T61 or T410 - opinions?

I'd like to hear your opinions on the following 2 laptops.

T61
C2D T7300 2Ghz
4GB ram
160gb 7200rpm
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140
1440x900 screen
Win7
6 cell battery

T410
i5-520m 2.4Ghz
4GB ram
320gb 7200rpm
Intel HD Graphics
1440x900 LED screen
Win7
6 cell battery

I have the option to purchase either one from friends, with the t410 being about double the price of the t61. Do you think it's worth the premium? I do mainly office productivity work like word, excel, and powerpoint, photo editing, ocassional HD video editing, and online research.

Assuming both have similar battery capacity (I intend to purchase another battery for the T61 if it's shot), which one will last longer? And is the Quadro NVS 140 part of the affected NVIDIA GPU failures?

 

Not sure what country you are in. If you are in USA, then try outlet.lenovo.com and get a R400 instead, it is only slightly thicker than a T61 and T410.

Nvidia GPU used in this T61 is the affected model, so i wouldn't purchase it for the lack of security on the GPU longevity.

Since, you did not mention the price you are paying it is hard to make any suggestion as to which you should purchase.

When you mention the applications you are using, can you describe the approximate file size you are working on?

 

The T410 while expensive would be the better choice over the T61 in the long term. Mainly the specs of the T410 would be advantageous to the things you want to do on a laptop. Video editing and large photo editing can be quite strenuous for the C2D T7300 CPU, the Core i5 should be able to cope with these demands quite easily.

As lead_org mentioned, the graphics chip by NVIDIA on the T61 is known to be faulty and can fail over time. Plus the CCFL screen on the T61 is not spectacular by all means, the LED screen on the T410 should be a much better improvement in comparison.

 

I am in the US and thanks for the outlet link. When I do photos, it's basically what comes out of my 12MP, at ~4mb images. And the videos can be pretty big, at 2-3GB per files.

 

if you are working with those sort of video file size, i would suggest you get a T410 instead..... or maybe a W700 or W710 with quad core cpu...