My T61 T9300

Well I just received my T61 with the newly added T9300 chip. I ordered it Tuesday (1/29) morning in the early AM and received it Friday (2/1) morning at 8:30am California time! I was extremely pleased with the shipping time and am even more taken back by this awesome laptop.

I've seen a few requests for bios revision numbers from people probably intending to upgrade, So here is the revision number that shipped with my laptop:

BIOS Version: 2.09 (7LETA9WW)
BIOS Date: 2007-12-27
Embedded Controller Version: 1.08

Hope this information helps someone.

One more thing, I read a lot of threads comparing the LG and Samsung screens dated a few months back, and I was very worried when I looked at my build and noticed I had the FRU for the Samsung display listed on my build sheet. I am presently surprised however by the quality of this LCD. I have a 22 inch Samsung LCD desktop monitor (Syncmaster 226BW) on my main PC and this notebook LCD is very comparible in terms of color reproduction and brightness. It is very close to my gf's pink 14inch Inspirion in terms of brightness. The color's are also very rich and videos look awesome on it! There are no dead pixels either. The only minor gripe I have with the screen is some minor backlight bleed on the bottom of the panel. It is not noticeable in any thing other than a black screen however, and during movies it does not take your attention away from the film.

The speed is also top notch. 1080p trailers and .mkv movies play without a hiccup and Doom 3 plays great. I dont intend on gaming much with this laptop but its nice to know that it still can turn out some decent frame rates on some pretty demanding games of yesterday.

The high pitch whine that people have said to have heard on previous t61's is not present on mine at all. My ears are highly sensitive to that high pitch whine because a friend of mine has a 14inch T61 with a T7300 and the high pitch noise was very noticeable to me. The system is very quiet and I can hardly ever hear the fan.

In summary I am very, very happy with my purchase!

Here's the total specs of the machine if anyone is interested:
SBB INTEL CORE2DUO PROC.T9300
VBB MS WIN VISTA HOME BASIC
SBB MS WINVISTA HM BS32 US ENG
SBB 15.4 WSXGA+ TFT
SBB NVIDIA QUA. NVS 140M-128MB
VBB 1GB PC2-5300 667MHZ 1DIMM
SBB KEYBOARD US ENGLISH
SBB UN(TRACKPOINT TOUCHPAD)
SBB 120GB HDD,5400RPM
SBB DVD REC.8XMAXDUAL LAY UB-S
VBB PC CARDSLOT EX CARDSLOT
SBB INT.WIRE.WIFI/LINK4965AGN
SBB 6 CELL LI-ION BATTERY

Total: 996.87$ US
(included shipping and tax)

If you have any questions or want me to do some benchmarks like superPI or anything let me know and I'll post the results here if anyone's interested.

 

How is the viewing anglles on this ?

DO you have to look stright at it and any change in angle changes the brightness colors ?

Thanks


I just ordered one myself


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The viewing angles vertically are better than i expected after reading tons of reviews about how horrible the samsung would be. I'd have to say that this laptop has the best vertical viewing angles I've seen personally on a laptop, but I've only seen a few. The vertical angles are much better than the 14inch samsung t61 my friend has, but still probably could be improved. and comparing it with a dell inspirion 1420's 14 inch screen, the T61 is slightly better.

The horizontal veiwing angles are very good in my opinion with little change in brightness and colors. When i turn the laptop all the way to the side and look at it from a profile view, I can still easily make out all the colors on the screen. The brightness "grays" for a lack of better terminology, when you turn it to the side, but it still looks great and you can easily read it and video performance still looks decent from these extreme angles.

 

Hmm ... maybe they are getting a different model from samsung at this point.

Gotta tell you i'm suprised at samsung for making such bad screens.

 

Thats exactly what I thought too. It was hard to believe all the threads of people just bashing such a prominent manufacturer like Samsung, their LCD TV's and desktop LCDs usually get exemplary marks on review sites and my desktop LCD is flawless. Maybe notebook screens just aren't their specialty.

Irregardless, this LCD must be an updated model, because I am quite picky with my electronics and audio video equipment and this laptop LCD is a pleasure to use.

 

Just downloaded PC Wizard 2008 and the Display is listed as

"LTN154P2-L05 - 15 inches"

This is indeed the Samsung display and seems to be the same model as before. I guess that makes me a happy Samsung lcd owner hah

 

Well if i get a samsung screen ... and it sucks ... i'm blaming you


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I also have a Samsung screen, but a 14" instead. I like it too; guess it makes the both of us.

You should post in the ThinkPad Appreciation Thread in my signature, I'd really like to add a good statement about the Samsung model LCD.

