Thinkpads Forum

I'm finally finishing up burning a set of recovery discs for the T61, but while I wait I thought I'd give my first impressions of the T61 (as compared to my awesome yet flawed T42):

- first thing I noticed was definitely the display (15.4" WSXGA+) specifically the poor viewing angle and image quality. Some people said it was fine, other said the same so I wasnt sure what to expect, but definitely a huge difference to me.

- keyboard is really mushy on the T61, dont know which one I have though

- I personally really liked the form factor of my 15.1" t42, and the wide edges on either side of the keyboard on the T61 are rather unattractive

- on that asthetic note, the t61 overall just looks a bit clunkier and less "sleek" than the t42, if you care about that sort of thing.

- even the cdrw drive feels flimsier, there is a lot more flex on the tray when i push it closed, vs the t42.

- sound quality on the T61 speakers is much improved

- love the addition of the media card reader

- happy with the placement of the ports and jacks (no audio jacks in the front thankfully)

- I ordered my sys. with vista home basic, and it is slow as molasses. My system was configured with the T9300, 2GB and 100GB 7200rpm HD. This seems to be a known problem with vista OOTB, and Im not concerned about that as I plan to blow it away and install a fresh copy of xp as soon as my rescue discs are done.

Thats all for now. I still love my t42 but the MB is all but dead, (boots once in a blue moon), so this purchase was more necessity than me wanting a new t-series just yet. (I'll get around to trying to replace the MB at some point, I'm not a wiz with tinkering with TP hardware).

Hope this is of some use to somebody.

an update from last night:

xp is up and running, had a small hitch with xp not having SATA drivers during the initial install otherwise things went smoothly. Happy to say things are much better, XP is wicked fast, the 7200rpm HD and fan are really quiet.

the display isnt as bad as I previously thought, with the updated drivers its actually really sharp and bright, but being a widescreen it still suffers from problems with the poor viewing angle. even looking dead on, you can see the corners wash out.

I used the thinkvantage system update and its been very helpful. I also kept access connections because I read that it was a little better at reestablishing connections after coming out of suspension, and lastly the active protection system.

Anyone else have opinions on the rest of Lenovo's utilities?

I always like to keep the power manager, and of course all the hotkey utilities.

oh right forgot about that, I've installed power manager as well. I have all the hotkey utilities too. Does the thinkvantage button serve any purpose other than launching into their utility software?