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Comment by mahmud | Hacker News Reader

The battery part is actually true, but I thought it was only me because I use older TP models.

My girlfriend's HP gets at least half a day. I don't think she even bothers to charge it during the day.

But hers is a crap laptop with lousy, fragile keys; short screen (WTF IS THAT?) that's twice as wide than it's tall, and sucks for everything but listening to music.

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I loved my T41p. It was so pleasant to use that it became my main workstation. Unfortunately, the battery stopped holding a decent charge and the fan stopped completely. Since Macs were growing in popularity, I needed one for testing, so I made the switch to a 17" MBP. It was rough at first (I really miss the pointing stick, extra trackpad buttons, and the incredible range of the hinge on the T41p), but after three years, I'm still impressed by the design and quality of the MBP. Most other laptops seem old and clunky by comparison. As for Linux development, VMWare or VirtualBox allow you to run multiple distributions and you can back up images for easy restoration. As for common open source tools on the Mac itself, MacPorts has the essentials and more.

I was a TrackPoint junkie until I got myself a unibody Macbook Pro. That was the first trackpad I actively enjoyed using, and now I honestly wouldn’t want to go back.

My T61 has both, and I use them about equally often.

My sister's Dell has a touchpad that's basically unusable.

Actually, it is the power management. Most likely it can be configured. But that is one of the points (admin time): you have to configure it. On Macs, it works.

Not really. Most of it is lack of proper power management in the drivers, especially graphic drivers. Work is ongoing, things will improve. In a few years.

I have only about 2--2.5 hours of battery life in my T61 under Ubuntu (standard 6-cell battery, 3 years old). Luckily that's sufficient for my needs.

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