[agumonkey]

I still like x61 a lot, not hard to find for less than 100$ on ebay. With the usual maximum ram + ssd upgrade you really have a neat little 4:3 rock solid machine. Most people buying ~600$ core i5 laptop will never reach the boot time and stability I get using *linux on this hardware. Next week I'll try x200/x201 family to see how better the cpu is (heat and battery life mostly).

[busterarm]

Yep. I've got Arch (soon to be OpenBSD) on my 2nd-gen x100e and I put in an SSD and upgrade to the A/G/N wifi card. There are some quirks but it's a decent system. I'm ready to move on though. These have heat problems though and everyone I know with an x2XX has worse problems than I do.

Even with the $600 core i5s, it'd be getting the same OS. Hopefully they've switched to the newer Intel wifi cards because the Linux driver on the 5400AGN they were using has problems.

[agumonkey]

Arch user here too. I see a lot of articles saying BSD is saner than linux, and you're tempting me even more to try it. If you ever write about it post the url here.

[selectodude]

I loved my X61 but I couldn't put up with how it sounded like it was going to take flight all the time.

[agumonkey]

True, that's the main reason I try newer ones. If I was a gifted engineer I'd build a better heatsink so the fan would never kick in.

[thrownaway2424]

I still have a x61 and a x220. I prefer the x220 obviously for being way faster and for having a giant Esc key (I use vim). Both totally solid. On the x61 I use tpfand and the fan almost never comes on.

[agumonkey]

Thanks, I stopped looking for fan control, since I was more interested in underclocking. I'll try it right away.