Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I finally got a new laptop with a lone USB 3.0 port. I'm now looking at getting a USB 3.0 hub with a power adapter so I can use both of my USB 3.0 hard drives at faster speeds. I've read lots of horror stories where some hubs either don't come with power adapters -- and as a consequence the portable drives don't work with them properly -- or they are designed poorly which results in USB 2.0 speeds. Or, the hard drives keep getting disconnected. Do your readers have any suggestions or experience using USB 3.0 hubs? Thanks!"
As someone else mentions in this thread, Thinkpads stand for quality and reliability.
I want to dispell some myths:
Cost: Do you rely on your laptop every day for your job? Do you need the internet to carry on being a professional? If you do, the extra few hundred pounds a thinkpad costs will pay you back in ways that only an economist could measure. Think of the cost of not having access to your data, emails, work tools and internet for one day, or even for a week? How much would that cost you : in terms of inconvenience and added expense of getting around this, in terms of your career, in terms of having free time to do other things?
Thinkpads also come with excellent warranties, so if your thinkpad should break down, they are so helpful that the problem shouldn't impact you too much.
Performance: When you friends laptops are having trouble with their screen going dark, or the laptop overheating and crashing, or windows crashing unexpectantly, or freezing up for odd reasons, and then having the motherboard melt because the fan had stopped working, or it's been sent back for the 3rd time after the 1 year warranty just ran out, whose's laptop is faster? Overall, the thinkpad, because it keeps working! O.k., so I'm exagerating, but you get the idea.
Performance also depends on what you use your laptop for. I use mine for Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop (as a hobby) and Outlook Express, Internet explorer and Adobe Acrobat. My 1.3Ghz centrino processor is still going strong, and handles all the above with ease, as well as playing my music at the same time. Even photoshop runs surprisingly fast. But for gaming it's probably rubbish.
I've had my T40 thinkpad for 2 years now, and I'm so happy with it, that I now regard some other laptops as being a bit like over-priced, plastic toys. But, of course, there are other excellent laptops out there - Latitudes, Powerbooks, Tecras and other top-line ranges.
Duncan.