R61e mini review

[asiafish]

While my business is now entirely Macintosh, I still wanted a ThinkPad just to play around with. Since my MacBook Pro laptop and Mac Pro desktop cost a small fortune, I decided to shop on the (very) low end on what is essentially a plaything, and wound up with an immaculate R61e purchased from Doronto here on the forum. As always, Ron understated the machine's condition as this is for all intents and purposes a brand-new ThinkPad. Thanks Ron.

What really surprised me besides the condition, however, was just how nice of a machine Lenovo was selling at such a low price point. These regularly sold brand-new for about $600 when first released and dropped to about $500 as they were discontinued. A year later a used R61e tends to fetch between $250 and $350 depending on condition and warranty status. As my R61e is immaculate, but is no longer under warranty, I feel I got it for an excellent price.

I usually know what to expect when I buy a computer and thus am rarely surprised either pleasantly or unpleasantly by what I get. This is, however, the lowest end computer I've ever purchased and despite that, I am very pleasantly surprised that it is also the sturdiest and best-assembled laptop I've ever used. Yes, my old T42p and more recent T60p were NICER, but neither felt as sturdy as this R61e.

I also previously had a low-end R60 that while also a bargain machine, still had the Ultranav pointing device and docking connector. This R61e is TrackPoint-only (my preference) and has no docking capability. That R60 was the machine I used to set my expectations regarding performance as both are fairly similar in specification. The R60 had an Intel GMA 950 integrated GPU and a Celeron M 530 CPU at 1.6 GHz. With 2GB of RAM it did fine in Windows XP, but was slow running 32-bit Vista Business. I really wanted to run 64-Bit Vista, but either the processor or something else on the systemboard was not 64-Bit capable.

Well, I am delighted to find that not only is the R61e with its Celeron M 540 (1.86GHz) processor 64-Bit capable, but that it is quite a bit faster than the R60 was running 32-bit Vista or even XP SP2. I installed 64-Bit Vista last night and currently have it fully patched, and once Vista finished indexing the hard drive the machine sped up nicely. Originally I was planning to use this with the Celeron only until I could get my hands on a Core2Duo to transplant, but after spending most of last night configuring this baby I've decided not to bother. The Celeron really is quite speedy and as this won't be used for heavy multitasking an extra CPU core would be wasted here.

All is not perfect. As many on the forums have commented before, the screen is offset to the left making the machine look a bit unbalanced, but not really impacting use in any way. Its also REALLY thick after coming from a 1" thin MacBook Pro, and rather heavy as well.

I'll update later when I've had time to try various applications and some games, though I'm not expecting much except on older titles. I'm also curious about battery life with the Celeron processor and wonder if the loss of SpeedStep will hurt runtime as much as single core helps. We shall see.

[asiafish]

Battery life with the 6 cell is 2.0 hours with the screen two notches down from full bright and wifi on. With the screen at minimum bright, wifi off and ThinkLight on, essentially how it would be used on an airplane, battery life went up to 2:48.

Not bad for a non-SpeedStep budget processor. Not great, but not bad. 9 cell should boost that to 3 and 4.5 hours or thereabouts.

Performance continues to delight, and just today I installed OS X on it, though I've not started the long and complex process of getting all of the various components to work. I have wireless, but no sound and the screen is only showing a stretched (distorted) 1024X768 instead of 1280X800. My install DVD has many driver and kernel options, so I'm sure its just a matter of experimentation to get everything right. Of course, its quite swift and very stable with Vista 64 bit and Windows 7, so while I'll play with OS X on it, it will remains a Windows machine as far as real work goes.

[underclocker]

Very nice and accurate review. I just picked up an R61e, perhaps the exact same model, a 7650-84U. I am almost shocked at how snappy the machine is with the Celeron 1.86 CPU, 80GB 5400 rpm drive and 512MB of RAM. It's easily as snappy as a basic T60 or T61. Plus, the LCD is actually gorgeous with beautiful colors and incredible brightness.

Regarding features, it is no frills - I mean no microphone, no external dock connector, no camera, no SD slot, non-removeable optical (but it is possible) - but it does have the basics, stereo speakers, great LCD, combo optical, fast CPU, fast Intel graphics, three USB 2.0 ports, and it is upgradeable. There are at least 20 supported CPU's listed in the HMM and it probably will support several more. While the included Celeron runs at 533MHz internally, it supports CPU's that run up to 800MHz internally.

The design is also no frills, like all 15.4" R series machines, one giant, black, shiny, plastic brick - not much design competition for any MacBook, but not offensive either.

I am now using the machine as my living room media machine. It is connected to my home network, a stereo and an LCD TV. It's a great fit.

Oh, I did upgrade it to 1GB of RAM and eventually I'll add a Core 2 Duo CPU, just to keep things running as cool as possible.

[asiafish]

I had no temperature issues with the Celeron. I sold mine to a guy in my reserve unit heading to Iraq. He needed a reliable machine on the cheap and this was a good fit.

I just ordered a 14" widescreen T61 with integrated GPU and it should be almost a perfect replacement. That one is Core2Duo. My only regret is the lack of better graphics for some gaming, so I may trade this T61 for a T or R 60 or 61 with dedicated GPU.

I actually prefer the trackpoint-only palmrest on the R61e, but prefer the 14" size.