Gear Bag Change: Say Hello to the ThinkPad T400s

I must be the most fickle person when it comes to taking gear on a trip. I went through the careful thought process to decide on what I would bring on my trip tomorrow, and all was settled. Until today, that is. I got to thinking about the gear that I might need and decided to make a major change. No, I’m not carrying one of the netbooks I considered, I have decided to bring the loaner Lenovo ThinkPad T400s along for the ride.

Why the ThinkPad, you might properly ask? I had decided that I needed a bit more performance than a netbook would provide, and that’s why I originally went with the MacBook. I wanted to make sure that I have decent compute power with me, without sacrificing too much portability. The MacBook qualifies, all right, so I thought the matter was settled.

Then today I was looking around Mobile Tech Manor, and my eyes settled on the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s. That’s the newest member of the ThinkPad line and it’s a very thin and light notebook. I started thinking about bringing it along for the trip. It’s certainly powerful enough for anything I might need to do, with the Intel 2.4 GHz processor and 2 GB of memory. It was clear the T400s meets all the performance requirements for my trip.

I gazed at that 14.1-inch screen and I realized that it beat the MacBook in this area. The MacBook only has the 13.3-inch screen running at 1280×800. The ThinkPad runs at a big, vibrant 1440×900 so that coupled with the slightly bigger screen size clinched the deal.

So why didn’t I originally consider the ThinkPad in my “careful” thought process, you might be wondering? A totally silly reason. I did not think the T400s would fit in my Booq backpack. Seriously, that’s the reason. I have bigger backpacks but I don’t like traveling with anything bigger than the small Booq bag, and I had assumed the 14-inch ThinkPad wouldn’t fit in the laptop pocket. This morning I tried it and it just fit. Barely, but it does and that ended my debate. So tomorrow I hit the blue open skies with the ThinkPad T400s in tow. I’ll let you know how well it works for me.

In case you missed it, you can take a look at my video of the ThinkPad to appreciate how mobile yet capable it is.