Rec'd T61 - Initial impressions

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.

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.