Merlin Mann from 42 + 1 folders once suggested in a podcast that if you want to apply yourself too some creative writing you should start typing and refuse to use the backspace key; just pretend it’s not there. I’m far to obsessive compulsive to follow this advice verbatim because typos freak me out like breakfast cereal without soy milk, but that compulsion aside I’m going to give it a try.
After doing some more experimenting with the unstable release of Debian, I so royally messed up my ThinkPad I decided to wipe it clean and start again! For a change and given 12 is coming in 6 days, I thought I’d try out Fedora. So far I’m impressed. Now if only it could take screenshots and go on standby…!
UPDATE: I’ve got this working, so despite this post being a day old it should be considered hysterical. I mean, historical. Freudian slip.
I’ll post in more detail as soon as I’m finished.
Since my MacBook Pro’s latest in a long and painful run of hardware problems I’ve been entertaining the idea that I might have to replace it sooner than I thought. Since I got my iBook G3 back in 2001 it’s never crossed my mind to ever look at laptops other than Macs, talk about brand loyalty!
A lot has changed with me since I got my MacBook Pro in 2006 though. For one thing, I’d barely used Linux in any serious way before then and now I’m more than comfortable with FreeBSD and several Linux distributions. The vast majority of the software I use on my Mac are cross platform that were originally designed for Linux such as OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric, VLC, The Gimp, UFRAW, Inkscape, Thunderbird, Firefox and Midnight Commander. When I use my ThinkPad X40 "netbook" with Debian Linux, I’ve been surprised by how ergonomic it is to use and how little I’ve missed from my Mac other than perhaps fonts, and iTunes to syncronise my iTelephone.
I think I could picture myself not using an Apple computer. Have you picked yourself off the floor yet? Apple computers have always been a pleasure to use and Mac OS X is fantastic, but they’ve never been the most reliable machines with hardware, at least in my own experience.
As I’ve said many times, the other line of computers I’ve always liked alongside Apples have been ThinkPads, and looking at the specifications for their T400s and the T400 with discrete graphics they’re are very competitive, sleek machines for much less than a MacBook Pro. Not only that, but they have expansion slots not just a SD card adapter and a decent number of USB ports! Of course the ThinkPad will come with some ugly flavour of Windows not Mac OS X, but that’s something that can be overwritten with a real OS. Wonder if you can get refunds on Windows licences?
I’m bluffing and kidding myself of course, I’ll probably get a unibody MacBook Pro when I can afford it, but like a religious person who used to be certain they knew their creator but has read one too many books on evolution and now has small inkling of doubt, if I do decide to get a Mac again, it won’t be after giving a PC serious consideration for the first time in 8 years. That’s already a huge change for me. Don’t think Steve will lose much sleep though as long as I’m still buying.
It may come as complete shock to you to find out our first home computer from the early 1990s was a DOS machine. Certainly I’ve never mentioned this ever before on my blog here (cough!), and I certainly have never blogged about running DOS on modern hardware for nostalgic fun.
Turns out one of the unintended positives of procuring a ThinkPad X40 dating back to before IBM’s hardware division was purchased by Lenovo is that IBM were themselves a DOS vendor (an oversimplification of history but it’ll suffice) and supported running DOS well after everyone else jumped on the Windows bandwagon.
What this means is even for a 2004 vintage notebook computer from their download page they have complete DOS software for updating the BIOS and diagnosing problems along with drivers for networking, external optical drives, sound and their obscure, limited run USB grilled cheese sandwich waffle irons that came bundled with I’m so full of crap.
I’m stretched for time as is and probably won’t be able to test any of this out for a while, but I do have a licenced copy of IBM PC DOS 7 and a ThinkPad with drivers… it might be time to get my nostalgia freak on :).
I know I’ve posted about it far too much, but I just have to post one more time about my experiences with this amazing little machine.
It’s been over a week since I installed Debian Lenny on my newly bought second hand ThinkPad X40 and it’s exceeded all my expectations. I honestly have not been as impressed with a non-Mac piece of hardware for years. It’s extremely lightweight, has a fantastic full keyboard and despite having an old battery I still get 3+ hours with the screen set to full brightness and WiFi on. I’ve literally walked into lectures and tutorials at uni with just this machine which has been such a tremendous relief on my back compared to lugging my 15″ MacBook Pro. It’s light, solidly built and it’s 1.4GHz Pentium M with a scant 512MiB of memory perform far above what I expected.
As an Xfce user on FreeBSD the other thing I’ve been surprised by is how much I’m enjoying Gnome 2.26. The problem is I tend to use FreeBSD on older machines and servers so Gnome has always been overkill but it works beautifully even on this older hardware. The built in graphical tools allow me to update software, configure wireless networks and even have true composting video effects which means I can have translucent menubars and all that cool stuff. The system also boots up quickly and standby works. It’s almost feels as if IBM shipped me this ThinkPad with the software preinstalled.
