best office/home office setup - the telecommuter

[Mark Ellison]

I will chime in on this topic.  In the last few months I've purchased a
Lenovo W500 and a T500, a docking station and external monitor as well as a
Lenovo M57 desktop that I run headless as a Fedora 11 development platform.
I connect to the M57 using tightvnc.  The W50 also runs Fedora 11 like a
champ with full wireless capabilities.  I assume the T500 also supports
linux very well, but we have kept the T500 as a windows only machine.

What Greg said about screen resolution is correct WRT to the laptop LCD but
both T500 and W500 support 1920 x 1080 on external monitors that are capable
of this resolution.

The 'switchable graphics', a feature that is on both models allows you to
use the integrated graphics controller when on battery to save juice and
allows you to use the discrete graphics controller for high performance when
plugged in. The discrete graphics controller will handle 4 screens including
the laptop LCD as an extended desktop (four portions of one huge screen), or
you can duplicate screen contents if you prefer.  FYI to switch between
graphics modes, right click on the battery icon in the system tray to get
the context menu.

I purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse but find I prefer using the laptop
keyboard and a bluetooth mouse (so get the bluetooth option).  We also use
the integrated camera for skype video calls and use the fingerprint reader
instead of typing in passwords.

Like Greg suggested, two docking stations are a good idea- one for home and
one for the office.  There are four USB connectors on the docking station so
you can add disk storage this way.  There are also a variety of monitor
connectors on the docking station as well and of course there is an ethernet
connector and just in case someone somewhere really needs it, a modem
connector.

Regards,

Mark
http://EllisonSoftware.com


On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 3:26 PM, John Abreau <jabr at blu.org> wrote:

> I just bought a couple Thinkpads for a couple of our engineers,
> and one thing I ran into was a difference in supported screen
> resolutions.  The T500 is 1680x1050, with no other options,
> whereas the W500 is available as either 1680x1050 or 1900x1200.
>
> My engineers explicitly asked for 1900x1200, so we went with
> W500's.
>
> For your requirements, if you'll be using it both at home and at
> the office, I'd suggest getting two docking stations, one for
> each location. That will save you the trouble of fiddling with a
> bunch of cables when arriving at or departing from each location.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Greg Rundlett
> (freephile)<greg at freephile.com> wrote:
> > Moving to a new employment position, I'm once again faced with
> > purchasing some computer equipment.  I'm wondering what hardware,
> > software and combination people like the best for working seamlessly
> > in the office AND home office environment.  I'm not really a traveller
> > - so I don't have to do the 'road warrior' thing.  However, I do want
> > to be able to work in multiple locations.
> >
> > I was going to buy a notebook (Lenovo T500 ~ $1200) with docking
> > station ($200) plus keyboard and monitor ($400), but I'm wondering
> > what other people think.
> >
> > Does anyone just use a desktop, with screen plus sshfs?
> >
> > Does anyone just use an external USB drive + using synchronization
> software?
> >
> > Does anyone just use a service like Dropbox?
> >
> > Obviously without the notebook to move around, you have to maintain
> > applications and even the OS on multiple hardware.  I think the
> > notebook gives the best flexibility + power + least effort, but I'm
> > just wondering what other people's experience is.
> >
> > --
> > Greg Rundlett
> >
> > nbpt 978-225-8302
> > m. 978-764-4424
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> > http://profiles.aim.com/freephile
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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