Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I have a T61p which I've been very happy with (running Vista Business 32). Two questions for comments, as I'm interested in others experiences/thoughts:

-- Is it worth moving from T61p 14inch to T400 14inch? Is the widescreen or keyboard in current models a problem? Is performance that much better?

-- If I get 4gb RAM is Vista64 stable (I'd also run Linux so the RAM won't be wasted). Is Vista64 stable though for this hardware?

-- Is there any difference (aside from capacity) between the 64gb and 128gb SSD? Are there performance differences? Does anyone know the actual drives used?

I'm a programmer so I don't do any games/media/etc on my laptop. Just coding/email/etc.

Thank you.

Hans

If you get a T400 with a LED backlight there is a BIG difference in the screen experience compared to a T61.

For me, on my T400 there is no discernable differnce in keyboard feel from my T61.

Vista 64 is very stable. I have it running on several platforms, including an X61, T61 and T400, with excellent stability.

Cheers,

Bill B.

I also run Vista64 on T60 and T400, both without any show stopper. T400 seems to run noticably "smoother".

The only big differences for you would be the LED backlit screen and the battery life. The screen does look a lot better, especially if you had the WXGA screen on the t61p, but I don't know if that is a compelling reason to upgrade. The battery life is amazing due to the 25W CPU, DDR3, and switchable graphics - depending on settings, you could get as high as 1 hour per battery cell (i.e. up to 9 hours on the 9-cell battery). I upgraded from a t61 to a t400 and while I like the t400 better, I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for my t61 biting the dust (the video card died, a $600 non-warranty repair )

Vista 64 is definitely the way to go if you want 4GB of RAM, but if that's one of your major reasons to upgrade, why not just grab 4GB of DDR2 for your current laptop? I think a 4GB kit is like $35-40 right now (as opposed to $100 and up for DDR3). Also, your 32-bit windows license also works for 64-bit - just download a copy of the 64-bit ISO, install, and call microsoft to reset your license key - tell them your hard drive crashed and you had to reformat or something like that.

As for SSDs, I think that the hard drives are Samsung, since they have so many advertisements for SSDs in Lenovo's print ads. I do not know if they are MLC or SLC drives though - I'm guessing that at least the 128GB drive is MLC, since I haven't seen higher than a 64GB SLC drive. Personally, whether you buy a new laptop or just upgrade the old one, I'd wait a few months before buying an SSD. Prices are in a freefall right now, and capacity is rising sharply with all the new MLC drives hitting the market now and in the next few months. I wouldn't buy a current MLC drive due to the write stuttering issue (problem with the jmicron controller), but Samsung and OCZ (with their new Vortex line) have both claimed that they will be releasing properly working MLC drives in Q1 2009, with capacities up to 512GB.