Reasons for Buying a Refurbished Thinkpad
I wrote this article about three years ago, but never posted it. So finally, here it is... (I should point out this Thinkpad has since expired in a fire.)
I was procrastinating on studying a few weeks ago (as usual) and decided to look at the going prices for refurbished laptops, and most especially refurbished IBM Thinkpads. I stumbled across cedarpc.com and noticed that they had refurbished x60 Thinkpads for around $350, and then a few days later, a x60s (sans battery) showed up Cedar PC for only $240. I thought about it for a while and decided to pull the trigger on it. Now lets follow the logic that allowed me to justify spending $240 on a refurbished piece of 4 year old technology...
Overweight
I have a perfectly functional HP dv2910us laptop right now that I carry to campus almost every day now and despite the fact that it only weighs in at around 5lbs, I've found it to be rather tiresome to carry constantly. The problem is mostly that not only do I have to carry the laptop, I also have to carry the AC charger, a binder, one or two textbooks, and my lunch, and the weight adds up quite quickly. So I've been thinking about getting a lighter machine for a while now. A netbook would be a perfectly logical choice, but after spending an extended period of time trying to type on a 10 inch netbook, I found the miniature keyboard to be absolutely unbearable to use. Of course, I considered getting a new 12 inch light weight laptop, but discarded the idea quickly because I really can't justify spending more then $800 on a device right now.
Obviously, the ipad or any kind of keyboard-less tablet was out of the question (not just because I dislike Apple) but because I can't develop software on the ipad.
The x60s I purchased is by no means expensive, and at 3lbs its quite light.
Shiny Shiny Shiny
I hate glossy screens. Glossy screens are the devil. The glossy screen on my HP bothered me a bit when I first got it, but I was willing to put up with it since the price was so low. Unfortunately, over the past 18 months that I've had my HP laptop, I've discovered that unless I keep the backlight cranked up to over 95%, the glare off the screen under normal lighting is atrocious. And of course, with the backlight up so high, my battery life went from 2.5 hours to about 1 hour.
I'm sitting in a dimly lit corner of the library right now with my backlight set to 90% and I can still see annoying little glare spots from the ceiling lamp twenty feet away, and even more annoyingly, I can see the reflection of my moving fingers at the base of the screen. If I switch to my black background terminal, I can see my entire reflection in all its glory. The only time that this screen doesn't have glare or reflect back everything behind it, is when there are no other ambient light sources in the same room. With the smallest amount of ambient sunlight, my shiny screen turns into a 14 inch mirror, and if I happen to sit next to a window on a sunny day, my screen becomes completely unusable.
Yet for some reasons, glossy screens are the only option for most laptops sold today. Only the high end business laptops and expensive Macbook pros offer matte screens at a premium, which infuriates me to no end.
Loud Howard
My HP has a bit of a problem. When its CPU temperature drops below 118 F, the BIOS decides to go nutty, and it revs the system fans all the way up for a split second, shuts them them down for about a second, and then repeats ad nauseum. This generates what is hands down the most infuriating noise ever.
Imagine if you will, you're sitting in the nice quiet library studying for your big test tomorrow when some guy sits down next to you and pulls out his laptop. He flips it open and immediately the following noise starts emanating from his machine:
wwwhhhhRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRhhhh wwwhhhhRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRhhhh wwwhhhhRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRhhhh wwwhhhhRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRhhhh...
Oh, by the way, that guy with the annoying laptop is me...
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – Summary and Conclusions
In short, I believe the dv2910us is a highly recommendable laptop. To the common, casual laptop user, it looks good and gets the job done and can be purchased at a surprisingly good price (the dv2911us, which lacks a Lightscribe drive, was recently on sale at Office Max for only $550 US). To the Linux user, the dv2910us manages to be pretty Linux friendly and offers solid performance with its Intel hardware, although HP probably lacks some of the geeky coolness that Lenovo has. College students will no doubt appreciate (as I do) the fact that its fairly light at five and a half pounds, has a battery life of about two and a half hours, and still manages to be pretty sturdy. Gamers however probably won't be too thrilled by the dv2910us and its integrated Intel graphics card and middle-of-the-road Intel Core 2 Duo.
