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Chris:
I spent quite some time agonizing over this very issue and just bought a
dual-scan. Note first, however, that I think that your premise is wrong.
I very much doubt that you can find that P120 TFT for the same price as the
P133 dual-scan, at least in the United States. There are a few places in New
York City advertising the P120s for $3,000, but call them and you'll find that
they don't have them, or are "expecting them soon and taking orders." From
comments on the Net, I've concluded that those folks are not to be trusted and
may well ship you a used machine. Check Deja News before you buy from any of
them. Of course, I don't know the market in Berlin.
My local dealers (CA) were quoting closer to $3,600, even for the 120s. The
T-Zone, a superstore in Silicon Valley, is selling the old 133 TFT, 1.08 gig, for
$3,800, which is the best price I could find from an established outfit; they
have them in stock.
If you are able to get the 120 for about the same price, I'd buy it.
I just ordered a P133 dual-scan with 1.08 gig from IBM (this is the original
133MH with the smaller hard drive). If you can find an IBM employee who will let
you use his/her serial number (IBM *allows* this under their "friends and family"
program), you can pick it up for $2,239. Note that IBM is temporarily out of
16MB modules for the 560; I bought one (Kingston) for $150 (incl. shipping) from
Insight.
According to an IBM Easyserve employee active on this list (who shall remain
nameless), the dual-scan is the same screen used on the 365X. That screen isn't
bad looking, but clearly not as nice as the larger and brighter TFT on the 133s.
However, I just can't justify the price differential.
As for hard disk real estate, maybe a PC Card drive?
If anyone else finds the TFT 120 for $3,000, do me a favor--don't tell me
about it. And if IBM starts offering it to friends and family within the next
two weeks, I'm going to do bodily harm to the rep who said he didn't know when
that would happen. Ah, such is computing. :)
Ken Rosenblatt
You wrote:
>
>I need a new and light machine but I still can't make up
>my mind. Here are two questions:
>
>1. If you had to pay roughly the same for either the
>
>TP560 with P120, 8MB, 810 MB, TFT
>
>or the
>
>TP560 with P133, 8MB, 2GB, DSTN
>
>which model would you buy? I know that TFT is definitely
>better but 810MB isn't a lot of diskspace if you need
>two operating systems.
>Given that there is no 2nd level cache, will you
>notice the performance difference between both processors?
>
>2. Is anybody running XFree on the DSTN model? I know
>that there are no problems with the X Server on the TFT
>model but I also know that there have been problems
>with older DSTN machines (and if there are no patches
>I'll be lost...)
>
>Thanks
>
>Christoph Eyrich
>
>
>PS: The other machine I was thinking about is the
>HP Omnibook 800. From a technical point of view the
>machine is clearly superior (built-in SCSI port,
>2nd level cache) plus it is being backed by a 3 year
>warranty... But: the screen pales in comparison
>to the 560 TFT one and the keyboard isn't quite
>comfortable...
>_______________________________________________
>
>eyrich@zedat.fu-berlin.de
>