My thoughts on Lenovo T61 vs Dell D620

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LIVE4SPD · #1 Post by **LIVE4SPD** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:50 am

Here are some of my thoughts on these notebooks, I've seen several people compare them and they are quite similar. No photos, I figure it's easy to find out what they look like online. This is my opinion based on what I see as important being a network administrator with one T61 for myself, and several D620's I manage at my workplace.

The notebooks I'm comparing are similar in specs, the T61 has a T7700 processor and NVS 140 the D620 has a T7600 and NVS 110. Both have 4GB of ram, DVD+R's, 4 cell batteries, and the same resolution screen. The T61 has a 7K200 200GB hard drive; the D620 has a 7K100 100GB drive.

Both notebooks are virtually identical in size. I believe the T61 is maybe 1mm less in width and perhaps 1mm less in height when the screens are closed. The T61 has the advantage though of being .4 pounds lighter. Pretty major difference. The T61 AC Adapter (90w) is slightly smaller but similar in weight to the Dell AC Adapter (90w).

The T61 has a couple flimsy areas around the card slots and above the Ultrabay CD rom. The Dell notebook is a little more solid around those areas. Because of that I think the Dell has a little bit better solid feel. Whether or not one is really tougher than the other I don't know and not willing to test.

The Dell has 4 usb ports vs. the T61's 3. The T61 has a firewire port Dell does not. The T61 also has an Express card and PC Card slot vs. the Dell's PC card slot only. The Dell does have a smartcard reader and a wireless on/off switch that will detect a wireless signal without the notebook being turned on. The Dell also has a serial port which is interesting the T61 does not. For pure road warriors I think the Dell is a little more advantageous given the 4 usb ports. IMO. For all others the T61 is nice because it does have firewire and an extra card slot. (For whatever)

Keyboards are both great. The Trackpad is a little larger on the Dell but the buttons are as easier to hit on the T61. Also the trackpoint in the Dell is very touchy compared to the T61. No scroll button either. The T61 gains an advantage here because it's pretty useable without a mouse and most of the time I don't use an external mouse. The Dell takes more effort to use the mouse, and I will use an external if at all possible.

Interestingly the Dell with 4GB of ram reports 3.25GB to the operating system, the T61 with 4GB only reports 3.0GB. I see no reason of why anyone would by 4GB of RAM vs. 3GB for either system unless you are using a 64bit OS. The T61 requires keyboard removal to get to both DIMMs, the Dell does not. From a service standpoint I think it’s stupid Lenovo can’t figure out how to get both DIMMs accessible from the bottom.

Battery life I have to say is not great with the T61. The 4 cell battery is good for about 1.5 to 1.75 hours. This is with the screen set to 3 bars and continuous wireless surfing. The D620 will do about 2.25 to 2.5 hours on the same 4 cell battery. Whether this is contributed to Vista on the T61 vs. WinXP on the D620 I don’t know. My 7 cell on the T61 will easily get 3 hours not sure how much longer. I don’t know what the extended Dell battery will get. One this that is also noticeable is the Dell charges the battery much faster. I don’t have specific numbers but I think the Dell will charge the battery from empty to full in about 1.5 hours. The T61 takes AT LEAST 2 hours. So you know, the Dell’s extended battery extends from the front of the notebook, the T61 extends from the rear.

Wireless usage is good with both notebooks. The wireless antennas on both seem to give good reception and I’m pleased with that. Both notebooks have optional WWAN cards which these notebooks do not have. Bluetooth works well on both.

Performance is great with both notebooks. I actually give the edge to the T61 even though it is running Vista. The hard drive may be the difference but the T61 is faster doing most things in Vista. Boot up time is about 30 seconds faster with the T61 and Vista. Shutdown time is the same. This kind of surprised me; I figured the Vista computer would be slower.

Noise and heat output is superior on the T61. The T61 hardly ever makes a noise. The hard drive is dead silent, and fan is rarely heard. The Dell, however, has a very noisy hard drive and fan will get quite loud under load. IMO the T61 is much more refined in the area then the Dell D620.

Another major win for the T61 is the ThinkVantage software suite. Dell has essentially no equivalent software. The Dell quickset is a joke, and not nearly as comprehensive has ThinkVantage. ThinkVantage has several options all in a neatly organized program. It is of course easily accessible with the proprietary ThinkVantage button at the top of the keyboard. Dell has no such button.

