X60s versus T60 noise comparison

Hi all,

I'll probably return my sony sz2 and get a thinkpad, either the X60s or the T60.
Anyway, i know all the specs and what i need etc, and in general i would be happy with both machines , with their obvious plus/minus's...
Anyway, im wondering: which one is noisier?
The 2 in question are:

T60 2007-FRG, 14" SXGA, T2400, ATI X1400
X60s 1704-56G , L2400

Im wondering about fan noise under full system load, and idle.
My guess , from googlin a bit, is that the X60s is less noisy, but might suffer from heat problems.
Maybe someone who has used both can comment ?
Thanks alot!
I hate fan noise, and have used a very noisy T40p for the last 3 years... So, i wouldnt really fancy getting a new T60 and again having a very noisy machine. I often work in quiet rooms at night...

 

Well my T60 (2613HKU) w/T7200 & ATI X1400 is VERY quiet; I mean there has to be SOME sort of sound or no air would be moving...but that is all I hear, no noise introduced by the fan itself.

 

Thanks for the report!
Yea, im well aware that there has to be *some* noise. However, fan noise varies a great deal. If its just the noise of moving air, ie white noise, thats fine.
Some fans tend to make high-pitched whinning noises , when spinning fast.
so that a 'pitch' can be perceived (such as the one in the sony sz which ramps up and down that annyoing sound).
Any others who have used one or both of those thinkpad machines?
Thanks!

 

My T60 is really quiet, too. I can't imagine that noise would be the deciding factor between those two unless you have some medical condition that makes you hypersensitive. There are much more significant difference between the two machines.

Chris

 

well, call it a medical condition if you like
the guys in the shop are kinda wondering about me too
I am wondering why so many people just dont care about having a vacuum cleaner in their laptops.
So yea, i am certainly above average sensitive to computer noise..so if there would be a noticeable difference between the two, it indeed could be a deciding point for me. However, if they are about the same...
Anyway, thanks for the reports.

 

Well the P4 based notebook made a lot of noise. Since then it is not much noise generated by cooling of the new mobile processors. In most of the notebooks the fan is off most of the idle time and at low load like browsing or Word processing... And the fan has many speed modes...

 

well, my t40p is a pentium m . its certainly not only P4's that have annoying fans. (but in tendency, you are certainly right.).
See, there are differences. Quite vast ones. Ive heard them....
Would be great if it was as easy as cpu-type==noise. That would spare me alot of hassle and time spent on this issue.

 

I haven't used a T60 but the X60s is very quiet - and I consider myself sensitive to noise. I virtually never notice the fan in the X60s and even at high speed it is relatively quiet. At low speed I have to hold my ear next to the notebook to make sure the fan is even running.

 

have you considered using the computer while sitting in a freezer?

I thought some people had reported a high pitch from the core duo whine when they did some things..from the fan or usb port or something...anyone know what i'm referring to? that probably wouldn't go well with your sensitivity

 

ThinkPads are not approved for operating at temperatures below freezing point. They should not even be stored at such low temperatures.

 

uh...joke?

 

Canadian models of X60's are. And the fan, if needed, is an optional extra in canada

 

Check out the Legends of ThinkPad videos (K2 Mountain). http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/community/legends/index.html

 

I think the x60s is quite quiet. The harddrive I got in it isn't the quietest but when idling or just doing some lightweight work the fan isn't on at all.

Under load and/or after long use the fan kicks in and the problem I have with it is that it starts at 3000 rpm. That sounds more than it is in this case, I'm quite sensitive myself. But it won't exactly go unnoticed and it's a bit too much for me.

I am quite certain that for my needs I could (and probably will) change the fan-speeds so that it starts at 1500 rpms or something. That would be muuuch better and probably enough for me. But if stressing it you might need some more, but easy to fix that with another temperature threshold.

Eventhough I think it's quite noisy at 3000 rpms its way quieter than most laptops - and in an *noisy* enviroment (such as a class) it doesn't bother me at all. It's when sitting home where I don't have any noise around me.
And the defaulted settings is that the fan kicks in more often with AC-power and since you (atleast I do) use the AC-brick more when at home than away (due to the fantastic battery-life with the 8cel I almost never brings the ac-brick) it also spins up more at home.

It's certainly not a dealbreaker for me but there are quieter laptops out there. Dell and Samsung (dell uses samsungs) both have passive laptops. So they are quite quiet Although they don't come in dualcore flavors

For a dualcore ultraportable I don't think there are much better (quieter in this case) laptops than the x60s. But theoretically a bigger laptop could be quieter with less effort. Beware of powerfull graphic cards though as the eat quiet laptops for breakfast.

edit:
I have taken for granted that it is possible to change the fanspeed on the x60s but I don't know for sure whether you can.

And I have no experience of the T60 so no help there.

 

Have you seen the Legends of ThinkPad "Trekked" video?

Btw, the X60's are virtually silent...my boss has one. I have an older T42p. The fan is rarely audiable.

 

Here it is.

 

Doesn't matter if thinkpads could withstand -200 C and +500 C.

A harddrive is not supposed to be used (or stored) in those temperatures. And guess what, thinkpad laptops uses the same harddrives as any other laptop-maker. Sure thinkpad-reliability in all glory but lets not get overboard shall we? Those legends of thinkpad videos are just PR crap.
Nice way to boost the self esteem by thinkpad-owners (and buyers) I guess but when it comes down to it it's just BS all the way through (not saying that thinkpads aren't reliable just that the videos doesn't say anything. And that thinkpads share many components with other manufaturers which neither of them have any control over (IBM had when they made harddrives too but even then they didn't customize them especially for thinkpads)).

Most of those cases you should be embracing the harddrive and not the laptop for being reliable.

