Thinkpads Forum

Hello -

New poster here. I am looking to purchase a used IBM notebook, probably a small & light X series. My requirement is for a small and rugged machine with effective powersaving, wifi and a decent screen. Build quality is very important. I have wanted a tiny IBM for years.

The machine will be used for work and travelling, probably with a dual boot of Fedora + something non-windows. I am tempted to stick another distro or possibly Chrome OS on there. While I'm away it's a netbook for skype, photo processing, and some blogging and light document editing. Oh, and the odd SD movie.

I already have a 12" Powerbook G4, which I love but it's too big and power-hungry for travel. I also have a Samsung NC10, happily running Fedora 14. Although there is nothing wrong with either, the Samsung has proved too useful at home for me to take on the road, and it seems you can get ex-company thin & light IBMs for as little as £100 now.

Anyone got any recommendations or things to avoid? Any particular Fedora gremlins / gotchas?

Thinking along these lines:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IBM-ThinkPad-X60- ... 0349095365
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IBM-ThinkPad-X40- ... 0547108457
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IBM-THINKPAD-X40- ... 0750758899

Any thoughts would be great.

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I'd take an X60 over an X40 just cause the slow and noisy hard drives in the X4x machines are performance killers. A SATA X60 gets you access to bigger faster SATA drives or SSDs.

FredGarvin wrote:

I'd take an X60 over an X40 just cause the slow and noisy hard drives in the X4x machines are performance killers. A SATA X60 gets you access to bigger faster SATA drives or SSDs.

+ 1. The difference in performance is quite stunning. You could put a ZIF SSD drive in X4x,and it would perform a zillion percent better than it does with the stock drive, but it does take some finagling. With X60 - or better yet X60s - everything is cheaper and more accessible when it comes to upgrades.

Good luck.

I love my X40, but I do like my X60s a lot as well. They both have advantages.

X40

Advantages:

- Sightly smaller
- Full size Ctrl + alt keys on both sides as it lacks a Windows key
- Runs cooler than my X60s
- Slightly brighter display I find (Could be that my X60s was abused, not sure)
- A cosmetic thing, but the Red stripes on the mouse buttons (I like this)
- Cheaper to obtain

Disadvantages:

- 1.8" hdd (Performance killer, also limits size)
- Only 1.5GB Ram
- Windows XP is the newest OS I feel comfortable running on it
- Orange thinklight rather than the white light (Personal preference though)

X60s

Advantages:

- Faster processor
- SATA HDD
- mPCIe
- Newer styled buttons on keyboard (Lacks the red stripe though )
- Has a dedicated Windows key + menu key

Disadvantages:

- Runs hot
- More costly because it's newer
- Limited to 3GB, but not really a big deal IMO
- Smaller ctrl + alt keys, harder to press sometimes.

I can't really think of any other advantages/disadvantages for either computer. I like them both.

My father's X61 Tablet plays very nicely with Fedora 14, for what it's worth. Don't think anything from the X60/X61 range should have any hardware that'll give you any trouble; also, I second the vote for an X60 or newer, just because your life will be so much easier with native SATA hard drive/SSD support.

Yeah, I've nursed an X40 back to life with an SSD but for the money I've spent I could have ponied up just a bit more and got an X60.
Then again, the X40 is a tad smaller and lighter and I'm very happy with the way it's performing now - it runs cool and silent and is fast as hell if you don't need to do any graphics-intensive stuff.

SSD is recommended whichever model you get. If you plan on running linux exclusively then do consider my setup: 16GB SSD for OS, 16GB SD card for storage. It's a blessing to be free from spinning platters.