special academic + volume discount, and even better, my other half gets re-imbursement from her employer for a computer purchase. I would not have been able to afford it otherwise! (Those of you without my perks, I'd recommend you try Thinkpads.com. Good prices, and the operator, Bill Morrow, is a nice guy to deal with. You may find that even with exchange rate and shipping, the prices will still come in under IBM's web price).
Anyways, enough rambling, let's get on with the review and how well it works with OS/2! An installation with eComStation and Linux will be tested later.
I'm a practical guy, and since there's plenty of disk space for me, no need to wipe out the default Windows XP Pro that was pre-installed. Whip out your favourite disk partitioning utility. You could probably use DFSee. I used a later version of Partition Magic (8.0) that could handle the NTFS partition. All I did was shrink the WinXP partition, and move it to leave space for OS/2's Boot Manager at the start of the hard drive.
And...ummm...that's it. Though if you're doing this, you may also want to make sure you download all the OS/2 drivers before you start.
After the initial setup, it will ask you to reboot for the GUI portion of the setup. Here's some tips that may save you hassles later.
And that's it. Aside from deferring some of the driver install, you don't have to play any tricks or work around any problems. It will install easily and OS/2 will boot up just fine. The wireless, unfortunately, has no driver yet, and I have not tested the modem yet. But as I mentioned, this isn't a priority for me.
The installation of SNAP was absolutely straightforward. There was no messing required and it worked "out of the box" with the default parameters. I have to admit, it was a bit of a gamble, because the T40p comes with an ATI Mobility FireGL 9000 and it is not supported under SNAP. I took the chance because I know it is the same silicon as the Radeon 9000, which is supported. As I had hoped, SNAP ended up detecting it as a plain Radeon 9000.
I was fortunate that I had no dead pixels at all on the display. The pixel density of the screen (~124DPI) is a bit higher than my old one (120DPI), so everything appeared just as sharp. The off-angle viewing is also comparable, which is very good compared to many other LCD's I've seen. But it's still apparently no match for the FlexView which is on the Thinkpad R50p. The only downside I've seen with this display is, for some reason, there appears to be slightly more glare on this display than my old one. Nothing I'm not entirely sure because the old 770X was thicker and also had "feet" to tilt up the laptop as well, so the screen position with respect to my office lights may not be the same.
The summary? Thumbs up for this screen! No complaints. (By the way, the screen is held to the body by solid metal hinges. The IBM rep demonstrated the toughness of the T40 by holding his T40 by the screen, horizontally, and "bouncing" the laptop from the hinges. I dare you to try that with yours).
First, what you don't hear. And that's the T40p. This is a really quiet machine. On OS/2, the fan rarely comes on, and even at full-speed, it isn't loud. The hard drive is barely audible. Now back to the real audio...
You can download the audio drivers for the SoundMax chipset from IBM. Or, they are also available from hobbes. Installation is also a breeze.
Win-OS2 sound is installed by default, but nothing special there. The audio is
not shared between Win-OS2 and OS2. For OS/2, a mixer is also installed.
Okay, that's great. But then I realized ... the drivers do not support MIDI!
UGH! There is a bit of a work around at hand though, you can install TiMIDIty, which
is sort of a software MIDI implementation. I warn you to read the installation instructions
carefully to make sure you don't miss the last step, which is "manual". Otherwise,
the install is easy and I now have MIDI working.
The volume, and mute, is controlled by 3 separate rubber buttons above the keyboard. They work fine in OS/2, but you don't get the on-screen display that I get when I'm in Windows XP. Personally, I'm not fond of the buttons, I much prefer the single volume knob from the old 770X. What's wrong with the knob? In one intuitive control, I cover the functions that now takes 3 buttons, plus it is infinitely tuneable. (Sadly, same trend towards buttons in my car too).
The drawback to the sound? It's the downright most awful set of speakers I've ever heard on a laptop. Totally atrocious. If you want decent sound, use external speakers or headphones. I know that audio isn't the biggest priority with business type laptops, but for a laptop at this cost, it wouldn't hurt to improve it a bit. It's terrible!
You're on your own with the modem, since I have no need for it. The modem is a software based modem using a Lucent chipset. You can download beta drivers from hobbes, but I'm not sure it will work with the T40p.
Both devices are supported in the default install of MCP2, but you should install the new Single Mouse driver from IBM if you get a chance.
Now that I have a Trackpad, I'm surprised to discover that I prefer the Trackpoint! It has been much improved over the old one in the 770X and comes with 3 different pointer types, so it'll be easier to find one that's comfortable for you.
I noticed that the Trackpad was overly sensitive sometimes and inadvertent caused a button press (press to select is on) fairly often. If you like the Trackpoint, I suggest turning off the Trackpad in BIOS. The added bonus is that you'll get access to the 3rd button on the Trackpoint back. Yes, for whatever reason, if you activate the Trackpad, the 3rd button is disabled.
I haven't tried the suspend option via the power object, but I have it set to auto-suspend when I close the lid. And ... it worked perfectly. Even the mouse pointer and networking.
As for the battery performance, it is absolutely incredible. The claimed battery time is over 7 hours. I had run the first 50% of my battery without Speedstep (so it was full speed), when I checked the Power object, it estimated that I still had over 3 hours of run-time left! I have no reason to doubt IBM's claim here. With Speedstep involved, it looks like I can easily get 7 hours out of it. (For some reason, OS/2 always seems great with power. On my last 770X, I continously looped a MPEG movie and it was headed for the quoted 3.5hr run-time on battery).
The IBM Thinkpad T40p is one expensive machine, but it is also quite possibly the ultimate portable laptop right now (okay, perhaps exceeded only by its new sibling the T41p). It seems to be well built and full of nice useability features (for example, the keyboard light).
It's great for us that the T40p works great under OS/2 as well. The only hitch is possibly in the modem, and the wireless networking. Both can be worked around by using external PC Cards. Fortunately for me, none of these matter for my usage, so I'd give it a perfect thumbs up for OS/2 compatibility.
One thing I missed is the absence of a serial port. For most people it won't matter, but I need this port to interface with other equipment. (It's routers, CompactPCI evaluation chassis and other stuff most people don't need or use).
After I've used it a bit, I'll write up future reviews on reliability and useability. Hopefully, I'll get some time to try installing eComStation and other OS's to see how that goes.
One thing I should note already. Windows XP has a beautiful looking interface, OS/2
really needs some prettying up. On the flip side, even using Windows XP for a few hours
at a time has exposed just how skin deep the beauty is! OS/2's PM and WPS are so much
more consistent and easy and just simply more useable.
This article is courtesy of www.os2ezine.com. You can view it online at http://www.os2ezine.com/20040316/page_3.html.