[PLUG] Thinkpad T61

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:09:33 -0700
Kris <krisa at subtend.net> wrote:

> I'm happy to report that with Gusty, everything is working nicely.
> Though I was a bit surprised that compiz/beryl doesn't work.  Sure I
> expected crappy 3d support form the Intel card, but not nothing. :)
> No big loss though, it would have been neat but not functional for me.
> 
> Noticeable physical differences between the HP and the Lenovo:
>  * HP has a standard desktop keyboard ctrl-alt placement, the
> lenovo's are closer together (IBM used to boycott the windows key
> too.. but this Lenovo now has it)
>  * The LCD is much cooler (in color temp) than the HP, which you just
> get used to, but side to side is quite noticeable.  I use greys and
> blues in my theme anyway, so I guess I'm cool color-temp kind of
> person. :)  Compared to my viewsonic 19" LCD at home laptop LCD's
> just suck.
>  * For the pointer-mouse users like me, Lenovo provides 3 mouse
> buttons.  The HP had a pointer-mouse but only two (trackpad on both
> have only 2).
> 
> I have the fingerprint reader but haven't tried to use it (I've been
> using dm-crypt on /home since it was available with much success).

Thanks to you and others for the comments. I thought this would become
an off-list discussion, but it appears the Lenovo T61 is of general
interest.

About 4:00 today I stopped at Computek, which is a short walk from
PSU, where I needed to go anyway. I spoke there with a fine gentleman
who showed me a sealed box with a T61 inside, and he provided me with
the written specs for it, and a price of $1500. He said he sells
hundreds of Thinkpads to large business customers. After talking with
him for 15 minutes it became apparent that if I am going to buy one
from a local person, he is the man with the knowledge to do a good job
of selling a Lenovo.

The specs on it are:

Core 2 Duo 2 GHz
160 GB HD 5400 rpm SATA (I or II is unclear)
Intel PM965 chipset
15.4" widescreen 1680 x 1050, up to 2048 x 1536 externally
1 GB RAM (he said he can add more)
DVD+- dual layer 24X
800 MHz bus speed
1.56 Kg (with/without battery?)
nVidvia NB8M-GS
Intel wireless 4965AGN
Gigabit ethernet
Bluetooth
Three years warranty
Windows XP Professional

It all looks like what I want, except I want 2 GB RAM.

I went to lenovo.com and put all these specs into the Customize window.
It came to $1473 with free shipping. Considering the stories in this
thread regarding shipping time, the $27 is worth it, plus I'd be
supporting a local merchant. And the Lenovo site gives me one year
warranty; he gives me three years.

I'd like to find out if the hard drive is SATA 150 or SATA 300 (he
didn't know, and I can't find out anything on the Lenovo site). And on
the Lenovo site there is an option for a 1 GB disk cache, which this
computer doesn't seem to have. I wonder if it can be added, because I
want a fast hard drive. It might make up for the fact that the drive is
only 5400 rpm.

Methinks the gentleman is close to making a sale.