Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

My trusty x60s is "written off" this year, so it was time to get a new machine. Blatant consumerism and all that.

Unless you drink the Apple kool-aid and are able to put up with their programmer-unfriendly keyboards (though that's gotten better of late), ThinkPads are still the only reasonable choice for a laptop. The logical successor to x60s was the x200s.

While I'm generally very happy with the machine (it's even lighter than the previous one and the nine-cell battery lasts even longer - about 10 hours, PXE just works, suspend/resume just works, it still has a proper nipple instead of a silly touchpad -- basically, it's still a ThinkPad) Lenovo made some really strange design decisions this time round.

• Why does it have to be so wide? As far as I can tell, the extra width is mainly caused by a wide bezel on each side of the screen. It's still very compact (about the size of a sheet of A4 paper), but it makes you wonder.
• The increase in width has subtly changed the keyboard dimensions in a way I can't quite put my finger on. I seem to be making the strangest typos on this keyboard. I'm sure muscle memory will catch up eventually.
• Why would you put a camera on a business laptop? Does anyone else feel uncomfortable staring at a camera all day long? I know it's not doing anything (because I don't put drivers for that useful thing in my kernel), but it's just "there". All the time. I'm looking for a sticker to put over it.
• The nine-cell battery sticks out the back a bit, like the extended batteries on X-series ThinkPads have always done. It no longer sticks out over the entire width of the laptop though. Which again makes me wonder why the laptop is wider. Surely they could have made a 12-cell battery that sticks out over the entire width, or just preserved the previous width?

I have basically come to terms with the idea of "wide screen", even though it's unnatural and crazy. I find myself using :vsplit more than split, but I still think it's nuts.

This particular model comes with an Ericsson F3507g Mobile Broadband Minicard, which is a very fancy gadget. I haven't tried it yet, because I don't have a spare SIM, but it brings an amazing collection of radios with it. It also adds a privacy concern: "theft deterrents" in the BIOS. I don't particularly want my laptop reporting my location (there's a GPS radio in it) to anyone who listens at all times.

Presumably, these things need operating system support and I can turn them off in the BIOS, but how do I know they're really off? Time to spend some more quality time with the bootloader to make really sure.

Overall, I'm very happy with the new gadget. It does what I need it to do and will presumably do it until it's written off.

I'm still trying to decide what to do with the x60s now. Other than the keyboard, which is predictably beaten up, it's in fairly good shape. Probably donate it to a school or a geek in the larval stages.