T500: My opinion

So I got my new T500 last friday, and I have been playing on it since. I am in no way a laptop guru or computer mad scientist, but I do spend a fair amount of time on them and know what I like.

First off the specs:

ThinkPad T500 2081

Intel Core 2 Duo processor P8600 (2.40GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2)
Genuine Windows Vista Business
15.4 WSXGA+ TFT
ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 with 256MB
3 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 (2 DIMM)
Integrated fingerprint reader
160GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
DVD Recordable, Ultrabay Slim
9 cell Li-Ion Battery
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My daily use is can vary from extreme to light, I am a webdeveloper/designer who also games.. so I wanted something that could offer all of the above. Last year I purchased myself a XPS M1700 as a desktop replacement and it is a BEAST but with all of that beastlyness came a 17lbs package you had to haul around, and a power brick that was the size of a toaster. so I was also looking for smething a little more portable.

I can honestly say this little monster answered all my questions. I can do all my work, and gaming with ease. it's light (I have read some people saying it's to heavy to carry around all day.. who are these people? do they have arthritis or something how can u not handle this?) and i mean very light I can barely even notice it in my backpack.

It's powerful, when I am developing I can knock the graphics down to the onboard and plop myself on the couch, and not even worry about the battery dying for hours.. I mean HOURS. I think 2 or 3 movies went by before I got the little warning that it was at 10% battery. Then when I need a break simply change over to the ATI graphics, and BAM I log into WoW and im playing full screen high settings with 60fps. (I had read a wow question on here before and I also tried to find some answers in regards to the game working on this system.)

Heat: while doing everyday things, browsing, watching videos, working there is no heat.. its room temp all the time. While gaming it can get a little warm underneath which is expected for such a small device. But it never gets to the point where you worry or need to set it down.

the screen: while the matte finish is amazing for giving a much better display in a bright area, and shows much much less glare, i did find that it still had some glare issues if you are stuck in a place with a light behind you and such.. I really don't think there is any way around this. But other than that the screen was wonderful, i found i had plenty of screen real estate to work with and everything looked great.

Wireless: I found the wireless on this thing amazing, I was picking up connections i never saw on any other device in my house. And connecting to my Cisco on wireless N was a breeze and provided me some serious connection speed. I was easily able to stream video from my main machine over the wireless.

All in all I give this laptop a 9.5 out of 10. It is an amazingly powerful laptop especially for it's price. I would suggest it to anyone looking for a super light portable laptop that hast he power to game and offer long battery life!

 

Glad to know you are loving your T500. i got a similar speced T500 on friday and blown away by the awesomeness . on the way installing hackintosh and vista ultimate as soon as i get the vista discs

 

it is pure awesome.

 

You never saw a S-IPS on T60. dot

 

as a matter of fact i did see a t60 at a friend's place yesterday. except the difference in viewing angles and slightly better screen. it is not so great either in performance, heat or the weight. maybe i was too mesmerized by my t500 to care about the t60 . anyway i am thinking of hooking thinkpad to 42 inch plasma. so screens dont matter anyway

 

/jealous.

I just want the T500. I don't need a 42 inch plasma!
Are there any other games you play on this?

 

Thanks for the review. I am considering the T500, and truth be told, it's at the very top of my list right now. One of the things that I've been trying to gauge by asking different people about is battery life. How has yours been so far? If you don't mind me asking, what have you done with it so far and how has that affected your battery life?

 

Rome: total war, Praetorians and Zero hour. i use a wacom tablet to play these games, much easier on the hand.

i am thinking of getting red alert 3.

 

Congrats on your purchase!! Could you shed some light on things you didn't like about the T500 or thing's that COULD be IMPROVED on just to provide everyone else some insight.. since you listed a lot of PROS for the T500.

Thanks!

 

A 15.4inch laptop is generally not considered lightweight. I can carry around a laptop that size just fine (in a backpack); I did it for 2 years. But I also appreciate having an ultraportable with a full sized keyboard (x200). So no not every person has arthritis that likes lighter laptops .

 

just replying to a few

"Are there any other games you play on this?"
- I primarily am a wow fanatic, I will be testing Fallout 3 on it this week and I will post on here to let you know how that goes.


"THAANSA3 - battery life"
- From what i have seen this far it is very very good on battery, if you switch to onboard graphics and put energy star mode on your laughing, i think I got 8+hours out of it. When you have it running full bore graphics, lights all of it your looking at 3.45hrs from what I can see. so over all this thing can really offer an amazing battery life. On that note I did get the 9cell which is in no way obtrusive, and doesnt weigh much at all.

"pkja1 - things i didn't like"
- the only "cons" I have found so far are all based on comparing it to my M1700, which isn't really fair.. I miss the num pad on the keyboard. I wont lie I havent run into anything that really stands out as a "con" to me yet. When I do I will let you know!

"jaredy - weight"
- I know I just like to poke at people, I find it silly to think something of this size is considered "heavy" in any aspect at all, but of course it isn't the lightest either. Regardless its like a feather to my XPS lol.

So again I highly recommend this thing to any one who is looking at it as an option. As a user who has gone through a good number of laptops (dell, hp, acer, toshiba) I have found this to be the best bang for you buck. It is sturdy you dont feel like you need to baby it when moving around, its fast and powerful, wonderful screen and graphics.. just a dream

if you can think of anything else you want to ask I will attempt to either re-create your question on it to give you a hands on answer or answer as best I can!

 

Did you ever get osx to run on it??

 

cannot discuss,

p.s.. no wifi or graphics drivers.

 

Anyone here have it with the LED screen? How does that look?

ZM

 

its ok, nothing mind blowing, really bright, contrast isnt that good, looks washed out. i saw a 500 nit dell ATG screen next to my t500 and i was blown away by the quality of that screen. (my lappy was 1k less though haha.)

 

thanks for the post, it really helps me, buying one right now

 

I secon chopped's opinion on the t500 screen. It's very underwhelming.

 

seems to me that if you mess with the gamma a little bit on Catalyst CC it helps with the washed out look.

 

Mine gets delivered tomorrow

 

Is anyone able to compare this laptop to a Latitude E6500 from Dell ?

 

On the note of gaming, I can play crysis on my T500 on medium settings at around 40 fps stablely...

 

They just posted a new 6500 review on the homepage, and it looks to be underwhelming. Author said he wish he would have bought a thinkpad.

 

I see it like this as far as display.

Macbook: Horrible
Dell 6500: Mid range.
Thinkpad: Mid range.
Mackbook Pro: Higher range but no high rez
Desktop screens: High range

 

im also a webdesigner and ill be upgrading from r61 to t500 in the coming weeks. now thing is i work only in linux (ubuntu 8.04). how do the ati graphics work with ubuntu?

 

definatelly a great notebook. Ive had mine for 4months and its been awesome. superb build quality. i went with the p8600 cpu just to have a bit more kick in gaming and im glad i did since it was only a $30 upgrade. In the next year or two I will be looking into upgrading the processor like many others have done on here. It will likely be the X9100 or X9000 chips that you can get from ebay (engineering sample). I might also consider a 35w chip as well but I will definately have to research more into it.

 

not sure if switchable graphics work with linux but the thinkpads have a LOT of support for linux/Ubuntu

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

 

I'm also a WoW fanatic who's considering buying a T500. What kind of FPS do you get playing WoW? If you can also mention the video settings that would be great!