Initial impressions: T60p model 2007-83U

[darrenf]

Picked up my T60p at the UPS depot this morning (good thing, too becuase it was in a 30' countainer of them headed to IBM in RTP and would have been a "claim for sure" by Monday if I hadn't brought it to their attention).

First impressions:

The good
------------

* Alps keyboard is the best Alps I've used. It has a different feel (a little "cheap" feeling) and it has a little more resitance than I'm used to, but I think I'm typing just as fast with it. Also, the bottom row of arrow keys don't stick up in the air like in the T4x Alps keyboard.

* The keyboard is very firm. The flexing present in most T4x 14" keyboards around the arrow pad is gone completely.

* Somehow I didn't notice it in the product shots, but it now has separate battery and AC indicator lights inside and out. That will reduce confusion over whether AC charger is connected and providing power.

* No vent holes!! Despite photos to the contrary, there are no vent holes under the fan in this 14" case.

* Liquid drain holes are present. I can't tell you how hard it is to resist the temptation to try this feature.

* Construction seems very solid - even an improvement over my T42p.

* No blinding ThinkLight. The ThinkLight is shielded in the 14" model as it was in the 15" T43 model so that it shines down on the keyboard and not also at the user.

* Keyboard lettering is slightly larger.

* Wireless on/off switch is not nearly as cheap and breakable as it looked to me in photos.

* T4x and T60 optical drives are functionally interchangable, just remember that it will look funny. A T4x user can therefore install a dual-layer DVD drive (I did). It looks like one could change the bezel and make it match the case as well.

* Screen *seems* pleasantly brighter with a little less blue push than the stock screen in my T42p, but I use color correction so I'm going from memory.

* My fears were not realized - the screws are philips/flat combos, not torx/flat.


The bad
-----------

* Keyboard still has three-key syndrome. If you press particular three-key combinations, the laptop is unable to process it using the address lines available and so you get a beep. G-H-J is an easy-to-test combination that triggers this.

* Hinges are pretty tight (similar to 15" T43s) and I swear it feels like the screen is flexing ever so slightly when I close the screen. I've not gotten this feeling from any T4x. I would guess this is a combination of tighter hinges and the reduction in the right-side edge reinforcement.


The ugly
------------

* The fit of my Sanyo battery could not be worse. I'll try fixing it with scotch tape shims and bending the hook, but it's much worse out of the box than the Sony in myT42p and, IIRC, worse even than the _Sanyo_ fit on the T4x.


All in all, I'm VERY impressed with the T60 so far.

I have to clone my T42p HDD to the SATA drive now and I want to make an image of the stock setup first so it will be a while before I get to report on the video, fan and such.

Once I've had a chance to play with software I'll report back.

-darren

[dr_st]

Keyboard still has three-key syndrome. If you press particular three-key combinations, the laptop is unable to process it using the address lines available and so you get a beep. G-H-J is an easy-to-test combination that triggers this.

Are there many laptop keyboards out there that don't suffer from this syndrome? I have the same thing on my T42 and on my Compaq Evo.

[darrenf]

Are there many laptop keyboards out there that don't suffer from this syndrome? I have the same thing on my T42 and on my Compaq Evo.

OK, so it's a push to call that a "bad" but I had to come up with some "bads" or I couldn't have called the battery ugly. I mean, "the good and the ugly" doesn't have quite the ring that "the good, the bad and the ugly" does.

I just realized that I have to decrypt my existing hard drive before I can clone it (sector copy wouldn't work) so it looks like playtime is a couple hours off.

I've decided that I will be requesting an NMB keyboard, though. The keytravel on the Alps is a little long with a little too much resistance. It's also a little noisier. I don't know that a new ThinkPad user would have a problem with it but the NMB has spoiled me.

-darren

[darrenf]

Good
--------

* Fan noise. I haven't pushed it yet, but under normal use on AC and DC, the fan is running always and is pretty silent. If I put my ear in front of one of the exhaust ports I can hear a light whine of the fan motor, but from a position seated in front of the screen, in a room with modest ambient sound (AC) I can't hear it. It is not as quiet as some older models and I'm sure that some will not be happy with it but it's *nothing* like the T43 fan.

* Fan efficiency. This thing pushes a lot of air and it's staying pretty cool (again typical office/web browsing work).

* Hard Drive noise. Improved as compared with the same drive in IDE in a T42p. This might come from the improved shock-absorbing rails on the hard drive or the fact that the drive is now enclosed in the roll cage because the drive is identical to my old drive with the exception of the circuit card (only two letters are different in the model number).

