*NEW* T60 widescreen review (from NBR with great pics) !!

[PRGeno]

It's far closer to perfect than anything I'm seeing from Lenovo at this time. I hope Lenovo take a lesson and has something on the horizon that will bring the lead position back to the Thinkpad line, but I just don't see it at the moment.

I guess your main complaint is the lack of a 17" WUXGA Thinkpad? I have a hunch that there will be one, because the highest resolution for the 15.4" widescreen T60 is only WSXGA+, so it looks like Lenovo is reserving WUXGA for a future, bigger model.

Yes the lack of a 17" WUXGA screen is one complaint, but also the lack of a more powerful graphics card is also an issue. The HP's nVidia card is a screamer.

[PRGeno]

The HP pointing device is the equal to the ThinkPads except in the driver options. The Trackpoint driver provide more control of how it works, where HP acts like a mouse pointer only.

I have an old Compaq Evo, where the trackpoint device is essentially the same as the IBM device, manufactured by the same company (Synaptics). The default driver isn't as option-rich as the TP Ultranav driver, but I managed to install a different driver.

The biggest difference to me was the cap used on the trackpoint. The cap that came with the Compaq was very crappy compared to the Thinkpad caps, especially the soft dome. This may or may not be true regarding newer HP/Compaq models. However, since it's the same trackpoint, you can just replace the cap with any Thinkpad cap, which to me improved the experience greatly.

I did the same thing, replacing HP's blue cap with my favorite Thinkpad dome cap, and all is good.

[PRGeno]

I would have to agree with everything the reviewer said. It is a first class machine, not without it's minor faults, but nothing is perfect. It's far closer to perfect than anything I'm seeing from Lenovo at this time. I hope Lenovo take a lesson and has something on the horizon that will bring the lead position back to the Thinkpad line, but I just don't see it at the moment.

Thanks a lot .
I'm afraid that Lenovo has not understood that the IBM customers are ready to pay for quality.

I'm not sure Lenovo is alone there. Most vendors seem to be targeting the mass production systems that cater to those who won't pay more, and typically don't know better anyway. Unfortunately that is the world we no live in. High end and quality don't make it through the production management product review cycle. And that isn't limited to the computer market.

[Aramitz]

Unfortunately that is the world we no live in. High end and quality don't make it through the production management product review cycle. And that isn't limited to the computer market.

You're right

[mybellyisempty]

Well, I just pulled the trigger. I was looking away from Thinkpads for a 15.4", but just for [censored] & giggles, I hopped on our favorite auction site, and managed to snag one with a 3 year warranty for $900.

8744-5BU w/ an extra stick of RAM.

It'll be replacing my T43 as my primary system, with the T43 going to Linux work.

Now, I just need to find some way to trade my T43 accessories for T60 :p

[pianowizard]

managed to snag one with a 3 year warranty for $900.

You are so lucky!

[RonS]

I got a chance today to compare a T60p 15.4" widescreen with a T60p 15" Flexview. I was disappointed with the 15.4" quality - I was hoping for more. The Flexview blows it away.

Before today, I was entertaining the thought of picking up a new Widescreen T60p. But I'm definitely sticking with my Flexview.

[dgrey]

I received my Widescreen (Buy.com 8744-5BU). I was looking for info after ordering it, and was starting to get worried with all the posts about how Thinkpad quality had plummeted, but it is absolutely solid. I am very pleased with the fit and finish, and it is rock solid. No creaks in the frame even holding it up with the screen open with three fingers. The palm rests don't have any give, and the DVD is a tight fit. I checked the serial, and it is an LG LCD, I don't see any bad pixels or other issues. On to the questions.

1. Is it possible to replace the WSXGA+ panel with a WUXGA panel from a Z61? Assuming you can, the screen looks great at the resolution it's at, would it be counterproductive because I would find the text too small compared to the 1680X1050? If I'm just going to increase the text size why pay extra to essentially stay the same? (yeah I know, if I wanted that, why didn't I buy a Z61? T series rock)

2. When I put another memory stick in, I had to pull the palm rest back. There is a space under the palm rests just to the right of the trackpad. It looks like maybe it's designed for a module for an Express Card 34. Does anyone know about this? Am I right, but it's just not out? Assuming it's just not in this model, can I get the part and put it in?

