My Thinkpad T61P Mini-review

I'm at work, and I don't have my laptop infront of me, and my digital camera is somewhere so I didn't get a chance to take pictures, but here is a tiny review off the top of my head

Ordering: So I ordered this thing on 6/6 and right before checkout it told me the ESD was going to be 6/20. I thought alright, cool, not SO bad... Then I checked out and the ESD changed to 6/27 and I went from to
Anyway, it ended up shipping 6/9 and getting here on 6/11 which immediately changed my face to again

Delivered: Thankfully the 2GB stick I ordered from newegg arrived the same day my laptop did. Once I added this to the 1GB that came with my T61P, everything was so much faster. I didn't really like how the RAM slots are right under the palm rest. I'm used to them being on the bottom of the laptop, but oh well, something to get used to.

I don't think I really have any complaints about the build. I kinda knew what to expect because I have a Thinkpad T41, so I assumed it would be similar. It is thinner than I expected though, which is a good thing. The screen is also what I anticipated. I actually really like the 1680x1050 resolution and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the screen. I don't know who manufactured it yet (how do I find this out anyway?), but I'm not out to get anyone because of a bad screen yet, so I don't care who made it

I LOVE the keyboard. So quiet and nice. So much better than my T41's keyboard, which is also amazing, but this one takes the cake.

Everything else seems to be in order. Nothing looks really wrong to me at all, and I don't think I really have any other complaints about the hardware. Sooo, onto the software.

Vista: Everything took a little bit to load when I first turned it on with only 1GB of RAM, but that was soon cured when I installed the other DIMM I had. This is the first time I've used Vista on any laptop/PC I own, and although I've only used it for a short time as of now, I don't really have many complaints

Anyway, the stock settings were short lived. Right when I turned it on I began making the recovery/resuce discs; once that was complete I downloaded all of the necessary drivers, and went at it. I followed Stallen's Clean Install Guide and everything went smoothly for the most. The only little, tiny problem I had was that I accidentially installed the audio
driver for XP instead of Vista.

Another thing that is sort of strange to me is that I only have ~68gb of HDD space. Now as I posted up there, I got a 80gb hard drive, and I know the advertised amount is never what you end up with, but I am really supposed to be missing more than 10 gigs? I also never saw the "hidden" partition during the Vista installation. There was just 1 partition that was around 68-69gb. Then after I formatted it I lost 2 gigs. Am I missing something? I made recovery/resue discs for a reason... and that was so I can delete this hidden partition. If I need to use something like GParted to see and delete it, please let me know

Once I fixed that issue, everything was all better. I download the newest 16x.xx series video drivers from laptopvideo2go.com (169.09 I think it was) with their modded INF file. I've yet to install/play any games yet, so I can't say anything about that, but it was no problem installing the driver and it seems to be doing its job

I wish I remembered my Windows Experience Rating before I did a clean install, but I don't... I only know what it is right now, and that's 4.9. I think the highest score was a 5.3, and that was for video card performance

Once all of the drivers were installed (I think I got all of them, I should double check the device manager ), I began tweaking things since Vista does a lot of stuff I never want it to do again (like all of the stupid warning everytime I click anything). I followed Les's Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide and things definitely began to run faster/smoother. I think the big things I did were disabling index searching and turning off the sidebar. I also stopped some things from starting up with the machine. All in all, it boots up pretty fast I'd say.

Finale: Well, there's probably more I'd like to say, but I can't really think of anything since I haven't done much on the machine yet save a clean install and loading all of the drivers. Once I begin installed applications, games, etc., I'll update

I guess this was longer than I expected

...I used a lot of 's lol

 

Congrats on you laptop. You are one of the lucky few who have gotten there laptop shipped withen a few days. I have waited 2 weeks a t61 I ordered and it has not been shipped yet

 

Congrats! Glad everything came out A OK for you. How do the speakers sound? I'm still debating sending mine in to get that fixed/find time to write a real review.

 

the speakers sounds fine, but all that's came out of them so far is the sound vista makes when it boots up or recognizes a usb drive lol

also, can anyone answer my question about my hard drive. does 80gb really turn out to show only ~68gb or do i still have the hidden partition?

 

Yes it does

 

Wow you must have a great job...to be able to write a review while at work?

 

Always nice to read a review. synic, congrats on your new laptop.