-darren

[danny_isr]

my T43 fan is just like what u describe on your T60.
i don't know what to think about this . maybe different T43 got different fans.
my fan is on almost all the time , but it's not noisy at all ....

[darrenf]

danny_isr, sounds like you've got a keeper. Don't send it in for service!

Update
------------

The Hydis display does have a lot of blue push. Oh well -- back to color correction.

-darren

[darrenf]

Update
----------
Running on battery, processors at 41C, I can hear the fan all too well. Bummer. More accurately, I head the sound of airflow - the fan itself is all but silent unless my ear is right up to it.

-darren

[darrenf]

In another thread, Kyocera asked

[...] the 14" - how is the feel of the body, the strength, does it feel like it will flex if you picked it up with one hand with the lcd open? Is there a balance between the strength of the base and the heaviness of the top. ?

The base is, as expected, more rigid than the T4x.

I never hesitated to cary the T42p around with the lid open and the T60 has even tighter hinges so it's no less capable in this regard. Just for grins, I just carried it around *by* the top of the lid and the hinges never gave way. It's not very balanced for carrying this way, but that should demonstrate how well constructed it is.

My one gripe is that by changing the reinforcement on the right edge I think they weakened the display housing. That wouldn't be a concern on a T42 but this model has the much stiffer hinges. Still, that's just an observation about what I think might have been a poor design decision. The ThinkPad still has the best hinges and display housing in the business, IMHO.

The top isn't very heavy. With it tilted almost all the way back, the base stays on the table.

Oh, I should have mentioned this at the outset - one change that stands out is that the base is textured now. It feels like the finish used on the camera body of my Canon D20 (which has been called a fine finger-nail file ). It makes the case a little less slippery. At this point, I think it's a positive.

-darren

[Hanson]

So does the battery run longer on the T60 than the T43 as it claims to be?

[darrenf]

So does the battery run longer on the T60 than the T43 as it claims to be?

Unfortunately, no. On my T42p with 9-cell I would get 7 hours if I tried. The same setup yields 4 to 5 hours on the T60. One glaring contributor is the CPU whose slowest clock is 1GHz per side. My T42p (2GHz processor) would clock down to 600MHz.

If I could get this thing to clock down to 300MHz/side then I think there would be some great power savings, but it won't go.

-darren

[hoya]

* Screen *seems* pleasantly brighter with a little less blue push than the stock screen in my T42p, but I use color correction so I'm going from memory. -darren

darren - could this (color correction) be the reason why the display looks different when you put the t42p image in your T60p?

also, did your T42p have a Samsung or Hydis panel? I'm assuming it was a 14"?

[darrenf]

Yes, as I said I'm working from memory. I do think the screen is quite a bit brighter but I need to turn off color correction on my old screen and run some side-by-side tests. I'll do that once my T60 is fully up and running.

Both displays are 14" UXGA+ but the parts lookup fails on my old laptop so short of taking it apart I don't have a way to find out what display type I had. My memory is that all displays were either Samsung or IDTech when I bought that machine, but I don't know for sure.

-darren

[hoya]

Both displays are 14" UXGA+ but the parts lookup fails on my old laptop so short of taking it apart I don't have a way to find out what display type I had. My memory is that all displays were either Samsung or IDTech when I bought that machine, but I don't know for sure.

-darren

try this page to manually input the numbers:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... sLookup.vm

[bmfyxpp]

I'm writing this from my 2007-83U and I agree with Darren on just about all of his points. The three-key beep is certainly annoying-- is there a setting to disable that? I couldn't find anything in the BIOS.

The screen took a bit of tweaking to get it looking the way I wanted-- it's set for 16-bit color out of the box, I believe, which caused a strange blotchiness in one corner that can only be described as similar to shingles scars. Bumping the color up to 32-bit solved that one, and some color correction and ClearType tuning finished the job.

The fan is certainly on a lot, but I personally hardly even notice. I'm sure some people find it annoying, but it's not a big deal to me at all.

Installing the extra RAM stick was an adventure. I may start a separate thread on the subject just to get some tips from others.

The only thing that feels flimsy is the DVD/CD tray. If I try to pop a disc onto the spindle one-handed, it feels like the tray might snap off. Best to hold the tray with one hand while putting in the disc with the other. Also, the button is a little hard to locate if you're not looking at it.