Thoughts on the new T61p

[Seajosh]

At first glance, a ThinkPad is a big rectangular hunk of black
plastic. Nothing special on the outside and given the price premium a
ThinkPad commands over notebook computers, an expensive hunk of black
plastic. However, I think the design of the notebook holds up well
when compared to a Sony Vaio or a MacBook.


It doesn't run MacOS X so your local Apple fanboy will never
pass up an opportunity to remind you how much you suck. But I love
it. Absolutely love it.

When you first pick it up, it feels very solid with no flex in the
body and is relatively light without the batter. Lenovo put a
magnesium roll cage around the entire notebook for protection and more
importantly should reduce the chances of the LCD screen being cracked
or otherwise abused. The top of the notebook has a rubbery texture
which I like.

The keyboard is your standard ThinkPad keyboard; full-size, stiff,
with a great tactile response when typing (speaking of keyboards,
Apple's new aluminum keyboard is fantastic!). This is one of the
biggest reasons I bought a ThinkPad; most notebook keyboards are
flimsy and otherwise terrible. The computer has drain holes at the
base of the notebook and a reservoir in case you spill liquids on
keyboard - this is a feature I do not want to test but it's nice to
know that accidently spilling coffe on the keyboard can be easily
handled. Another key feature for me was the pencil eraser in the
middle of the keyboard, otherwise known as the TrackPoint, because you
don't have to remove your hands from the keyboard when using the mouse
to navigate. It also comes with a touchpad for those who prefer it.

The screen itself is 1680x1050 with good resolution and
brightness. There is some slight light leakage from the top and bottom of the
screen that I only notice when the screen is completely black. I got
an NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M video card (256MB) that runs Vista's Aero GUI
smoothly.

Battery life is respectable given a 9-cell battery; it runs a little
over 2 hours on the Maximum Performance power setting. On the
downside, the 9-cell battery is heavy and feels as if it weighs as
much as the computer itself.

It's running 32-bit Vista Business and so far, the only problems I've
had are a few random lockups. I've spent 5 days using it as my primary
development machine and I'm pretty happy with it. I think that Vista
is getting a bad rap because Microsoft has really done an excellent
job making Windows easier to use and the Aero user interface is clean
and crisp. After working with Aero, the classic Windows interface
seems dull and lifeless. Sure, you need to throw a lot of hardware at
Vista to get it to run smoothly but today's high-end PC is tomorrow's
standard entry-level PC. In the short term, Microsoft needs to add
Physical Address Extensions (PAE) to 32-bit Vista to allow it to use
more than 3GB of RAM.

ThinkPads come with ThinkVantage software to help manage the computer
and for me it was another key feature in choosing a ThinkPad. I've
always liked the ThinkVantage software because it makes dealing with
minor but annoying Windows shortcomings much easier to handle.

[FNAKFHE]

are you running a 2.4Ghz chip?

[bebzif]

the only problems I've
had are a few random lockups. I've spent 5 days using it as my primary
development machine

A few lockups in 5 days - do you think it is acceptable ? I would have thrown it away. Did you make some investigation to know whether in comes from hw or sw ?

[Seajosh]

My processor is running at 2.2 GHz - couldn't justify spending $400 to get another 200 MHz.

The lockups occur when I'm running on battery and from reading the forums, it appears TurboMemory may be the cause of the problem. I'm going to apply Intel's latest drivers and see how it works. A few lockups in 5 days is acceptable to me given a new system; it may not be acceptable for you.

[Thing]

Any results on the TurboMemory theory? It appears to happen to mine only with running on battery.