T61 (Merom) release, specs?

[slowernet]

Asus has just announced their first Merom notebooks (no indication that they're shipping, however):
http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/19/asus ... portables/

Any insight or predictions on when we'll see a T61, and what improvements will be made over the T60 (other than the CPU)? Has Lenovo shown any interest in DVI?

[fbrdphreak]

No word on DVI, but I have been bugging them about it. No word on Merom refresh at all.

Only info is that there will be a widescreen T-series
http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=1256

[christopher_wolf]

Any news as to whether there will be a 4:3 version as well?

[fbrdphreak]

I would keel over dead right now if Lenovo were to drop the 4:3 T-series altogether. In other words, I highly highly doubt they would do that.

[snife]

Any news as to whether there will be a 4:3 version as well?

Yes there will be.

[kulivontot]

widescreen notebooks are merely a ploy to pass off smaller screens to the consumer to make it look like they are getting additional features rather than less screen space.

[pianowizard]

widescreen notebooks are merely a ploy to pass off smaller screens to the consumer to make it look like they are getting additional features rather than less screen space.

What I have noticed is that even though widescreen displays have slightly smaller areas than 4:3 displays with the same diagonal length, they usually (though not always) have more pixels, i.e. you can view more stuff. For example, a 12" WXGA (e.g. my Dell Inspiron 700m) has 1280×800 resolution (1,024,000 pixels), but 12" XGA (e.g. my X40, T23 and Toshiba Portege R100) is only 1024x768 (768,432 pixels). With widescreens, it's also easier to put two Word documents or web browsers side by side. So, I think we do get "additional features" with widescreen notebooks.

[Liam_]

widescreen notebooks are merely a ploy to pass off smaller screens to the consumer to make it look like they are getting additional features rather than less screen space.

What I have noticed is that even though widescreen displays have slightly smaller areas than 4:3 displays with the same diagonal length, they usually (though not always) have more pixels, i.e. you can view more stuff. For example, a 12" WXGA (e.g. my Dell Inspiron 700m) has 1280×800 resolution (1,024,000 pixels), but 12" XGA (e.g. my X40, T23 and Toshiba Portege R100) is only 1024x768 (768,432 pixels). With widescreens, it's also easier to put two Word documents or web browsers side by side. So, I think we do get "additional features" with widescreen notebooks.

Well, this obviously depends on the screen. Currently I'm studying and my study-mate's laptop is a Dell 6400, 15.4" widescreen. He has got a resolution of 1280x1024, and I have a T60p, 15" screen and a resolution of 1600x1200

So I can have more words and webbrowsers next to each other

So, what I mean is, it depends more on the resolution of the screen , the way you work with it, then on de actual width of a screen.

Just my 2 cents on the subject

[fbrdphreak]

^^
Exactly. Resolution is more important for "desktop real estate" as I like to call it than screen size.

[pianowizard]

Well, this obviously depends on the screen. Currently I'm studying and my study-mate's laptop is a Dell 6400, 15.4" widescreen. He has got a resolution of 1280x1024, and I have a T60p, 15" screen and a resolution of 1600x1200

No, I was comparing regular and wide versions of the same type. You are comparing wide XGA with regular UXGA, which is not fair. You should instead compare the UXGA (1600x1200) with the WUXGA (1920x1200), and obviously the latter has a lot more pixels.

[Kamika007z]

Just to note: I hate widescreens

[bert]

Core 2 Duo should be available in Thinkpads any day now, quite possibly today. The Dell website today shows Core 2 processor choices as selections for the XPS line, replacing the Core processors that were there yesterday. This happened very quietly with no announcement at all this far, but the day is still young.

[fbrdphreak]

Core 2 Duo should be available in Thinkpads any day now, quite possibly today. The Dell website today shows Core 2 processor choices as selections for the XPS line, replacing the Core processors that were there yesterday. This happened very quietly with no announcement at all this far, but the day is still young.

The word I have gotten is that Lenovo is waiting a bit. With widesreen T-series coming out and probably other changes, I'd say October or so.

[bert]

Here is a link to some more info:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3961

[fbrdphreak]

Here is a link to some more info:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3961

Yes, I know the people at DailyTech, but I also know the people at Lenovo. Several companies have announced C2D notebooks, but Lenovo is waiting.

http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/index.php

[zyphria]

Several companies have announced C2D notebooks, but Lenovo is waiting.

