integrated microphone on T61 ?

is there one ?

 

Yes it does.. ..

 

How good is it? I have an integrated mic now but it picks up fan noise and vibration from the case.

 

anyone know where it is exactly?

 

Usually as per T tradition it's on the palm rest.


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the tiny two slits are there near the right touchpad button, but there are no actual holes. Odd. That might explain the crappy Mic performance. Audio hardly gets picked up at all in Messenger. Manufacturing defect on all these palm rests?

 

well i just took the palm rest off and even if there were holes, there is nothing behind that area anyways. I cant figureout the problem here...maybe a driver issue?

 

silly me, it appears that the Mic needs to be boosted in the Control Pannel > Sound. There are some other settings that you can mess around with. After this, people can finally hear on the other end.

Also, boost the Messenger volume in the "Mixer" by right clicking on your taskbars Volume control. By default, Messenger is a few notches lower than the others.

 

i was a bit surprised by the quality of the mic, i wasnt expecting anything grand. placement of the mic is excellent, i just noticed it.

 

I can't find a mic booster anywhere on my system. I hope this wasn't part of something I uninstalled? Any help on how I can locate this?

Nevermind, found it...

 

actually the more i use this mic, the more it sucks. It is simply not sensitive enough to be useful in applications like Messenger. Even wit all the settings boosted, it is not worthwhile. Lenovo needs a new driver or some other fix


Edit: here is a picture of the mic "slits" that are to the bottom right of the touchpad. Im no expert, but I would imagine that these slits should have actual holes in them???? My mic is working, but the sound volume is so low its worthless. The mic boost makes things louder, but the ambient noises from the touchpad, keyboard, HD, etc are too overpowering, making the mic useless again.

 

What version of Windows are you using? I just returned my Vista T61 because the audio recording was so poor and ordered one with XP because I think it may be a Vista driver problem. All of the other Thinkpads in the "T" series line have done a pretty good job with audio before. So if you're using XP and still having problems that makes me wonder if I did the right thing.

 

Vista Ultimate...at this point i cant go back..just need to hope the drivers get fixed

 

Someone said in another thread that he fixed an audio problem by uninstalling the IBM driver for the sound card and that when his computer rebooted that it found the generic Windows driver and that the sound was fine after that. It's worth a shot. The worse thing that could happen is you have to reinstall the original sound card driver. I'll post what happens with XP when that machine gets here in a couple of weeks so we can figure out if this is a problem isolated to Vista.

 

This forum is going to be a great help on the T61; I can see that. I didn't even realize, until reading this thread, that there was a mic on this machine!

I got the same generally poor results noted here (Vista Ultimate). If there were a help file with the microphone setup screens it would help.

 

i have been messing around with various drivers and what not, and have concluded that the built in mic simply sucks with MSN messenger. On Skype it works OK without the feedback and static noises in Messenger

 

I ordered my T61 with XP and can report that the mic ain't much better under XP. First off, you can't crank up speaker volume high enough as compared to other laptops in our household. It sounds ok with with headphones though, but I'm disappointed that my T42 has more audio oomph.

That said, voice recordings don't seem to pick up any extraneous noise from fan, hard drive, or other internal components. You just need to put your sweet lips a little closer to the mic.

Methinks that new drivers (whether XP or Vista) will correct this (what I consider minor) annoyance.

 

Is the mic adeqaute for recording lectures from the front row of a class room?

 

Has anyone been using the internal mic and t61p's? I am running Ultimate.

 

Used the internal mic today. Quality is great with the booster, during lecture. I usually sit 6 rows away from the professors in stadium style seating. Recording came out great with light noise from the keyboard for taking notes. Will be using this option more frequently from now on during my Programming class.