Dennis den Brok asked:
> I am considering getting a ThinkPad T61 or T500 to run OpenBSD on.
> My main concern is the noise level: I'd prefer the fan not to run
> at all during text editing and web browsing. Can anyone comment
> on that? Are there other caveats?
I have a T60 and a T60p (both 15.4" widescreens with ATI graphics);
currently both run 5.4/amd64.
For both, the fan *does* run at a low speed even when the system is idle.
I'm ok with the (relatively low) noise, but your tastes/tolerances may
differ.
Other things of note:
* X autoconfigures fine, and the 1680x1050 pixel 15.4" display is great
* the T60-series keyboard is (IMHO) fantastic -- it was (is) my key
reason for staying with the T60 generation and not a newer machine
* wifi (wpi or athn) works ok
* with the disable-ATI-video-repost kernel patch,
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=131458407113428&w=1
suspend-to-ram worked ok for OpenBSD 4.9 and 5.1, but it's been broken
(either for GENERIC or for GENERIC + disable-ATI-video-repost)
since I moved to 5.4. :( :(
* apmd doesn't seem to grok multi-core processors, so 'apmd -C' will
keep the clock rate at minimum even when 1 core is at 100% cpu
(I think this is a software problem, not specific to thinkpads)
* both the T60 and the T60p have an irritating touchpad problem which
I described in detail in
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=138735540520268&w=1
I'm unsure whether this is a hardware, firmware, or software problem.
Overall I'm happy, and would get another T60-series as a replacement
if one of my current pair died. As always with laptops, YMMV......
--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
<jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu>
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched
at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police
plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable
that they watched everybody all the time." -- George Orwell, "1984"