It's a drop-in replacement. Why wait? They should at least replace their existing processor selections.

[fbrdphreak]

Several companies have announced C2D notebooks, but Lenovo is waiting.

It's a drop-in replacement. Why wait? They should at least replace their existing processor selections.

Probably to coincide with the widescreen T-series launch.

[Porsche]

I don't quite undestand why Lenovo hasn't gotten on the bandwagon immediately with the Merom chip. I guess they are not fearful of losing their "comparative advantage." Does anyone know within some level of certainty when a widescreen or a Merom equipped thinkpad will be out? Thanks.

[rkalla]

I wondered this too but took a closer look at the performance chip-to-chip and it's really not that big. With CPU intensive operations (encoding) it's average is 15% (most likely due to the L2 cache boost):
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2006/08/ ... uo-laptop/

In my opinion 15% increase for cpu-specific tasks means that translate to roughly a 5% "real world" difference... suggesting you likely won't see the difference at all using one.

I think this is part of the reason Lenovo wasn't all over the Meroms... the other reason, they have too much stock of the old ones most likely and are clearing out their inventory.

That's my guess of course, I don't know for sure.

[zyphria]

20% more battery life sounds rather desirable though.

[rkalla]

Where did you get 20% more battery life from? All indicators so far suggest slightly less (5%?) battery lives at the moment with the preliminary tests (cost of the double L2 cache and 64-bit instruction processing which are negligable).

That does not include the Merom-specific platform comming at the middle or end of 2007, that will be highly optimized for the Core 2 and later processors, so things might improve *then*, but right now, there is not gaping divide between the two.

[fbrdphreak]

A few points:

*Lenovo will be shipping Core 2 Duo in early October. Got confirmation today

*They didn't move to C2D immediately for several reasons: CD stock, releasing new models in October already (widescreen T for example), and not a "revolutionary" change by any means

*Battery life does not increase by 20%, performance does. Battery life is near identical

[rkalla]

References for some folks:

5% or so here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=2808&p=7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=2808&p=8

10% or so here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=2808&p=9

but there are some bigger differences here with synthetic if this is what you meant:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=2808&p=6

and yes identical power usage:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... =2808&p=14

[fbrdphreak]

I meant the 20% performance thing as a general number. Obviously it depends what task you're looking at, but C2D has some nice performance increases across the board.

Intel finally got us their Merom sample, so we'll be conducting full tests and comparing to Yonah as well as Turion 64 X2.

[rkalla]

Please let us know what the results are as soon as you are done testing, I saw some prelim on the AMD part and was *severly* unimpressed, but another more technical set of eyes on the problem would be appreciated.

[fbrdphreak]

Yeah it is looking like AMD's Turion 64 X2 isn't very impressive. Performance is on par with the desktop Athlon 64 X2's, but those are behind Core Duo in the first place (in somethings, it is competitive but not impressive). So C2D should wipe the floor with T64 X2.

We've already reviewed the MSI S271 with Turion 64 X2, so you can see how it fares here:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=128

We'll also have a review up of the HP dv2000z T64 X2 next week, which uses the NVIDIA chipset instead of the ATI. The HP though should be a closer comparison to the Core Duo-based HP dv1000t, so we'll have a bit more of a direct power consumption comparison.

[thinktank]

I would keel over dead right now if Lenovo were to drop the 4:3 T-series altogether. In other words, I highly highly doubt they would do that.

I am afraid that that may be only a matter of time. I just recently bought mine and when shopping around for laptops I noticed that the ubiquitous glossy wide-screen laptop seems to become the standard. At least until the next fad. Pretty soon it will be too expensive to manufacture a few "old fashioned" 4:3 screens that only a handful of users buy now.
Many things tend to only get more "modern" and not better.

[fbrdphreak]

No, the standard aspect display will not disappear from Lenovo for quite some time.

[michaeln]

Would you recommend holding off on buying a t60 till october since new models are coming out then? (hopefully old models will drop in price)

[mattbiernat]

Would you recommend holding off on buying a t60 till october since new models are coming out then? (hopefully old models will drop in price)

I've read somewhere that c2d and cd will be initially priced the same, at least for now. And i've seen the older models priced more than newer models on the lenovo website. So i don't think it is a good idea to wait unless you want to see the changes in T61.