IBM Thinkpad T42p 2379-DYU


2379-DYU Specs:


For instructions on how to install Linux, see my page on Installing RedHat Enterprise WS 3.0 and Fedora Core 2.

Impressions:

The following is reproduced from my posting to forum.thinkpads.com, an excellent source of information about IBM Thinkpads.  Because the forum was such a great help to me in my decision to purchase a Thinkpad, I posted the following review there, so that people could learn more about the new 15" T42.

What I want in a laptop
I am a computational scientist and do most of my work in Linux.  In general, I value text resolution most highly since I typically have 2-3 terminal windows open plus a text editor for whatever I am doing.  I also do visualization and one of my goals was to have a laptop that could accomplish some basic tasks in this regard.  I travel alot, and I always carry on my bags, weight and portability were a huge concern.

The T40 series was basically my choice from day one.  I have always loved the IBM trackpoint, and the T4x offers the thinnest, lightest solution that does not really sacrifice power.  To me, the 14.1" screen models are the absolute perfect form factor...just big enough to give you a good amount of screen, but still small enough to be extremely portable.  The other concern that the the T4x was one of the only systems that give you more than XGA resolution.  As I said, I value screen real-estate tremendously, so the extra resolution is a huge plus.  An extra bonus would be something like a screen that uses a newer technology like IPS or MVA in order to achieve higher brightness, contrast, and viewing angle.  But so far, none of the ultra-portable laptops had this ability (although Fujitsu has just come out with an MVA screen for their 13" laptop...but only in XGA).

Why I got the 2379-DYU
I was all set to order the T41p (2373-GEU) and one week before I ordered, I heard that IBM was set to announce the T42 line.  So I decided to wait.  I still would have happily bought the T41p except for one thing: Flexview screen.  After looking at pictures, I decided that the 15" T42 was not that much bigger than the 14" T4x, so I bit the bullet and got a 15" T42p, as yet unseen.

Size/weight
I have to say, I am very surprised at how little I notice the extra bulk of the 15" model.  Honestly, when I compare it side-by-side to my friends' T40s, yes it is every so slightly bigger and heavier, but in practical terms, this does little to affect how portable I find it.  Aside from the fact that it adds an extra 0.6 pounds to my backpack every day (over a 14.1" model), I cannot say I suffer any loss in portability whatsoever.  The benefit of the Flexview screen, for me personally, surpasses downside of the slightly extra bulk.  In a perfect world, I would have loved a 14.1" Flexview screen.  But in a world of compromise, I feel I made the right choice.

Flexview
The Flexview screen is fantastic.  I compared it to my fiance's Toshiba's "Clear Advanced Super View" screen (which I think is actually an MVA screen made by Fujitsu), I actually prefer the Flexview.  It has less variance in color and intensity over viewing angle than the Toshiba.  The text is super-crisp and bright.  On thing to note is that the Flexview screen (manufactured by ID-Tech, a Taiwanese company  partly owned by IBM) has anti-glare characteristics superior to most other high-viewing-angle monitors I have seen on Toshibas, Fujitsus, and Sonys.  The only drawback is now I notice how blurry my 6-year-old Mitsubishi CRT on my home workstation is. :)  Some people complain about the small text under UXGA.  Under Linux, it is incredibly simple to scale up the size of fonts for anything I use, so I so not have the issues that other people seem to have under Windows.  In Windows, I just selected "Large Fonts" and "Cleartype" and everything is easily readable for me.  I use Mozilla Firefox as a browser and I can scale up fonts in any web page with the touch of a button.

The response time is the only thing for which the Flexview is less than perfect.  As a test, I have tried playing Neverwinter Nights and Enter the Matrix.  In both, I can notice some blurring as I move around due to the slow pixel response time.  The most acute example of this is in Matrix, when I am looking at a brightly lit object (like a white sign or a TV screen in the game) and I rotate the view.  This leaves a white streak behind the bright object that lasts a fraction of a second.  In the end, however, if I just settle down and play the game, I no longer notice this kind of thing.  Part of the reason I notice these kind of imperfections is that the screen is so good.  With a dimmer screen with less contrast and a more washed-out appearance, it would be much harder to notice this kind of thing.

Again, in a world of compromise, having a faster response time would probably have meant more power usage and possibly more weight.  The pixel response is fast enough that playing DVDs is no problem, so one can keep oneself amused on long flights.  Otherwise, since I do not actually intend to play games on this machine, nor does the bulk of IBM's clientele, I feel they found the right balance between pixel response time and power consumption.

