Thoughts and Questions on a new Thinkpad 87414BU widescreen
Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 11:39 pm
Through an offer from my college alumni office, in December I was able to pick up a:
T60 87414BU, T7200, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM, 15.4" SXGA+ 1680X1050, DVD Rewriter, 9-Cell batt, WinXP Pro 32.
for the very low price of $1756 plus tax and free shipping.
Just got it yesterday and here are my initial impressions and a couple of questions at the end:
SUMMARY:
If not for the weak display, this would be a dream machine.
DISPLAY:
I am a long time thinkpad owner. This is my 6th. My very first thought was "Hey, what's wrong with this screen!?!". Only after some research did I first discover that not all thinkpad screens are as awesome as the ones I have gotten used to. It is immediatley noticable.
If your head is in a good position, it is very bright, but off angle is bad. White is especially bad off angle.
Some colors are weak and all are uneven over long distances, so if you use a 1-color desktop background you will absolutely see patches of lighter and darker, richer and blander.
Off-angle vieweing is bad. Even if you hold your head perfectly still in the center of the screen, the sides still hint at the off-angle problems because the screen is so wide that the sides are a little off angle. If you move your head at all, it is immediately noticeable and distracting. Being off angle vertically looks a lot worse than being off horizontally. If the guy in front of you leans his seat back and you have to keep the screen at less than 90 degrees, you will be in for a very different vieweing experience.
If you touch the screen, you get the expected discoloration near your finger, but you also get puddle-like waves on about 2/3 of the screen. I am pretty militant about not letting people touch my screen, but here's the kicker: if someone walks by my desk, vibrations from the floor cause the same puddle-waves. I imagine this would make it unusable on an airplane tray, in a train or car, etc. This one fact may cause me to send it back to Lenovo for the trusty 15" flexview.
There is some light leakage, from the right side only.
Not a single pixel problem that I could find.
I watched part of a DVD on the screen and it looked fantastic.
KEYBOARD:
The feel of the keyboard is probably the best of all the thinkpads I've owned. The one thing I don't like about it: On my T42, the CTRL and ALT keys are larger and right next to ech other, so you could hit them both with your thumb while hitting DEL with another finger. This enabled quick, one-handed Ctrl-Alt-Del to lock the computer. On the T60, a windows key and context menu (right click effect) key are added between the pairs of Ctrl and Alt, which unforunately thwarts the one-handed computer lock.
Another welcome difference: the wrist rest is about an inch shallower than on the T42 and the other T60 15" models (t is more like the A20). It is more comfortable (at least for me) to type on the T60 wide because your watch band can hang off the end of the shallower wrist rest instead of being pushed up into your wrist. Although the A20 was 15", it had a narrower wrist rest becuase the keyboard was closer to you.
POINTING:
I don't use the touchpad, so I can't comment except to say it looks a tiny bit smaller than the T42. The touchpoint is about what you would expect. The same as my T42, which is a big step up from the A20. The mouse buttons have a nicer feel than my T42.
SPEAKERS:
Better and louder than the T42. Can't complain.
CHASSIS / CONSTRUCTION:
Feels very solid. Not too heavy. Has an external switch for turning off wireless. Nice.
Uses 20V AC adapter, wich is heavier, larger, and incompatible with the 16V adapters.
No longer fits my backpack in a way that I feel safe with. Will need to get bigger bag.
It is 14.1 inches wide. I think the engineers could have shaved a half inch off the width and still had the LCD safely mounted. I also think the LCD could have been an inch taller in the same chassis, so maybe 1680X1200. Wouldn't that be nice.
FINGER PRINT READER:
I was skeptical, but I'm won over.
DVD RW:
No complaints except that the ultra bay stuff is different than T42 series.
PERFORMANCE:
I didn't do any benchmarks, but it is clearly faster than my T42.
Two things I noticed that are slower than my T42 running Win2K:
- coming off screen saver there is about a 5 second pause before I can log back in.
- installing some software takes 5-20 times as long, with very long pauses of inactivity.
I assume these slowdowns are software-related or WinXP-related.
When idling with screen maximum brightness, the battery thinks it will last a little over 5 hours.
SOFTWARE:
This is an academic model purchased through my alumni office. It includes Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements. The recovery partition is about 8GB. The basic install of everything uses a whopping 20GB on the C drive. I was pretty shocked by this.
QUESTIONS:
Does any body know if there is a way to hack the Verizon internal EVDO modem to make it work with Sprint EVDO?
I also have an opportunty to get a 2623DDU 1600X1200 with T2500. Would it void the warranty to upgrade the CPU to T7200?