3. It didn't come with an EVDO card. I understand the wires are already in place, but does anyone know if/when they will be offering the EVDO Rev. A cards?

4. I ordered an Express Bus 54 adapter for a Compact flash card, and a 133X 8GB Compact flash card. Pity I didn't have this board to ask the question first, but what I want to do is put the adapter and flash card in the computer, format it, and install the OS to the card. Does anyone know if that's possible to do, and then use it as the system drive to boot from? (8G should be enough for the base system drive, and the hard drive would be for apps). If so, this should make is disgustingly fast.

5. The drive in it is a SATA I (150mpbs). Is the controller Sata II? Just curious if/when 2.5" SATA II drives come out, if they will be fully supported.

6. In general, it's impossible to upgrade the video. Assuming I'm willing to risk it, is the X1400 pin compatible with any others? X1600/X1700/X1800/X1900? I have a friend who does Surface Mount rework, and could swap the chip at some later date if it would actually work.

7. Speaking of Video, when I bring the properties up, it says it has 512MB of video ram. I know it has hypermemory, but I thought the 1400 was 128 vram +128 Hypermemory. Is it 256 vram +256 Hypermemory? Or is it oddly 128 vram + 384 Hypermemory?


As a warning, I installed a driver for the ATA bridge from update.microsoft.com, but it caused the dvd to stop working. I rolled the driver back, and it worked again (XP SP2).

Yes, I probably didn't read enough posts that might have answered all my questions. Sorry about that. Hopefully someone will take pity on me and answer.

[WPWoodJr]

4. I ordered an Express Bus 54 adapter for a Compact flash card, and a 133X 8GB Compact flash card. Pity I didn't have this board to ask the question first, but what I want to do is put the adapter and flash card in the computer, format it, and install the OS to the card. Does anyone know if that's possible to do, and then use it as the system drive to boot from? (8G should be enough for the base system drive, and the hard drive would be for apps). If so, this should make is disgustingly fast.

I'll be interested to see how this works out!

[dsalyers]

dgrey:

1) This is probably technically feasible. But, you would likely void your warranty making this change. Personally I have a WUXGA screen on a z61p. Personally, I only have one small problem with the text size. Some websites use an 8pt font, and for me, that is too small at a normal distance. But, a quick change in the browser to make the minimum 10pt resolves this.

3) My understanding is the EVDO card requires its own antenna, and unless you ordered your system with EVDO they would not install the second antenna. Again, with my z61p I don't have EVDO, and I don't have the second antenna (which also means I can upgrade to 802.11n). My T60p have EVDO, so I can't check to see if the antenna would be there otherwise.

5) According to Intel's site the 82801GBM controller is capable of transferring at 3.0Gb/s and that it fully supports the SATA I specification and many parts of the SATA II specification. However, the bandwidth to and from the 945PGM is only 1GB/s. So, a SATA II hard disk, while can be used, will not likely give you any performance boost.

6) No, the video is not changeable.

7) Don't know. But, from what I have read hyper memory was only supposed to double your memory.

[dgrey]

I got the flash drive in. The Express card adapter hadn't arrived, so I tried it with a PC Card adapter I had. With XP, it was seen during the install from CD, and installed the system files on it, but wasn't recognized as a bootable device. No go.

Got the Express card adapter. XP sees it, and installs the system files on it. When it reboots, the flash drive is recognized as a USB ATA drive, but it blue screens. Haven't found a solution, apparantly a well known problem with XP. Tried to install Vista, but Vista does not recognize the card as a valid drive to install to.

I'm going to try with OSX and Linux to see if they will work.

bah.....

[vkyr]

The supplier of UXGA laptop flexview screens went bankrupt

Is that for sure ? There were at least two manufacturers of UXGA IPS panels according this table, IDTech and BOE-Hydis.

Older Thinkpad models with UXGA IPS TFT panels, mostly had assembled LCD panels from IDTech (a merger between the Chi Mei LCD Group and IBM Japan)...

http://www.idtech.co.jp/en/products/index.html

...in newer Thinkpad models there were also UXGA panels used from BOE-Hydis instead.

Most in Thinkpads assembled IPS panels were from:

- IDTech
- BOE-Hydis
- LG-Philips

and I can't remember if I've ever seen a DBU panel in reality.