Availability- the Dell is available with a custom order and can be had in a week or so time. The custom order T61’s seem to take years to arrive. But a stock configuration T61 could be ordered and obtained overnight from CDW.com and the like.
So that’s in summary the differences that I have observed between both notebooks. I will let you draw your own conclusion to which notebook to buy etc.

Enjoy.

pianowizard · #2 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:53 am

Thanks for the detailed report. However, a more fair comparison would be one between the T61 and the Dell D630, because the D620 is an older model that has been discontinued. On CNET, the D620 gets 6.9 whereas the D630 gets an impressive 8.2 from the editors. The Thinkpad T61 gets 7.6.

pipspeak · #3 Post by **pipspeak** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:05 pm

It's a little worrying that you give the edge to Dell for build quality. Solid construction was always a Thinkpad forte and one of the few reasons I still buy them.

What's the overall feel of both with respect to casing rigidity and fit & finish?

My T43 also has a few flimsy strips of plastic on the sides but the overall casing is pretty solid so I feel it can take a few knocks.

#4 Post by **gator** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:38 pm

Thanks for the detailed writeup. The Dell D630 is indeed getting good online reviews, esp on battery life compared to the T61.

pianowizard · #5 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:51 pm

pipspeak wrote:It's a little worrying that you give the edge to Dell for build quality. Solid construction was always a Thinkpad forte and one of the few reasons I still buy them.

I don't think Thinkpads have gotten worse; the T60 is definitely more solid than the T43. It's just that Dell is catching up fast.

pipspeak · #6 Post by **pipspeak** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:59 pm

I guess so. What I've been reading is actually making me reconsider my T61 order.

I went and configured a D630 and for about the same money as the T61 I can get a similar configuration, better batterly life, and three years of accidental damage coverage (which is pricey for the T61). The Dell docking stations are also far cheaper than the rip-off Thinkpad ones.

If Dell keyboards are getting better too... Lenovo had better watch out.

wearetheborg · #7 Post by **wearetheborg** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:05 pm

HA! A Dell beating a thinkpad in terms of build quality ...

pipspeak · #8 Post by **pipspeak** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:10 pm

No dynasty lasts forever

Volker · #9 Post by **Volker** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:21 pm

pipspeak wrote:It's a little worrying that you give the edge to Dell for build quality. Solid construction was always a Thinkpad forte and one of the few reasons I still buy them.

If you would have read the OP then you would have noticed that he specifically avoided saying that one's build quality is better than the other's. Subjective impressions about how flexible the palm rest is will not tell you anything about overall toughness.

One interesting point is the battery life. The Dell battery seems to have about 8% more capacity (and hence must be slightly heavier). Though that would not explain the difference. Since the OP was comparing two different NVIDIA discrete graphics options, maybe they differ in power consumption? In any case, if you care about battery lifetime your only option is the intel integrated graphics. The above-mentioned CNET review was a GMA X3100 dell and a NVIDIA T61.

wearetheborg · #10 Post by **wearetheborg** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:39 pm

Volker wrote:
If you would have read the OP then you would have noticed that he specifically avoided saying that one's build quality is better than the other's. .

No, but he did say

Because of that I think the Dell has a little bit better solid feel.

#11 Post by **ryengineer** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:42 pm

LIVE4SPD wrote:Whether this is contributed to Vista on the T61 vs. WinXP on the D620 I don’t know.

This statement is very ambiguous for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Dell running on Windows XP? If so the battery statistics will be very fair.

nurio · #12 Post by **nurio** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:19 pm

pianowizard wrote:Thanks for the detailed report. However, a more fair comparison would be one between the T61 and the Dell D630, because the D620 is an older model that has been discontinued. On CNET, the D620 gets 6.9 whereas the D630 gets an impressive 8.2 from the editors. The Thinkpad T61 gets 7.6.

I won't get excited or trust CNET reviews as they really seem to be bias and unprofessional when it comes to benchmarking and battery life comparisons, they are comparing apples to oranges! They take four different machines with different specs although as far as it goes to the T61 you can get it very close the D630 that they were using.
Here are the specs for the machines that they were comparing (focusing on T61 and D630):

D630: Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 384MB Mobile Intel 965GM Express; 120GB Hitachi 5,400rpm, 9 Cell battery

T61: Windows Vista Business Edition; 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 965GM Express; 100GB Seagate 7,200rpm, 6 Cell??? (based on their T61 review)

1. All machines but the D630 have Vista installed! The D630 has XP!
2. Vista is known to be a much bigger drain on battery life compared to XP!
3. Vista is known to have bad performance compared to XP (hopefully this would be fixed or improved soon).
4. Is the memory allocation for the Intel 965GM Express configurable on the T61, though the BIOS?
5. A 7,200rpm hard drive can shave about 30min - 1h of battery live, depends on usage!
6. They are clearly testing machines with completely different batteries. Although they are not saying in the review what battery the T61 was tested with, but they are linking back to a T61 review with a 6 cell battery!

