worth buying the z61t now?

[zaku]

with the following specs for US$950 brand new

T2300E, 512MB RAM, 60GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1440x900 LCD, Intel 950, CDRW/DVD, 802.11abg wireless, Secure chip, IEEE 1394, Fingerprint reader, 4c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

or should i better go with another tp series for the price? and is it possible for future upgrade to a core 2 duo on this machine? any comments ?

[Ken Fox]

with the following specs for US$950 brand new

T2300E, 512MB RAM, 60GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1440x900 LCD, Intel 950, CDRW/DVD, 802.11abg wireless, Secure chip, IEEE 1394, Fingerprint reader, 4c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

or should i better go with another tp series for the price? and is it possible for future upgrade to a core 2 duo on this machine? any comments ?

It looks like a pretty good price to me; whether you might want to get a little bit faster processor depends on what you want to do with it. There are no other similar machines in the TP line (e.g. no other 14" widescreens) so if you want a 14" widescreen the Z61T is your only choice. You can get a 15" widescreen in the Z line or in the T line.

[zaku]

thanks for the reply

about the processor speed, how does it compares to the pentium M 1.7ghz? should be a bit faster since is core duo? cuz i'm enough with my T42 running with a PM1.7ghz.. just wanted a smaller widescreen thinkpad (my t42 is a 15").. and what it makes me drool is the titanium lid in silver color..

so at least the price is fair for the specs right? hope it's not going to a huge depreciation soon since the z series aren't that popular?
for this price we still can get better specs on other brands.. but i'd like just to stick with a thinkpad

[Ken Fox]

thanks for the reply

about the processor speed, how does it compares to the pentium M 1.7ghz? should be a bit faster since is core duo? cuz i'm enough with my T42 running with a PM1.7ghz.. just wanted a smaller widescreen thinkpad (my t42 is a 15").. and what it makes me drool is the titanium lid in silver color..

There are comparison articles on other sites in which the various notebook processors are compared on various tests. I don't have a link right now but if you look around or use the search function on this site you will pull some up (or google for them).

I had a 1.7ghz T42 like yours, now have a T43 2.0ghz (which I'm using now) and a 1.83ghz X60. In actual use with most of the tasks that most people use PCs for, you are not going to notice much difference with current software and XP among anything from a single core 1.7ghz to a 2.0 Core Duo double core processor.

If you want speed, the cheap and easy upgrades would be to buy either another 512mb (or a 1gb) stick of RAM for the vacant slot, and a 7200RPM hard drive. Newegg has been selling the current speed demon, the Hitachi 100gb 7K100 in SATA for about $115 lately. 512mb of RAM will cost you maybe $50 in addition. Extra RAM and a faster HD will do much more for your perception of speed than will increasing processor speed unless you are using applications which are highly processor intensive.