z61m Review by Cnet Questoin

CNet has posted a review of the z61m here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Lenovo_ThinkPad_Z61m/4505-3121_7-32121847.html

They didn't seem to like it too much, but they're cnet so that doesn't mean a whole lot. However, their benchmark scores were disappointing. They admit that the z had a 5400 rpm hd, but that can't be the only reason that the z was much slower in some of the tests. Is there something else about the z that holds it back? If so, is this a problem with all thinkpads?

 

The other notebooks they tested it against had the T7200 whereas the Z61m had the T5500 so they should perform better all things equal.

 

Lenovo ThinkPad Z61m
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 664MHz; 512MB ATI Radeon Mobility X1400; 120GB Toshiba 5,400rpm SATA/150

The z did have the t7200. All the notebooks tested were identical in specs except for the graphics card and hard drive. I can understand that the hard drive speed will slow things down a bit, but there was a very large difference in some of their benchmarks.

 

The Z61m had the slowest hard drive & video card of all the laptops in that comparison. I'm sure that if all of those machines were comparably equipped that they would have all performed (virtually) identically.

 

You are correct. I think that people are too focused on benchmarks. While they are useful, performance on the machines will be similar in day to day use. Screen quality, build quality, etc will have a higher impact on overall satisfaction level in my experience.

 

I'm presently enjoying my new Z61m, configured the same as the test system that cnet used, other than I've got 2 gig of ram. Now that I've had a chance to turn off some of the overhead that isn't necessary to me, the thing smokes. Compared to my Dell desktop 3.0 ghz HT, it's much faster even with the 5400 rpm drive. My last laptop was a T40P 1.6 with 7200 rpm drive and 1.5 gig ram...not even close to this machine.

My brother has a new Dell 1505 Core Duo 2.0 ghz and it feels much slow than mine subjectively. But he hasn't really turned off any utilities, etc which has a huge impact on how it runs. It isn't slow by any means, but not as snappy.

The only benchmark I ran on this was superpi, and it was identical to all the other c2d t7200's.

But the keyboard, display, service etc are great, as expected. There may be something faster out there, but for a general business machine this thing is great.

Mark