Thinkpads Forum

Search the forum for "T60 noise" and almost all of the posts are complaints; search it for "T42 noise" and most posts say it is quiet.

According to IBM/Lenovo, the T42 is about 5oz lighter and 0.1in shorter and thinner than the equivalent T61.

T61 8897 14.1in SXGA+; 150nits, 4:3, 200:1; Intel X3100
12.3x10.0x1.1--1.3; 5.3lbs.

T42 2378-FVU 14.1in SXGA+; 150nits; ATI Radeon 9600
12.2x10.0x1.0--1.2; 5.0lbs

exTPfan wrote:According to IBM/Lenovo, the T42 is about 5oz lighter and 0.1in shorter and thinner than the equivalent T61.

The weights I gave in my last post (T42=5.17lb, T60=5.22lb) were obtained with a very accurate scientific balance in my lab, and I used that same balance for both my T42 and T60. The difference was only 0.05 lbs. The weights provided by IBM/Lenovo are usually off by several percent. I know because I've owned over 30 Thinkpads and I weighed each and every one of them, carefully.

Incidentally, I had a 14.1" SXGA+ T43 that weighed 5.17 lbs, exactly the same as the T42.

Paul Unger wrote: You could work with the T4x thinklight; you can only avoid mistakes with the T6x thinklight. That's my take on the difference.

[censored], I love the thinklight, it lights up the whole keyboard as well as to the sides of it, really makes working in the dark possible.

The thinklight on my T42p always shined right in my eyes until I masked it a bit with some black electrical tape. The thinklight on my T61p is perfect for me without needing any mods. I find it produces enough light to see the keyboard in a completely dark room. Good enough for me.

In my Thinkpad experience...

600x - Tank.

T23 - Beautiful tank.

T41 - Beautiful.

T60 - Modern tank.

I'd marry a T60, but I'd have an affair with a sexy T41...

T7TrainingSystems wrote: T23 - Beautiful tank.
T60 - Modern tank.

try picking up T23 by one hand, especially in the corner. you will quickly notice it's not anywhere close built as a tank. but yes I agree, T23 is simply beautiful while T60 is ugly ugly ugly...

T7TrainingSystems wrote:I'd marry a T60, but I'd have an affair with a sexy T41...

Ah, but affairs are so fleeting. Aim for stability--get "married".

I think ugly depends on whether you have one of the big boys or the old 14.1 non wide screen size. The smaller version is not ugly at all imo. It is a little beefier, but for good engineering reasons.

exTPfan wrote:Search the forum for "T60 noise" and almost all of the posts are complaints; search it for "T42 noise" and most posts say it is quiet.

Yeah, they get really quiet after the GPU comes loose, because there is no reason to turn it on anymore.
So far the T6x series is not suffering from that. I'll take a little noise and a thicker look if it is more durable.

Those of us who don't abuse our laptops don't have that problem.

Time will tell.
I never abused mine either but laptops are not designed to ride a desk their whole life, they are mobile devices. As they move around they get flexed, and then eventually....
If you buy a used one you have now way of knowing how it was treated and there are very few new, unused T4x's out there now. Nothing lasts forever.

carbon_unit wrote:Time will tell.
I never abused mine either but laptops are not designed to ride a desk their whole life, they are mobile devices. As they move around they get flexed, and then eventually....
If you buy a used one you have now way of knowing how it was treated and there are very few new, unused T4x's out there now. Nothing lasts forever.

That are in VERY good condition. Many corporate laptops lead a docked life, not being carried around very much at all. I have been buying used T42's off lease with docks that seem to fall into this category. They have almost universally been in very good condition, and have shown no signs of failure. As you say, though, time will tell. You could buy 3 or more of them for what you will pay for a new T61 though, so you could have built in redundancy!

Hi, kind of jumping in late, but my take on this...

I went from T42p UXGA 2.1GHz XP from 2004 to the current T61p WUXGA 2.4GHz Vista. I absolutely loved the T42p, and love the T61p even more.

I agree that T42p with WinXP was a solid machine but my need simply grew out. I do a lot of computational programming running VMWare all the time. T42p had tough time keeping up but thanks to the dual core, T61p is so much better in handling my tasks. Computation times have improved slightly but the biggest benefit is being able to do other things while I let my programs run.

Vista has been very stable for me, although I refreshed twice to get the right apps and config in place.

Perhaps the only things I miss with the T42p is the Flexview screen and the keyboard. When doing graphics work and for general pleasure of looking at the screen, Flexview was much better. I'm getting used to the WUXGA though. The real estate is so large that I don't have to look at the whole screen that often. The keyboard is just cheap on T61p but hey, I'm happy for the performance I'm getting for the price!

Just another view on this

I'm a new, and definitely future, Thinkpad owner. I've only had my T61 for 1.5 months or so.

I'm curious what makes the T42 keyboard better.

I don't have any complaints about the T61 keyboard but I don't have any experience with older Thinkpads to compare it to.

I would describe the T42p keyboard as having a more "dense plastic". I had the so called ALPS keyboard for T42p and my T61p came with Chicony and replaced it with ALPS. Perhaps they were thicker plastic or something... it felt more solid under my finger. The general stroke feel is still good on T61p. No so much of a complaint but I notice it every once in a while

I believe Thinkpad keyboards are made by three different companies and they feel different, and it's just luck of the draw which one you get. My T42's keyboard is terrible whereas the T60 I used to have had a much nicer keyboard.

Frankly, I'm wondering why Lenovo even sells a screen like this.

Because people like me believe even that resolution is too large. Hell, I wish I could get 1600x1200 in a 14.1" 4:3 panel. I would be in heaven.

5. It’s not faster. A lot of that is probably due to Vista, but I went from a 1.4ghz Pentium M with 768mb of DDR and and integrated gpu to a 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb DD2, and a discrete video card with 128mb of ram, plus intel’s new turbo cache thing and it feels slower if anything.

Mine is TONS faster. I went from a T40 with a 1.7 Dothan and 2GB of ram to this thing and it screams in comparison... I am a power user though, and notice any amount of lag. I'm even using a slower chip and Vista, it's faster. noticeably so. It's not going to faster if you're just having an IE window with a few tabs open, though.

6. There’s a strange high pitched noise that sometimes happens in sync with movements of the mouse. The computer will be quiet and then I’ll move the mouse and it will sound like the hard drive is whirring really fast. I don’t know if this is unique to my machine and for whatever reason it seems to be happening less frequently.

My T40 actually did this more than my 60 does... in fact, I haven't heard any sounds in a long time. I think it did it when it was new, but I can't remember.

and if you thought the T42's keyboard was nice, you should use an NMB T23 keyboard >_>... best keyboard i've ever used.

Yeah, the old NMB's were really nice.

The one I have now is OK, but a shadow of the former greatness.

lithium726 wrote:Hell, I wish I could get 1600x1200 in a 14.1" 4:3 panel. I would be in heaven.

You can certainly put one on your T40. See my signature and this thread.

pianowizard wrote:

lithium726 wrote:Hell, I wish I could get 1600x1200 in a 14.1" 4:3 panel. I would be in heaven.

You can certainly put one on your T40. See my signature and this thread.

That's awesome, I didn't even know those panels existed. Any idea if it'll work on my T60 though? Not a fan of spending a lot of money on something I'm not going to use daily.