How outdated is my T61 ?

Ok, so my T61 is quickly approaching almost 4 years old in a few months. It has a Penryn T8300 processor with a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHZ @ 2 GB of ram.

I ONLY use this laptop for movies, music, internet, documents, etc. The primary HDD (160GB @ 7200RPM) has been at 96% full for months, but I store all of my data on a 320GB backup external drive, so not too worried about storage. I'm more concerned about speed, and technological advances. For example, how far have these processors become in the last 4 years ?

Take my T61 and compare it to a W520 for example with a Core i7 lets say. How much faster would it be compared with my T61 ? More than twice the speed ?

I'd just like to get a round about idea on how far technology / processors in general has come since I last purchaced my Thinkpad T61 new so long ago.

I'm not looking to upgrade right away (MAYBE when Ivy Bridge comes out), but just curious on how far things have gotten ?

 

Things have come along with processors, but not so much that for basic tasks that your system is outdated.

If your system serves your needs just fine, I wouldn't worry about it. You could upgrade to 4GB RAM which could be helpful to you at some point. Otherwise, I'd stick with it if it works fine.

 

I agree with Roger; you're fine. I would keep that money in your pocket and see if something really nice comes out in the future. (Better screens, etc.) I would still use my T61 daily if I didn't game.....

 

If it serves you well enough, a W520 would be way overkill.

Another 2GB of RAM would be nice if you can snag it for cheap off of Craigslist or something. Maybe just bump your storage to a larger drive?

 

CPU needs have sort of plateaued for most uses. Unless you're doing something that pushes the frequently, I doubt you'd see much of a difference. My R60e, which is a generation behind your T61, is fine for web, office and media. Bumping up to a decent SSD and perhaps a drive in the modular bay to accommodate your storage needs might be a better option and will cost less.

 

Can apply middleton's ultimate bios to get your T8300 running at 2.6Ghz plus faster SATA-II interface speed.

Quite a few folks prefer the 16:10/4:3 LCD the T61 offers. The new systems have a wider but shorter 16:9 ratio so for some it's a step backwards for anything other than watching movies.

 

Mine turned 4 last month. Although it is mainly used by my wife these days it handles everything thrown at it. I have the T7500, though I have 8GB of ram. I'd say your fine! If the 4 year itch is grabbing at you by all means scratch it, but don't blame it on the perfectly capable system...

 

My acquired T60 with a Core Duo does office work just fine (technically 2 generations behind). Also loving 4:3 SXGA+ screen on it.

 

I use my T60 all the times, your T8300 is no slouch for general work. Unless you need to do lot of video, graphics, gaming, CAD/CAM based work, etc, then your T8300 should be fine for at least another 2 to 3 years.

 

Wow, thank you all for the responses !

I have no plans on replacing my T61 anytime soon, just a generalization on how far technology has come. In fact, my T61 still looks like new, and still runs as fast as they day I unboxed it

 

I think the Penryn CPU was a leap forward in terms of performance and heat production. I have a soft spot for the penryn cpu.

Given the fact that you are still running with the X301 and Dell Inspirion, the Thinkpad T61 should be the better performing of the bunch.

If you need more CPU power consider a desktop or a souped up quad core T520 (in the future).

 

Not outdated at all. If you only do office work, web browsing and even multimedia what you have is entirely sufficient and no benefits could be gained by, say, putting in an i7 extreme processor.

 

As long you're content with your T61 then there isn't much reason to retire it, it's only outdated as you make it to be. For your uses such as movies, music, internet and documents the T61 can handle those tasks quite easily, I still take my T61 over a netbook anyday. You could say the main reason I chose to upgrade to a T420 is that I do designing work so I need something better than the CCFL screen on my T61 which I admit is pretty poor.

If you're curious about how things have progressed you can have a read of my review where I compared my T61 against the T420.

 

Thanks for the link Hearst ! I'll be checking out your review !

Again, I still LOVE my T61, hands down the best laptop I've ever owned (although my X301 is better build quality wise IMO). My X301 I VERY rarely use. I think it only has like 35-40 power-on hours lol My T61 has over 8,000 power-on hours (checked by using CrystalDiskInfo) and still runs great ! The Dell however, has NOT been as great as my Thinkpads, but is still operational. The Dell has gone though 2 hard drives, TONS of viruses, fan stopped working then randomly decides to start working again, etc.

I have NO plans on getting a new computer in the near future (in the next 1-2 years), BUT I WILL be getting the iPad 3 when it comes out . . . . just because

 

I have a T61 15.4" 1660x1050 T9300, 3GB DDR2, Fingerprint, ExpressCard slot, 2503-10U docking station. Last week I upgraded my hard drive from the factory 160GB 7200 to 750GB Seagate Momentus 7200.5. Wow, what a performance boost! I was really struggling with 3GB free disk space. By the way, I reinstalled Win7-32 instead of 64 bits, and I feel it is snappier. I really really do hate the X3100 video processor and the CCFL backlight, but the performance is pret-ty good (Larry David style).

 

outdated ?

do you know how many people are still looking into buying T61 laptops ?

I just bough couple myself, but will tell about that in another thread

 

I just upgraded from a T60p (it died) to a T420. The biggest improvement was going from Vista-->Win7. Upgrade your machine to 3GB (using a 32bit OS) and get a bigger Hard Drive (the new ones are faster because of higher densities) - It's what I did, and it made a huge difference.

 

whoa you are sure using your X301 sparingly, is that your weekend Ferrari?

