Comparing T61 and T61p
 

I'm looking at the Lenova T61 15" with discrete graphics and the T61p (mobile workstation) 15" with discrete graphics. There's not a huge difference in price.

Any advice?

Thanks.

The "p" designation is used for higher performance machines. But Thinkpads come in a gazillion configurations, your best bet is to get the precise model number of the two machines and compare them in the TABOOK

The T61p 15.4 inch comes standard with WSXGA+ resolution upgradeable to WUXGA. Graphics is a NVidia FX 570M.

The T61 15.4 inch comes standard with WXGA resolution upgradeable to WSXGA+ with a lesser graphics chip.

If you are thinking to go for a WSXGA+ resolution, the T61p will have faster graphics than T61.

http://www.mekong.net/tech/vidres.htm

I have been using 15 inch 1600x1200 UXGA on my home PC (A31p) in the past few years while using 14 inch 1400x1050 SXGA+ on my work PC (T41/T60). My wife had been using 15 inch SXGA+ (A31).

UXGA is very good when you are a multi-tasker with many windows open. It is harder on the eyes for text, not much difference for graphics. The SXGA+ especially in 15 inch size is a great size if you don't usually have many windows open. I need SXGA+ on my 14 inch office computer due to large spreadsheets.

The 'p' model is higher end vs the non p platforms. I have a T61p. It's a great desktop class laptop. I'm very happy with it, but it is a little on the heavy side and is quite large. If you plan on doing a lot of work on a plane or carrying it around a lot, you may want to get something smaller.

I just got a T60 with 15.4" WSXGA+ display. This is as high resolution as I am willing to go on this size. Any higher, my eyes will need to be uncomfortably close to the display to make out the words. On the other hand, I love the large desktop space I get.

To get an idea on how small the default text size will be, you can look at the screen's pixel density, usually in dots per inch (dpi) unit. This measurement is usually not readily available on manufacturers' page, but can be easily calculated from the resolution and size information available. There is even a handy calculator page: http://www.raydreams.com/prog/dpi.aspx

I have used all sorts of displays from 80dpi (15.4" XGA) to 200dpi (7.2" WXGA on Libretto), and found my comfort zone to be around 120dpi. For what it's worth, Windows' OS default is 96dpi.

Lenovo offers these 15" displays on T60 series:
15.4" WXGA 97dpi
15.4" WSXGA+ 130dpi
15.4" WUXGA 150dpi

Actually, my plan is to take my HP Pavillion to France (where I spend about 5 months a year) and leave it there and to use the Lenova in the US.

I would only travel with the Lenova if/when the HP conks out. Otherwise it will be my primary computer here.

Oh, my head is spinning. (I don't have the techie smarts for this.)

On the one hand, I do usually have open simultaneously IE7 with multiple tabs & streaming radio, Outlook, and either several spreadsheets or a couple of Publisher projects and/or a Photoshop project or 2.

Does that count as several windows?

On the other hand, I wear very strong bifocals and the resolution on my laptop 1280x800 pixels, 120 dpi (is it quite clear now that I've no clue what I'm talking about?) is as small as I can possible read comfortably.

FWIW, I am planning to go with 4GB ram.

The default display panel for the 61Tp is listed as 15.4 WXSGA+TFT and the System Graphics as NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (256MB Open GL).

Sorry to be such an idiot. I really appreciate the help.

pick the T61p
 

Another difference is warranty (most T61p models still come with the IBM style warranty, 3 year onsite service -- which is great). Most of the T61 models do not (they have 1 year carry-in warranty). That might be the biggest difference between your choices (or the specific models you are looking at might have identical warranties). Lenovo (and most other manufacturers) have really made their product lines confusing. While T61p is a higher end model, there are lots of T61s that are higher than some T61p models!!!
Based on your comments here and the "similar" pricing, the T61p is your best choice (no contest). It has a fabulous screen -- a lot better than most laptops -- so the small text size is fine. Also current Windows (and most apps such as Office) make it easy to increase the font size; dpi was an issue when the font size was not selectable in windows, and got smaller as the dpi increased (with no way to bring it back to the original size). Now high dpi displays are a *good* thing, and not to be avoided (as long as you have Vista or XP).

Be sure to get 64 bit Windows if you do get 4GB (32 bit windows uses 2GB max by default, up to 3.5GB by special tweaking, and can never use 4GB). More important than >2GB for most people (and for the app load you described) is getting 7200rpm hard drive. Vista with 2GB and 7200 rpm drive is generally faster than with 4GB and 5400 rpm drive, for most workloads, fwiw. Lenovo also offers the cool 1GB Readyboost flash on the motherboard option, which works great (but some report problems with this new technology). It works a lot better than using USB flash memory (speeds boot by a lot, over 50% faster).

