T61 first impressions (yes, another one)

Received delivery of my T61 (SXGA+, T9300, nVidia GPU, 4965 wifi, Bluetooth, and Vista Business 32-bit) a couple days ago (haven't had time to do much but upgrade to 3gb RAM and a Hitachi 7k200, do a system restore, and start cleaning out all the bloatware).

Just thought I'd add to the slew of first impressions by new T61 owners, and as a first-time user of Vista. Coming from a T43 with XP Pro, so a lot of the comparisons reference that. This is a little stream-of-consciousness too, so consider yourselves warned.


HARDWARE:

Processor is super fast compared to my T43 (Pentium-M 1.86GHz), and feels very fast -- especially given that it's running Vista -- compared to my desktop's Athlon X2 3800+. Everything CPU-related moves very quickly.

HD/RAM upgrade was simple, but the system restore took quite a long time. Going to set up a base system with my "must-have" software, all updates, and (hopefully) SP1, then do an Acronis image.

Formfactor is nice and compact, basically just like my T43. Fit and finish is top notch. My only "Hmmm" moment was when I saw the hard drive cover was held in place by a single screw, and even has enough play to pivot a tiny bit. One more screw to fix it on 2 axes would have been nice. The fact that it's right out on one corner of the laptop is kind of strange, too; I would have expected a data-critical component to be more centrally located. The palm rest is a little thinner and more flexible than on my T43. I have the NMB keyboard, and it's excellent.

The system was extraordinarily quiet at first boot; I put my ear to the machine and couldn't hear anything but a barely audible buzzing of the hard drive. After Aero started up, the fan kicked in and now it's just average. Still quieter than my T43 (the fan is starting to get wonky), but not near-silent like my desktop. Contrary to some reviews on Newegg, the Hitachi doesn't seem any louder than the 80gb drive that came with the system.

Battery and power adapter design is different from the T43, which is a shame. I can't use my old T43 batteries or adapters, so I'll have to sell them. I do want a travel adapter ($120!!), the default one is a little big for tossing in my portfolio bag. It's maybe 1/6" bigger in every dimension than the T43 adapter, and feels a little less robust. The new power plug design on the T61 is strange; it's larger and looks more delicate, almost like a coax/cable tv connector. I prefer the smaller, thicker design of the T43's plug.

The battery doesn't "snap" in as satisfyingly as on the T43; I have to double check every time to make sure it's properly latched in. It also only has one lock, as opposed to 2 on the T43.

The display is pretty good; I have what appears to be a Hyundai/Hydis/whatever screen. It is brighter than my T43, but about the same in terms of color contrast (i.e., sub-par). Horizontal viewing angles are somewhat better, but vertical viewing angles are just as poor. I'd like to get the glossy screen conversion done by ScreenTek, but I'd have to ship the laptop to them, which is a discouraging prospect. Maybe later on. I like the 15 brightness levels (vs. 7 on the T43). Gets rather washed out at higher brightness settings, so I'm running it at medium brightness (7-10), which gives pretty nice, saturated colors when viewed straight on. Zero bad pixels or light leakage. The off-center screen absolutely does not bother me at all. I made note of it when I first opened the laptop, and after that it was a non-issue.

The "bump" on top of the screen lid is a little distracting, but only when you're removing screws or doing other maintenance to the bottom of the laptop, since it will wobble slightly and rotate on that axis. I folded up a microfiber towel and used it to dampen the effect, which made it much easier to work on.

The inclusion of 3 USB ports is nice; I needed 3 with my T43, so I had to buy a mini-hub. I have yet to see if all 3 ports on the T61 are full power (my 2.5" portable hard drive requires a full power port to run).

Update: All 3 USB ports are full-power (they are able to power my Western Digital Passport 160GB external hard drive).



SOFTWARE:

Lenovo's started loading trial software onto the OS, which really annoys me. The only mitigating factor is that most of it could be useful to a normal business user.

