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    making the T61p lighter? Anyone franken this laptop and to make it ~4lbs?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by jedisurfer1, Jan 16, 2014.

  1. jedisurfer1

    jedisurfer1 Notebook Deity

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    over the past few years I've own probably 30 different laptops. For some reason the t61p with LG WUXGA is still my favorite. It runs 3 vms with fairly fast, the keyboard I love and I've configured the touchpad to scroll inside my vm. The only thing I dislike are the heat and the weight.

    Has anyone gutted the t61p and made it lighter? I have a travel laptop, a workstation one but I like the 1200 resolution and I do a lot of work on the couch, with a few vms, and ipmonitor in the background. It does it quite well except it's just too warm and heavy on my lap.
     
    jedisurfer1, Jan 16, 2014
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  2. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

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    I'm pretty sure that apart from throwing a spacer in the UltraBay and running it on small (6 cell) battery there's nothing you can do to lighten the load...meaningfully, that is.
     
    ajkula66, Jan 16, 2014
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  3. PatchySan

    PatchySan Om Noms Kit Kat

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    Yeah even the standard 14.1" T61 is pretty heavy for what it is but I gotten used to it! As ajkula66 mentioned apart from the Ultrabay Weight Saver and flush battery there's not much else you could do, it would be kinda pointless stripping out the magnesium rollcages to save weight as it would decrease the ThinkPad's strength.
     
    PatchySan, Jan 16, 2014
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  4. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Doesn't help he also has the 15" version..
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Jan 16, 2014
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  5. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

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    Indeed.

    That LCD assembly is quite heavy in its own right.
     
    ajkula66, Jan 17, 2014
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  6. jedisurfer1

    jedisurfer1 Notebook Deity

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    yeah I figured that was the answer but the thinkpad community has a way of surprising me sometimes. I don't use it for travel so I may experiment with some things.
     
    jedisurfer1, Jan 17, 2014
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  7. TuuS

    TuuS Notebook Consultant

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    For the heat issue you can swap for a board with Intel graphics and a Penryn cpu chip, that will make a very cool running machine. You can also try reseating the heatsink with some good quality thermal paste and tweek the fan settings but the nVidia fx570m isn't a cool gpu and if it has a Merom cpu that will produce some heat too.

    For weight, the frame and plastics are pretty light so as George recommends getting rid of the optical drive and a smaller battery are the only easy options. You could look into aftermarket LCDs, the ones lenovo uses are heavy. I had a challenge shipping two of those screens and keeping the parcel under 4lbs for 1st class internationalIt required a lot of air pockets for packing instead of the usual foam and bubble wrap.

    My best advice is if the weight matters that much, you got the wrong laptop.
     
    TuuS, Jan 29, 2014
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