How often do YOU buy a new ThinkPad?

with the ultrabase the x200 does everything I want from laptop. Luckily my mom doesn't know much computers, she uses my thinkcentre for stockbroking softwares and surfing webs.

 

Ah, now we know where the finances behind the ThinkPad museum come from!

 

Just what I was thinking.

 

Haha

Regarding TP's - Im also thinking about collecting my ThinkPad's as time goes by, but given that computers are not cheap it will take lots of time to collect few more ThinkPad's for me, 2-3 years as bare minimum between every upgrade, unless I start to buy old school ThinkPads for the sake of trying them out and having them . Yes, I like gadgets, quite alot, I just hope that when I upgrade I wont need to sell my then-old-ThinkPad in order to collect funds to buy new laptop and also I hope that all my laptops will be functioning properly so I will have working bunch of laptops and not just old garbage that I cant neither use nor sell

On the other hand its very hard to have more than one laptop and not want to use them all at the same time, so having many laptops and being able to actually do all my stuff with one or maximum two would be rather awkward too. Why all those laptops that I could be using are sitting on my desk or under it and NOT DOING ANYTHING?! ARGH!

 

I started with a late-model T61 15". As I owned it in its first year, I realized I wanted a bit smaller system, and that the WXGA display was just too low-resolution from me. My SO got the T61 (which is still perfect for her) and I bought a T400 with the WXGA+ screen. Over time, I've maxed its RAM, swapped the hard drive, and upgraded the processor, and swapped the keyboard for a T60 one. Swapped the wifi card in the SO's T61, and upgraded the RAM in it as well.

I haven't felt a need for a T410. The T420 would be incredibly appealing if it had a WXGA+ screen. However, due to a bug in the current switchable graphics driver, I'm waiting to see how Lenovo handles it before I consider purchasing another ThinkPad. JameZ on the forums submitted it to engineering, but if they take another six months, my next system will probably be a Dell Latitude (I love my ThinkPad, but waiting a year for the first fix to the switchable graphics driver was bad enough).

I love my ThinkPad, and those who provide support in the Lenovo forums are great folks; I just wish that Lenovo sales, customer service, and depot repair weren't such a crap-shoot.

 

Very true. I agonized over this for a while. But then I had to give in. So, for the moment, our home will have the x201 (when it arrives), the R400, and maybe a S-10 (some cheap variant of it) to serve my partner's portable needs.

 

Just got my second thinkpad t410s and wife took the 14month old x301 ... but I have always replaced yearly...

 

My mom did finance my extravagant purchases during the uni years, and i contributed to about $15,000 dollars to Steve Jobs Apple. Inc. But i used my own salary to purchase these machines, which also why i hardly have any savings during these few years from working. I guess everyone has some sort of vice, and mine happens to be Thinkpads.

P.S. Realizing i have bought too many laptops, this is why this year i will not purchase as many Thinkpads.

 

Well...you could continue to buy them and ship over some to us less fortunates who cannot access the different CTOs that I keep reading about!!!! I think some of us suggested this in an earlier post/ thread.

 

Your use of "as many" and "Thinkpads" implies that there's still more than one purchase on the horizon. Methinks I could have fun with your Thinkpadding budget.

This year may be the first "Year of multiple Thinkpads" for me. I want a W7xxds series for a Linux workstation, which I will probably treat myself to as a Christmas present, and I'm thinking of picking up an X300 from ebay, just for nostalgia. Mom's laptop refresh might include a Thinkpad later this year as well if I can't breathe new life into her Vostro 1520, I'm even considering getting her an Edge series unit, but it's more likely she'll end up with an SL or a lower spec T410 from the outlet. I might also hook my father up with an X120e when he starts grad school this year. Prior to this I've been a 3-5 year upgrader, although I have had my collection grow via gifting. My A21, 760ED, and G41 all came to me free of charge for various reasons. None of the gifted units have ever been my primary notebook, though.

 

If you are getting the X30x series, i would highly suggest you get the X301 with the displayport and intel 4500 MHD GPU.

 

I might spring for it if the price is right, but I'm buying it more as an "engineering art piece" of sorts, rather than a daily use machine. Like the W701ds, I like it less for its specification and usefulness, and more for the fact that Lenovo is willing to push the envelope of innovation without sacrificing the Thinkpad's badge of quality. I'd buy it as something I can whip out when someone shows up with a MBA, just to prove to them that companies other than Apple can bring innovation to the table. If the X301 fits my price range when I'm ready to buy, I'll definitely consider it, though.

 

ebay is your friend in that case.

 

Well that is fine, if you are going to have it as a museum trophy piece, but if you are going to actually use it, then i would suggest you spend that extra few dollars and get the X301. W701ds is a great machine, but it is pretty much a desktop bound laptop.

Don't really use ebay all that much.

 

For selling those old laptops to buy "newer" Thinkpads.

 

If i was buying these laptops for reselling then i wouldn't have bought them in the first place, i am collecting them. I can buy newer thinkpads if i wish, but right now there is really nothing special in the thinkpads lineup that i really want. The only machine i want right now is the X220, but i don't really need them at the moment, since my X200, X301, X61 are doing just fine.

So i can wait a little bit and wait for the price to normalise a bit, instead of paying the higher price charged during the price skimming phase.