Inexpensive R series / Any sales coming up?

So, my younger brother turns 18 in July, and I'm considering buying him a Thinkpad for his birthday. I've heard rumors of a refresh in June, and I was wondering if there was likely to be some kind of clearance before then?

As it stands, I've priced up the following R61i with EPP:

Intel Pentium Dual Core T2370 (1.73GHz)
Windows XP Pro
15.4" WXGA
Intel GMA X3100
1GB DDR2
80GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Thinkpad 11a/b/g Wifi
6 cell Battery

Any comments? I used to have an R51, and it was pretty solid. Can anyone with an R61i comment on it's build quality, etc?

My brother's not a huge gamer, but he does play a little bit of WoW, and a few Steam games that are running on the Source engine (I think TF2 and Gary's Mod mostly). I know the Intel cards aren't great for gaming, but would it be able to handle these games on lower settings?

 

Just ordered and received one for a family member and it is great. It took about an hour to get Norton off and my usual suite on. I still have see what bloatware he will keep, but for now it just has been disabled. By far one of the most sturdy laptops I have touched and a great feature base, but you already know this as you have a t61.

Edit: Just search for coupons, I believe I used a 15% off which was quite nice.

 

Most coupons don't seem to work with EPP. The price with EPP is almost identical to the coupon price

 

I'm not that sure of the performance capablity of the GMA X3100, but I would recommend a NVS 140M if he plays source games, I have one in my T61 and it plays smoothly, though not at the highest settings.

 

problem is that it's not availabe on the R61i, and I'm trying to keep it to not much over $500.

However, my old 32MB Radeon 9000 could handle CS:S at low settings...

EDIT: Yeah, to go to the NVS 140M, it's an additional $200

 

New ones should be comming out in September

 

Ah, I was hoping June so I could get a good deal on an R61... oh well, $540 isn't bad for the specs... Mainly I'm debating on integrated vs. dedicated graphics.

Also, does anyone know if the R61i 15.4" has an SD Card Reader in it? (It's an option in the 14")

 

I don't play any games on my laptop so integrated for the sake of battery life is the way to go. Because of this I can't tell you if it will be any good for those games. Go for the 14.1" if the price is similar as it's a superior design to the 15.4" "R".

 

Even then, it could be quite a while before they ship, so don't expect them anytime soon.

 

I have the 14 and couldnt be happier, its definitely big enough. I do have the NVS 140 though, it plays source great.....integrated wouldnt work well at all.

 

well, he does have a desktop for gaming... it's only got a radeon 9550, but it suits his needs. I think i'm going to go integrated, for the sake of price and battery life

 

How so?

EDIT: They're out of Intel 11g cards, are the Thinkpad ones still atheros?

 

The 14.1" has the roll gage for the lid not just the bottom like 15.4" "R" plus it uses the same material on the lid as the "T".
In fact there is very little difference between the 14.1" "R" and the "T" series.

 

Interesting, thanks.

Just to make sure, this applies to the R61 i as well, right?

It's not very much to bump it to a 14", so i think i'll do so

 

Yes it does.

 

Great, so now I'm at a 14" R61i with a 6 cell battery and a Media Card Reader. Everything else same as my original post, and it's a grand total of $557

 

i have the r61 with the x3100.

the games i can run on it kinda varies. for example, it has 'low' framerates for games like warcraft 3 (hovers around 20-25ish with max settings, and drops to like 15 in dota).

i can run CS source fine on the lower/lowest settings. I'm a really big on fps performance, so when i say its "fine" it runs at at least 30 fps constantly but you have to lower a lot of the stuff.

that being said, i'm not too sure if it can run team fortress 2. i have team fortress 2 but i dont have the board band connection to download it now that i'm home from school. from what i 'heard' on some forums, it doesn't seems to run well at all unless if you run it in directx 8 mode or something, and even then the performance is questionable (cause the guy who used directx8 would call 15 fps playable).

I also read that portals lag like heck on the x3100. its ok if you disable the portal depth to 0 (IE, you can't look at stuff through the portal) but then that pretty much makes some of the puzzles impossible.

but weirdly enough, when i was playing the original half life the other day, it wasn't running that smooth as whenever there was shadows or weird lighting, my fps would drop to like 5.

GTA:San Andreas also runs fine on integrated if you turn the settings down. i don't have any fps numbers but its very playable.

 

This is something that I'm still debating on. but to go up to the Quadro NVS card, it's going to take the price up to $720.

EDIT: Can the Quadro NVS 140M be driver-modded to a Geforce?

 

My understanding is that you can.

 

hmm i'm curious, whats the geforce equivalent to the Quadro NVS 140M?


if it was me, i'd rather get the integrated graphics card and spend the money on extending the warranty instead. my sister brought me a $1000 laptop because i needed one for college and i got a 1 year warranty. it ended up breaking after like a year and a half it made me feel terrible for breaking it because i know that is like the only thing she'll ever get me haha.

well if you're getting this for your brother and if hes going/expects it to last through college, getting a longer warranty isn't a terrible idea.

 

It's roughly equivalent to the GeForce 8400m GS.

 

Ok...

I'm still not sure which way I'm going to go on this.

I know the site says ships in 2-3 weeks, but what is usually the expected ship time? I know mine shipped faster. I want to get it by his birthday, but My first paycheck wasn't as much as I was expecting, after a mixup with my timecard, so I might not be able to order it until the 2nd week of June, and his birthday is July 4

 

I say order it as soon as possible. Don't chance it.

You can pay with Bill Me Later if you like and that way you'll have time to sort out your $$ situation.

DD

 

What's the catch to BML?

 

seems like if you spend $750 or more then it's no interest, no payments for 6 months

DD

 

and of course, the laptop i'm looking at is $720.

I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and order it once I get my paycheck cashed. Maybe I'll add a laptop bag or something to put it over $750.