 

Basically lol

My plan was to have my X301 for my travel / on the go laptop. Turns out that my travel plans were cut back drastically from what I used to do. Now I only travel about twice MAYBE three times a year. I vowed to NEVER sell my X301, since I paid the full brand new price for it (over $2,000 USD) and I thought (and still think) that it was the coolest laptop ever created. Super thin WITH a DVD drive. Which is something I wanted on a laptop.

So ya, the X301 is very snappy, but with a 64GB SSD, I would never use it for my primary machine. Nowhere near enough space.

 

Can you blame THAT on Dell?

 

The AMD Turion 64 x 2 is an oven, this is one of the major reason people don't like AMD full voltage laptop processors, they put out too much heat and processing power is lot less than equivalent speed intel cpu. AMD trails Intel in their mobile CPU line, in the desktop space they just fit in more Cores to compensate for the lack of processing power, but that is not feasible for laptops.

But the X301 is a real good machine (it is a definite Halo Thinkpads with a price to match). The T400s that i bought to replace the X301 has started to fall apart, the screen bezel has cracked and the palmrest cracked too....and i pamper this machine compare to the old X301 that i used or any other Thinkpads. Luckily Lenovo was able to redesign the T420s to make it stronger, and the screen no longer flexes under opening/closing motion, nor does the bottom casing flex when lifted by the corner of the machine. But T400s and T410s falls short of the X30x quality by a mile, and these machine definitely falls under the don't buy category along with the T61/T61p/R61 with Nvidia GPU.

 

That's improved quite a bit with Fusion, lead_org, but I think there's still room for improvement.

 

The Fusion CPU is pretty slow but they do have a good GPU. I guess AMD is making up the lack of CPU processing power with a better GPU. The problem with AMD is that they don't have the R&D budget of Intel and as such they are always trailing Intel.

 

Nope, I blame that on the naughty stuff that was on there.

lol

Oh, and luckily I didn't spec out my T61 with that prone to failure GPU

 

OT - the X301 chassis is destined to becoming classic and worth investing some effort in improving it's functionality by for example:

* attaching a 7mm sata HDD, up to 500GB to complement the 64GB SSD you have. I've commented on how to do that at X301: replacing DVD drive with HDD *PIC*.
* performing a 800Mhz->1066Mhz FSB PLL pinmod. If you modded the bios then could get a an extra multiplier to gain a further 200Mhz (or 266Mhz if PLL modded) by running dual-IDA.

<strike>* attach a $160/$210 GTX450/GTX460 DIY eGPU via the X301's expresscard slot to give gaming quality graphics. It would be a 10+ times improvement in performance over the 4500MHD.</strike> <-- lead_org's correction below.

 

there is no expresscard slot on the X301.

 

Plenty of junkware, but hardly to blame for spyware.

By the way, if you get a business class machine from dell you won't get the junkware.

I like Dell Workstations, but I hate their laptops. No consistency year to year. I've had co-workers with them and they go through HDD and batteries like candy.

I just went from a T60 (still running good) to a T420.

I'm quite pleased with the performance boost.

Battery Amazing.
HDD Silent
Fan Near Silent
Screen Kinda of a sideways upgrade (literally)
Weight
Speakers, worse if you can image that.
Lack of status lights.
Speed, blazing, I didn't realize what I was putting up with. My T60 had 4GB Win7 32bit, T420 has Win7 x64 8GB.
Wifi running very fast with N enabled.

 

The Dell Precision Workstations are really good.... but lifting a fully loaded one (T7700) is back breaking work.

 

Hi,

I just received a note of apology from a moderator and I acccepted. May we return to T61s as I have one and a new Lenovo.

Specwise, I thought my T61 could do anything a w520 would do. This turns out not to be the case as the W520 has 4 processors (More on this) to the the t61 dual-core and memory speeds are higher.

Not only does the w520 have 4 cores but it has 4 hyperthreaded processors also.

As it turns out the w520 is much more formidable than the t61p. I used this to my advantage. I turned the T61 into an 32 bit XP machine by installing XP.
In a very real way I hated doing this to my t61 but my old Inspiron died and I needed something for 32 bits and XP testing. This way, I used my T61 more.

Renee

 

Well you're a developer and can definitely take advantage of those extra cores.

 

@Renee, so your T61p got downgraded to the more mundane work. So how is your W520? Do you like it, how do you like the increased bulk of the machine compared to the T61p?

 

Congrats on your new W520 Renee ! I know you've had your T61p for awhile as well. I'd also love to know how you like the W520 compared to your old T61p

 

Well there no doubt about it. I love the W520. My desk top is a mature Extreme and I use the Lenovo to test until the Sandy Bridge Extreme is out in
Q4. I got the largest W520 I could and my goodness did it ever pay off. For development working I simply remote to the lenovo.

There is a difference. The w520 is a very husky machine with all kinds of power in the rawest sense of the word. It's as if I can feel the two additional cpu's all hyperthreaded.

Oh yes, I took care of the 16x9 by ordering the high resolution screen and I ordered 8 gigabytes of memory so I'm very comfortable with this machine.
Definitely it's a machine I would recommend.

In a way, I hate saying goodbye to the t61p because it's a good machine. Both are on the lan.
Renee

 

Comparing them is something I don't dare do because obviously the W520 would "win" and I'd be the loser.
Renee

 

"how do you like the increased bulk of the machine compared to the T61p?"

What increased bulk? I am unaware of any other than a larger charger....

Renee

 

The thickness of the W520 bottom casing should be more than the T61p.

 

I haven't noticed it....

Renee