Thanks. And thanks Bill for a great site.
T60 87414BU, T7200, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM, 15.4" SXGA+ 1680X1050, DVD Rewriter, 9-Cell batt, WinXP Pro 32.
for the very low price of $1756 plus tax and free shipping.
Just got it yesterday and here are my initial impressions and a couple of questions at the end:
SUMMARY:
If not for the weak display, this would be a dream machine.
DISPLAY:
I am a long time thinkpad owner. This is my 6th. My very first thought was "Hey, what's wrong with this screen!?!". Only after some research did I first discover that not all thinkpad screens are as awesome as the ones I have gotten used to. It is immediatley noticable.
If your head is in a good position, it is very bright, but off angle is bad. White is especially bad off angle.
Some colors are weak and all are uneven over long distances, so if you use a 1-color desktop background you will absolutely see patches of lighter and darker, richer and blander.
Off-angle vieweing is bad. Even if you hold your head perfectly still in the center of the screen, the sides still hint at the off-angle problems because the screen is so wide that the sides are a little off angle. If you move your head at all, it is immediately noticeable and distracting. Being off angle vertically looks a lot worse than being off horizontally. If the guy in front of you leans his seat back and you have to keep the screen at less than 90 degrees, you will be in for a very different vieweing experience.
If you touch the screen, you get the expected discoloration near your finger, but you also get puddle-like waves on about 2/3 of the screen. I am pretty militant about not letting people touch my screen, but here's the kicker: if someone walks by my desk, vibrations from the floor cause the same puddle-waves. I imagine this would make it unusable on an airplane tray, in a train or car, etc. This one fact may cause me to send it back to Lenovo for the trusty 15" flexview.
There is some light leakage, from the right side only.
Not a single pixel problem that I could find.
I watched part of a DVD on the screen and it looked fantastic.
KEYBOARD:
The feel of the keyboard is probably the best of all the thinkpads I've owned. The one thing I don't like about it: On my T42, the CTRL and ALT keys are larger and right next to ech other, so you could hit them both with your thumb while hitting DEL with another finger. This enabled quick, one-handed Ctrl-Alt-Del to lock the computer. On the T60, a windows key and context menu (right click effect) key are added between the pairs of Ctrl and Alt, which unforunately thwarts the one-handed computer lock.
Another welcome difference: the wrist rest is about an inch shallower than on the T42 and the other T60 15" models (t is more like the A20). It is more comfortable (at least for me) to type on the T60 wide because your watch band can hang off the end of the shallower wrist rest instead of being pushed up into your wrist. Although the A20 was 15", it had a narrower wrist rest becuase the keyboard was closer to you.
POINTING:
I don't use the touchpad, so I can't comment except to say it looks a tiny bit smaller than the T42. The touchpoint is about what you would expect. The same as my T42, which is a big step up from the A20. The mouse buttons have a nicer feel than my T42.
SPEAKERS:
Better and louder than the T42. Can't complain.
CHASSIS / CONSTRUCTION:
Feels very solid. Not too heavy. Has an external switch for turning off wireless. Nice.
Uses 20V AC adapter, wich is heavier, larger, and incompatible with the 16V adapters.
No longer fits my backpack in a way that I feel safe with. Will need to get bigger bag.
It is 14.1 inches wide. I think the engineers could have shaved a half inch off the width and still had the LCD safely mounted. I also think the LCD could have been an inch taller in the same chassis, so maybe 1680X1200. Wouldn't that be nice.
FINGER PRINT READER:
I was skeptical, but I'm won over.
DVD RW:
No complaints except that the ultra bay stuff is different than T42 series.
PERFORMANCE:
I didn't do any benchmarks, but it is clearly faster than my T42.
Two things I noticed that are slower than my T42 running Win2K:
- coming off screen saver there is about a 5 second pause before I can log back in.
- installing some software takes 5-20 times as long, with very long pauses of inactivity.
I assume these slowdowns are software-related or WinXP-related.
When idling with screen maximum brightness, the battery thinks it will last a little over 5 hours.
SOFTWARE:
This is an academic model purchased through my alumni office. It includes Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements. The recovery partition is about 8GB. The basic install of everything uses a whopping 20GB on the C drive. I was pretty shocked by this.
QUESTIONS:
Does any body know if there is a way to hack the Verizon internal EVDO modem to make it work with Sprint EVDO?
I also have an opportunty to get a 2623DDU 1600X1200 with T2500. Would it void the warranty to upgrade the CPU to T7200?
Thanks. And thanks Bill for a great site.
