I just received my T61 and have some initial impressions to share with all.

For those familiar with Thinkpads, there is nothing revolutionary to discuss.

I purchased from PC Connection - yep, they have one model in stock and it's very well equipped. I had placed an order for basically the same specs and canceled it after ordering from them.

There have been a few comments about the offset LCD, but honestly, you don't even notice it when using the laptop. I think they made the chassis slightly larger so they could position the speakers on both sides of the keyboard. I like it, but it is definitely larger than the T60 14.1 model and feels very close to the T60 15" models. I've had both.

I definitely don't like the battery extending out the back. Makes it look like a retro fit design.

I was a little worried when I first setup Vista Ultimate on it, because I got two blue screens and had to reboot. Eventually, I completely shutdown and everything seems to be normal now.

I've installed a few apps and no problems. I was a little disappointed to see that they installed MS Office trial version - bloatware to me. They also installed Nortorn Internet Security - what a system hog. I immediately uninstalled both.

The LCD could be a little brighter - I've been using a Macbook Pro for the last 6 months and with the smaller font size and dimmer LCD, it will take a little getting used to. I have brightness all the way up and it still seems too dim for my preference.

It is definitely cool running. I used it for 3 and half hours straight last night and I could not find a warm spot on it. My Macbook Pro was just sitting there the whole time and it was noticeably warm on the bottom near the LCD. They did a nice job with the thermal design.

It came with the 6 cell battery and I've been running for about an hour and a half with wifi and bluetooth on and at full brightness and I've got 40% battery left. I'd say about 2.5 hours would be the max you could expect under these conditions. With video playback, probably 2 hours.

It's 2.0 ghz and has the 160 gig 5400 hard drive and this puppy is fast. Much faster than running Windows XP through Parallels on the Macbook Pro. The USB drive is incredibly fast. It copied 10 gigs of data in about 10 minutes. The MBP would take over an hour or close to it. That may be the fault of running Win XP through Parallels.

Fit and finish is excellent. I'd love to have a little bit brighter screen, but all things considered, this is the top of the heap when it comes to business laptops.

I've got more experimenting to do with it and more apps to install, so I'll follow up in a day or two. So far, love the size, the love the weight, love the specs, love the fit and finish. A brighter LCD would be nice and a better battery fit would help with the appearance.

Off to the office to see how my Advanced Dock and 30 inch Dell external LCD works with it.

I envy you

I have a T41p. Nice lappy; still quite fast today. With 1 GB of RAM, the FireGL T2 and the 7200 rpm hard drive it feels quite snappy.

I love this laptop because it's very power efficient. If you've tried Notebook Hardware Control, you might have noticed that it has a power draw metter. This lappy consumes between 12.5 and 14W while doing basic stuff such as Internet browsing. I have a Dell Precision M70 and it draws like 25-26W, so even if it has more battery capacity (72 vs 80 W) the T41p lasts much longer. The TracckPoint and the keyboard are also things I adore...

Do you think it would be a good idea to upgrade? I like the widescreen format more (I always keep the IM client bar to the right) and the sound system on the T41p is pretty much at bottom of the scale.

So:

1.- How much power does it draw?
2.- Are the keyboard and TrackPoint good?
3.- What about the sound system?
4.- Is it sturdier than previous models?
5.- Is it true that it has an integrated web cam?
6.- Are there any details worth mentioning to us having older models? (both negative and positive)

I think that's all, for now...

mikemex

1. How much power does it draw. It seems like it uses a little more power than any previous model. Not sure why that would be unless it's related to Vista and / or the new Intel chipsets. I normally don't worry about these things unless I'm traveling and then I use a 3 cell ultrabay battery to give me a little more juice. Definitely something to consider if you are relying on long battery life.

2. The keyboard and trackpoint are standard thinkpad. They are top notch and very precise. If there is any better I haven't used it or heard about it.

3. I haven't really played a DVD or anything yet, so I can't comment on the sound system. One thing I did notice about the sound is that it doesn't appear to make that loud DING when it goes into suspend mode. I never cared for that and there may be a configuration option for it, but right now it's not doing it and I really like that.

4. It seems pretty solid. No squeaks or bends anywhere in the chassis. The LCD is very solid. Although it's thinner and lighter than the T60, I'd say they put it together with the same fit and finish you'd expect in a Thinkpad.

5. The model I purchased did not have the integrated web cam. Yes, that is an option, but I really don't have any need for one.

6. Other features worth mentioning...

I used it with my advance dock at the office yesterday and I was hoping that I could just dock it while it was suspended, but this didn't seem to work properly. I finally had to shut it down, dock it, and start it while docked to get it recognize the resolution of my external LCD. Dells seem to handle this better.

When I was finished, instead of shutting down while docked, I selected "suspend mode" from the shutdown options and this morning I opened it up and figured it would just resume normal operations. Not so. It must have thought it was still docked and no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to show the login screen for Windows Vista. I finally had to do a hard shutdown by holding the power button down and then cold boot. That worked fine.

The thing I am most impressed about is the size. It's a little bigger than the previous 14.1 models as far as thickness goes, but I think that makes it feel more robust. The LCD seem somewhat brighter than previous models now that I've been using it for a while.

If you're in the market for a small, lightweight, business laptop, I don't think you can beat this one.

Just got mine yesterday, also from PC Connection. 4 blue screens so far, but other than that I'm liking it. I don't have any issues with the battery sticking out of the back, and prefer that over the Dell's with the battery in the front.

The LCD is great, plenty bright for me, I even turned the brightness down a little. I don't even notice the offset LCD, not sure why everyone has been making a big deal out of it. There is a little light leakage at the bottom, but I could only tell when it was completely dark in the room and an all black screen.

The keyboard is great, like always. Love having the trackpoint, much better than a touchpad.

Speakers are good for a business oriented laptop, just watching YouTube and Joost, it sounds good enough. I'll be using headphones most of the time anyway, plugged in my Sennheiser HD595s and everything sounded great as expected. My Razer M100 Pro|Tone earbuds sounded great as well.

Power is good for me, much better than my last laptop (4 year old Sager 5670), watched Joost while browsing the web and installing new programs for about 1.5 hours, then the low battery came on at 10% remaining, this was on the Default power config. Should be able to watch a DVD with wireless turned off and a more battery friendly power plan.

Haven't tried Linux on it yet, going to pop in a LiveCD sometime just to see how well that works, I'll probably wait until Intel releases the 4965 drivers. I need a Windows machine anyways for a router sim program.

I haven't tried any gaming yet, I'll probably put CS on it to see how well it plays, I've got a dedicated gaming rig already, so I'll probably put a good RTS on this to pass the time while traveliing.