"But it’s the same laptop!" my wife said. I've been using a Lenovo T60 or T60p for a very long time. Since it came out, in fact. I had a T60 at my last job for years, and a T60p all the while at Microsoft. I have happily running 64-bit operating systems on my T60p with 4gigs of RAM…unfortunately with the caveat that the T60p can only address 3gigs, no matter what. (Unlike its smarter cousin the T61.)

I've been at Microsoft almost 2 years (it'll be 2 years in October, I think) and I've been begging my boss for a "hardware refresh." That's Microsoft speak for giving your laptop back and getting a better one. You're better off if the laptop you want is "MSIT Supported." Folks have been known to order all sorts of crazy stuff, but they're responsible for keeping it running if things go south.

My budget was limited and I wasn't able to get an SSD (Solid State Disk, vs. a regular hard drive) in my new laptop, but I would have needed at least a 160gig version anyway, so I'm not too sad.

I've been trying out two Lenovo laptops and settled on one. The other gets s