The only "ghosting" effect I have noticed is if I go to http://webmail.att.net, I notice a very very very slight whitening of the blue background directly underneath the while login box.  I would never have noticed this at all if Conmee had not pointed it out on his 15" SXGA+ screen.  I have not noticed any other artifacts whatsoever.  Also, I have no dead pixels (knock on wood).

FireGL T2
I have not done any benchmarking on it, but it plays Enter the Matrix and NWN more smoothly than the GeForce4 Ti 4600 on my Athlon XP2500+ workstation. In Linux, glxgears runs at around 1700fps with the ATI drivers installed...which actually is kind of pathetic considering that my old 1.2GHz Althon with a Geforce2 Ti achieves 1350fps. Maybe there is some kind of upper limit on glxgears, or the ATI Linux driver is mighty lame compared to the Windows one (which is entirely possible). I got the fancy graphics in order to run openDX under Linux...we'll see how that goes.

Battery life
I get about 3.5 hours on the standard 6-cell battery in "Bettery Performance" mode with WiFi enabled and the screen on brightness setting 2 or 3.  This pretty much fits what the IBM TABOOK says.  A 9-cell battery (that comes with every other "p" model) would therefore last 5.25 hours.  This is somewhat less than the 14.1" models, but the IPS screen eats up more power than the 14.1" TN LCD.  It's something like an extra 2-3 watts.

Hard drive
This model is also the only "p" model to come with something other than the 60GB 7200RPM drive.  In the end, I am actually glad it came with the 80GB since with a dual-boot system, I really do need the extra space.  The drive is very quiet and does not get hot or warm up the palmrest noticeably.  The only annoyance I had with it at the very beginning was that when it parked its heads (which it does aggressively, and after something less than 1 second of idle time) it made this "tick" sound that was, shall we say, quite audible.  Much more audible than any other noise the drive made when it was busy.  In Windows, even if you are not touching the machine, it will access the drive about once a second for at least 10 seconds (and after each access, the heads would park themselves again: "tick").  So the machine would sit there idle, and I would hear "tick......tick......tick.....tick...."  After about a day or two, however, the intensity of the "tick" decreased dramatically, and now although I can still hear it, it is quiet enough that I tune it out with no problem.

I have heard various things about the reason behind this ticking. The one thing I know for sure (from the Hitachi website) is that one of the features of the drive is that the heads actually park by sliding up a ramp that is beyond the radius of the actual platens. This substantially increases the robustness of the drive in case of a sudden shock, since the heads will not get bent and there is no chance of them carving out trenches the platens. The more popular rumors are that the drive actually "breaks itself in" by aggresively parking its heads during the first day or so of use. After that, it goes into its normal usage mode, and does not make such a big ticking sound. I do not know for sure if this is true, but I can attest to the fact that the loud ticking does go away after a day or so, so if you hear it from your new T42, wait a couple of days before panicking.

I cannot make any speed comparisons to the 7200RPM drive because I have never used one.  It is definitely slower than the 7200RPM (8MB cache) 3.5" Western Digital 800JB and 2000JB models I have on my workstations, but that's to be expected.

Summary
Overall, I am extremely satisfied with my T42p.  The slightly extra bulk and power drain are, for me, worth sacrificing to get the Flexview/IPS screen.  The screen is really wonderful.  I cannot keep saying that enough.  If you want to get an idea of how it looks, go to Fry's and look at any Fujitsu that has their "Crystal View" screen and imagine the same screen, but without the glossy reflective coat (the Flexview has superior anti-glare characteristics, although I think the color depth on the Fujitsu may be slightly better).  An alternative would be to go to Best Buy or CompUSA and look at a Sony XBrite screen, but also without the glossy reflective coat (and even then I do not think the XBrite display is as good as either the "Crystal View" or Flexview).  Then compare these to a run of the mill machine.  This will give you a feeling for the difference between the 14.1" TN screen and the 15" Flexview/IPS.  Then you can decide for yourself whether the Flexview screen is worth it to you.  It might not be...everybody is different.

The keyboard is rock solid.  The fan makes virtually no noise.  Build quality is first-class.  Everything one would expect (although in the past might not necessarily have gotten) from a Thinkpad.