X61s--5400vs7200, wireless card and cpu choices?

hello,

this morning I priced out the X61s on the Lenovo website using the /cpp option --also the USESAVEDEC coupon still seemed to work.

As I might need to make a quick decision to take advantage of the good pricing, I was hoping if someone could tell me if they have been able to tell which options have noticeably improved battery life.

there is the 1.6 vs 1.8 cpu, and a 5400rpm HD vs the 7200rpm variant--do any of these seem to make a big difference in battery life? Also, which wireless card seems to be causing the least problems w/heat, etc.

Finally, does the trackpoint w/fingerprint give up anything over the standard trackpoint?

 

get the 8cell battery and you will get around 8hours of battery life on a x61s
I'd choose the faster cpu just because lagging is horrifying, and the slower hdd takes less battery, but not by much. As for the wireless card it doesn't really matter, but get only the intel ones since the thinkpad wireless cards are not as good.

 

A 5400RPM HD will extend the battery life by a small amount. You're not going to see a huge performance benefit going from 5400 to 7200RPM except during initial boot time, so I wouldn't worry about it. Unless you're gaming there's no major reason to get a 7200RPM on a laptop.

As for the CPUs there won't be a huge difference between power consumption. I agree with Acorn. Go for the faster CPU, stick with the 5400 RPM, and put any extra money into RAM (2GB or bust!). The extra RAM will somewhat help offset slowdowns from other components.

Your best bet on saving battery power is to turn off features when not in use (disable the wireless if you're not using it, don't use USB, CDs).

 

I would put 7200rpm HDD as the top priority. A faster hard drive actually boosts the performance a lot (in daily usage).

 

I agree that the faster HD boosts performance in daily usage, but it depends on what you're doing with it. Gaming, yes. Graphic design, yes. Everything else: not really. The benefit of the speed is not enough to be noticable in application tasks, and it's not really a necessity or higher priority.

If you're going to invest the money, invest in parts that are not easily upgradable later (read: CPU, monitor). Then RAM, then HD performance. The HD is far from a priority.

Also, you have to keep in mind that a high end 5400RPM drive can still outperform a low end 7200RPM, so going the 5400RPM route is not a bad choice at all. The performane difference is not nearly as big as if you were going from a 4200RPM.

 

The fingerprint reader is unique and I love using it to log-in to windows, encrypt files, certain websites, etc, it's your own opinion on that.

On the HDD would you rather have more storage or speed, its your own personal opinon.

The Wireless Card, I have the Atheros model from Thinkpad and it performs like it should, recognizes all the wireless networks need be, so on that personal opinion.

CPU choose the latest.

 

Hey,
thanks for the recommendations. I'm not sure if the deals are still available, but I am definitely leaning towards the 5400rpm hd over the 7200rpm version. Ill go for the higher speed cpu as well.

 

Typically a faster hard drive only helps with load times for gaming where the graphics card is overwhelmingly the most important component.

Depending on what you are doing, the hard drive can often be the performance bottleneck as the computer waits for data to be read from the drive. I personally would get the the faster drive over the faster CPU. Most every day tasks like office and internet aren't very CPU intensive.

 

Agreeing with ZAZ, historically disks have been the system bottleneck. Disks are a little bit better than they used to be and processors are much better than they used to be so disk continue to the system bottle neck.