In the bottom line they didn't try to match specs and of course the D630 will have a better battery life and performance!!!

I am really not a Thinkpad fan boy, but when it comes to review and comparisons I like to see apples compared to apples not oranges!

By the way, PCMAG gives the edge to the T61 over the D630 (4.5 vs 3.5 of 5):
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2127379,00.asp

LIVE4SPD · #13 Post by **LIVE4SPD** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:25 pm

Follow Ups-

Yes the D630 would be the proper comparison. But I wasn't able to use that computer for any length of time. If you want to compare physical dimensions and weight between the D620 & D630 you can at dell.com but far as I can tell they are identical.

The Dell feels better put together. You can grab the Dell by the right side left side wherever. If I grab my T61 by the left palm rest it feels like my case will crack because of the void of the pc cards. Also I can't grab the T61 on the right side new the CD Rom because it feels pretty mushy there as well. There is no concerns picking up the Dell but with my T61 I have to pay attention. Perhaps that is the penalty for the weight difference.

Battery Life- The review may not be valid for the battery life. There are too many variables.

nurio · #14 Post by **nurio** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:48 pm

Please don't get me wrong, I definitely understand that there are many variable. I was only commenting on CNET review about things that I can. I haven't worked on a D630 before or even a T61 (which is on order), so I can't really compare the build quality or on anything.

pipspeak · #15 Post by **pipspeak** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:22 pm

nurio wrote:By the way, PCMAG gives the edge to the T61 over the D630 (4.5 vs 3.5 of 5):
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2127379,00.asp

I'm not a great fan of the Cnet reviews either but PC Mag is no better in many respects. They know their computers better but compare apples and oranges. For example, the Dell D630 review compares a T7300 and Intel graphics Dell with a T7700 and Nvidia T61 and (surprise surprise) notes that the T61 outperforms the Dell. Well duh! That' a large part of why the T61 got a better score from what I can tell.

Why can't computer reviewers order machines with identical configurations and then run some comparisons?

#16 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:34 pm

pianowizard wrote:Thanks for the detailed report. However, a more fair comparison would be one between the T61 and the Dell D630, because the D620 is an older model that has been discontinued.

Based on cursory inspection of the units at our office (we have one more D630, all other new notebooks are ThinkPads), the D630 is pretty much identical form factor to the D620, so much of the comparison is still valid. Do you know what has changed from the D620 to D630 to merit such a huge increase in the ratings?

#17 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:37 pm

LIVE4SPD wrote:The Dell feels better put together. You can grab the Dell by the right side left side wherever. If I grab my T61 by the left palm rest it feels like my case will crack because of the void of the pc cards. Also I can't grab the T61 on the right side new the CD Rom because it feels pretty mushy there as well. There is no concerns picking up the Dell but with my T61 I have to pay attention. Perhaps that is the penalty for the weight difference.

The feel of the plastics aside, there is the fact of the internal rollcages on the T61. It will be structurally stronger, although it's indeed possible that the plastic skin will crack more easily (but unlike the D630, the skin is not structural on the T61).

nurio · #18 Post by **nurio** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 6:29 pm

pipspeak wrote:
nurio wrote:
I'm not a great fan of the Cnet reviews either but PC Mag is no better in many respects. They know their computers better but compare apples and oranges. For example, the Dell D630 review compares a T7300 and Intel graphics Dell with a T7700 and Nvidia T61 and (surprise surprise) notes that the T61 outperforms the Dell. Well duh! That' a large part of why the T61 got a better score from what I can tell.

Why can't computer reviewers order machines with identical configurations and then run some comparisons?

I completely agree with you. My point in bringing up the PC Mag review was not to say that they are doing a better job, but more to "contradict" CNet review. IMO if you put CNet vs. PC Mag you get CNet = PC Mag, yet they end up with different results in their reviews (in the philosophical sense)

LIVE4SPD · #19 Post by **LIVE4SPD** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:20 pm

Personally I long for days where some magazine did a drop test and spill tests of all the notebooks. Was it PC MAG? Do they still do that?

