Thinkpads Forum

i consider to buy new T61p 14.1 so i customize a t61p with penryn 2.5 T9300 and 1GB ram/dvdrw/finger/bluetooth/wifi abg on lenovo.com. but i am very surprise cost of it is only 1120usd . 2 years ago, i cannot buy t43p or t60p at this price (above 2200usd-3000usd /t43p or t60p). what's wrong? may be quality of t61p decrease and some parts and covers are made from cheap materials ?

i heard a lots complain that T61p used cheap plastics and it is bad quality, is it fact ?

pls give me advice

many thanks

No, not bad quality at all. The plastics may not 'feel' like the older Thinkpads, but that is because the outer plastic doesn't make up the basic backbone of the laptop anymore-it has an internal rollcage that is much stiffer, lighter, and stronger than the older models.

Prices have definitely dropped from where they used to be, and arguments can be made as to why-but in the end, the laptops are still of excellent quality and better than most anything else on the market. Just be happy we can now buy them for such a low price!

One more thing, using an example-last weekend, I was using my T61p 14.1" SXGA+ late one night, and I fell asleep at some point. When I woke up the next morning, the laptop had fallen off of my lap and landed on the hardwood floor-screen fully open, and the LCD/keyboard side facing the floor! And this was a drop of close to two feet. I feared the worst, but upon close inspection there was not a single mark, scratch, or crack on the T61p whatsoever-it came out perfectly unscathed. I hit the power button and booted right back into Windows and it has been running perfectly since.

So yes-the quality is still there.

I just received my T61P 14.1 SXGA+ T9300. I have previously owned T42P, X60, X61T. I too was initially surprised by the low price of the T61P. After receiving the laptop, i think the price is cheap for a good reason. The LCD just painly sucks compared with almost any other highend laptop!!

The build quality of T61P is still very solid. The screen does not flex and keyboard still very comfortable. However, my biggest complaint is the LCD screen. The screen is horriable. The bottom 1" of the screen is significantly brighter due to backlight leakage. The color is also not uniform across the screen. In any bright light environment, i find myself constantly adjusting the screen to get a comfortable viewing angle. This is not what I expected from a thinkpad. Overall, i'm pretty disappointed with the T61P mainly due to the screen.

I have a T61p 14" machine and it seems to be of good quality, although I have just barely got it running. Vista remains below my lowest expectations of it, so I have got to get it under control. That is why I am not using it much yet. ... JDH

Well technically you can say that about anyhting then. A BMW few years ago cost the same or more than it does now but the ones now are definitely nicer and comes with more.

Technology gets cheaper over time and the process of construction is finetuned also so it becomes cheaper to produce things than it did before. As you get more used to it you can make them faster with less mistakes so your yields grow while your costs come down.

A few years ago when you got a T43P and it costs X to make but those same parts or technology got cheaper.

I think the build quality is excellent but the screen could be brighter.

I have a 14.1" T61p.

I used to have an A30, which was a tank. Very good build quality on that.

My T61p is decent, although there are a few quibbles which would really qualify as nitpicking. For example, the LCD doesn't look completely centered within its frame. It's maybe a pixel or two canted, and it's closer to the right side of the bezel than the left.

The plastic LCD casing also has some small gaps in certain areas where the plastic doesn't fit together very well.

Apart from that, the screen itself isn't too bad... it's bright enough for my purposes. I don't have any light leaks or dead pixels.

The keyboard is great, and the laptop so far has done what I want it to do.

My wife's X61s on the other hand doesn't exhibit any of the plastic case issues my T61p has shown. Hers wasn't a CTO though. Don't know if that makes any difference. I believe quality control is hit or miss with Lenovo these days.

I just put my T61 (on AC full brightness) beside my T41 (new Lid, on AC and full brightness). They are equally bright as far as I can see.

I was concerned about all the screen comments and when I finally got my T61 at the beginning of this week, it is just fine.
...JDH

many thanks for responding, but i can understand that lenovo may be replace some good materials with worse materials. for ex , t41 used titanlium to produce covers while t61p use cheap plastic and a worse LCD.

incvn03 wrote:many thanks for responding, but i can understand that lenovo may be replace some good materials with worse materials. for ex , t41 used titanlium to produce covers while t61p use cheap plastic and a worse LCD.

Because the Titanium is under the plastic.
The LCDs are no worse than the non-flexview LCDs in earlier models. The flexview option is gone due to low supply.

ok, today i borrow a 14.1 t61p from my friend, i am disappointed about it so cheap plastic and quality of t61p's screen. i cannot believe it is worse than t60p i have one year ago !

incvn03 wrote:ok, today i borrow a 14.1 t61p from my friend, i am disappointed about it so cheap plastic and quality of t61p's screen. i cannot believe it is worse than t60p i have one year ago !

you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

How true.

CokeBear wrote:The LCD just painly sucks compared with almost any other highend laptop!!

Except for the Flexview screens of the A, R, and T series, all other Thinkpad models have always had terrible LCDs, even when the prices were much higher several years ago.

