Lenovo T61

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Look & Feel	Good
Comfort & Portability	Satisfactory
Robustness & Durability	Excellent
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	High quality notebook
Disadvantages:	Higher price

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I tried new Lenovo T61 with configuration:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz
1GB RAM
nVidia Quadro 140M
100GB 7200RPM disc
14.1" wide screen 1440x900px
Webcamera, fingerprint reader
Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
6 cell battery

New thinkpad is traditionally whole black. It is very well built as usual. Nothing screapes and the keyboard is nice acurrate.Titan-Magnesium
hardeness was improved by hardening back part of chassis.The only thing where is the influence of Lenovo on IBM shown are the connectors for reproductors and microphone.
They were placed in front of laptop what is not so handsome.

After few hours of initial testing i revealed a small bug - it is impossible to change the backlight intensity for the display.

I tried to run a Linux system so i have to write some hints:
The graphics card works well with the newest drivers from nvidia. Wifi card has no oficiall drivers from Intel so i tried
ndiswrapper which some people made succesfull, but finally i upgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy beta and compiled mac80211 and iwlwifi
webcamera is not working.
Fingerprint reader is working with Thinkfinger
Sound was very hard, finally i resolved with ALSA from CVS but still it is not ideal - repro is working only via audio jack, internal reproductors are not playing.

So using linux is possible on this thinkpad but it will take a lot of time to adjust everything. The Thinkpad is still excellent quality and deserves buying eventhough the price is a little bit higher than for other simillar configurated laptops.