Need help deciding on T61 or X61s

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here. Just found this website to be very useful to helping me buy my perfect school laptop. I'm currently considering a Thinkpad T61 or X61s for college. I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the library and using my laptop for taking notes. I'm pretty much going to be a mobile user with this laptop.

I'm trying to figure out which laptop fits my needs better. I would like to have long battery life and it seems that the X series offer that, as well as being light. But the thing is I see IBM does not offer its new 45nm C2D processors on the X series. I assume the new 45nm C2D processors are less power hungry than the 65nm C2D.

I'm just wondering if I get the T61 how much battery life should I normally get with a 9-cell battery? I'm reading that X series get as much as 6 hours on 8-cell battery.

Which laptop should I go for?

 

I have the 61s and if weight and battery life are issues that is your solution.
If gaming is part of your requirement then the T series is the answer.
I come from a power (video editing and Photoshop) background and my C2D 7300 is way more powerful than I need.

 

It really depends on whether or not you need the graphics power that the T61 offers. The X61 has an integrated graphics system that is less powerful than the dedicated nVidia NVS140 or 570M in the T61. Also the T61 has an internal optical drive and a touchpad which the X61 does not.

 

Welcome to lenovo world.

Well, I owned a T40, T43, X60, X60 Tablet, T61p, T61 (T7500 with nvida) blah blah blah. Why i moved from T to X is because I need it light, but now I'm over 40 so my eyes are giving me problem so I moved back to T series.

If you get the X series, you won't go wrong with 8 cells battery, it will last 5 hours. The Penryn (ie 45nm gives 30 mins more battery power). BUT if you get a T61 with nvida, it will be on par because the T screen is larger, the nvida drains more power.

ie T61 (penryn) with nvida with 9 cells is = X61 with X3100 and 8 cells in terms of battery life

I have just orderd the new T61 14" widescreen with T8100 processor and the new 9 cells battery, this should give me max power....I'll update if it comes in the next couple of day.

If i am in your shoe, I'll get a X61, with X3100, 8 cells, 1x2GB 667 SODIMM, 1024x768 resolution, Hitachi 7K200 100GB drive. Don't try the X61s, the low voltage processor may means longer processing time = drain power. I can feel it because I had my x60 (with T processor) and it was faster than my colleage X60 (with L processor). See this CPU benchmark

The reason is that all these saves power while giving a fast speedy laptop...

 

Hmmm, I guess I'm going to save up a little more for the X61. Are you sure I should go with the 7200rpm drive? Aren't those things more power hungry and hotter?

 

A 7200rpm drive may run slightly hotter, but I don't think you'll notice much of a difference--if any, at all. I upgraded an old ThinkPad R40 from a 4200rpm drive to a 7200rpm drive. It was slightly louder, but wasn't warmer or take any more power. After all, it was power to load data but did the work in half the time. My battery life didn't change at all.

What I did notice is that Windows and all of my applications/files loaded in half the time. Getting a fast HDD is one of the best things you can do to speed up a PC.

 

Oh I also notice the difference against X61 and X61s is the screen. The X61s is TFT and the X61 is STD. Is the quality going to be really noticeable?

 

I don't believe the the jump to Penryn is going to make a huge difference in performance or battery life. One generation to the next usually doesn't. Most daily tasks like Office and Internet aren't that CPU intensive anyway.

The screen on a laptop is the biggest drain the battery. Running the screen at lower brightness levels is usually what stretches the battery life the most. Putting the CPU in low power mode helps as well. I had the good fortune to review the X61s last summer. It was a nice machine, light and very portable. I got about 6.5 hours of battery life out of it with screen at half brightness.

I just picked up the nine cell battery for my R60. It goes about 5.5 hours with the screen at half and WiFi on. I'd expect around the same for the T61, maybe a bit better, but the nVidia card will drain your battery more quickly.

 

Well, Penryn supposed to go into deeper sleep mode if under utilize, that should save some juice. I am using T61 right now, nvdia 14" standard, on bootup 100% new 9 cells battery, it says 2.18 hours to go. (battery stretcher on, ie wireless/bluetooth turned off, but my screen brightness is max as my eyes can't see if darker, CPU max performance via bios)

When I recived the new T61 with T8100 and X3100 and 9 cells, I'll post the result again

 

As for nowadays computer, I find that my X60 is as fast as my T61 now and it can last 5 to 6 hours. The bottleneck is at the harddisk, so I got a 7K200 16MB right now. If you can afford thee $$$ get a SSD sata drive, it should get another 30 minutes of battery power.....