Work/Gaming laptop soon

[Karamazovmm]

there is no more upgrade path for you in terms of performance, the cpu you are almost at the top and simply it isnt worth the price.

Another thing that you can do is to go for a more mobile approach, like I do

The thinkpad edge s430 is coming with a unnamed nvidia gpu (I hope its a 640m) and a 1600*900 screen, although quite a difference in terms of gpu performance, and probably cpu, it comes with a thunderbolt port, that will allow you to hook up a desktop gpu to it. And no the performance decrease by the pcie 2 x4 aint that large.

This would provide you high quality gaming with a lot of mobility, basically the s430 weights 2/3 of the p150

That for me is a good compromise since I dont game that much, people do prefer a more unified approach.

[tony487]

there is no more upgrade path for you in terms of performance, the cpu you are almost at the top and simply it isnt worth the price.

Another thing that you can do is to go for a more mobile approach, like I do

The thinkpad edge s430 is coming with a unnamed nvidia gpu (I hope its a 640m) and a 1600*900 screen, although quite a difference in terms of gpu performance, and probably cpu, it comes with a thunderbolt port, that will allow you to hook up a desktop gpu to it. And no the performance decrease by the pcie 2 x4 aint that large.

This would provide you high quality gaming with a lot of mobility, basically the s430 weights 2/3 of the p150

That for me is a good compromise since I dont game that much, people do prefer a more unified approach.

I get that, in the Penryn line, I am at the top end. I was thinking do I 1--replace SSD and HDD and keep the T400. or 2--new laptop. Do Thinkpad Edges have the same quality as the Thinkpads? Also...

Thunderbolt = desktop GPU. ??? I am not familiar with this.

[Karamazovmm]

There are no gains in performance from that t400, it doesnt pack a sata 3 connector, thus its nill the idea of getting a faster ssd. And sincerely not that the difference would be felt

the thinkpad edge is of good quality, but not like the t line, however you have the t400, its quite abysmal the difference in quality of that model to the several previous gen.

thunderbolt is basically a pcie interface, it will give you a pcie 2.0 x4 port for you, when people finally launch the egpu thunderbolt powered, we will be able to harness the power of the desktop card.

There are several manufacturers doing this, one is the msi gus II, there are other places as well

[tony487]

however you have the t400, its quite abysmal the difference in quality of that model to the several previous gen.

I am probably being dense here, but the quality you are talking is a drop from the quality of the T4x or T6x to the T400?

I never owned an 'IBM' Thinkpad; the T400 was my first.

So much to decide...

[tony487]

I am dumping all over my own thread here...

So, another option... look to a true work/business class laptop. We have a cheap-o desktop at home right now. Cheap-o by 2011 standards... it seems to be handling Morrowind just find. I also have Oblivion I need to play. Of course, Skyrim is soon to follow.
Plus, I am old-school CRPG... just picked up the SSI Gold Box games and MM1-5. All will do fine on the desktop.

So... get a good work laptop now (or, soon) and look to get a gaming lap/desk top later in the summer or a bit beyond.

To get this a bit more to topic: 17 inch laptops. I have had one in the past and it wound up desk-bound. I see that many Windows 17's are 8 pounds or so and up to 12+ for the beasts. I 'feel like' 8 lbs isn't too bad, but a combo laptop will be over my shoulder almost daily.. at least to/from car and office.

Thoughts? Max weight you have found ok with carrying on a regular basis.

[Karamazovmm]

yes the t400 was not really up to the ibm standards a lot of people complained, not that the thinkpad line is perfect far from it, there are several overheating issues (the latest is the x220 with the i7), certain pieces that break and so forth.

my max weight capacity is quite different from yours, I wake up at 6am go to the gym, and at 8am Im COMMUTING to work by subway, it takes me one hour to get there, after that there are some meetings with clients usually nearby and I show them some stock analysis, them I go to uni at 5pm by subway again, 1 hour trip, after that I carry it all around the campus and that thing is large, I arrive home at 11:30pm, you see no car, lots of trips with it in bag.

Having said, unnecessarily, all that I think for me the limit to mobility is in the 2kg range, and by no means Im a weak man, its because my hours are long and the trips as well. For you since you have a car the 3kg of the np9150 is good enough

Im sincerely vouching for you to get the np9150 with the 7970m, or go with the more mobile approach like I do, I bought this mbp specifically because it packed thunderbolt and because the x220 wasnt as readily available as this was. The idea of egpu is to get something quite mobile and packing the punch of a true desktop replacement