X60s or X61?

I love my x61 but considering buying a used x60s because of the better battery life (i like the idea of 8 hours unplugged). Is this a bad idea? Is the x60s a huge downgrade from the x61? I would be using it for work (basic office programs, ect).

 

I'd be surprised if the battery life is that much better between the x61 and x60s. A better choice would probably just be to buy a new battery. I'd bet yours doesn't work nearly as well as when it was new.

 

According to reviews the x61 had a battery life of 4 to 5 hours on an 8 cell battery while the x60s had about 8 hours and 20 min on an 8 cell battery.

 

I thought X60s is based off 945 chipset and older Merom processors are less efficient than Penryn offered on X61?

 

Not sure, I just know all the reviews for the x60s talked about it's incredible battery life and when the x61 reviews came out they complained about it not having the same battery life of the x60s. I do know with a new battery I get about 5 hours of battery life out of my x61.

 

1. X60s mostly uses the Low voltage CPU of the Core Duo series (Yonah), there is only one model that uses the L7xxx Merom CPU and it is quite hard to find on the market.

2. Most X61 uses the T7xxx CPU, which is the Merom CPU. Only some of the latter variants had the T8xxx and T9xxx CPU, which are also less common than the T7xxx Merom variant.

To OP X60s battery life is about 6 to 7 hrs with 8 cells, i replaced it with a T8100 X61 and i only lost about 1 hr in battery time, but got a lot more powerful system.

So if you have the X61 i would suggest you forget about the X60s, you could possibly think about the X61s, which i also have and it has a comparable battery life to the X60s.

P.S. X61/t/s variants can support SATAII (middleton's mod) and 8 gigs of ram.

 

I'd recommend the X61s. If you're not in a rush I'd wait and watch IBM's certified used equipment store, as some cheap units surface there from time to time. The warranty will only be 3 months, but that's not really a problem for three reasons: 1) the units that are refurbished tend to be in very shape 2) you can extend the warranty for a year 3) the X6x series is easy to disassemble, and parts are cheap via eBay.

 

You can probably find a cheap X61s on ebay for around 250 USD. I got a X61s for my uncle for $250 AUD with 6 months warranty remaining, the stockist claims that there are over 3000 of these machines in existence, and more than half of them went to USA.