Thinkpads Forum

Another thread on what should and should not be considered in a T60 chassis.

So, my T60 15" has the fingerprint reader on the right palmrest. Unlike the left palmrest which is completely solid, the right one creaks and flexes quite a bit. There is considerable play if you press down on it right below the right Ctrl key, and by looking at the edge of the palmrest (right below the keyboard), you can see that the palmrest is not level around that point - it rises a bit, which is what creates the flex. If it had been level, there would have been no flex at all.

Is that normal for a 15" T60 non-wide palmrest, with the fingerprint reader on it? Hopefully someone who has a similar laptop can comment on that.

Thanks.

I also have a 15" T60 with a fingerprint reader and I do not have the creakiness you explained.

And is the palmrest level under the right part of the keyboard?

I finally got around to take some pictures.

Here you can see how the palmrest rises in the area of the Right Ctrl key:


Another picture, with my finger pointing at the spot where there is flex:


Here's how it looks when I press down on that spot, as you can see, the palmrest becomes level then:


I don't think it should be this way, but I am not completely sure. After all, there is nothing holding the palmrest down at that particular point. In fact, unlike the 14" models where the palmrest latches down at both sides, on the 15" models it latches down only on the left, and on the right it is held down only by the combined force of the other anchor points and the screw.

I'd appreciate if other T60 owners could say whether their palmrest looks similar or different in that area.

My 15" T60 with FP reader has flex in the same area. I don't recall it creaking though. You have to press down fairly hard to get it to flatten out as you've shown.

I've also got a 4:3 T60 15' with the fingerprint reader and have some flex in that area. Not a tremendous amount, but enough that I can feel it when I push down on it.

FWIW, my T61 14' has a some flex in the palm rest area as well.

I'm actually more interested to know whether the bezel lies flat in that spot below the keyboard shown in the pictures or whether it rises, like on my and HarryC's machines.

There is alway some flex (especially directly underneath the fingerprint reader), but a bezel that is visibly crooked is strange to me. I'm just trying to find out how normal it is on these models, before requesting a new bezel/whatnot.

I think I will change the title...

If you want another data point, I just checked my 'work' T60 and it does flex there, but not nearly as much as my other T60.

Looks like [censored] assembly to me, like the panel isn't "sitting right". The panel is user removable, perhaps You could re-fit it? Underneath is screws with clear symbols next to them, unscrew those, remove the panel and re-fit it carefully. (Nice time to add some memory at the same time

Blame the keyboard manufacturers ...
There's a bit of solid metal at where the palmrest goes a bit upward on the keyboard. I think it is possible to bend it downwards to fix this issue. With my Chicony keyboard the fit was well, and not elevated the slightest. With my current alps it is elevated a bit, but as this has nothing to do with reliability, i don' care about it really
On the other hand the T4x did not have any extra metal on the keyboard to support the palmrest - the result being that there was extremely much complain about palmrest flex and/or creaking in the right area near the harddrive.

EDIT: See http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/yallhk/NIBKE-7208.jpg for an example of the metal part next to the arrow keys on the T6x keyboards