[Thinkpad] NEED NEW COMPUTER FOR DAUGHTER

[Stuart F. Biggar]

> I'd think an A20 should be plenty powerful enough for a kid in college. 
>   Put enough RAM in it to make XP (or Win2K) happy and add a wireless 
> card.  What does it have to do?  Typical office apps (Word, Excel, 
> Powerpoint) plus browsing?

I wish that were true but my experience says otherwise.

Our uni now requires PCs in the dorms to run some monitoring
program that ensures that the PC is up to date on anti-virus
and other "required" stuff.  If the machine isn't up-to-date,
connecting to the network for anything other than doing updates
is not allowed. The same restrictions may be coming to the rest
of the network.  The provided anti-virus is a CPU hog as is some
other stuff.  I have used an A21p (512 MB with fast drive) with
the required software load and it is so slow as to be frustrating.
My T43p (2.13 GHz with 2 GB) is OK except during startup.  The way
things are going, a dual-core CPU is a good idea for the near
future.  Also make sure the wifi can do WPA2 with AES.  I'm
sure there are other traps for older hardware and I doubt if
it is going to get any better with time.

I know this is a Thinkpad list but some of our students (grad)
have recently switched from PCs to MacBooks with dual-core CPUs.
The ones that made the switch are happy - OS X appears nice
and appears to use fewer resources than Vista (or even XP).  And
the University edicts for Macs are way easier to deal with and
no monitoring software (at least so far).

Stuart

> 
> I use a variety of laptops, from an A21p with 384MB to a T2x-equivalent 
> Dell w/512MB to a T40-equiv Dell D600 with 1GB to a brand new M65 spec'd 
> like your 'NU recommendation' below.  You know what, for most 
> non-intensive usage I can't tell them apart.  Sure, when I've got 15 
> apps open at once on my main work system it is responding better than 
> the old A21p would do in the same situation, but that's not 'typical' 
> non-techie usage.
> 
> Save the money for other things.  The laptop is probably going to take a 
> beating at college anyway, plus an old A20 won't be a giant target for 
> thieves either like a T60 would be.
> 
> Rob
> 
> The Floyds wrote:
> 
> > My daughter is headed off to college and needs a new computer.  She has a
> > thinkpad A20 and I am thinking of a T60 or T61 but don't have any experience
> > with buying a new one.  Any suggestions on what to get her?  She is not a
> > gamer and NU suggests  at minimum a 1.83 Ghz core 2 duo processor with win
> > XP pro or vista business, 128 MB video, 60 G hard drive, DVD+/- RW,  2 GB
> > ram, 10/100 ethernet, 802.11b/g wireless, minimum 2 USB ports, 3 yrs onsite
> > next business day and complete damage recovery.  I don't know what complete
> > damage recovery refers to either.  They figure this system should last her 4
> > yrs but she plans on medical school so she will need one longer.  Any help
> > you experts out there can offer is much appreciated.
> >  
> 
> 
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