Geek love

As part of the home clearance I've come across a fair amount of technology that has been given away at various press events and I haven't got around to using.

Now I know some of my American counterparts have a very hard line on freebies. Many are barred from even accepting a grotty tshirt in case it is seen as bribery. US journalists as a rule never take gifts, pay their own way on trips and even take their own coffee into interviews in order to avoid the slightest perception that they are being influenced by those they are paid to cover.

European journalists, by in large, take the opposite view. Budgets are much tighter on this side of the Great Salty Puddle, journalists salaries are much lower and so we take every freebie going and are more than happy for companies to fly us to distant events. Simple economics means that if they didn't we couldn't afford to go and companies recognise this and take us.

I once had a polite but forceful row with an excellent journalist on Wired, who was appalled that we accepted such gifts. "What about bias?" she said. The simple answer is to look at how we behave. Generally, and this is a sweeping statement but broadly true, the US press gives interviewees a much easier ride that the UK press.

You'll never see a British hack applaud a press conference or preface their question with a comment on how great the presentation was - behavior I've seen from the US press many times. We are our own watchmen and any journalist who softballs or shows bias gets drummed out of the profession very quickly.

Anyway, so I took some unused kit to the Computer Exchange and traded it in. On my way out I saw this, a ThinkPad T60, sitting alone and unloved in the corner of the shop. I knew it had to be mine and, after a quick inspection, a rummage around on the hard drive and a brief exchange of funds, it was - and I'm writing this on it now.

But SL I hear you say, why not get a Sony with its pretty designs, or a nice cheap Dell or HP machine. Well the simple answer is that, in my opinion, there is no better laptop than a ThinkPad. I've used a lot of laptops over the last 15 years, reviewed many, many more, and nothing else matches the ThinkPad*.

They are beautifully utilitarian, have the best keyboards in the business and are so rugged you could beat off a hoard of dervishes with one and still be able to check your Gmail afterwards. They are the best of IBM's engineering and Lenovo have wisely decided not to muck about with perfection.

Plus they have the 'magic eraser' cursor controller on the keyboard so you can turn the trackpad off. I once lost a page and a half of copy because my thumbs were dragging on the trackpad and I've never trusted them since. Lessons like that, along with not backing up regularly and making boot discs, you only have to learn once.

My glee in getting this little beauty was deeply geeky, but I'm proud of my geekiness and was over the moon with this find. All it needs now is a few upgrades to the hard drive and memory and I'll have a machine that will last for years.

*Before you ask no, Lenovo did not sponsor this posting and the only gifts I have taken from the company over the years are a Bluetooth mouse I can't even give away, a useless power cable and a laptop bag. Its management team are touchy little wankers too - if it wasn't for a good internal and external PR team they'd be sunk.