When prices drop, people start noticing or imagining all sorts of problems that were previously overlooked. I did that myself, when I bought a Lenovo X60s in late 2006. I complained about the flex in some of the plastics above the keyboard, even claiming that none of the dozens of Thinkpads I had previously owned had this problem. Guess what, after getting that X60s, I have bought many more IBM-era Thinkpads. I examined their plastics carefully and found that most of them had the same degree of flex. I thought the X60s was the first one to have such a problem simply because I had never looked for it before.

Well, here's how I see it...

If you accept the fact that FlexViews are dead and gone except on tablets, something I still find very difficult to swallow... , then:

a) Ordinary TN panels on newer models are likely better than they were on the old ones. If I had to choose, I'd take the panels used on newer T6x/R6x over ones used on T30 or T4x units any day.
b) Newer R6x machines feel more sturdy than R5x, and by quite a margin. The same goes when comparing T60 with any T4x. I haven't played with any T61/p long enough to be able to judge it properly.
c) I'm not crazy (and that's an understatement of the millennium) about the design of the newer T6x/R6x machines, nor do I like the keyboard, but that's really a matter of taste and personal preferences, and not an objective judgment of any kind...

Just my $0.02...

jdhurst wrote:I just put my T61 (on AC full brightness) beside my T41 (new Lid, on AC and full brightness). They are equally bright as far as I can see.

I was concerned about all the screen comments and when I finally got my T61 at the beginning of this week, it is just fine.
...JDH

What is FRU#/manufacturer of your screen? Thanks

ymemuser wrote:<snip>
What is FRU#/manufacturer of your screen? Thanks

I have no idea. The screen is buried deep inside the lid, and I don't know how to identify it. ... JDH

Won't Vista's device manager reveal some details?

jdhurst wrote:

ymemuser wrote:What is FRU#/manufacturer of your screen? Thanks

I have no idea. The screen is buried deep inside the lid, and I don't know how to identify it. ... JDH

Answer:

In the thread [url=http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=56225][color=blue][u]Another IPS question[/color][/u][/url], in his post of Sat Jan 26, 2008 10:27 pm, ryengineer wrote:Download the PC Wizard and look under Video then Monitor type, search the Manufacturer number it tells you, that will be the manufacturer of your lcd display.

Johan

jdhurst wrote:The screen is buried deep inside the lid, and I don't know how to identify it. ... JDH

If you go to Lenovo Parts Lookup and enter your notebook's type and serial number, it will display manufacturers and part numbers for the computer's components.

I did the parts lookup. The FRU number is 42T0433, but there is no manufacturer list. .. JDH

jdhurst wrote:I did the parts lookup. The FRU number is 42T0433, but there is no manufacturer list. .. JDH

Google'd 42T0433 and found T61 first impressions (yes, another one) which points to 14.1" SXGA LCD, FRU 42T0432, What is it? which says that 42T0433 is made by BOE-Hydis. This is in accordance with Who makes 14.1" SXGA+ TFT on a T61p?.

Johan

i am considering to buy a t60p which like new condition at 1050usd , i think that i can have a thinkpad laptop with higher quality than t61p so this retail price for this t60pwas 3020usd at 2006. you can compare between 3020usd for t60p and 1200usd for this t61p, higher price , higher quality.

is it great idea ? he he

incvn03 wrote: is it great idea ? he he

Only if there is still a factory warranty and no bad pixels, etc.

mulder wrote:

Only if there is still a factory warranty and no bad pixels, etc.

Most of the T60p units will have some warranty leftover, these are not that old.

As for the dead pixels, new units can have them as well, as there's not a thing you can do about it if there's just a couple of them.

So, yes, I second the idea of buying a T60p with IPS LCD for the aforementioned price, and maybe upgrading the CPU or the whole mobo along the way...

For me they all look equally sturdy or one might say fragile.

My dads X600 almost fell apart after some fall.

Then his T42 fell of he coffee table - good that it had a rollcage so it didn't fell apart. They had to replace the LCD panel though

A year and a half ago I bought a R60 and by carrying it in lenovo messenger bag I managed to brake the rollcage. Only found out today.

My T61 looks good, probably is the best of all above.

I don't buy the story about the quality decrease. These computers where always manufactured by Chinese from the same materials. What happend lately is that executive paychecks went smaller and Lenovo doesn't have to compensate the price for the money they lost on buying the license on IBM logo. If it makes sense to you

I just wanted to point out about this "supply" issue - many other vendors seem capable of shipping lots of laptops with high quality displays (ie Apple), I don't see why people would believe that they really seriously can't get high-quality displays to build Thinkpads.

I've never really been a fan of widescreen on anything - I don't care about watching movies on it, and the aspect ratio doesn't match most photographs I would be producing or looking at, so I find it rather dumb, personally.

If you really could place 2 complete application windows side-by-side without having to resize them from the size they had on a previous 4x3 monitor, that would be interesting - but the aspect ratios on the "wide" screens aren't wide enough for that.

Meh.

Speeking of screens: What thinkpads have LED backlit lcds (= macbook pro)? It seems to be the thing now - has any tried those screens for a longer period, especially outside?

Any curent T serie. T400 and/or T500 and/or W500 will have LED screen as an option.

Hmm, ThinkPads are the only notebooks that I can find that still makes anti-glare anti-reflective LCD screens. That alone makes ThinkPad screens better than any other brand...