bobpeers -> blog

My old laptop from 2003 runs the original Centrino (Banias) with a 1.3MHz Pentium M. Up till now it’s dual booted Windows XP and Fedora 9 but since I never use it I decided to wipe clean and just install Fedora 11.

It actually runs amazingly well on a full gnome desktop, it’s fast, responsive, boots in about 30 seconds and shuts down in about 5 seconds! I’m sure it actually runs faster than it did with the old install.

I’m pleased that a new OS still runs fine on an old laptop and despite the increasing size and complexity of the OS it doesn’t seem to have impacted performance.

My girlfriends mother has just got a new (old) laptop. It’s a business laptop that’s a few years old, a Lenovo Thinkpad T43p to be precise. I’ve read lots about Thinkpads but never actually used one for any length of time before but there’s a few things I quickly noticed.

1. This model has a 14.1″ SXGA+ screen running at 1400×1050 and the quality is fantastic, incredibly sharp and clear. Even though it’s only 14.1″ you feel as though you have plenty of space. Many 14″ laptops run at 1280×800 or less (like my HP 6930p) which I find rather limiting.
2. Build quality is superb, it feels as though it will last a lifetime.
3. Great keyboard, easy to type on right from first use (although the lack of a Win key and the Fn key placement is very hard to adjust to).
4. This model had a Intel Pentium M 760 / 2 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a standard 80GB 5400rpm disk but felt very fast and responsive in everyday use. It felt much faster than I expected it to.

Along with the genuinely useful Lenovo software available I’ll definitely consider buying a Lenovo myself in future. I know that Linux runs fine on them and with them being a staple of many large businesses they get a lot of people installing Linux so the web has plenty of sources of help with Linux on Lenovo laptops.