blog.olbrecht.net

As some of you know, I’m writing this on an aging but wonderfully stable IBM ThinkPad X21 series. Now about to end it’s third year of almost 24/7 use, I’m still surprised as to the features IBM keeps adding to it.

When I first got my IBM ThinkPad, it came with almost none of the famously known ThinkVantage suit of tools. OK, it came with lots of tools but their actual usefulness was rather redundant for a geek like myself. I soon opted for the additional diskspace I could get by not installing the tools (especially Rapid Restor).

Only 18 months into using the ThinkPad, I stumbled upon AccessConnections, a tool that really made my life easier by making changes to my network settings based on location profiles. It still wasn’t perfect though: Automatic profile switches didn’t occur at first because of lack of experience as to profile building on my part, DHCP issues (AccessConnections *needs* a working DHCP to automatically switch between profiles) and troubles with my 3com Wireless LAN PCMCIA-card (an early edition x-jack-antenna equipped 802.11b card).

With time came experience and I started appreciating the simple pleasures of easy-configuration switches offered by AccessConnection, still it didn’t really like working with my 3com card.

Today a lot of these issues changed: After upgrading to AccessConnections v3.21, it finally started accepting my card as a real wireless device, offering the whole set of preferences before only available to IBM devices or other vendors cards sold via the IBM website (mainly Cisco). By now AccessConnections is managing my wireless settings (and doing an admirable job, much less cumbersome as the sometimes enfuriating Windows configuration utility.

…. anyway, point being: this machine is now 3 years old, long since out of production and still there’s real, work-experience enhancing software additions made by IBM at no additional cost to myself. Did I mention I’m really looking forward to my next IBM ThinkPad? There is *no* other vendor with this kind of support for their machines. They may be a bit more expensive than others but at the end of their life-cycle, you got more out of them than their money’s worth.

-Jan

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2004 at 3:42 pm and is filed under tech.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.