The only problems I really have, is that the media keys's sensitivity is non-adjustable, and that a matte screen option (instead of glossy) isn't offered.
The dv2910us isn't anything really stellar. It doesn't have amazing processing power, super long battery, an innovative new esthetic look, a slim body, or a ridiculously low weight; which is why the dv2700 series hasn't garnered the same kind of attention as the Apple Macbook Air or the Lenovo x300. But it remains a decent laptop, nonetheless, sufficient for all but the most strenuous of tasks.
What the HP dv2910us does have to offer that all those other popular laptops lack, is an affordable price. And for many people, like me, the price is always a major determining factor.
- Index
- Unboxing
- Build Quality and Design
- User Experience
- Installing Linux
- Summary and Conclusions (currently viewing)
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – Installing Linux
I've decided to shorten this section down significantly, as it is probably the least significant part of this review (for most people), and for me to do it due justice would require quite a lot of time. I'm planning on writing an article later, more specifically aimed at installing Arch Linux on the dv2910us.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Ubuntu Hardy Heron Live CD ran great on my dv2910us. I'm not much of an Ubuntu Fan these days, (although I don't hate it) but I couldn't help but be impressed by Hardy Heron. Everything worked great right from the Live CD, including wireless and suspend to RAM, without any tweaking required.
Last week, I finally decided to go ahead and install Arch Linux on my dv2910us. I started by just trying to use gParted to partition the drive, running from a Live CD, but after using gParted, Vista crashed and refused to boot and so I was forced to do a system restore and use Vista's tool for resizing partitions, which turned out to be pretty useless. Vista does this lovely thing where it makes a bunch of huge system restore points and pagefiles, scatters them across the disk, and doesn't bother to inform you at all about them. The only way I could even see pagefile.sys was to run the command prompt as root and then "dir /a" to list the system files. All these special system files prevent the Vista partition tool from shrinking a drive more then 10 or 20 gigs. Eventually, I was so fed up with Vista and its craptastic goodness, I was forced to retry gParted and happily enough it worked the second time!
Part of the reason that I bought the dv2910us, was because of the abundance of Intel hardware that it has. Intel tends to be a little more Linux friendly then many other companies, they open up the specifications on their hardware and write drivers for most of their equipment. Unlike my old desktop's ATI x800 xl graphics card which nearly drove me mad, the dv2910us's hardware was pretty simple to set up and use. The only thing that I haven't configured yet is the webcam, but judging by Arch Linux's wiki, it appears doable. [EDIT: August 19, 2008. I was able to get the webcam working easily enough with Skype by using the r5u870 (Ricoh) driver, and Arch Linux was able to detect the HP Webcam as a usbcam.]
The HP dv2910us probably isn't the most Linux friendly laptop around but its still quite useable; from my experience, all the hardware can be configured with relatively little fussing around. While HP doesn't have quite the reputation Lenovo does with the Linux crowd, I think HP has done a pretty good job, even if they weren't trying to.
- Index
- Unboxing
- Build Quality and Design
- User Experience
- Installing Linux (currently viewing)
- Summary and Conclusions
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – User Experience
The beginning of my review of the HP dv2910us can be found here.
Despite my efforts, this review has become rather badly organized. Pretty much anything that is interesting in my review is going to be in this section.
I've heard HP referred to as "The Evil Empire," so apparently the boys and girls in HP's marketing department are trying to change their company's image by making themselves all "personal." Which is totally cool, as long as they don't expect me to cry over my lappy.
---Crapware and Such
The first time I booted up the dv2901us, I was greeted by a series of setup menus, courtesy of Microsoft, HP, and various other paid advertisers. Vista spent a surprisingly long time updating and configuring the system once I had ticked off all the required checkboxes. Its been quite a while since I've bought a pre-built computer (well actually I never have), and it was only upon first running the dv2910us that I realized just how annoying "crapware" really is. ("Crapware" is a term coined by internet writers and is used to categorize software and trial-ware that comes pre-installed on new computers.) The term is quite appropriate, as anyone who has bought a computer in the past few years will know, there are gigs of crap installed on new computers. While I was buying my new HP lappy from Circuit City, the employee who was helping me, told me that for the low, low price of $30 they would sell me a model that had had all the crapware removed by a certified Circuit City tech. While crapware is without a doubt annoying and stupid, I cannot see why the bloody hell I would want to pay someone to remove it for me when I am quite capable of doing it myself, although some people clearly are willing to pay. So I ended up spending a great deal of time removing software and advertisements from Microsoft, Yahoo, HP, Slingbox, and even Maxis (almost 3 gigs of "The Sims" trial software!), before I finally got down to really using my brand new lappy.
