Just received my new T61p

Hi everyone, finally received my T61p.

Initial thoughts (in random order):

• Canadian customer service isn't on par with their US counterparts.
• Considerably faster compared to what I have now. Pentium M750 compared to C2D T9300. Wow...
• By far the best (in terms of comfort and feedback) notebook keyboard, ever. The location of some keys will take some getting used to, though. Mfg#/FRU#: 42T3177/42T3209 -- I don't know who makes it.
• The speakers are mediocre, at best. Line-out, on the other hand is great -- my headphones are extremely loud on level 50 (maximum). I don't care much for speakers anyway, I always use headphones... =)
• No dead/stuck pixels, so far.
• The display is very crisp and bright. PC Wizard said that I have the LP154W02-TL06 panel. From what I've seen, it's made by LG.
• The viewing angles absolutely blow. I can't find an angle where the colors are uniform vertically. This means that I can't look at something on top of the screen and on the bottom without seeing significant color fading. Quite disappointing. Are there any tweaks that I'm not aware of?
• The LED light is a cool idea, but it doesn't seem to illuminate much.
• It's a lot lighter than I expected (with a 6-cell battery).
• It fits great in my old Asus laptop's (also a 15"-er, but 4:3) bag.
• It's extremely cool and quiet. I can't hear it working. GPU's at 57*C, HDD's at 38*C, and both cores are at 37*C when doing a little internet browsing. I haven't pushed it yet, but so far, these temperatures are awesome.
• It feels very solid.

That's all I can think of right now.

Oh, a question: I got a small bag with two screws in it (one long with thin thread, the other short with a "fat" cap). What are they for? Replacements just in case?

Thanks.

 

congrats....
The new thinkpad will get official released too...

 

The screws are just replacements for 'just in case your fish eats the screws'.

Good job for your purchase. I'm proud of you I have pretty much the same model, but the Samsung screen. And the lighting is a bit uneven.

 

I have found that the speakers sound different depending on the program they are used with. I found that any thing through Windows Media Player sounds very low in volume, even at max volume. Where as the other DVD player program(forget the name) that they give you sounds loud.

 

Thanks for the replies. =)

I have to clear something up: after coding all day on the TP I can honestly say that the screen isn't that bad. In fact, my eyes don't even hurt! I guess I just needed to get used to it.

One more question: when I hook up (via built-in VGA-out) an external LCD to my T61p, the display seems to "lose" a lot of brightness -- i.e., whites are really dull... I cranked up LCD's my brightness to 100% (it was 50% before using an ATi Radeon X600 and was great). Even now, on 100%, it's significantly duller than my T61p's screen! It's supposed to be quite a bit brighter, though.

Is this a driver issue, or a general hardware issue with the FX 570M?
I really hope I can do something about this...

Thanks!

 

Were you on battery while you were connected to the external monitor? Thinkpads automatically decrease brightness on the internal monitor when off a power source.

 

Nope, I was always plugged in.
In fact, I've yet to unplug it from the wall. =)

P.S.
Increasing brightness via the NVIDIA control panel only increased relative brightness, so that's no good.

 

1 screw is for locking the Ultrabay CD/DVD drive and the other is for the HDD bay. They're there for users who don't plan on swapping out their HDs or DVD drive.

 

Thanks. I can only find one hole without a screw on the back, however. It's the one that holds the optical drive in place. Where exactly is the HDD hole? I spent about 5 minutes looking at the back and couldn't find it. Maybe I'm just blind.

Attached is a (crappy cellphone quality) picture of the two screws that I have.

 

hmmm.. that's long.. the only place I can think of is the left LCD hinge. and the screw goes horizontally across

 

Ah, well, no matter. I'll just fasten the bay screw then.

Thanks.

P.S.
The external LCD issue is still a pain, if anyone knows something, please post!