Thinkpads Forum

I can't afford a MacBook pro... but I have the chance to buy a decent T61 locally on Craigslist for $140... I read that these are great laptops for music production due to how well the MOBO'S are grounded ... supposedly improves sound quality ... I am willing to upgrade the CPU,SSD,and go 64 bit if needed... I just need some of your expert advise for an optimal build and stable OS... I will be running some pretty large programs such as Ableton live, Reason, Cubase, FL Studio etc.. Will this machine run with the big boys? ... I would be slowly upgrading it ... maybe spending up $400 in parts if needed ... any and all advice is much appreciated .... thanks

As you are interested in DJing - the T61 will not record internaly, as far as I'm aware. For upgrading, a Merom 2.6 is the fastest you can get, and there is the nVidia issue.

tipo33 wrote:As you are interested in DJing - the T61 will not record internaly, as far as I'm aware. For upgrading, a Merom 2.6 is the fastest you can get, and there is the nVidia issue.

Thanks for the reply.. I am researching the bug issue now (great heads up) ... I would probably use a FireWire interface if I go this route... thanks again

Using a quality external sound card and DAC, 1394 or USB, would greatly alleviate grounding issues you would expect from any stock integrated audio in the first place. Integrated audio has never been fantastic and I wouldn't expect that much from it from any computer.

That said, the various ThinkPads I own I have noted to have very clean output from the headphone jack, if that is of your concern (I don't hear data noise, etc). I have a T60p but would expect similar performance from the T61.

tipo33 wrote:As you are interested in DJing - the T61 will not record internaly, as far as I'm aware. For upgrading, a Merom 2.6 is the fastest you can get, and there is the nVidia issue.

a Merom 2.6 is not any near the fastest you can get, or else I must not be typing on one right now ...

there is the nVidia issue. But you can also get one with Intel graphics. As you can see in my sig, I got both types.

it wont record internally as the feature is disabled on hardware level. However if your T61 has expresscard slot then you can put wonderful external sound cards. Check out the Echo Indigo DJx. I think you can get one of those for PCMCIA slot too, but I would prefer expresscard one. You can also get the sound blaster 5.1 one but as far as I know people are complaining of sound delays and such, driver issues, etc.

good luck

Cubase will run, and ProTools probably will too, since I've heard of T61 hackintoshes being able to run the Mac build.

Radioguy wrote:Cubase will run, and ProTools probably will too, since I've heard of T61 hackintoshes being able to run the Mac build.

Now the Hackintosh would be sweet if all the drivers worked.... anybody ever tried it with a thinkpad?

Yes. There are several threads in this subforum about that, and another subforum about OSX on ThinkPads as well.

I finally got Lion running on a 2nd HDD partioned with Mint as well, but I've not installed any production software on it yet. I'm still feeling it out.

Forget the unsupported Mac stuff, just grab Ubuntu Studio. I threw it on an X61 and it seemed to run just fine (although I've been just been playing with effects and stuff, not doing anything "real").