The T61 is one of Lenovo’s most powerful computers. Whether you’re seriously considering this computer or simply shopping around, this article contains valuable information on the features and performance of the T61. I bought my Thinkpad T61 in July, 2007, in preparation for my first year of college. I have now been using this laptop for a year, and it’s time for a T61 review.
Lenovo Thinkpad T61 Review: Pros
When running in high performance mode, the T61 performs remarkably well. It only lags when under serious strain, and I have never had a problem with overheating or restarting
The T61 handles the Vista operating system very well. Although Vista uses a full gigabyte of RAM simply running in the background, the T61 does well dealing with this stress.
The T61 comes equipped with very strong hinges that aren’t prone to breaking. After a year of constant use, the hinges still aren’t loose like they would be with other laptops.
The T61 is more customizable than many Windows laptops offered by other companies. All the options are available on the Lenovo website for further review.
Lenovo Thinkpad T61 Review: Cons
Despite claims to the contrary, the T61 has incredibly poor battery life. While Lenovo claims the batter can last over five hours, this is only true if you run the computer on the worst possible setting, which is more trouble than it’s worth. My battery life is typically two hours on the high performance mode.
Due to awkward USB port placement, I tend to use one port more frequently than the other two. Over the past year, the connection has become somewhat loose, and the T61 doesn’t always recognize when devices are plugged into the port. This is a very frustrating issue with the T61.
The speakers are of poor quality, incapable of playing loudly at all. Adding insult to injury, the location of the headphone jack at the front of the computer is very inconvenient. These problems apply only to the 14.1-inch display, as the 15.4 inch display has both louder speakers and better headphone jack placement.
The T61 comes preinstalled with all sorts of annoying applications from Lenovo. These are simply inferior versions of many other applications that are themselves unnecessary. I spent hours determining what it was that each program did and deciding whether to remove them from my startup menu. This was a particularly annoying aspect of purchasing the Thinkpad T61.
To put it simply, the T61 is not a pretty computer. It is solid black-dull, not shiny-and it is just not very attractive. If you’re hoping for a good-looking computer, you should look elsewhere.
The computer does not come with a windows installation disk. Lenovo claims that their system is better, as users often misplace these installation disks. This may be true, but I would certainly feel better having the disk. I’ve never figured out how exactly their system works, and I’m not sure what I would do in the event of a hard drive failure.
Lenovo Thinkpad T61 Review: Conclusions
When I bought the T61 a year ago, the sticker price on my top-of-the-line model was almost $2700. Through my college I was able to buy the computer for $1700, which I considered to be quite a deal. However, for what I spent, I was quite disappointed with the performance of the T61. I still feel that I would have gotten a better computer for less money had I gone with a Apple, HP, or Dell. That said, prices have fallen quite a bit since when I bought the T61. The same model that I bought now sells for roughly $1000, a price which I find to be quite reasonable. I would look into other computers before rushing out and buying this one, but if you don’t find any of the cons to be deal breakers, this is certainly a powerful machine. Make sure you upgrade to at least 2GB RAM, or the Vista operating system will not work well. I hope that you’ve found this Lenovo Thinkpad T61 Review helpful, and good luck shopping for your laptop!
