Begining a new T61 project and need a little advice.

[dogbarber]

Hello everyone.

I'm new here to the forum and would like to ask a few questions about my little project.

I am by no means a computer pro. I consider myself a novice. Not an idiot, but I know enough to be dangerous. I do OK.

I currently own an Ideapad P500 and a Thinkpad R52.

I just purchased a T61 on ebay (one of those decommissioned business laptops for 35 bucks missing its hard drive and battery) that I would like to have fun with. That is to say, I bought it to become more computer hardware literate and to have fun fixing it up. I've always wanted a T61 and I'm so excited to finally get one!

It should be here in a few days.

It's specs are currently 2 Gigs of RAM, aT7300 processor, and a model number of 7661-E17 (if that helps).

My plans are to install a 128G ssd, install a separate storage drive in the HDD caddy, bump up the RAM to 4 Gigs, and pop in a new 9cell battery. I was going to swap out the T7300 with something speedier, but I think it will do OK for now.

Like I said, I'm pretty confident in what I am doing and am looking forward to having fun with this, but I have a few questions that plague me.

1) I want to install a 64bit Windows 7 base on it. Will the 4Gigs of RAM and the T7300 be sufficient to run that? The only heavy software I plan on running is Photoshop (if I can).

2) Driver installation is a bit of black magic to me. Is it as simple as just going to the Lenovo driver page for the T61 and downloading those drivers and installing or is it more complex than that.

3) Is there a way to beef up the graphics card in these computers? What should I expect on that front?

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read and help a brother out! This seems to be an awesome community!

[ajkula66]

1) I want to install a 64bit Windows 7 base on it. Will the 4Gigs of RAM and the T7300 be sufficient to run that? The only heavy software I plan on running is Photoshop (if I can).

4GB is cutting it a bit too close on a 64-bit OS. Try it out and see for yourself.

2) Driver installation is a bit of black magic to me. Is it as simple as just going to the Lenovo driver page for the T61 and downloading those drivers and installing or is it more complex than that.

Download System Update from Lenovo's website and run it a couple of times on a freshly installed OS. it should pick up most if not all needed drivers/utilities.

3) Is there a way to beef up the graphics card in these computers? What should I expect on that front?

Your machine as it left the factory:

Code: Select all

ThinkPad T61 (7661-E17)	
Based on 7661-12U: T7300(2GHz), 2GB RAM, 80GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1280x800, Intel X3100, CDRW/DVD, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 6c Li-Ion, WinVista Business 32

You have the weakest but safest graphic option available for *61 series. You'll do OK as long as you're not intent on heavy gaming. No "beefing up" unless you want to got through the dock and an additional graphics card basically turning your T61 into a desktop...

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read and help a brother out! This seems to be an awesome community!

You're very welcome. We hope that you'll enjoy your stay at TPF.

[dogbarber]

Thanks!

If I go 64bit, do I need to go full 8Gigs of RAM or can I do a 4+2 for 6Gigs of RAM?

Also, do you think the t7300 will be fine with a 64bit system?

[ajkula66]

It really depends on how you use the system.

8GB RAM is a costly venture nowadays, especially on a 6-7 year old system. That's why I stated that you should test it out and see how it works for you.

T7300 - when coupled with 4GB RAM, SSD and a fresh install of W7 - will do just fine.

[dogbarber]

Hmm.

Maybe I am jumping the gun a bit.

Perhaps I can just stick with a 32bit system. From what I read, everyone says go 64bit.

Like I said, Photoshop will be the heaviest thing I run. The rest will be internet browsing and video streaming.

If you guys think I'd be Ok going 32bit, then I can go that route as well.

[ajkula66]

Try the 64-bit, and if that doesn't fly well, go down to 32-bit or upgrade the ram to 6GB.

There's no doubt that 64-bit OS is the way of the future, I just don't want you to blow $150+ on RAM for the machine that initially cost $35...

Good luck.

[dogbarber]

Good advice!

Thank you very much.

I'm excited to dig in to the project. Excited to learn!

...just don't want to make any rookie mistakes that could have been easily avoided.

[ajkula66]

Have fun with that T61 and don't stress over making mistakes.

Some of us have killed more ThinkPads trying to hack them and achieve the impossible than most people have seen in their lifetime...

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Good luck.

[dogbarber]

OH!

Completely forgot. This one I admit I am completely ignorant of.

The mini pci slot on the side... what do I do with that? Any options for it?

[twistero]

4GB RAM for a 64bit Win7 installation should be plenty for many use cases. I have ran such a configuration for a while, and the only time it ever came close to being out of memory is when I literally had 50+ image-heavy tabs open in Firefox. I did eventually bump it up to 6GB because I wanted to run virtual machines.

For the secondary miniPCIe slot, here are a couple things I've seen people doing / have done myself:
A WWAN card, as the slot is intended for. There's probably no WWAN antennae in there though.
A secondary WLAN card. Again, no antenna.
A CrystalHD hardware video decoder card. Helps play HD videos. Although, the CPU is probably powerful enough by itself for video playback.
Internal SD / microSD card readers.
Internal USB adapter card, to install USB devices inside the chassis. Obviously space is a concern.

And here are a couple of possible things that I haven't seen anyone doing yet:
A GPS card.
A USB 3.0 controller card.
A TV tuner card.
A SATA controller card. (People have tried this, but never succeeded, mostly due to compatibility problems.)

[schen]

Around our house, these have been the workhorse machines for the last two years, with just a very recent upgrade wave to the T500 displacing them. Actually, my son is still on one with the nVidia GPU. While with us, they were all configured with SSD (64Gb on my son's, 240Gb on my wife's, and 80Gb on mine), running Windows 7, 64bit, and 4Gb of RAM.

We had no issues at all with them, with anything that we did. My wife's is her main machine and does everything, from M$ Office, to web, to school stuff with lots of apps through the internet. She's terrible about keeping 6-8 Firefox tabs open and rarely if ever rebooting. My son used an Intel integrated GPU model for over a year and watched tons of Youtube videos and played some lightweight games on it. I used mine as a mobile workstation which I took to school (were both teachers) as well as football games to move game video to our web service. I kept a 200Gb drive in a caddy to cache the video on before uploads. Again, no issues at all.

We upgraded when I got a T500 for a ridiculously low price (it went to my wife), so my son got her machine, and I sold mine, because I started using a T60p with the 15" IPS 1600 x 1200 screen, which I typing on right now.

So, I'd say that you've gotten yourself into an excellent "learners" machine that's about near bullet-proof! I kind of look at the T6x series as kind of modern-day A31s. They are still amazingly capable for their age and the prices on them is just stupid-low! When combined with a decent SSD, and 3-4Gb of RAM. Hope you have a good time with yours.

[dogbarber]

Thanks Schen!

It's due to be delivered tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to it. I have and Ideapad I use as my daily driver, so I've got all the time in the world to do this exactly how I want and when I want.

First order of business will be the ssd. I've googled around and it looks like the Samsung 840 (non pro) gets stellar reviews so looks like that will be the one I get.