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Yippee! New work laptop

Posted by Paul Macklin

17 February 2008 at 6:09 pm CST (UTC +?)


I've been wanting to upgrade my aging laptop (an IBM ThinkPad R51) since last summer, but in the last few weeks, it seemingly went out of its way to get itself retired. Yup, lots of blue screens, failure to resume from hibernation with increasing frequency, bizarre crashes when using the wireless. Perhaps it was merely a driver issue, but definitely a little spooky, given how much I need it for work.

Fortunately, Vittorio stepped in and let me quickly order the replacement we'd been talking about: a nice, lightweight ThinkPad X61 (Model 7675-92U). This thing is just a dream to work with: Core2 Duo, 1 GB of memory, 160 GB, full-size keyboard and trackpoint (but no touchpad, which is fine by me), and best of all, incredibly small and around 3 pounds! It's just night and day when compared against the old laptop.

Also to Lenovo's credit, they allow the option of installing XP on every laptop they sell. After about an hour of using Windows Vista Business and watching it slow to a crawl after opening any significant number of programs, I wiped the hard disk and installed XP Pro (discs included). Now, I just about have all the software I need installed, and things are looking good. Just in the nick of time for the UCI math systems biology symposium at the end of the month.


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