What's not excusable is trying to sell me stuff during system setup, or sign me up for trials and services. It just barely squeaks through my rage filter, since everything was unselected by default. Definitely annoying, though, and cheapens the brand. I expect that from a new Dell; not from a Thinkpad.

I also have no real way of telling what software is added by Microsoft, and what's added by Lenovo. I have my own solutions to most of the functions they cover already, all of them lighter on system resources and/or open source, so I removed as many as i could. After I removed them, I feel like it's a pretty clean system, but I still have to do some more digging through the process list. I know how to use the BSA to create a clean install, but that's just added hassle, and I already made my recovery DVDs.

Vista itself isn't nearly as annoying as I thought it would be. All the software I've tried to install so far has gone through fine... but I'm not done yet.

The UAC popups don't bug me much, now that I know what they actually do. By all reports I should start seeing less and less of them as I keep using Vista, so I'm willing to put up with them for the time being. Unless Vista throws some real curveballs at me, I will be dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu.

Functionally, Aero is a joke compared to Beryl/Compiz, and adds very little actual value to the UI that I can tell. To be fair, I haven't investigated Aero very deeply yet, but my impression is that Aero copied the look and some of the Beryl effects (even the window buttons look the same) available in Ubuntu, but some of the most useful Beryl features are missing or not implemented as well.

For example, one of my favorite Beryl features: when I have focus on a window, I can hold CTRL and spin the mouse wheel to make the window fade in or out. Seems like fluff, right? But for a programmer/engineer, it's great when you're coding in a maximized window and want to reference a window that's underneath it, or for a designer working in Flash, and you need to get a color Hex code from a design doc, both of which are situations I run into all the time. The customizability of Beryl is also far, far beyond the sparse Aero options dialogue.

That said, Aero does actually look very attractive, and I much prefer using it to the vanilla Vista desktop (I'm a sucker for a pretty face). I disabled the effects that are time-wasters (fading/sliding windows and menus, etc), so it's just as responsive... just looks better and uses more battery life.

I like "start search", but I have to play around with it some more to see if I prefer it to Launchy on XP or the Deskbar applet in Ubuntu.

I disabled the sidebar; I already have a clock in my taskbar, and I hardly ever see the actual desktop anyway. Plus, all the other stuff I might put there I already run as Firefox plugins.

I'm conflicted about Vista's preloading... I don't like to see the hard drive caching stuff to RAM when I boot up, but I do like the responsiveness of the system. Possibly I should have sprung for the TurboMemory add-in card.

I really wish they had an option to prioritize what Vista preloads, and when to do it. For example, I could tick Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Flash, and UltraEdit to preload five minutes after I boot to the desktop or something.

Even better would be to have selectable preload profiles available at startup; if I chose "Work" it would preload all my work apps, if I chose "Normal" it would preload IM, web, and email apps, selected games, etc... and so on.

Anyway... that turned into kind of a saga.

CONCLUSION:
- Performance is outstanding.
- Hardware quality is on par with my T43.
- Software package seems more like a consumer-level laptop than before.
- Vista has some amusing delusions, but is perfectly usable (so far).

 

Nice review. Why did you choose the standard screen over the wide screen format? I prefer standard screen on laptops as well but just wanted to know your opinion about it.

About the preloaded bloatware, I don't mind it as long as it keeps the cost of the laptop down. The Base System Administration software lets you reformat the entire OS and only install the things you want.

 

It's either a Samsung or an LG I believe.

Great review. I definitely agree with many of the points you made, especially about the bloatware. I'm on my fifth month of usage and all the little peeves I had with the system aren't noticeable anymore.

I'm glad you like it; I'm thinking of dual-booting PCLinuxOS myself.

 

Thanks sp00n (Tick reference? If so, love it!)

I chose standard for a few reasons... uh-oh, hold on... I feel another saga coming up:

Work.
I do a lot of multimedia design and programming work. With a WXGA+ screen, I lose 150 pixels of vertical viewing area that could be used for additional lines of code, and every little bit of vertical space is important to me when I'm programming. When I had 2 desktop displays with full-featured monitor stands, I actually flipped one into portrait style so I could get more vertical room for code. For multimedia work, it's kind of a wash.