 

Nice!!!! Mine supports the upgrade...

Hows the battery life?

 

Nice. Sadly the T9300 is almost cost half the price of your laptop in its retail form. So much for any thoughts of me upgrading my T61p.

 

$316 dollars for at least two more years of use (after already 5) seems like a good upgrade.

 

My initial search had it at around $450, but I found some for less. I guess knowing you can upgrade in the future is good. By the time I feel I need it, hopefully it will be a lot cheaper.

 

I get around 2.5 hours with the standard 6 cell battery, and thats with wireless on and using word, listening to mp3s and downloading with newsleecher software almost constantly. I also have the brightness turned up to the max or two down from max, almost all the time because I like the screen bright.


The performance is quite good.

I ran wPrime benchmark (32m) and the system finished the calculation in 31.51 seconds. The notebookreview.com review of the T61 T7300 processor scored 42.025s in comparison.

 

Nice. I have the Samsung screen as well, and outside of some light bleed at the bottom, it's a great screen. Glad you like it, as well.

 

Wow, that seems like a pretty low price for that configuration. I was also on the site in the early morning on 1/29 and for a short period, the T61's were listing all the Penryn's (even T9500), for $225 LESS than the default choice of T7250. I tried to order, but it didn't seem to go through in either Firefox or Opera. The browser would just sort of hang after I had selected one of the options and give me some XML processing error.

 

teach you right for abandoning ie7

 

Haha, yeah, I don't know if it was the browsers. Originally, I thought my FF was having a problem since with FF I only whitelist cookies and had only added lenovo.com. However, it hung in Opera too, so I figured they were doing some site update. However, even since then the Lenovo site seems to have issues. Navigating their site, particularly when playing around with laptop configurations, causes my cpu to shoot up. Or sometimes I'll select an option and it won't properly update.

 

How could you get that price? Please let me know.
Thanks...

 

mavrick85:

Can you please just clarify something for me real quick? you ordered your T61 on 1/29 and just received it on 2/1??

Doesn't it say, that for any custom configurations, especially with that new T9300 chip that the ship date is 1-2 weeks?

Because if that is incorrect, and what you say is right.. I just may be ordering a custom configuration after all, instead of a pre-built config model. Please let me know! Thanks!

 

That shipping date is an estimate. About a week before I ordered this particular model I placed an order for a 14inch T61, T7500 w/ discrete graphics. The order shipped within 36 hours of placing the order, and arrived 4 days later. So I ordered on a Thursday and received the following Tuesday.

This newest T9300 came unbelievably fast! It took less than 24 hours to get a shipping confirmation. From my experience Lenovo always ships UPS Express, because both of the laptops I've ordered have been free shipping VIA ground and always arrived quickly via Express.

So yes, the shipping dates I mentioned in my first post were correct. I placed the order around 1am Tuesday Morning, received shipment notification around 5pm Tuesday afternoon, and finally the laptop was delivered to my door on Friday at 9am. My configuration was quoted 1-2 weeks to build as well, and specially after ordering it with the brand new penryn, I was very excited to receive it.

As for the laptop, I love it! Best laptop i've ever owned!

 

Wait, did you see the same thing (the Penryn's being $225 less)? Were you able to get an order through?

 

I ordered mine on Saturday:

1 8897CT CONFIGURED SYSTEM
02/28/08 $880.17 $880.17
43Y3426 SBB INTEL CORE2DUO PROC.T9300
42V8012 VBB MS WIN VISTA HOME BASIC
42V8568 SBB MS WINVISTA HM BS32 US ENG
42V8285 SBB 14.1 SXGA+ TFT
42X5946 SBB INTEL GMA X3100 GM965.
41W2060 VBB 1GB PC2-5300 667MHZ 1DIMM
42V8195 SBB KEYBOARD US ENGLISH
42V8294 SBB UN(TRACKPOINT+TOUCHPAD)
42V8164 SBB 80GB HDD,5400RPM
42V8172 SBB DVD REC.8XMAXDUAL LAY UB-S
42X0805 VBB PC CARDSLOT EX CARDSLOT
41W1685 SBB 11ABGWIFI WL LAN USEULAANZ
41W1508 SBB 6 CELL LI-ION BATTERY
41W1787 SBB CPK NORTH AMERICA
42V8339 SBB LPACK US ENGLISH


Anyone see anything I did wrong? My plan was to buy 3rd party memory after I get the laptop. I also have a license for Vista Business which is why I only paid for the home basic version.

One question... isn't this processor's fsb 800mhz? Why are they using 667 mhz ram? Would I see any benefit to replacing the stick that comes with it with 800mhz?