Lenovo T61 NC11DGE [hardware]

August 18, 2007 at 12:44 (Hardware, Lenovo, Notebook, T61)

After about 3 weeks with my new notebook I think it’s time to tell you my experience with it. At first I thought about making a complete review, but well firstly I’m to lazy and secondly there are enough good ones around in the net(). So I just gonna tell you about some strange/interesting things which caught my eye, by examining my new toy. If you buy your Thinkpad in Germany you can’t customize it like in the US Lenovo shop, so I had to stick with a pretty preconfigured version. Furthermore the specs on the German Lenovo Page are not complete or even incorrect, so I had some interesting surprises(red marked in the hardware specs)!

Hardware Specs

  • Intel Centrino Pro (Santa Rosa/Mobile 965GM)
  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 at 2000 MHz
  • 2048 MB PC-5300 DDR2 SD-RAM
  • 80 GB SATA, 5400 RPM,8 MB Cache (Hitachi Travelstar 5K080)
  • CD-RW/DVD Combo in Ultrabay Slim
  • 14.1″ TFT, 1440×900 WXGA
  • Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
  • Intel 4965AGN Wireless Chip (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n(draft) )
  • Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate (BDC-2) with Broadcom Chip
  • Intel HDA Audio (AD1984)
  • Finger Print Reader
  • TPM Chip (Atmel or National Semiconductor, not sure yet)
  • 7-cell Lithium ion Battery
  • Ports:
    • Expansion Bus port (for Essential Port Replicator, Advanced Dock, Advanced Mini Dock)
    • ExpressCard and PCMCIA Slot
    • External Display (VGA)
    • External Microphone/Line-In
    • Internal Microphone
    • Headphone / Line out
    • IEEE 1394 (Mini)
    • RJ-11
    • RJ-45
    • 3 USB 2.0

Working with this laptop is quiet nice. The keyboard works excellent for a laptop keyboard and the trackpoint is a useful alternative option to the also built in touchpad. I’m working with both of them and switch randomly or depending on the task.

I went for a integrated graphic because firstly the driver support under Linux is better (open source driver) and for lesser power consumption, because some tests indicated a very short running time on battery. So I also decided to go for a 7-cell battery instead of the normal 4-cell one. But even with this I’m a little bit disappointed about the running time, but I haven’t tweaked anything till know under Linux so maybe it gets better. But one confusing thing happened in the first charging cycles… at one point I had a full capacity of 73 Wh but thereafter i had again something like 68 Wh which is quiet a difference… so let’s see time will show.

The ThinkLight which helps to illuminate the keyboard in the dark is a quiet nice idea, but actually mostly the light of the screen is enough.  And talking about the screen… actually its pretty good and 14.1″ are a good compromise between small form factor and useful screen size. It’s very bright and you can regulate it in 7 levels of brightness. But even with the brightest setup there is a strange dark shadow at the bottom of the screen, it’s not really annoying, but I’m a little bit concerned about a damage of the backlight…

All in all it’s a really nice Laptop and like like to work with it(especially having the freedom to sit on my balcony in the sun and working on the Laptop, how I  do it now, is just awesome) I’m not sure about the battery, but this will turn out later. At the moment I’m just enjoying the speed of my new toy!

Later on I gonna write a little bit about my experience with Gentoo Linux on it. So stay tuned.

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