Thinkpads Forum

T60 is my first thinkpad notebook. I wonder how is the quality compared to IBM made thinkpads. I must say, I like my T60. But really, there are some really annoying details.

Besides a few nay-sayers, most people feel that the T60 is up to the standards of previous Thinkpads from IBM.

Can you be more specific about what you find annoying about your T60?

It is up to the quality of my other thinkpads, it's very solid, well made, everything is working fine, the only issue i'm having is with the wireless card and reception.

irfan wrote:T60 is my first thinkpad notebook. I wonder how is the quality compared to IBM made thinkpads. I must say, I like my T60. But really, there are some really annoying details.

Based on my experience with the ThinkPad line over many years, I would say the new 60 series are every bit as good as before.
As far as your experience with annoying details, just look at some of the other brands out there and suddenly the ThinkPad looks even better.

The BIOS issues I and several others experienced is a nice example. Another one, the harddrive and the memory placement. Seems that the engineers did not pay to much attention to ergonomy. As a result, palmrest gets warm. I can add more. But the idea is, I kinda feel like the details are overlooked. Do not get me wrong. I do not want to compare thinkpad to other brands. Lets say, what you think could be better in your T60

It is discouraging about the bios issue, i'm at 1.06, think i'll stay there for a while. I'm waiting to hear from aarong about his atheros wireless card. This laptop is so solid feeling and that is what i need on the road every day. I've used some of my customers dell's and they would not last very long with the abuse I put them through.

No difference

Just got my new T60p last week. So far I have not noticed any difference between my previous models. Nor have I experienced any of the annoyances reported on the forum such as a squeaky palm rest, dead pixels, wireless problems or BIOS issues. I still have my T42p and have noticed that on the T60p the LCD lid/case is more solid, there is less flex to the lid than on the T42p.

IMHO it is better - the rollcage should make it sturdier than any previous T series.

I agree that the hdd placement is annoying as I am always hot and that just makes me hotter but it has been placed there on all previous T series so its not a change.

I think the quality is at least as good. The T60 definitely feels more "solid" to me than the T4x series, which were excellent.

I don't think IBM has actually manufactured Thinkpads for many years. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Thinkpads has been made by Lenovo for some time, under contract from IBM.

I owned a T20..the t60 kills it. On the t20 i can press the back of the LCD and you'll have distortion, not so on the t60.

RonS wrote:I think the quality is at least as good. The T60 definitely feels more "solid" to me than the T4x series, which were excellent.

I don't think IBM has actually manufactured Thinkpads for many years. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Thinkpads has been made by Lenovo for some time, under contract from IBM.

Either Quanta or Compal or the like made certain lines of Thinkpads like the R Series and X Series. I don't think Lenovo had a hand in the production then and still don't now; they just have as much of a hand in it as IBM did back before IBM/Lenovo. So there isn't much of a change there.

Quanta or Compal produces notebooks for other brands too. But I wonder, who designs the notebook and who decides on the material choices. How is the quality testing done.

irfan wrote:Quanta or Compal produces notebooks for other brands too. But I wonder, who designs the notebook and who decides on the material choices. How is the quality testing done.

That is pretty tightly controlled by IBM, and now IBM/Lenovo, and its System Engineering teams; they take an active role in the testing and tweaking of the systems before and during the production. They have been doing that for awhile, I think back to the T30 and T4X Series now and it seems to be working quite well.


Most other laptop makers just hold the makers and suppliers responsible and hit them over the head when something does work right despite the fact that you need a team from the company that wants to sell and ship the laptops looking about how all the parts come together and form the entire system. That is like holding the supplier responsible for the entire system and results in them either not caring because they get too much grief and too little compensation for it (they are only supposed to make the part anyway, the company that the part is for should have engineers to put the parts together) or simply going elsewhere for business.

irfan wrote:The BIOS issues I and several others experienced is a nice example. Another one, the harddrive and the memory placement. Seems that the engineers did not pay to much attention to ergonomy. As a result, palmrest gets warm. I can add more. But the idea is, I kinda feel like the details are overlooked. Do not get me wrong. I do not want to compare thinkpad to other brands. Lets say, what you think could be better in your T60

I don't see the quality difference relative to the R40 or the T42, both of which I own. As for the heated palmrest issue, the T42 has that as well. I believe it is because they put the hard drive beneath the right palmrest in the T60, just as they did the T42.

Anyway, I'm happy as a clam with my T60p. The Thinkpad legend continues...

christopher_wolf wrote:

RonS wrote:I think the quality is at least as good. The T60 definitely feels more "solid" to me than the T4x series, which were excellent.

I don't think IBM has actually manufactured Thinkpads for many years. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Thinkpads has been made by Lenovo for some time, under contract from IBM.

Either Quanta or Compal or the like made certain lines of Thinkpads like the R Series and X Series. I don't think Lenovo had a hand in the production then and still don't now; they just have as much of a hand in it as IBM did back before IBM/Lenovo. So there isn't much of a change there.

You are right, Lenovo doesn't make notebooks for IBM. They don't even make most of the notebooks under their own brand. They are made by Taiwanese owned companies in China.

Lenovo just cancelled the Z series contract with Quanta because Z series had horrible sales. Winstron makes the R and X series for Lenovo and both Winstron and Compal makes other notebooks under Lenovo name for Lenovo.

If there are quality issues, it's probably individual cases, because the thinkpads are still been made by the companies that made them for IBM.

IBMthinkpad:

I still have my T42p and have noticed that on the T60p the LCD lid/case is more solid, there is less flex to the lid than on the T42p.

I noticed that too, that must be the reason for the extra wide and sturdy hinges.

Or if your uber l33t you could build your own high end notebook for a small fortune

gearguy wrote:Or if your uber l33t you could build your own high end notebook for a small fortune

Well, I tried that once...Best not to bring that up again as the results were nowhere near as good as a Thinkpad.

Building a Desktop or a Workstation? No problem...Laptops, however, are a whole different ballgame.

How you did that I wonder

irfan wrote:How you did that I wonder

It was, as some would say, a Frankenpad.

Mainly stuff from my older HPs, got them together and found that I could make them work...Once they were really together in a package, though, is when I discovered the various problems; cooling, drivers that didn't play nice with each other, BIOS that would support some hardware and not other, closely related, hardware. Granted, I didn't pay a fortune for the parts, but I doubt that would have helped much. That and seeing as how the original ze5170 came off the shelf to me from HP with a BIOS that was older than it was with no updates in sight limited what I could put in and have work. It couldn't even recognize a modern HDD, and the ze5170 was only 3.5 years old for crying out loud, because of that.

So I am sticking to Thinkpads.