New T61 Impressions / Wireless Problem

[XH]

Greetings everyone. I recently purchased the ThinkPad T61. My specs are 14" SXGA+, NVidia, 2 GB RAM and 160 GB HD.

I initially ordered the Dell M1330, a configuration that cost $1,700. But then I saw the 20% discount offered by Lenovo and decided to take advantage of it. I ending up paying $1070 for mine and felt good about the deal.

I am a writer with a couple of books already published and selling quite well, so you can imagine my primary use for the laptop will be more writing. So my thinking was that the ThinkPad's legendary keyboard and its higher resolution screen (relative to the M1330's 1280 x 800) would be advantageous.

I may be a bit different than many people in this forum in that I actively prefer standard screen over wide screen. To me it looks much, much better. Wide screens may be great for spreadsheets or watching DVDs, but the standard screen is definitely better for writing. And if you were to calculate 1400 x 1050 and compare that to 1440 x 900, you'll see it actually offers more screen real estate. It was a lucky thing for me that the 20% offer was only applicable for the SXGA+ models.

I am a fast touch typist. After some time using the ThinkPad, I actually wasn't that impressed by the keyboard. It's a good keyboard, of course, but many laptops have decent keyboards nowadays, so the difference between it and its competitors wasn't great. Also, I personally did not like the Fn key at the lower left corner. That's where my finger seeks the Ctrl key.

I also didn't like the fan being always on. Yes, it's quiet. And yes, I can tune it out. Still, I've had laptops that could be absolutely silent rather than quiet. When the application and data are completely loaded into memory and there's no great load on the CPU, the fan and the hard drive spin down, and then you get true, total blissful silence. I hope someone will update the fan control software for the T61 soon. To me that would make a good laptop great.

I soon ran into the wireless problem that other people in this forum have also mentioned. The wireless LED would go off, requiring a reboot to restore functionality.

My first attempt to solve this problem was to use the BSA to select a minimal installation, and let the machine restore itself to factory condition with minimal crapware.

It took quite a few hours. At the end of the process I had a slimmer installation of Vista. I tried using it for a while, but soon the problem returned. The first time that the LED went off, I pressed Fn-F5 and saw that the machine thought the wireless connection was still active. I turned it off, and then back on. This fixed it for the time being.

Minutes later, it went off again. This time Fn-F5 failed to resurrect it. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I contemplated the 15% restocking fee and felt depressed. What now?

I decided to attempt a clean install of XP. As many people have already noted, it's not exactly an easy task, but eventually I got all the right drivers in place, and Device Manager had no more question marks.

It's been a day since I completed the downgrade. So far, the wireless LED hasn't gone off by itself. I'm praying it worked and things will more or less remain reliable from this point on.