Fresh out! Lenovo T61 Jun 12 2008

Got mine two days ago, here is the core SPEC

14.1 WLCD
T9300 2.5GHz 6M L2
1DIMM 2G RAM
160G 7200RPM HDD
Discrete Graphic
Windows Vista Business SP1

$1130 tax inc. direct from Lenovo website

I am a software engineer with 10 years experience using laptops from various big brands. I have a stone-age IBM TP T21, and this T61 is my second TP and an upgrade from my heroic TOSHIBA satellite after 5 years perfect service. These days I've been busy working on platform setup and file migration. Following is my brief review of this new T61 from Lenovo.

1. First Blink -- it is cheaply built

This machine was produced in Shenzhen China including its LCD panel. In this everything made in China world, we can’t expect too much upon what you could get for just 11 hundreds USD.

From a single touch I can feel that T61 uses cheaper material to cut down the building cost of its cash cow T-series. Esp. the palm rest part applies the cheapest plastic degrading it into sort of DELL Inspiron 5000 series 8 years ago. Poorly mounted speaker cover wobbles.

Overall, T61 feels less solid than before and it is thicker than ever.

2. Legendary keyboard has gone.

T61's keyboard has turned from once the best in the industry to a stiff noise-making average performer. The good is that it is firmly mounted. A nuisance about the key arrangement is the two page back/forward buttons close to the direction keys. If you got big hands, you could lose all your online editing by wrongly tapping on the backward key, which leads you into previous pages wiping out your input.

BTW: Comparing difference brands, I reckon that TOSHIBA nowadays owns the best laptop keyboard in terms of comfort and usability.

3. Meaty part! Performance is convincing

Vista Experience Index rated 4.1 for my machine, which was the Vista AERO experience points and the lowest among the other aspects.

T61’s HDD is from Segate. It is an OK performer with 43M/S Read and 35M/S Write .

Vista performance on this machine is good if not excellent. Vista is obvious faster and better OS than XP in so many aspects, you can feel it if you are really a serious power user. Vista makes better use of memory, the more the better. With moderate services opened, Vista eats up more than 500M RAM along.

T61’s cooler performance when running in full speed attributes to the 45nm new CPU.

4. Battery life is good so far with 6 cell.

Normal office routine work with speaker turning off and LCD on its lower brightness will drain the battery in around 3 hours on my machine.

5. ThinkVantage loads of good stuffs!!

Check it out periodically and you will be surprised.

Seems that I am getting this article too long…Will follow up later.

In short, this new T61 is worth of the money you spend. Chinese product can be good.

P.S. Why T61 becomes so affordable? Because 2nd generation Intel platform of 45ns CPU with 2G Turbo cache is around the corner later this year. If you plan for a new business notebook, now is the time.

Josh

 

Nice little review. But I assume you meant T61?

 

Lol, thx dude.
T41 are the ones in my office....
I've corrected, it is T61.

 

Yeah, what's with that?

Edit: Oh, I see.

I hope your observations on the keyboard and build quality aren't representative of all ThinkPads or ThinkPad owners.

 

I don't entirely agree but I get your point. I have a T61, had a T42 before this, and an Inspiron 5000 before that. The T42 "felt" better, more solid and dependable. The keyboard is still just about the same. Thinkpads still have the very best keyboards bar none.

On the T61, It's almost as though they tried to copy the T41 build quality and almost got it right. The plastic is a little thinner. ThinkVantage software has become useful, where before it was just kind of annoying.

The Inspiron 5000 was a piece of ****. It wasn't just mine, everybody at work had trouble after a year or so with them.

 

Yes, I feel that T40s series was at TP's apex. Magnesium alloy frame, carbon composite cover, 14.1' 4:3 screen.

Because 14.1' 16:10 WSRCN is cheaper, Lenovo no longer offers options for 14.1' 4:3 panel and this is a bad thing. Lenovo takes advantage of the frame for widescreen by putting antenna into it, and what we get? Asymmetrical screen placement.

BTW, T61's LCD panel has very poor black level!

I can't agree someone said that TP keyboard is quiet.It's not! You might say it feels so Pro, but Mac Pro notebook and TOSHIBA's keyboards produce much less noise. If Mac Pro notebook is not a "MAC" with single-button mouse/touchpad, I think I may stick with it forever, it's a gem for all the time.

T61's speaker is terrible. not for MP3, not for playing DVD, but for system notification and warning sounds (of course, you could always put on earbuds for music...) After all, for a business machine, even speaker can be an option.

DELL and TOSHIBA's Harman/Kardon speakers are the best, HP/Compaq's JBL is above average.

T61 is a good deal, for the same spec. you could be easily charged more than 500 bucks from DELL for a XPS M1330/M1530 despite their better build.

 

Dell's speakers good? Pft.

 

What rating did you get for gaming graphics?

 

I got 4.6, for the first run.

But I think other benchmark software would put NVS 140 at the bottom of the line. This Graphic Module even uses Turbo Cache to share the main RAM up to 768M. Still remember how slow the nVidia 6200 TC was?

In addition, as far as I know memory bandwidth for this card is merely 64bit..which means that it obviously isnt designed for gaming.

 

It is always good to be able to get different views on laptops through the reviews IMO. Anyway, TP_FAN, congrats on your purchase.

 

It's been about a month since getting hands on T61, very coding intensive everyday.

a few concerns:

1. Noisy keyboard--Really loud! I mean it! Matchable with those Dell's desktop keyboards...Really annoying!

2. Build-in Webcam has Poor White Balance esp. under Fluorescent Light, severe yellowish hue.

3. Vista & VS 2005

Startup loading - csrss.exe process
VS 2005 auto reference(auto finishing) slow..
Microsoft encapsulates almost every bit of codes into classes, which made the framework more sustainable and looks more structured, on the other hand, this produces lots of referencing overheads, which slow down running performance.

That's why for algorithm or pure coding, Linux/g++ still seconds to none. Havent try any VMware under Vista, expected to be slow...

4. Firefox 3 is generally faster than IE 7
Some said IE is faster when opening ASP pages, I might wig my finger on this. I recommand Firefox 3 on vista strongly, no ActiveX Objects, auto cookies clean-up. Text pages load in Lightning speed.

5. For longer battery time and better cooling--remove your DVD Driver and disable touchpad!

Follow up later when new issues found.

 

Great times, I'd love to hear about the #5 more, wouldn't it be ugly with a huge empty hole on the side without the DVD driver? Do you have any pictures?

 

If you don't want the empty hole (who would?), I suppose you can "safely remove the hardware device" in the system tray. That should cut power to the optical bay.