Sorry for going Off Topic

 

I looked at the " Trekked" video. Thanks to everyone who posted the link. The only time the guy is seen typing on his ThinkPad the temperatures appear to be above freezing point.

 

tjoff, thanks for your report (and for posting something actually useful).
yep, it has to be a core-duo, and ive already decided for the x60s....
controlling fan-speed is possible, btw. Ive checked on that
cheers

 

Good choice, I hope you like it.

 

Well, those videos are made in the studio. They are 'based' on true events, note the actul person at the end of the video clip holding the ThinkPad.

 

Yea thanks already placed the order, including 3 year on site and 1 gig additional ram ....cant wait (should be here monday or thuesday, yaiii).
im kinda glad to no longer be a vaio-aner (returned the thing). Once a thinkpad, always a thinkpad.....(its my 3rd )

 

ok, its xmas today :-D
to complete this thread: yep, very happy with the x60s so far.
did some noise tests, maxing out cpu, in max.performance mode.
and, what can i say... very nice and low noise level. no annoying trinitus-like high-frequency noise as on the sony sz. no up+down whinning of the fan.
noise-difference between the various fan speeds is minimal. just as it should be. and its the sound of moving air, not the sound of a highspeed motor.
i love this thing so far. touch wood all goes well. feels like an engineering-jewel indeed. Great keyboard.
when the delivery guy gave me the box i first thought **** they forgot to put the computer in there, its sooo lightweight.

 

Glad your happy

I remember thinking the exact same thing when I got the box

Just a tip: (you have to do it 30 days within purchase or something) Order the recovery-CDs. I know that I will replace the harddrive in the future and having the CDs will make the transition smooth. Just reformatting the system could be a pain without a cd (and if the recovery partition broke or you needed the space or you replaced the harddrive...).
Whether you get one for free depends on where you live and the person you talk to but I got lucky.
They'll probably ask why you want them and then just say that you plan on replacing the harddrive or something.
Worth a try atleast.

 

thanks for the tip! i was assuming that i can create recovery cds with the thinkvantage recovery tool thing (i have a usb2 dvd burner), but i havent tried that yet. Btw, the 'realtime visualizer' thing of the harddrive protection system is quite impressing

 

Yeah you can burn your own. Haven't tried that though - I don't haven an external cd/dvd drive so I can't burn them and it won't let you store the image-files on disk so that you can transfer them to another computer.
But I'm an perfectionist when it comes to storage and having pressed CDs is a relief to me.

Starting to feel the urge to get an external cd/dvd drive though. I thought installing linux and such would be a breeze with an usb-harddrive. But it proved to be a real pain.
Although I keep telling myself that it's a one-time thing. And in my case I'm probably right. I've grown a real hate towards cd/dvds on laptops for some reason.

Was quite surprised when I got my recovery CDs, guess how many it was...
I bet you were wrong..
I got 8 (!) CDs

Haven't used them yet so don't know if theres use for them all.



Yeah the 'realtime visualizer' is cool, dunno if it makes more damage though when you play around with it
Although I like the feature it's kinda annoying too, a bit to sensitive and when your carrying it around music and other streaming 'stuff' pauses when the head is parked. Quite unnecessary 99.999% of the time, but still you (atleast I) have to have it on - 'just in case'. And I don't know whether that software affects some drives internal protection against drops, or if thats just an interface to it

But to be honest the harddrive is probably the least of my worries should I drop my x60s...
(easiest and among the cheapest parts to replace, plus I only got a 40 gb drive so I'm gonna need to upgrade it whenever I feel I can afford it (it gets a bit cramped when dualbooting with linux and I originally thought about squeezing in Vista there too) - and add to that the recovery partition...).

 

So the software on the machine lets you burn a single copy of recovery disks? (Or you can order them - if you get lucky?)

 

Its the interface to the drive protection itself Well, thats how i understood it, but im 99% sure. Did you try change the settings ? There are various sensitivity settings that can be made, so you might get rid of the annoying on/off. I personally quite like the feature. Youre certainly right about 'if it drops, the hd is not the biggest worry', but i would say this feature is not only useful in the case of a drop. HD's can crash badly from much less 'serious movements', when youre unlucky. Say for exmpl. you 'slam' a bit agains a wall whilest moving it on a table. Usually goes ok. Not always tho, if the drive is working at that moment and youre unlucky....

so, booting from a usb2 drive is not that easy then?
would be nice to boot from a usb key or an sd card, someday (talking about lightweight recovery tools for on the go)

 

Ok, thanks.

There are some utilities that boots of USB but they all have to be special-made to be bootable. I haven't seen an all-round boot application that can turn any bootable cd-iso or whatever and make an usb boot of it.

Kinda annoying to have one way to boot knoppix and an completely other way to boot gentoo and so on. You can't even boot different versions of knoppix using the same 'boot-of-usb' software but even then you have to replace it for a version custom-made for that version of knoppix (and the market for USB-bootable applications isn't that great so.. takes time for them to come out and so on).

Only got experience with Knoppix and Gentoo so far.

Oh, and the recovery application that lenovo ships do have an option to recover from usb-device. Great I thought but when booting my mp3 player (my mp3 player is an hdd-based) turns off - in the middle of the boot (think it is when it's checking for USB-devices or something). And the only way to turn it on is by reconnect the usb-cable but the instant I remove the usb-cable I gen an bluescreen (the recovery software is based on some mini-windows install).
That perticular situation shouldn't be an problem on an ordinary usb-drive though - I think .

Exactly.

Quite poor of lenovo not to ship the recovery CDs in the first place IMHO...

 

btw, the drive protection thing is not a part of the hd itself, but a separate entity in the machine. well, again, im not 100% on this, but very close. Definitely sounds like that. Its just a movement-sensor that switches the drive off if needed, so its not depending on a specific drive that supports this.