Z61t / WXGA+ / 2GB / 100GB/7200

Firstly, I wanted to thank the participants here for the info they've posted on the z61t zeries. I wanted the wide-screen real-estate of 1440x900, but not the price tag or size of the MacBook Pro, and the z61t + WXGA+ delivers it.

Secondly, using the EPP, I was able to get a z61t, with 1440x900, 2GHz Core Duo, 100GB 7200rpm HD, and 2 GB of DDR2 for just under $1500. This is using the "build your own" option. It's over a grand cheaper than the MBP same specs, and better than what I could find elsewhere in PCs. The ship date is 3 weeks out, but I'm not in a hurry anyway.

-z

 

yea...i dont know why anyone in the world would use apple to upgrade the ram to 2g as it costs like $500...unfair comparison there.

and if you didn't realize....the intel GMA950 blows...so I really don't know why you have all that ram and 7200rpm hdd...100 gigs of space at that.... with such a fast cpu...and integrated graphics...it doesn't make sense...what are u trying to accomplish with a laptop with those specs? gaming is out of the question...

 

more comparable to a regular macbook maybe..but w/o the vid card its not a real comparison

 

i think he wants the quality of a thinkpad...

also, GMA950 is not that bad depending on what you are doing. maybe he's not on the gaming rig and all.

 

why all the hate for the GMA950? There are other uses for a laptop then getting 100FPS on the latest and greatest game.

It's fine for pretty much everything besides medium-heavy gaming. I don't even game on my laptop so its not an issue at all (for me).

 

Plus better battery life as well.

 

If you don't care about gaming and don't care about Vista's Aero Glass interface, the GMA950 is fine...

 

Yes but the GMA950 is compatible with Aero. Reports are all over the interent saying that you must use the Intel Lakeport drivers until Intel releases compliant drivers. Also, having 1+GB of ram is needed. Aero doesnt really mean that much to me...since I will probably end up using the classic view anyway.

 

Hi guys,

I don't do any gaming. The purpose of this machine is to do email, freelance writing, web development, C/C++ and perl coding/development, and other general unix stuff on the road-- you know, real "work-type" things.

I wanted enough screen real-state to have two full windows side by side (e.g. 2 xterms, xterm & browser, emacs & browser, emacs & xterm) to minimize window-management overhead, and still a form factor smaller than my "work" laptop (nx6125). Will run some flavor of Linux.

My main interactive applications are xterm (shell), emacs, and a browser, and the most computationally-intensive things I do otherwise are code builds and batch image scaling.

As long as the video system can do 2d stuff at reasonable speed, it won't be a problem. For comparison, a c.a. 1996-7 Matrox Millenium is fast enough for my needs (though it obviously cannot drive the new widescreen LCDs).

As far as the disk goes, I wanted the faster drive for general system speedup, since my applications are generally neither CPU nor video-constrained. Getting more memory for a decent price is a no-brainer, since it will reduce swapping and increase disk performance. 2GB is probably more than I "need" but this way I won't have to mess with it down the road.

The regular MacBook does not have the screen real-estate I wanted. As for an "unfair comparison" with regard to Apple memory prices, chalk it up to (1) the "not wanting to F- with it" factor, and (2) not wanting to disturb the mfgrs warranty.

At my old company, we had IBM t42p laptops, which were well built, but huge. I would have looked at a Lenovo X series for more portability, but they don't yet have any widescreen formats.

Back-up of the laptop's data will be done over Gig-E to my 1.2TB RAID5..

-z

 

This board has too many 15 year olds concerned with only the latest games.

 

Well, Lenovo users can also go to forum.thinkpads.com -- definitely a different vibe over there.

Chris

 

[ link to LARGER image ]
[ link to LARGER image ]

Sorry for the sloppy focus..

 

Love the keyboard on thinkpads. I wonder when the IBM logo will stop appearing on the Lenovo products. I read that Lenovo can use it for a year or two...seems like that's about up.

 

LOL... when the ibm logo disappears, the price should be dropped by at least 20%

Or does anyone want Lenovo written in chinese on theirs?

 

My only two gripes about the keyboard:

1. Control needs to be where Fn is, for all the Emacs geeks

2. The "page right" and "page left" keys around the arrow keys impede tactile indexing to the movement keys.

 

hmm so that only took 2.5 weeks, including a holiday wkend, to get a custom-built z61T? that's relatively good!

 

Yeah, it was a few weeks early, vs the estimated ship date.

I'm also going to replace the DVD with an extra battery to improve unplugged life.

 

On wich site where you able to configurate the laptop to your personal needs? I've found this url] but theres only one Z61T configuration wich i can choose.

And what does EPP means

 

EPP refers to the IBM/Lenovo Employee Purchase Program.

I, too, have noticed different models and choices on the regular Lenovo site vs. the EPP site. I don't know why they would do this, since for example for the Z61, there are more attractive models on the EPP.

With the DVD replaced with an "Advanced Ultrabay Battery", and running Linux in an aggressive powersaving mode, I get around 4 hours of battery life. The exact time is a mystery because I can get "battery life remaining" times of almost 1 hour different depending on whch monitor I use. In any case, I definitely ran it for 3.5 hours with no problems and some remaining capacity.