With 4GB of main memory and 256MB of VRAM, the battery life of the T61p will be bad, even in standby. If you need good battery life, the T61 with 2GB of RAM will be a better choice. If the machine is plugged in most of the time, any amount of RAM will be ok. I use the small battery in my T60 with 2GB of RAM and the battery life is not great. The same batteries are used in the T61/T61p. We buy X60s for people who want great battery life.

If you are using 1280x800 WXGA now, 1920x1200 WUXGA will be too big of a jump. You probably should go to the store and find a 15.4 inch 1680x1050 WSXGA+ and see if you like it. WSXGA+ will allow you to show more on a larger desktop. I like being able to see corner of some window pane and click on it. Larger desk top allows you to do that. Actually I use both the laptop LCD (1400x1050) and a 20 inch monitor (1280x1024) side by side on my office desk. The smaller laptop LCD is used for the mail box and the larger monitor is used for work space.

My colleague use his 20 inch monitor at 800x600 to see better. Since LCD doesn't look good in non-native resolutions, he use a high end CRT.

We have always selected the 3 years onsite warranty for our Thinkpad purchases in the office. I had purchased 3 years depot warranty for my home Thinkpads. Unless you are buying something from the Lenovo "outlet store" web page, additional warranty is always an option.

The onsite warranty in general had seen a gradual degradation over the years. Now they may take up to a week to fix something due to longer lead time on parts. We now keep a spare Thinkpad in the office to mitigate this delay. The depot service had always been very good to me although I haven't had to send something in in the past few years. Even with this degradation, we still feel Thinkpads are better than other brands.

I found a PATA to CF adapter at Akihabara in Tokyo. So I loaded WindowsXP on a 2GB card and plugged it in a Thinkpad. While the booting is faster, 2GB for running WindowsXP is simply too small. 8GB is probably the minimum size to work well. May be I should add a HDD back in it to handle the swap files.

I am using 7200rpm drive in my home computer and frankly I can't tell the speed difference.

The T60 is a reasonably powerful business and personal laptop.

The T61p is a professional mobile workstation.

The primary difference here is the nVidia Quadra video card and the correspondingly higher resolution display found on the T61p.

Unless you are an architect, engineer, or product/machine designer or the like who needs to run powerful CAD/CAM programs then the OpenGL Quadro video card of the T61p will be complete overkill and will also result in much poorer battery life.

If you don’t already know that you need a video card like the Quadro to run your apps then you most likely will be far better suited with the T61.

I doubt you'll really benefit from the better graphics chip on the T61p judging by your usage patterns. I also don't think you need the super high resolution screen option on the T61p because things will be tiny.

I have a T42p with a 14" screen at 1400x1050 resolution and that's about as small on text size (or as big on DPI) as I'd go. The 1680x1050 resolution is what my 22" LCD monitor displays (and my eyes are quite happy with it). Shrinking that down to a 15.4" screen would make the text about the same size as my T42p.

You would need to provide the actual model numbers for them to compare.

I have a T61 that I love, although the additional bulk of widescreen is beginning to annoy me. I wish there were more T61/T61p 4:3 Thinkpads available in Australia/NZ.

My T61 was about $2k cheaper than the available T61p at the time - the T61p had a 2.4GHz CPU vs my 2.2GHz, and 2GB vs 1GB RAM (now 4GB) in the T61. Otherwise, video (Quadra), wireless (abgn + UMTS HSPA), etc were all the same.

That is the important point; Lenovo has effectively merged the 2 products so that they can be configured identically; it is the model number (3 digit) that counts, and not the T61 vs. T61p distinction. The chassis always was identical, but in the past the p series had big hardware differences; these are gone now. Both excellent choices.

The screen resolution (and quality) is an important consideration. Each of the available screen choices has a difference and if you are picky then it matters a lot. My personal favourite is the original 1400x1050 display, which is gorgeous, but some people cannot stand it. Now I would only buy the 1200x1600 (or 1920 in widescreen)because I really need the screen real estate. For mobile use, the 15.4 inch is a lot bulkier than the 14.1 -- amazing the difference an inch makes.

As for the battery life comments on this thread, they are true for XP but less true for Vista. One of the big improvements in Vista is power management (much of it due to the new driver model), so some of the high power graphics mobile chipsets will run in low-power mode for "desktop" use. Doubles the battery life. Turning off Aero increases it even more. My new Vista notebook really surprised me with the increased battery life, it wasn't something I expected.