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – Build Quality and Design
(The beginning to my review of the HP dv2910us (dv2700) can be found here)
--- Exterior Design
 |
 |
|---|
The lid of the laptop features HP's "Imprint" finish, which is basically just a lot of cool swirly grayish lines on a shiny black background. The finish is surprisingly durable, despite being an absolute fingerprint magnet (I suppose that's why HP includes a wipe-cloth with the laptop); my roommate had an HP laptop with the same finish that remained scratch-free throughout the school year, even though I once dropped a ladder on it. The base of the laptop is made of a very solid, dull, black plastic. While there is some slight flexing in the lid, the base is as solid as can be. All in all, the exterior design is quite attractive (at least to me it is).
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – Unboxing
(The beginning to my review of the HP dv2910us (dv2700) can be found here)
Its become fairly popular in reviews these days, to include pictures and a description of one's experiences with unboxing expensive electronic equipment. Lemming that I am, here's my unboxing experience with my HP dv2910us.
The box is a standard, nondescript brown box bearing an HP and Intel logo on the front, nothing at all like Apple's shiny white boxes, complete with carrying handle, that so many people have become fond of. There are people that are of the opinion that it is Apple's attention to small details, like the box, that has allowed them to be so successful. I frankly couldn't give a crap what the box looks like, and I find the Apple boxes to be unnecessarily flashy.
When I opened the box, I was greeted by a lovely little instruction sheet from HP, a sure sign that HP really does care about improving the user experience. A sort of nice clever trick, the simplified setup guide had been stuck into a little slot above the laptop, so that it is the first thing a new HP laptop owner sees upon opening the box. Its the little stuff that counts, right?
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – A Review
On Saturday, two days ago, I bought a brand new HP dv2910us from Circuit City for $680 (US), with a $50 rebate. The dv2910us is a pre-configured version of the dv2700 series, and its popularity with retail stores right now, is why it tends to be so cheap. The same model can be bought online directly from HP for $829.99.
Just as an aside, I would like to point out that HP makes a model called the dv2911us, which is the same as the dv2910us except that it lacks a Lightscribe drive. Lightscribe drives allow a user to "print" an image directly to the surface of a special Lightscribe disc. Its a neat trick, and if you burn a lot of discs and like to have them look pretty, then maybe Lightscribe is for you. But I doubt I'll be using my Lightscribe drive anytime soon though. For most people, the dv2911us is perfectly fine.
The Amazing Thinkpad
I was helping my uncle move last Saturday, and as we were loading his crap into the moving truck I noticed a laptop sticking out of a box full of cables. I pulled it out, and was surprised to find that it was an IBM Thinkpad T21.
I asked my uncle why he had thrown, what appeared to be a perfectly good laptop, (sans battery) into a box full of junk. He replied that the screen had stopped working years ago, and he had simply thrown tossed the laptop into his garage. He was about to throw it away, since he was moving, but I offered to take it off his hands. Luckily, we were also able to find the AC adapter for the T21 stuffed away in one of his boxes.
Its hard to understand why Thinkpads are so popular with large companies, until you've actually used one for an extended period of time. The old IBM Thinkpads were built to last forever, to suffer amazing punishments and just keep on ticking like nothing had happened; I don't think any other company makes laptops like IBM once did. It is still possible today, to buy a refurbished Thinkpad T20 online for about $200 (US), even though the laptop is close to eight years old. My dad didn't quite understand why I liked the Thinkpad line so much, so I showed him just how sturdy the old T21 was by pushing and pressing against various parts of the laptop's frame and screen, to show how it didn't flex at all, and then proceeded hit it a few times against the ground for good measure. Most other laptops will bend like a sapling in a light wind, the instant some pressure is applied to their screens, whereas I could probably use the lid of my Thinkpad as a hammer.
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