New R61 - Awesome

After getting the driver kinks worked out, my new R61 is fantastic. Its a work laptop so I had a limited budget of $1750... I think I did alright with it.

Specs:

Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz)
4GB DDR2
60GB 7200RPM HDD
X3100
14.1" WXGA

I put Vista Business x64 on it as soon as I got it and experienced the GMA965 bug w/ the 1244 drivers. After I manually installed the newest Intel drivers, everything is good and my WEI "Graphics" and "Gaming Graphics" scores went from 3.0 to 3.5 each. That and the TPM (what does that do, anyway??) were the only drivers Vista Business x64 didn't install automatically.

WPrime 32M: 42s
SuperPI 2M: 53s
Vista WEI: 5.1, 5.6, 3.5, 3.5, 4.7

Quick question though... how do you other guys out there w/ 4GB & Vista x64 configure your pagefile?

 

Nice specs ... That's a lot of money -- I guess that processor and memory set you back bit. Enjoy it, though!

The TPM is a security feature. You can read more about it here.


I would guess with 4GB of memory (of course this is dependent on what kind of programs you're running, that you could entirely disable the pagefile. I dunno if you want to do that though, for the rare event that you run out of memory and the system has issues.

 

When I said "limited" I didn't mean that it wasn't a lotta dough... I just meant that was my ceiling. Yeah, the proc was a $320 upgrade and the memory was ~$500 from the base $750 price. That pretty much maxxed me out but I figured - hey, they're not gonna buy me another one for 2-3 years or so, so I might as well make sure it has the guts to last a while. I figured, HDD prices will likely continue to plummet, so I should be able to grab a much larger HDD in the next 6 months or so for pretty cheap.

 

Yeah, everything will plummet given time

I probably would have gone for a better video card and the T-chassis, and upgraded later when prices decreased, but there's no denying it's a quick comp.

 

I have read so much conflicting information about T vs. R and pretty much deduced that the only differences were in the thickness of the laptop (very small difference) and the weight (also very small difference). Yeah, I wanted to go with the dedicated graphics but I was vetoed on that. I submitted my configuration to my boss and he said to configure it with integrated and just bump other stuff up to compensate. He didn't believe that a dedicated graphics card was going to increase my productivity... he's probably right since X3100 runs Vista/Aero just fine... woulda just been for gaming for me since I don't do CAD or anything like that. The extra proc. and RAM help a lot for me though since I run a lot of Virtual PC and emulation software.

 

There's a some significant differences between R and T with the 15" models (i.e. no LCD roll cage) but not between the 14" models. The 14" models only differ minimally in thickness and weight. The R has a slight edge in that its modular bay drives and adapters are more varied and do cost less, while the T's edge is in it's thinner and lighter profile.

Your boss was totally right.

 

yeah, so... I think it'll do very nicely for what I use it for.