Thinkpads Forum

Upgrading from my beloved T40p (RIP), I am facing a "T60p vs T500" decision.

Here are my options:

$600 - T60p, T2600, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15" UXGA, 256MB ATI FireGL V5200, CDRW/DVD
$825 - T500, P8600, 2GB RAM, 160GB 5400rpm HD, 15.4" WSXGA+, Intel X4500HD, DVD Recordable

I use the laptop for development (programming) and web browsing, so am mostly concerned about ergonomics (UXGA vs WSXGA, panel quality, keyboard feel, weight, etc).

Would love to hear your thoughts.

I guess it would depend on how important screen quality is on your list. If it's near the top, the UXGA screen on the T60 is clearly superior to anything being offered now on a T series thinkpad. Otherwise the T500 is a solid all around machine. There's two panels for it - a LG and a Samsung. The LG is decent. The Samsung is not so good. It's a bit of a lottery. I'd also keep in mind the V5200 is going to run hotter than the X4500.

I'll give you another option if you don't want the V5200, you can buy a T60 or R60 with the Intel GPU and either the SXGA+ or UXGA IPS screens and swap them for whatever panel is in there. On the T60 if it's the XGA screen, you have to swap the cable and inverter in addition to the LCD. On the R60 it's a straight swap for either screen. That's what I did for my R60, which has the SXGA+ LCD from the T60.

Sleepless wrote:$600 - T60p, T2600, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15" UXGA, 256MB ATI FireGL V5200, CDRW/DVD
$825 - T500, P8600, 2GB RAM, 160GB 5400rpm HD, 15.4" WSXGA+, Intel X4500HD, DVD Recordable

In addition, I would assume the T500 to be new with 1-year warranty at least, and the T60p to be refurbished at best. It might still have some warranty left on it, but need to check.

The T500 wins in the CPU department, loses in the GPU department. But it will run cooler and have longer battery life (when configured with the same battery). Since you did not list 3D applications or 3D games as your activities, I assume you don't need the stronger GPU.

Sleepless wrote:I use the laptop for development (programming) and web browsing, so am mostly concerned about ergonomics (UXGA vs WSXGA, panel quality, keyboard feel, weight, etc).

Would love to hear your thoughts.

IMO, UXGA generally is more useful than WSXGA+ for the tasks you mentioned (from the experience of using both UXGA and WSXGA+ desktop screens). On a 15" screen, the PPI for UXGA (133) is a tad higher than WSXGA+ on 15.4" (128), which may make the UXGA screen more straining for the eyes, but not much so.

Screen quality is definitely better on the UXGA IPS, as was already said.

Keyboard is going to be sturdier on the T60, but you can get a T6x keyboard for the T500 which will make it just the same.

Weight, when configured with the same battery should be about the same. The T500 may be a bit lighter, but the gap is definitely not big enough to consider.

FredGarvin wrote:I'll give you another option if you don't want the V5200, you can buy a T60 or R60 with the Intel GPU and either the SXGA+ or UXGA IPS screens and swap them for whatever panel is in there.

I also use a sxga+ flexview T60 which lasts 3 hours with maximum settings and the standard battery. It's comparable to the W700 - regarding display height. And that's for less than 2,5 kg having the ultrabay drive removed. (Compared to 4 kg of the W700?) As for me display height is the most important thing after display quality, stretching it out is fine for me. The T500 WSXGA+ CCFL display looks fine when considering display quality - it does not match the flexview quality from the T60 series.

When you think of "feature proof hardware", you might wait for the upcoming T500s (if it arrives anytime), they use the new docking solution the T400s uses right now.

There's no question that the T60 is vastly better. The current screens on the T400/T500 series machines are absolute crap, especially for programming, word processing, web browsing, etc. where the most important considerations are vertical resolution and picture quality (contrast, qualtiy at various viewing angles, etc.) The T60 wins by a huge margin in all these areas.

I think someone in Lenovo discovered they could save $200 per laptop by making the screen unusable. Of course, what's happening is that IT departments (like ours) are abandoning Thinkpads and users are clinging to their old machines. Sigh -- I guess computers don't always get better over time...

one thing to take into consideration is the fact that t60p is limited to SATA-150 (SATA 1gen). Where as the T500 has SATA-300 (SATA 2gen).

If you install a SSD into the T60p it's transfer speeds will be seriously lmited compared to the T500.

Aiwi wrote:If you install a SSD into the T60p it's transfer speeds will be seriously lmited compared to the T500.

I remember someone claiming/showing, that despite the theoretical double throughput of the bus, the actual performance difference in real-world was maybe 10% between SATA1 SSD and SATA2 SSD... But I haven't really looked into it deep enough.

I have used both 1. and 2. gen's Intel X25-m in my T60p as well as Macbook Pro unibody (comparable to the t/w500).
Performance on both were top notch - no difference in any tasks that I did , that could be caused by SSD performance. That is not to say that the MBP wasnt significantly faster, with a faster CPU, DDR3 ram and the stunning 9600GT gpu.
The T60p makes a very fine Windows 7 machine btw - still my Thinkpad of choice.

I had a Samsung SLC SSD in my R60. While it's not as fast as the Intel drives, I couldn't tell much of a difference other than a few spots where things seemed a bit more peppy. More to point the SATA cap is only really going to make a difference if you're copying/pasting rather large files all the time, which I'd say the majority of users aren't doing on a regular basis.

Sleepless wrote:Upgrading from my beloved T40p (RIP), I am facing a "T60p vs T500" decision.
...
$600 - T60p, T2600, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15" UXGA, 256MB ATI FireGL V5200, CDRW/DVD
$825 - T500, P8600, 2GB RAM, 160GB 5400rpm HD, 15.4" WSXGA+, Intel X4500HD, DVD Recordable
...
Would love to hear your thoughts.

As everybody here will tell you - you will be hard pressed to find a better display than the IPS UXGA. That said, the WSXGA+ 15.4" is imho the best display option on todays thinkpads, its crisp and clear with a nice usable resolution and foremost very bright. The viewing angles are fair and seemingly better than most of the other display options.

With the T500 you get an very snappy machine almost completely silent, the option to later go to 8GB ram. You can run a 64bit OS. The Intel graphics is all right, and can easily do 1080p HD video streaming offloaded to the GPU using DXVA. Some T500 keyboards are more soft than the T6x series. A T60 NMB keyboard can then be installed on the T500 - costs almost nothing.

The T60P has the display and video adapter going for it, on most other accounts it looses to the T500. Main problem with this machine is that its almost impossible to run a T60P without the fan going all the time if you don't want to burn your hands - You can limit the heat and noise somewhat by fiddling with tpfancontrol, rmclock or similar programs. The T500 runs ice cold and whisper quiet out of the box in comparison (The T61 and later fans are much less noisy at the same rpms)

I would take the T500, invest in an intel X25-m SSD drive, load Windows 7 64bit, and you have a very nice and futureproof machine.

regards,
Jesper James

jjames55 wrote:I would take the T500, invest in an intel X25-m SSD drive, load Windows 7 64bit, and you have a very nice and futureproof machine.

That's also a very great advice. I'd take the WSXGA+ CCFL panel , it is one of the best panels around today for the actual series.