#20 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:54 pm

See here -- IDG in Sweden did just that:
http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.108267

Some more (English) discussion in this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=302982

Bonaparte · #21 Post by **Bonaparte** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:40 pm

I've had my D630 for a month now. Very happy with it. Comparing it to a friend's T60 (haven't handled a T61, alas):

-Agree with the OP that the D630 inside feels much more solid than the T60, there is a lot more flex on the T60 if you push down on the strip above the keyboard, over the express card slot, etc. I don't see this as a problem, it's just an artifact of the plastic-wrapped skeleton design of the T60. Its internals are very solidly protected. I'd be happy with either, but do prefer the Dell in this.

-The D630 does have Firewire 400. The T61 has a webcam and media card reader optionss, though.

-The D620 and D630 also have magnesium chassis and screen backings. It's not just plastic. No noticeable flex when picking any of them up by the extreme corners while open.

-The T60 screen seems slightly stiffer than the D630, but both flex and even ripple if you push on their backs hard enough, contrary to popular myth and physical impossibility that they "don't flex at all".

-Rubberized solid screen back of the T60 definitely feels nicer than the hollow-sounding painted D630, but probably perform equally well. (Rubberized backing also attracts dust and oil much more, although I still prefer it.)

-Both have full length bezels to lock screen into chassis when closed. Dell also has rubber feet. Both are very robust while closed.

-Keyboards are both very good. The T60 (NMB) might have a sliiight edge, that said, when changing RAM I think I saw NMB written on the back of the D630 keyboard as well. Both show no perceptible flex when pushing a key very hard.

-Trackpoint on the T60 is definitely more precise than on the D630. I also miss the middle mouse/scroll button.

-Screen is brighter on the D630 (but probably the same as the T61).

-The hinges of the T60 are about 50% bigger in diameter and control screen play slightly better. Both are metal and very solid right now, but I have more confidence in the longevity of the T60's hinges.

-Fit and finish of both is very good. Niggling issues in both:

-T60 extended battery is wobbly, D630's is very solid, and I like that it's in front and is nicely rubberized to serve as a wrist rest.

-Screen latch on the D630 has play when opened, doesn't make noise unless you actually grab it and shake, but doesn't seem as solid as T60 latch.

-D630 hard drive (Seagate Momentus 7200 120GB) is a tad noisy, fan isn't that bad. Runs surprisingly cool. "Strike Zone" hard drive protection is a joke, no actual padding, just resonant damping. T60's HD is better protected.

I like both very much. When deciding I was slightly leaning towards the T61, but then I had a chance to get the Dell for $500 cheaper, both fully loaded, even after EPP pricing for both. Couldn't turn that down, and glad I didn't.

snife · #22 Post by **snife** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:48 am

I believe the main difference between the D620 and D630 is simply santa rosa chipset and graphics, externally the systems are identical.

I have a D620 and a few T61 and I can assure everyone that the build quality is not better on the D620. Don't get me wrong, comparing to the previous Dell i had (a D820 i think), Dell have made leaps and bounds in terms of design and build quality but they are not yet as good as a ThinkPad. The difference is that (as I have discussed many times before), the ThinkPad strength is internal or subtle so not obvious to users, the system and LCD rollcage, the hdd buffers, the hinges, the screen ridges are all things that the Dell doesn't have; the plastic is sturdier in places compared with the ThinkPad but this is because it is the plastic that is providing the strength, there is nothing more.

One issue I have with the Dell, is that the TrackPoint buttons are unpressable in the standard TrackPoint manouvering hand position, this has always been an issue with Dells and it has not been solved which to me makes the system unusable as a main system (as the reviewer hinted with the external mouse comment), the touchpad buttons are not much better but these are less important as you would tend to tap the touchpad anyway. I think it boils down to the TrackPoint being an afterthought on Dells to attract the business users whereas its a staple on ThinkPads.

2 Things I now love about the Dell though that i'd like to see on ThinkPads are the physical battery indicator leds on the battery itself and the battery sticking out the front rather than the back which has really grown on me - I thought it looked absolutely stupid when i first saw it but it makes so much sense to have the extra palmrest area.

snife · #23 Post by **snife** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:50 am

LIVE4SPD wrote:Personally I long for days where some magazine did a drop test and spill tests of all the notebooks. Was it PC MAG? Do they still do that?

I think they still do sometimes, I know that ThinkPads are still tested to ensure that they will do well in these tests.

#24 Post by **ryengineer** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 6:25 am

Someone should motorbike on Dell D630 for a while to determine it's robustness...

My thoughts on Lenovo T61 vs Dell D620

My thoughts on Lenovo T61 vs Dell D620

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