First Impressions

My T61p arrived today as well, here are my first impressions:

I have pictures of the PC, will try to figure out how to post em.

Keyboard = Alps (oh well, seems fine, but does feel different than my T60p's NMB and sits a little higher). Identical layout to T60p. I had thought a picture of the T61s had a L shaped enter key but this is rectangular and blue in color.

Screen = Flawless, as far as I can tell. I don't see a single dead or stuck pixel. It does seem to be about 10% brighter than my T60p 14'' 1400x1050 display. The 60p is from April, so it's not an age issue. It is off center Beautiful and crisp. Was set to native resolution and 32bit color on boot.

Size = Very workable. It's slimmer than my Dell M65, and the screen height is almost identical to the 4:3 display on the T60p.

Order vs Delivery = Seems to be exactly what I ordered, including WUSB/UWB.

Microsoft Office PreLoad = I was wondering if it was going to come with media, and it did. Two CDs -- Office Pro 2007 on #1 and Outlook with Business Contact Manager on #2. Office is preloaded but asks for a product key on first run (which is included with the physical media). Didn't do this yet.

System PreLoad = A bit of a mess, but I am going to do a clean install on a Hitachi 200GB anyway. 86.6GB total capacity (100GB minus Recovery Partition), 68.2GB Free, so about 18GB for the load with Office Pro. Versions or Demos of Adobe Reader 8, Diskeeper, Earthlink, Norton Internet Security, PC Doctor 5 for Windows, Picasa 2 are the extent of what I see in the Start menu.

Speakers = On the top, left and right sides by the display hinges. Seem much larger than the small slits of speakers that the T60p had (under the front edge).

No issues with bent fins on the rear next to the power connector.

In the box: Power adapter + US line cord, two extra trackpoint caps, telephone cable for modem, a couple of leaflets, and two security screws. Oh, and a PC with a 9 cell battery Battery was about 25% charged out of the box.

Curiosities:

1) There are two little slots on the scren about 4 inches from each side. I don't have these on my Dell M65 or my T60p. No idea what they are for.

2) The Bluetooth icon/green light on the screen bezel has been replaced by a radio tower with a box on it. According to Fn+F5 this is now the "Wireless PAN radios" indicator. All of the other icons are the same.

3) System has a Centrino Pro sticker on it, even thought it has nVidia graphics. Not complaining, but I thought you had to have Intel Proc/Video/Wireless or you ended up with a Core2 Duo label.

I will try to post some pictures later.

 

hows the text on the screen?

 

1. Yeah - what the heck are they? I'm not sure either.
2. Didn't look at this much, yet.
3. Yeah - same here. Nvidia + Intel wireless - maybe they dropped Centrino to platform + wireless - and dropped the video req?

 

The text is razor sharp. I love it. After having the 1920x1200 with the Dell M65, I was anxious to get the same resolution in my "personal" machine. This scren is way brighter/whiter than the Dell screen.

I have not changed the DPI or anything, yet anyway...

 

A couple of adds now that I am digging into it:

InterVideo WinDVD is also installed, must have missed that, or it must not have an icon. I'm digging into the Add/Remove Programs to clean some crud off.

Diskeeper = Diskeeper Home, whatever that is. I rarely defrag, and when I do, I use the built in defrag, which is Diskeeper's technology.

 

Congrats on finally getting the laptop. This is my first laptop purchase and was wondering how bad the screen looks if you drop it down to a lower resolution? I'm pretty good with high resolution monitors, but a 1900 x 1200 on a 15.4" does worry me just a bit. I'm not gonna let the resolution be a deal breaker for me, but I do wanna know how it looks if you do change it to a lower res. Any screen caps you can include in the difference would be appreciated.

 

DONT DONT DONT DONT do this. It's CRAPPY. The screen looks horrible in non-native. Increase the DPI, worst case.

 

yea, lcds only look good at their native resolution.

 

Just for fun I cranked it down to a few lower widescreen resolutions. It was ok but generally looked very soft in comparison. I'd agree wholeheartedly with ponicg and jaydm, go with the native res and up the DPI. A number of guys at work have the DPI up on the Dell M65s at 1920x1200 and are quite happy with it.

I'm not getting wowed by the hard drive performance on this box. I hope my 200GB is faster, that or I hope the Robson/Turbo Memory starts to learn a little better. The Norton Internet Security uninstall took several minutes.