Buy a T61p or wait?

[Jathm]

I am looking to upgrade from my a30p to a new all the bells and whistles laptop for college. I hope this will last me at least till the end of college enough for light gaming when i first get it and just web surfing and other stuff later in its life.

My question is, is there anything significant to gain from ordering in October rather than ordering now. Is there the next greatest and best thing that i should absolutely wait for like a quad core laptop or is the t61p the horse to bet on?

I know there is always something to be gained in waiting but what I am asking is if there is a big thing on the horizon?

Thanks for the help,

-James

[Liamo0o]

I would wait, the T62p coming out next month will have an octa-core intel processor, duel Nvidia 8900GTX 512mb, and a 15'' SXGA flexview screen - your patience will be rewarded

[richie23]

As I am in a similar situation (planning to replace A31 with T61p), my thoughts:

- There will be nothing "big" coming out until October, the only thing might be a little price cut-off.
- The next "big thing at the horizon" is the next Centrino version, but that will not come out this year: http://img.tomshardware.com/de/2007/06/ ... e1_big.gif
45 nm will save you a nice amount of CPU power consumption, but i doubt it will make a very big difference in a "workstation" notebook.
- The T61p has a lot of features I like: full 4 GB RAM possible with 64-bit OS, WUXGA resolution etc.
- There are still some things missing: DVI/HDMI out (available on HP 8510w, which is a direct competitor for T61p), better WUXGA screen (Flexview).

Just my two cents,

RichIE

[richie23]

I would wait, the T62p coming out next month will have an octa-core intel processor, duel Nvidia 8900GTX 512mb, and a 15'' SXGA flexview screen - your patience will be rewarded

OK, I think there are some hidden irony tags here, but anyway:
- your "month" seems not to be the month we know on earth
- 15" SXGA flexview? I have that in my 5-year-old A31 already. I think a machine with the specs you described (probably some 17" modell in 2009) should have WQXGA Flexview

RichIE

[Liamo0o]

widescreen is bleh

[Jathm]

richie23 what would this thing in October be?

Liamo0o thanks for the satire.

[richie23]

richie23 what would this thing in October be?

Well, the official price for "normal" models given at lenovo.com will probably not change until then - but chances are that there will be some special offers by resellers or new "Topseller" variants.

One example from Germany: Currently there is a special student offer for the NH05GGE which is 850 EUR below the "normal" price - two weeks ago this offer was only 550 EUR below normal price... So spending some weeks looking for good offers may be worth it

RichIE

[Pascal_TTH]

richie23 what would this thing in October be?

Well, the official price for "normal" models given at lenovo.com will probably not change until then - but chances are that there will be some special offers by resellers or new "Topseller" variants.

One example from Germany: Currently there is a special student offer for the NH05GGE which is 850 EUR below the "normal" price - two weeks ago this offer was only 550 EUR below normal price... So spending some weeks looking for good offers may be worth it

RichIE

I agree. There are a lot of school offering special prices for students. It's the same in Belgium and France, so I suppose it goes the same way in the US.

About upcoming new technologies, nothing until Q1 2008 when Core 2 Duo will switch from 65 nm to 45 nm. For graphics, Quadro used on T61(p) are based on the last DirectX 10 NVIDIA GPU (GeForce 8 serie). T61 also use the last Intel chipset...

So now or later, except prices, nothing will change.

[Growly]

I've decided to go for the T61p. The design isn't as bad as I originally thought (and it turns out that the T60 was just as [censored] - maybe a little less). I figured I could always buy old T43s to make myself feel good (it's a good plan, I'm working on it).

There won't be anything big in october. The only problem with the T61p now is the price - but if you're willing to pay extra for the glory of playing with it now, then by all means. These days it's hard to say you had the top-of-the-line of much of anything - they all change so fast. Secretly this is a hidden motivation of mine - I don't care if it lasts less than 4 months... just being able to say it will quench my appetite for some time.

[pianowizard]

Buy it as soon as the next coupon comes out. These are usually 10% to 15% off.

[hansontax]

They don't seem to be mutually exclusive options. You can have it all. You can buy your T61p, and you can wait.

I ordered my T61P on 7/12. My estimated shipping date has been revised from 7/31 to 8/31. I also bought a SATA bay adapter on the same order. Its estimated shipping date has been revised from 7/31, to 8/2, to 8/7, to 8/9. I guess it doesn’t matter much, since I don’t have a T61p to stick the bay adapter in anyway.

From what I've picked up browsing these forums, such delays aren't particularly surprising to ThinkPad veterans, nor are they much different than what one sees when some other manufacturers roll out a new machine. Monitor shortages seem to constitute an acceptable reason for delay, even though Lenovo could predict the need for a monitor at the time they set their first estimated shipping date. Just in time inventory systems can work surprisingly well, so...was Lenovo’s deceived by its monitor vendors? Was Lenovo deceiving its customers? Maybe the monitor vendor's dog ate their homework. Who knows.

I bring all this up to you because… if, later, you get to the point where you need to acquire a laptop quickly, you might want to take these shipping delays and revised estimated shipping dates into account.

Good luck with your decision.

[bert]

New laptop models are triggered by the release of new chipsets from Intel. These typically come every 1.5 years. The T61 is the result of the recent release of the Santa Rosa chipset. So expect to wait one and a half year before there is anything significatly new coming. There will be slightly faster and less power-hungry CPUs coming before then, but that is hardly worth a wait. So now is an excellent time to switch.

[Steve_Jobs]

New laptop models are triggered by the release of new chipsets from Intel. These typically come every 1.5 years. The T61 is the result of the recent release of the Santa Rosa chipset. So expect to wait one and a half year before there is anything significatly new coming. There will be slightly faster and less power-hungry CPUs coming before then, but that is hardly worth a wait. So now is an excellent time to switch.

Yup. As far as I know, nothing new is releasing anytime soon.

Good choice on he t61p!

[richie23]

New laptop models are triggered by the release of new chipsets from Intel. These typically come every 1.5 years. The T61 is the result of the recent release of the Santa Rosa chipset. So expect to wait one and a half year before there is anything significatly new coming. There will be slightly faster and less power-hungry CPUs coming before then, but that is hardly worth a wait. So now is an excellent time to switch.

Well, at the time when the "slightly faster and less power-hungry CPUs" will be released for notebooks there will also be a new chipset. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino#M ... .282008.29 this is scheduled for Q2 2008 - so no 1,5 years, but as I wrote earlier not in 2007 anymore.

After all I agree that it is a good time to choose the T61p

RichIE

[bert]

OK, what I meant is that we will see Penryn before we see Cantiga, and by the time Cantiga is released more than one year will have passed since the release of Crestline.

So given that Lenovo's time to market from the release of the platform stays about the same and Intel's delay in platform release compared to plan also stays the same, we can expect the T62 to come out about one and a half year after the T61. Following the usual laptop life-cycle.

[barrywohl]

Bernard Fall, the French historian of French involvement in Indochina, once put this most succinctly: "If it works, it is obsolete."

Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 5zvlrz.asp

[richie23]

OK, what I meant is that we will see Penryn before we see Cantiga, and by the time Cantiga is released more than one year will have passed since the release of Crestline.

You are right. I missed the fact that Penryn will already be available in first quarter of 2008 while Cantiga will be in second quarter.

http://pics.computerbase.de/1/7/7/6/2/1.jpg

RichIE