Thinkpads Forum

New T61 just arrived. T9300 processor, 4 gb ram, 7200 rpm hard disk (160 gb). nVidia 128 mb graphics.

Windows Vista Business 64 installed.

Opened it up, all is good...but slow...

Vista Service Pack 1 was installed... of course, I always expect to have to update drivers with Lenovo System Update. (been using thinkpads for many years.)

To my surprise, every single driver installed was a pretty old version - sometimes 2 revisions old.

Had to download almost a gigabyte worth of drivers, etc.

Intel 4965 (or whatever) card has bad performance. Used tweakvista.com recommendations to improve system performance (downgraded from aera to Vista basic which is aero lite).

Lenovo's wireless drivers aren't the same version as the latest on intel's website. *yeah yeah yeah I know lenovo tests the drivers thoroughly before they put them out as a lenovo update, but the performance of the wireless card was horrendous. It was 5 feet away from my Wireless N Access Point.

Did windows updates.... of course I have 5 windows hot patches that show up as recommended updated but won't install.

Finally did the Windows TCP autotuning hack and I now get the same performance as my old T61 with a T7500 processor.

Overalll Vista score - 4.1... better than my old thinkpad with x3100 graphics.

Couldn't wait until Montevino chipset to come out with DDR3 memory.

Took me a few hours just to get it running at a decent speed, and update drivers (for god's sake lenovo - update your system builds !)

All is good now.

oh that's interesting. Sounds like a nice system I was curious about your WEI scores though as i get a 4.0 on the system below (sig) so i was shocked to see "only" 4.1 on a new Penryn T61. Then again yours is not a T61P so maybe that might have something to do with it.

Anyways, did you get the 14.1" or 15.4" or what? I think you got the 14.1" based on the video card. If so how does it feel (build wise) and heavy? What battery life (estimates) are you getting? I'm interested in a new Penryn 14.1" but they are all higher clocked ones and i don't need 2.6Ghz. I mainly care about battery life and if i could get 4hrs with a 6 cell i'd be happy

I got the 15.4 wsxga+ 1680 x 1050. The only reason I didn't get the P was that I didn't need the WUXGA screen (1900 x 1200 I think).

Here are my WEI specifics:

Processor 5.4 (kind of disappointing for a brand new processor with 6 mb of cache, 45 nm process, etc...)

Memory (RAM) 5.1 (standard PC2-5300 667 Mhz RAM)

Graphics (for aero) 4.1

Gaming Graphics: 4.7

Primary Hard Disk 5.3

I would be happy to get 2.5 hours on my 9 cell battery using my Sprint Wireless WAN card. (it's a PC card, I have the intel turbo memory)

well as long as your happy with it then the WEI doesn't matter so much I'm happy with my T60 but of-course i've always had the upgrade bug bitting me... no matter what electronics i have..

(i was happy with the T42 i had but got this T60 cuz it was a good deal then decided i don't need both so let the T42 go to another happy customer)

Wait for the Montevina based systems coming out in June.

Everything will be better....

also, I had a T60, but it couldn't host 64 bit VM's on VMware workstation, so I upgraded to the T61.... and then I upgraded to another T61... and I'll buy a Montevina based system when they come out.

I have a T61p 15.4" with T9300, 3GB memory, UXGA, Win Vista Biz 32 bit, etc.

I get the following WEI scores:

processor: 5.4
memory: 5.0
graphics: 5.9
gaming graphics: 5.4
primary hard disk: 5.4

My computer seems plenty fast to me. At least as fast as my T60p (15.4" 4x3 aspect UXGA, T2500, 2 GB memory, Win XP, etc.).

On the other hand, I do notice that file/folder copy and paste operations take FOREVER. Much much slower than my T60p.

For that reason alone, I may downgrade to XP. It's really cutting into my productivity.

I don't have the 570 video card, which appears to be the difference.

rockefella wrote:I have a T61p 15.4" with T9300, 3GB memory, UXGA, Win Vista Biz 32 bit, etc.

I get the following WEI scores:

processor: 5.4
memory: 5.0
graphics: 5.9
gaming graphics: 5.4
primary hard disk: 5.4

My computer seems plenty fast to me. At least as fast as my T60p (15.4" 4x3 aspect UXGA, T2500, 2 GB memory, Win XP, etc.).

On the other hand, I do notice that file/folder copy and paste operations take FOREVER. Much much slower than my T60p.

For that reason alone, I may downgrade to XP. It's really cutting into my productivity.

Did you upgrade to SP1? That's a known bug (even though i don't have it) and a previous hotfix touched on it but SP1 supposed to be the cure. I can copy to my partitions pretty speedy and USB 2.0 HDs go to 22MiB/s