Just got my t61p 14' I'm 50%happy 50%sad. Here are some pics & a quick review

My thinkpad finally arrived, after 2 order cancellations and delays I finally got it.

I initially placed the order on Dec 17th, canceled it after 3 weeks because no shipment. Then placed another one on Jan 11th, then canceled it again on 14th due to the price drop (about 80 bucks) and placed a new one immediately. After 16 days I received it finally on Jan 30th.

After a quick check, I give you guys some pics and a short review.
Pictures:





Pro:

1. The build quality overall reaches my expectation.
I have seen quite a lot laptops (TOSHIBA, Lenovo, sony, LG, Apple, IBM, HP, Dell) since I repair laptops for my friends.
This thinkpad is better than most of them, even can be compared to my friends very very old (8 yrs) thinkpad from IBM.

2. It is very quiet with preinstalled Vista home basic. I have been trying to let it play some music and videos, the temperature is pretty low.
I have my 3 yrs old vaio vgn-s580 sitting besides it. T61p beats it on both lower noise and less heat, although the vgn-s series are infamous with it's fan/cooling problem.

3. The screen is pretty bright, I haven't check the manufacture (not so familiar with vista), but it seems I don't have the brightness problem with this t61p.
HOWEVER, I do got a dead pixel, which leads us to the cons.

Cons:

1. RAM, this is more a lenovo problem, I oldered 2 gig ram, on the box it also says 2 gig, but actually there only 1 GIG INSTALLED ON THE MACHINE!
I've seen ppl have this problem all over this forum, it seems that I am not so lucky neither. Then I called their tech support because the customer center is closed.
The guy I talked to told me that the extra ram should be in the box which is not, then he said he was unable to find my S/N, blah blah blah... However he couldn't help me and ask me to call customer center.
It was too late but I definitely gonna call them tomorrow morning. Fortunately, I have a spare 512 ram from my girlfriends macbook, I installed it for now, better than nothing.

2. NO FIREWIRE port, it seems that they dropped the firewire port on 14 inch model, which should be located on the front of the 15 inch model of t61/t61p.
I am very disappointed about this, I have a firewire dvd burner which I thought could be useful with this laptop. If I knew there was no firewire port, I probably just oldered the normal widescreen t61.

3. Dead pixel, see picture below:




It is actually pretty small, it seems big because the shacking when I took the picture.
BUT IT IS STILL ANNOYING!! From my laptop repairing experience, 1 dead pixel is not that big problem.
I have seen a lot of them on HP or Dell laptops. BUT, I never saw dead pixels on new Macbooks/MBPs. I am little bit sensitive about dead pixels so I do check any Macbooks/MBPs when I get the chance, I haven't found any. Why lenovo couldn't make thinkpad lcds reach the quality level of apple's laptops? It's not that hard.

Conclusion:

You get what you paid. The newer thinkpads have a significant price off, I paid 1245 CND for mine, it could be cheaper if you live in US. But as trade off, you got TERRIBLE customer service, smaller default hd, build quality drops (I don't think my new thinkpad could last 7, 8 years, like the old IBM/thinkpads, but it's probably still better than most other laptops made by other manufactures). Dead pixels, maybe Lenovo thinks that business user doesn't need top class LCD screens? However, my thinkpad worth what I paid, only if they can send me the extra 1 gig ram I ordered.

Some shoot for keyboard

 

was michael j fox your camera man?

 

How is the screen would it be good for movies?

 

Haha, yeah, those are some blurry pictures. Retake them man, takes like 2 minutes

 

Man that looks good. You can always get an ExpressCard Firewire adapter. I believe they make those.

 

Yeah, I guess so...
How about yours? You got the T61 widescreen right? Do you have firewire port?

 

Yea, I have one on the front, at the left.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

If you have time, would you mind commenting on the performance and battery life?

 

Sure, I'm going to update this one with more information. I don't think the battery gonna last very long, I don't travel a lot and I'm going to install Linux on it, with compiz fusion enabled most of the time, battery gonna die fast. Plus I only ordered the default 6 cell.

 

Its funny they moved the audio ports to the left side. I got a 15.4" a little over a week ago and noticed this. I thought maybe it was a difference between the 14in and 15in model but apparently not. I also have the firewire port on the left front side.

 

Well... I just have to say that I really like Ark's Avatar.

 

Well if you buy a computer with a killer video card it's understandable that you might want a good screen.
Anyways standard format screens seem to be dropping (or maybe being steady) in quality and getting phased out by widescreens. The t61p widescreens are not fantastic, but the standard are even worse.
Honestly in your case I would return the computer with the excuse of the missing 1gb of ram so as not to get the restocking fee and try to get a new widescreen one.

 

Ram is easily removed and replaced. I doubt they would allow an RMA based on a missing 1gb of memory.

 

try to run 3dmark06 in 1024*768 all stock: what score?

 

I liked the Chronotrigger avatar better.

 

I have the same machine. I first dual booted vista and ubuntu. i was able to get everything working on ubuntu including compiz-fusion. I am a graphics intensive user with lots of 3-D visualizations of large data sets and I have to say that compiz-fusion was slow and buggy with the very new quadro fx card in the t61p. I turned off compiz-fusion and life was much better. Then I started playing with opensuse 10.3 and I have to say I like much more.
I have everything working except for compiz-fusion. Still working on it.

for future purchases, always buy the minimum specs from the laptop dealer and replace parts yourself. I order 4 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM, 200GB HD from newegg for a fraction of what lenovo would have charged. My machine now is absolutely awesome!! the only complaint is the terrible viewing angles. fortunately that is not an issue for me.

 

Thanks to your suggestion.
Yeah, that was one of my option, but I dropped it, don't have that time to deal with lenovo. My old laptop is dying...
Also I believe they only offer standard ratio screen to the 14 inch t61p, cause I don't really want a 15 inch one, too big for me.

 

We learned both Ubuntu and SuSE in our OS class
I like ubuntu more, has been using it for years, plus SuSE 10.0 was such a nightmare which I still couldn't get rid off it.
I totally agree with you that compiz-fusion is not good to run with big 3D Applications. I don't really use big apps so I'm alright. Plus I compile compiz-fusion myself from git, which is the different version compare to what ubuntu offer.
I know that I should buy the minimum specs. The only thing I added on my order is the T7500 processor, 1gig extra ram and 3945 wireless card, and they even couldn't get that right.
It's sad that newegg doesn't ship to Canada (or they do?), upgrading system from third party company in Canada is not that cheap, at least in Calgary. We have a local hardware store called memoryexpress, they offer the cheapest price hardwares here, but it's still too expensive for me, 150+ for a 100g 7200 rpm hd? no I can wait. I'm a college student from China, don't have that much money in my pocket. And those stuff (ram, hd) in China are so cheap, man you cannot imagine.