I am still primarily a Mac guy, but I must admit I’m tempted at some point when I decide to replace my MacBook Pro to spend the same amount of money on a brand new ThinkPad and put Debian or FreeBSD on it. If Debian with one of the heaviest *nix desktop environments performs this amazingly well on a four year old machine, imagine how well it would run on a current one! It’d be stunning!
Having used Macs I cringe at the very sight of so many nasty, horribly flimsy, cheap and plastic PC laptops being passed off as well designed and expensive (not to even start on the budget craptops) but my dad always said his ThinkPads were fantastic machines and now that I have a tiny one of my own I can honestly say I see the appeal.
I’m gonna pop a cap in your… nah I can never pull off gangsta.
Depending on your attitude you either think the TrackPoint mouses between the keys on ThinkPads are either fantastic or dreadful. I love them, I’ve always been far more accurate with them than with trackpads or those trackballs older notebooks had. With all the multitouch gestures Apple now bundles with their laptop trackpads it’s doubtful I’ll ever get to use a TrackPoint mouse on a Mac, but I’m enjoying the experience again on my second hand ThinkPad X40.
Not only that, but as a *nix user I also love having three dedicated buttons which lets me copy and paste text in terminals as well as having the usual right click menus. Look at the mouse go! Click! Whoosh! Zoom! Blaz! Blaz?
Anyway because I got this machine second hand I quickly wanted to replace the gungy TrackPoint cap. You can buy a set of replacement TrackPoint caps from Lenovo but they’re a whopping $25 so I went on eBay and picked up a set for a couple of bucks from a friendly guy in Melbourne.
The little bag of caps (product ID 73P2698) come with three different styles you can choose: the classic dome, soft dome and a concave soft rim. All three are great but I prefer the concave soft rim (top right in the photo I took above) because it fits the shape of my finger and I can apply much more pivoting force with less effort. By pushing on the edges I can also accurately move the cursor just one pixel in any direction with no effort at all. It’s a beautiful thing.
If someone made an aftermarket TrackPoint mouse for Apple notebooks I would buy one in a heartbeat! I’d forgotten how much I love them.
WARNING: Excessive computer use can colour your eyes a scary bright cyan… apparently!
After just over a year of searching online, offline and everywhere in between (subspace?) I finally managed to procure myself an IBM ThinkPad X40 and USB powered IBM combo drive in excellent condition for less than AU$300 from an Adelaideian. When you consider they sold for over AU$3,000 new less than four years ago paying 10% is pretty gosh darn good!
This model of ThinkPad X40 was part of IBM’s executive/premium/expensive ultraportable X notebook series in 2005 and it still has fairly respectable specs: a 12 inch screen, 1.4GHz Pentium M with Centrino b/g wireless, a gigabit ethernet port, 1,280 MiB of PC2700 RAM, CardBus slot, two USB 2.0 ports, a 60GB internal 1.8″ drive and one of those cool three button (hooray for using with FreeBSD!) TouchPoint mouses. It’s slightly heavier than a netbook but has an infinitely better keyboard and… it’s a ThinkPad!
Despite otherwise being an Apple guy, ever since I saw my dad’s machines from work over the course of a decade I’ve been a fan of ThinkPads. They’re not sexy like MacBooks, but I think they’re classy and their build quality is absolutely without peer. I do love my MacBook Pro with OS X, but I have to say I’ve been tempted by a ThinkPad with FreeBSD, Xubuntu (or OpenSolaris if I could get it working!) for a very long time.
Coincidently, the X40 also holds the (dubious depending on your standing) distinction of being the last notebook designed and sold by IBM before Lenovo bought their consumer hardware division. The end of an era as it were.
Two related thoughts: If I needed to run some more Windows software for uni, I wonder if it’d run Windows 7 acceptably in a partition too? Might need to ask Nick Hodge on The Twitters. And I wonder how its performance would compare to the current netbooks too. It has an older, slower hard drive not an SSD but I’d have to think an older Pentium M would still outperform an Atom… maybe… maybe not.
The DFE-670TXD is a mysterious little ethernet card, because it’s turned my old ThinkPad 600E into a very picky eater. With this card plugged into either of the PC Card slots:
/etc/defaults/pccard.confCuriously, the only operating system which installed and detected the card perfectly was… OpenBSD! I have no idea what OpenBSD is doing differently, but booting of the CD and going through the installer the card is detected automatically. When I reboot the machine with OpenBSD installed, I can use the internet, share files on the local network and synchronise with time servers without any problems!
FreeBSD is my operating system of choice generally, but OpenBSD for some reason which completely baffles me right now is the only one that works. I’m completely baffled. Did I mentioned I’m baffled? Bamboozled? Anyone with knowledge on how OpenBSD drivers work know why or have any theories?
In any case I guess I’d better brush up on the OpenBSD FAQs, because I have an OpenBSD machine now!
I'm Ruben Schade, welcome to my labour of love mix of tech, anime, thoughts and nonsense from Singapore and Australia. Thanks for stopping by.
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