[PLUG] Thinkpad T61

Steve Beattie steve at nxnw.org
Fri Oct 19 18:50:37 UTC 2007


On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 11:06:44AM -0700, Dwight Hubbard wrote:
> My company just replaced my old Thinkpad T42P that had overheating issues
> with a new T61.

Which T61? With what features?

> The issues I recall that I encountered.
> 1. My T61 has a very new nvidia chipset, it did not work properly with the
> opensource nvidia driver.  It only worked with the newer nvidia commercial
> driver and vesa.

You can get T61's with Intel graphics chipsets.

> 2. The software to run the fingerprint scanner doesn't work very reliably (I
> never tried it under windows so it could perform the same there)
> 3. The battery life isn't any better than the older T42P I'm replacing (not
> just a Linux issue, it's not very good under windows XP)

I just purchased a 14" T61 to replace the T43 that I had been using before
I got laid off. It's got intel graphics, purposefully chosen because
of intel's support for open source drivers, and an intel 3945 wifi
chipset. I skipped frippery like bluetooth and the fingerprint reader,
but grabbed the 9 cell battery. I debated getting the 15" with the wsxga+
display, as I'm a screen real estate glutton, but am happy with the 14"
sxga+ form factor.

I'm running openSUSE 10.3 on it, graphics work fine, sound required
grabbing updated alsa packages and drivers from the multimedia:audio
repository on opensuse's buildservice. The ipw3945 chipset is working
fine with the ipw3945 driver on my simple wifi network at home; I haven't
tried the iwl driver nor have I gone out and about and tried to interface
with other wifi routers (and Metro-Fi hasn't lit up the AP they installed
right in front of my house). I also don't use NetworkManager as reports
from others have indicated that it introduces a lot of flakiness to wifi.
I was able to suspend to ram with 's2ram --force' and resume successfully
(though I had to manually switch back to the console and then back to X to
get my display back), but I've no idea how reliable it is. I have yet to
plug in the e1000 based ethernet port so I haven't verified that it works.

This T61 is quieter, cooler, and less power hungry than the T43 I was
using. According to powertop, it uses about 17W when unplugged with no
tuning on my part; my T43 would use about 24W. With the larger 9 cell
battery, I've been getting over 4 hours of battery life, versus barely
2 hours for the T43 with the 6 cell battery. The keyboard and mouse
buttons feel ever so marginally cheaper than the keys on the T43 to me,
but they still have a quality feel to them; I just wish Lenovo would
stop with the crazy wrist breaker left control key layout. In general,
the T series has been built with quality components, the T61 doesn't
feel like an exception.

All in all, I was very happy with my T43 and was sad to see it go. My
new T61 feels like a nice upgrade.

Hope this helps.
-- 
Steve Beattie
<steve at nxnw.org>
http://NxNW.org/~steve/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 194 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug/attachments/20071019/7bfea5f7/attachment.asc>


More information about the PLUG mailing list