Play.
I hate stretched displays, and sometimes you get those with games that don't properly support widescreen displays. Since I play a lot of older games, like Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, or Civilization, this is a concern. For web browsing, HTML pages are normally infinite height, not infinite width; webpage designs are still usually optimized for 1024x768 displays or slightly higher. I don't need to browse 2 windows side by side; if I need to transcribe from one window to another, I can set it up vertically just as easily, and it won't mess up line wrapping or force me to scroll horizontally to view all the content.

Travel/style.
My portfolio bag fits my 14.1" T43 snugly in its laptop pocket with a Logitech VX Revolution and a headphone case next to it. A widescreen system would force me to move those accessories to some other, less protected pocket. A standard display also fits better in enclosed spaces (i.e., airline tray tables), and just looks tidier to me. And a huge one: a 9-cell battery versus a 7-cell battery!

Principle/Preference.
I just hate the trend of widescreen displays, especially on so-called "business" laptops. I read that one possible benefit of widescreen is that you can view more columns in an Excel spreadsheet. That's fine, but I'm not an accountant... and it works both ways, too. With a standard screen, you view more rows. The only benefit to me of having a widescreen display would be watching 16:9 movies without as much letterboxing... and what do I care? I'm sitting 2 feet away from the display anyway, it's big enough already.

 

Thanks Arkit3kt; about the LCD, I googled the Mfg part #(42T0432) and the FRU part #(42T0433). The only info I could find suggested it was a "Hyundai-BOEHydis," from this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=50893#346130

I could load up PC Wizard and check later, but I'm satisfied with it so unless someone else needs to know, I don't really care

 

"then do an Acronis image."

You won't need it. Vista Buisiness has an incredible Backup system called Vista Complete PC backup.

 

it's "incredible" that they couldn't make it good enough to compete with Acronis.

 

Hm. How is it worse than Acronis? I'm doing some research on it now and it seems like it's pretty capable; I just need to get Vista distro CDs, right?

 

good review, thx.

 

Good review. Even though I got a widescreen, I'm actually glad that there's still standard aspect notebooks available for those who have a need for them. I hear the part about games not being able to stretch across widescreen displays.

Anyway, enjoy your ThinkPad!

 

I feel much the same about my new T61, I just need some more time to play with it. I got the widescreen, fell for the hype, I guess. I HATE my widescreen TV. But I do not mind the notebook so much. It was good for VISTA sidebar, but now I have XP anyways.

Solid build, great look, great keyboard. I would love to have the time to do a fresh install, but so far very stable and fast on out of the box setup. Sure is alot of stuff running in the background, though.

Dave

 

Well, I hit the rhetoric pretty hard in my post about wide vs. standard, but I really don't have anything against it, it's just unsuitable for my own needs. It's pretty much going to be forced down all our throats within the next generation or two of systems, anyway.

Even this time around, I had to consider the generally better visual quality of displays available in a widescreen format, especially coupled with the benefits of an LED-backlit display; considered both the Dell XPS M1330 and Fujitsu S6510. I just don't believe they're mature enough yet. No single laptop had all the features I wanted, the T61 just came closest, and it was already familiar. Penryn was just a bonus

Now if only someone made a 14.1" LED-backlit SXGA+ display that could be installed on the T61....

 

To be honest, I actually regret purchasing a widescreen resolution myself. I browse websites more than anything and a standard ratio would've definitely been more beneficial to productivity for me than this widescreen.

 

I understand your needs ark. However, for developers widescreen is perfect for Visual Studio.

 

Yeah, definitely. It's really all a matter of preference. I'm sure widescreen is also ideal for spreadsheets and such too.

 

Bottom line, I totally love my T61. I hope I will be using it for a good long time and make lots of $$$ with it