R61 opinions?

[Tholek]

Thanks. Anyone have closeups of the 15" R61 as well? Alongside a 15" T61 would be great.

Don't you mean 15.4''?

Yes I did.

[imataqito]

Thanks. Anyone have closeups of the 15" R61 as well? Alongside a 15" T61 would be great.

Yes I am considering of this one in Australia 89185MM

Intel® CORE 2 DUO® T7300 (2.0GHz) Centrino
Microsoft Vista™ Business 32
1GB RAM
120GB 5400rpm SATA HDD
15.4" WSXGA+ WIDESCREEN
CD-RW/DVD-RW Multiburner
128Mb Dedicated Graphics
Gigabit NIC
802.11a/g/n
Bluetooth
Integrated Fingerprint reader
6 Cell Battery
1 year warranty

What do you think of it?

I vigorously recommend at least 2gb of ram for vista. a gig sodimm of ddr runs about 35 bucks, us dollars, now so its a cheap upgrade and you'll really see a big improvement.

[rbi]

I vigorously recommend at least 2gb of ram for vista. a gig sodimm of ddr runs about 35 bucks, us dollars, now so its a cheap upgrade and you'll really see a big improvement.

May I also ask if I can add Intel Turbo memory if this model doesn't have one? Thanks.

Mod edit: excessive quoting trimmed.

[imataqito]

I vigorously recommend at least 2gb of ram for vista. a gig sodimm of ddr runs about 35 bucks, us dollars, now so its a cheap upgrade and you'll really see a big improvement.

May I also ask if I can add Intel Turbo memory if this model doesn't have one? Thanks.

I believe you can as long as you're not getting a WWAN card. There's only one mini pci-express slot on the motherboard. If you're interested in getting the turbo memory card, take a glance as this article before you do:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in ... spx?i=3009

The results are kinda disappointing, at least to me they were.

Mod edit: excessive quoting trimmed.

[tomh009]

Personally, I thought Anandtech's results were pretty decent -- ~100% increase in throughput on Windows XP startup, application loading and general usage, plus 10-15% increase in battery life. For $100 or so, that's a bargain in my book.

There was no increase in performance when doing a full-disk virus scan, but I would have been much surprised to see anything there -- you can't cache an entire disk in 1 GB.

[imataqito]

Personally, I thought Anandtech's results were pretty decent -- ~100% increase in throughput on Windows XP startup, application loading and general usage, plus 10-15% increase in battery life. For $100 or so, that's a bargain in my book.

There was no increase in performance when doing a full-disk virus scan, but I would have been much surprised to see anything there -- you can't cache an entire disk in 1 GB.

the huge hit on write performance really sucks though.

[pianowizard]

My friend's 15.4" R61 just arrived from Lenovo. It was configured with 1680x1050, 1x1GB RAM, 120GB HDD, and the cheapest OS Vista Home Basic. He will burn a set of recovery discs and then upgrade to Win XP Pro for free using our institution's site license.

I have been playing with it the whole morning and it feels amazingly sturdy. It's far more solid than both of my 15.0" R50p's, further confirming that Thinkpad quality got better after Lenovo took over, not worse. It's about 5 mm thicker than another friend's 15.4" 1680x1050 T60, and weighs 6.44 lb with a small battery. He paid only $756 including tax by combining a 10% off coupon and Visa Card's additional ~8% discount.

UPDATE: I just noticed one minor problem. Compared to the R50p, this R61's touchpad is almost 1 cm farther from the keyboard. This makes the touchpad slightly less convenient to use.