Thinkpads Forum

I've been using a T61 for almost two years, and loved it to death. Then it died I got the fan error message, so I bought a new fan, and that didn't help, so it appears the motherboard's gone. (I had the Nvidia Quadro, and apparently this is a fairly common but unaddressed issue.) I'm just going to replace the whole thing, because honestly I don't want to mess around any more inside of this one, and a new warranty might be nice. So I'm looking on eBay, and the closest ThinkPad I can find within my price range is a used T60p that still has a warranty. I've just got some questions for owners of T60p ThinkPads, to figure out if this is for me.

Firstly, I've heard that these tend to overheat, even more than the T61 does. Is this a likely occurrence? I do like to occasionally put my laptop on my legs, and even in the winter I don't need that much heating!

Also, how is the battery life? My T61 ran two batteries down, one per year, and it didn't have great battery life to begin with. The auction includes a 9 cell, which should help some. Speaking of which, does the 9 cell battery protrude from the 15.4" T60p? If so, is it large enough to be annoying? I assume that a 6 cell wouldn't stick out, but what kind of battery life could I expect from that?

Next, how is the weight? I can't find exact numbers anywhere, since there are different laptop and battery sizes, but is it carryable or the kind of think you'd want to leave on a desk most of the time? I'm at college so although I like the screen size, weight is a factor too.

Finally, I'm looking into this largely because any other ThinkPad T6x with discrete graphics breaks my budget. Everywhere I read that discrete graphics is the way to go, even if you're not a gamer. I'm not. I'm a programmer, I use Linux, and the most graphics intensive things I do are play old games and run a screensaver. In this case, would you say that I could get away with a T61 with integrated graphics, and that way I won't have the Nvidia fan problem again? Or would the operating system run noticeably slower without a dedicated graphics card to help out?

Thanks for reading all of this I know it's a lot, but I want to try to make sure I don't end up buying something I'm going to regret.

You might want to consider this:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=82653
Has almost a year warranty left and you probably could extend it.

I don't see why you should have a discrete graphic card on your board as all the things you do should be managable on a system with integrated chip.
As for other questions you asked, as far as I know there is no big differences between T60 and T61 in terms of weight and battery life.

I agree. For these uses - a T60/T61 with integrated graphics seems a very good idea. Less heat, better battery life, no chance of nVidia-related failures, and probably can be had for lower price.

As far as battery life, I also think that there is no big difference between T60 and T61. Perhaps a bit in favor of the T60, but not even sure in that.

The 9-cell battery sticks out the back of any T60, but not in an annoying way. A bit less than 1". The situation is the same with 14" standard and 15.4" wide T61 units.

magicdanw wrote:Firstly, I've heard that these tend to overheat, even more than the T61 does. Is this a likely occurrence? I do like to occasionally put my laptop on my legs, and even in the winter I don't need that much heating!

The fan is apparently really sensitive to dust. When they replaced mine after it finally died, CPU temperatures dropped over 30°C (100% load).

Using the power supply test in OCCT, I get the CPU (T5600 1.83 GHz) to 85°C and the GPU (Mobility Radeon X1400) to 80°C without undervolting. I suppose you could make T7600 + FireGL overheat if you really tried (the limit is 100°C for both, I think).