Thinkpads Forum

I've spent literally *hours* combing ebay looking for a T61 with T7300 or better CPU, 14" 1440x900 display, and without a nvidia GPU... and so far, I've had absolutely no luck whatsoever. Did they ever even *exist* as mainstream items, or am I probably wasting my time even bothering to look for one?

I really like the T61, but after reading recent postings at Lenovo's forum from users who are having out of warranty repairs denied & realizing that even the repaired ones are getting new chips that are going to fail the same way a few months from now, I came to the conclusion that it would be insane to risk buying a used T61 with nvidia GPU.

If the T61 falls through, I'm torn between a T60 with 14.1" 1440x1050 display and T2500 CPU, and a HP 6910p with T7300 or better and 14.1" 1440x900 display with ATI GPU. The T60 is cheap and nice, but has no future because it can never use more than 3 gigs. The 6910p isn't quite as nice as the T60 & T61, but I can unofficially expand it to 8 gigs with a pair of 4-gig SoDIMMs, give it a SSD, install Win7pro64, and have a weekend/travel laptop that will probably keep me happy for about twice as long as the T60 (say, 3 years vs 18 months). Of course, my fantasy would be to end up with a 2.2 or 2.4 GHz nvidia-free T61 with 14.1" 1440x900 display, upgraded to the same 8 gigs, SSD, and 64-bit Win7pro... but I've just about given up hope at this point.

Of course they exist, BobA had few barebones (without palmrest, optical, battery etc) for sale that were otherwise in excellent shape and in warranty. All of them had Intel X3100 GPU.
I bought one for myself also from the 1st T61 sale he had few months ago.

You're probably more likely to see it on a CTO model than a pre-configured model. A T400 probably wouldn't cost that much more, then it wouldn't matter which GPU you got. The R61 also had WXGA+ as an option too.

miamicanes wrote:combing ebay looking for a T61

Welcome to the forums!

I also got a barebone from BobA for an excellent price and in very good condition. Try entering the model number shown below on my sig, although there are of course other models with the same characteristics, but at least it will be a start.

If I'm not mistaken, Bob still has few left: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=92700

With this price, I would take them in a heartbeat if I was looking for T61 WXGA+ with Intel GPU.

You can get palmrest for something like $15 shipped and all the other items are dirt cheap for T61 (DDR2 memory, optical, SATA 2.5" HDD etc).

^^^ Cool, I sent him a message. That's pretty much exactly what I was hoping to buy

miamicanes wrote:^^^ Cool, I sent him a message. That's pretty much exactly what I was hoping to buy

Plus Bob is a great guy to work with, SO you get the machine you want and a great experience!