Thinkpads Forum

Just ordered his-n-her Thinkpads. Thanks everyone, for posting the discounts. My wife wanted the widescreen T61P for Web browsing while watching TV, and I wanted the better display , so ordered both a T60P and T61P. I'll be putting a fast MTRON SSD in mine (the wife gets a 100GB 7200), both w. maxed RAM 3GB@5300 & 4GB@6400, and both will run Gentoo Linux. These will hold us until the 8GB RAM, quad processor, LED back-light display Thinkpads become avail. in a few years. I just need to remember to keep my Flexview display concealed from my wife.

caseyse wrote:Just ordered his-n-her Thinkpads. Thanks everyone, for posting the discounts. My wife wanted the widescreen T61P for Web browsing while watching TV, and I wanted the better display , so ordered both a T60P and T61P. I'll be putting a fast MTRON SSD in mine (the wife gets a 100GB 7200), both w. maxed RAM 3GB@5300 & 4GB@6400, and both will run Gentoo Linux. These will hold us until the 8GB RAM, quad processor, LED back-light display Thinkpads become avail. in a few years. I just need to remember to keep my Flexview display concealed from my wife.

I hate you!

j/k congrats!


what are the ship dates?

You got your wife a top-of-the-line Thinkpad just to surf the web and watch movies?

Welcome to the forum and congrats on your purchases!

caseyse wrote:I just need to remember to keep my Flexview display concealed from my wife.

You may end up liking her T61p more than your own T60p, because the former's WUXGA resolution has 56.7% more pixels than the latter's SXGA+.

Pocket Aces wrote:You got your wife a top-of-the-line Thinkpad just to surf the web and watch movies?

Well, not many laptops allow you to do both simultaneously! The T61p's super-high display real estate makes this possible: web browser on the left half of the screen and the movie on the right.

pianowizard wrote: Well, not many laptops allow you to do both simultaneously! The T61p's super-high display real estate makes this possible: web browser on the left half of the screen and the movie on the right.

well, actually, I think all the current laptops are able to handle that without any problems,

last time i checked nether surfing the web or watching moves were very CPU or GPU or Memeory intensive tasks.

you can pretty much watch a DVD and Surf the web with a 1Ghz celeron and 256MB or ram.

kay.one wrote:you can pretty much watch a DVD and Surf the web with a 1Ghz celeron and 256MB or ram.

I wasn't talking about performance issues. I was talking about having enough pixels to show both the web browser and the movie well. The T61p's 1920x1200 is much better for this than the T60p's 1400x1050.

I don't understand why you would buy a computer solely for the purpose of watching movies while web-surfing. You're better off learning to do them separately.

caseyse wrote:I'll be putting a fast MTRON SSD in mine.

Where can I order a 64GB MTRON SSD? I can't seem to find any resellers on the net. Which SDD did you go with and what as your cost? Have you used one already and if so how was the speed increase?
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/8730/mtronqd9.jpg

pianowizard wrote:

Pocket Aces wrote:You got your wife a top-of-the-line Thinkpad just to surf the web and watch movies?

Well, not many laptops allow you to do both simultaneously! The T61p's super-high display real estate makes this possible: web browser on the left half of the screen and the movie on the right.

I can do that with my X31, too! I just have the movies running on an external 42" panel (which, admittedly, is not connected to my X31 ...).

pianowizard wrote:You may end up liking her T61p more than your own T60p, because the former's WUXGA resolution has 56.7% more pixels than the latter's SXGA+.

Yup, you're right. I ended up cancelling my T60P order w. Lenovo, and had a UXGA overnighted to me (arrived today). Since I was purchasing the prior gen for the display, it was a big oversight that I didn't get the UXGA. I also received 2x2GB of Crucial memory, and a T7600 C2D processor, and have installed both this evening. Although not too difficult, I can't say I enjoyed the exercise.

So, I'm currently looking at installing W2K3 and Gentoo AMD64. The W2K3 doesn't recognize my HD (and I didn't purchase a floppy), and I'm now looking at a blank Gentoo Live CD install screen, as X doesn't recognize the ATi GPU. I'll eventually have both installed (although not tonight), but I'm sure I'll need a bottle of Bushmills close at hand.

BTW - my wife likes watching traditional TV, while surfing the Web. She is currently using an old Dell, and frequently reminds me just how slow the machine is (it is very old). I didn't want a wide screen, she did; and I don't like a food-stained keyboard (it appears she does). So, I decided to splurge on two machines. Her machine isn't scheduled to ship until late Sept.

Interestingly, the SXGA 15" 4:3 T60P I had ordered from Lenovo, is no longer available.

For anyone interested in a Gentoo AMD64 install, you need to drop to a shell, replace "device=ATI" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf with "device=vesa" to continue a graphical installation.

The T60P is a really nice looking machine.