How reliable is the R61? Any common problems?

[atechnica]

My t40p died because of the motherboard flex problem (that I was unaware of until it happened and I came here to diagnose it) so I'm looking to buy a new thinkpad. The R61 seems like a good choice since I can get a new one for $600 or so. MY question is, is there anything that goes wrong on them that I should know about in advance? I want to keep the computer for at least 3-5 years.

Thanks.

[texasmike]

I purchased a R61i a month or so ago and have had no issues. Runs great. However, I do not use wireless, bluetooth so I cannot comment on that.

[tpangel]

I purchased a Thinkpad R61i (8932A54) last week at Office Depot and am very happy with it. Right out of the box, the wireless worked flawlessly with my existing 3 desktop wired network. I just returned from a trip today and the battery life was about about 3 hours with a normal load. It's a tad on the heavy side, but I don't care. It's built solid. I use a USB mouse at home. I have not used the fingerprint reader yet.

After researching laptops for a long time, the R61 is the best bang for the buck, IMO. Mine has WinXP Pro. The model I got was being discontinued and was super discounted.

Good luck!

[schen]

It's not the R61, but I've worked on a R60 for a year and a half now as my work computer. It's been everything you would want in an everyday computer. Consistent, and capable. It bascially always works without calling attention to itself. It's as solid as any ThinkPad I've owned barring the 600s of course.

It has locked up on occasion, but I'm fairly certain that had more to do with the our poor network and using applications that run over that network. Oh, I did do an "unathorized" upgrade fairly quickly that help matters a lot. For some unknown reason, our Technology department decided to buy them with 512Mb of RAM, so I upgraded it to 1Gb (very cheap upgrade) and that machine works beautifully.

[Zsoc@m]

I've R61 for 2 months and I like it very much. There isn't any problem with it.
It's with Vista and I suppose it is better than XP because with XP I had problems with my network at home. (There is 2 router and 4 PC wired + 1 laptop wireless)