Last Saturday was cold and wet. I had my TP X40 in a bag. While walking down some outdoor stairs which were very slippery I slipped, landed on my backside, and stopped myself from sliding all the way down the stairs by rolling over. I also broke the computer. The casing protecting the screen and the screen itself both cracked. The right hand rest was damaged. The three years extensive guarantee only expired a few weeks ago. CRAP.
It switched on fine, and even the left 1/3 of the screen was kinda working. The TP series is just so reliable I am still deeply convinced that they are one of the only two makes of Windows laptop worth buying.
I need a new light laptop anyway, so on Sunday I picked up the latest top-ish spec TP X61, from 2C (again!) in Star House, for a bit under HK$14K. The new Intel Penyrn chip for laptop is due to appear in new laptops very soon, but the Core 2 Duo platform is already very good, and I need the replacement computer for the CNY holiday.
(I did consider getting a MacBook, but I want something lighter and have the need to do some heavy data analysis and lifting with Office Excel in the next few weeks.)
It comes with Windows Vista. I considered upgrading to WinXP (which must be done by the dealer) but I didn’t want to hang around for two+ hours or go back to pick up the computer next day, so I put up with it.
Hardware wise, the machine is fast. The screen appears to be brighter. Battery life feels substantially better than the X40 (got a new battery for it not too long ago). The fingerprint security actually works rather well. Still excellent hardware, despite no longer being an IBM TP, but now a Lenovo TP.
Windows Vista is not as bad as I expected. I have had some unresolved problems with VMWare server, but the latest beta is supposed to support Vista. Network Stumbler fails to pick up any Wifi APs around. Otherwise everything I use seems to work fine. Just accept that the Windows system is fragile and a total PITA, and one would be happier.
Data migration wasn’t too bad because I only reorganized, backed up and restored everything on the X40 not too long ago. Reinstalling all the software took ~12 hours though. I couldn’t figure out how to get the TP Rescue and Recovery to restore my user files from the X40 backup, and I don’t think it is even possible to restore Rescue and Recovery data to a computer of different OS/model, so had the X40 been a total lost I could have been totally fscked unless I could get hold of another X40 to roll back to. The quest for backup solution on the Windows platform is still on.
Excellent hardware. Let down by the OS.