My old laptop, a trusty Thinkpad X30, began falling apart recently — literally, the plastic case developed cracks in the corners and pieces started to fall off. I don’t blame IBM: This machine got a lot of use during the years when I was working on my book — even fell off the table once or twice. It did good service. But I’m not going to trust my work to a computer that is shedding its protective casing like space shuttle tiles. So it was time to buy a new laptop.
I’ve been using ultracompact Thinkpads since 1998 or so and the days of the model 560. These computers have never failed me — never had a hard drive crash or other awful malfunction — despite years of abuse. (Mac folks, I love your operating system, but I don’t love its laptop hardware, so until there’s a Mac laptop that’s as lightweight and reliable as a Thinkpad, and that has a trackpoint-style pointer, it’s just not going to happen for me. Sorry.)
In ordering a new Thinkpad X60s, I wondered whether anything would have changed under the new Lenovo management. The good news, I’m happy to say, is that this Thinkpad continues to feel solid and behave well. The keyboard is if anything a little better than the X30’s (except I absolutely abhor the insertion of the “Windows” key and that funny other key on the right between “alt” and “ctrl” — what does it do, simulate the right-click? who needs it? why crowd the other keys? my fingers liked “alt” and “ctrl” right where they were, thank you!). It’s fascinating to put the new screen next to the old laptop’s LCD and see how 3-4 years of constant use have dimmed the display — something one doesn’t realize without this direct side-by-side comparison.
Thumbs down to Lenovo only for not offering a simple port replicator for the X60s — they make you spring for the fancier dock. Other than that, I’m pretty happy. And no, there was no way I’d wait to buy a new computer in order to graduate to Windows Vista. My philosophy is, never buy a 1.0 product. These ultracompact Thinkpads are so good because IBM has years of experience making them. Similarly, Windows XP (once it’s been upgraded and patched ad nauseam) has had most of its flaws beaten out of it in the years since its debut. Anyone who goes with Vista at launch has to be ready for a boatload of snags and bugs.
One eye-opening sidelight on globalization: the Lenovo web site sent me a UPS tracking number once my order shipped. When I plugged it in at UPS, I could follow my package’s progress all the way from Shanghai to the US. Not much more than a decade ago we were arguing about whether, you know, it was OK for advanced US computer technology to be made available to China. Now, we track the packages of advanced US-designed, China-manufactured computer technology from China’s ports to our doorsteps.
Anytime you move from computer to computer there is the hassle of migrating data (not too bad in the era of voluminous external drives — and migrating that way automatically leaves you with a convenient backup copy). The bigger hassle these days is installing your apps — assuming you haven’t gone completely over to the web-based model, which I certainly haven’t. Thankfully, Ecco Pro still installs nicely, from disk or download. Some of my other stalwart apps have gone free (like Opera) or free/ad-supported/paid (like Eudora), so it’s just a matter of download time plus digging up an old key. (If you have an OS problem, though, you have to deal with the horror of Microsoft activation — today Dave Winer reports one egregious example.)
But with the software installation comes the patching, and that is something of a nightmare. In the case of Windows XP, I dutifully installed a mountain of security patches, but declined the installation of the “Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool” (I’ve protected myself extremely well from malicious software without it). Once I turned down the current month’s edition of this tool, the auto-update wanted to install each previous monthly version, going back to its inception a couple of years ago. There was no way to defeat this that I could figure out. other than laboriously saying “no thanks” to AutoUpdate each time it turned the calendar back a month.
Then there was the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Once installed, it decided there were three critical patches I needed. But each one demanded that I install it, then reboot, separately. WTF? Three reboots for some lousy updates to a piece of software for reading a proprietary document format that I only use when people make me?
Adobe is full of smart engineers. Can’t they roll these things up, or at least set them up so the reboot only triggers once, after all the downloaded updates have installed? And gee, wouldn’t it be nice if they actually told us what these updates did, so we could decide for ourselves whether they actually matter?
Once again, we are asked to do things for the convenience of our software tools. The ostensible servant calls the shots.
[tags]thinkpad, laptops, software hassles, globalization[/tags]
Post Revisions:
There are no revisions for this post.