Thinking of getting a Thinkpad T60

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:33 am

I've been trying to compile a short list of a suitable replacement for my 4 year old Toshiba Satellite..currently the Thinkpad T60 is in the lead.

So I thought I'd post here to see if anyone's got one and can tell me what the noise level's like and anything else of interest.

Cheers..

Anodyne · Post by **Anodyne** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:08 am

I have one for business and like it very much. Of course I am biased because my previous Pentium4 laptop by MPC was like a boat anchor and was constantly breaking down.

What I like best about my 15.4" T60 is its compact size and battery life. I have the extended battery pack (it sticks out the back about an extra inch) which lets it run 4-5 hours (depending on what I'm doing). It runs fairly cool and quiet, you can hear the fan inside ramp up whenever you do anything that works the video card harder but not too badly. You can hear the fan while it is running in a quiet room, though.

Performance-wise, it is fine although I must admit I was expecting a bit more. Multi-tasking to me does not seem any better than my single-core desktop at home. My T60 is a 2.0 gHz T2500 Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) but maybe my expectations were too high. Also I only have 1 Gb of RAM and I suspect that could be a bottleneck. This may not be a knock against the T60 - Maybe there is some WinXP setting that I do not have set right or maybe all the first Core Duo processors were over-hyped.

I would recommend the T60 - I don't have a lot of other laptops to compare it to, but quality-wise it is worlds better than my previous MPC! If you have specific questions I can try to answer them.

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:00 am

Thanks for that...I presume 15.4" is a typo as I believe they are only 14.1 and 15"

One question - does the fan(s) run all the time?

Anodyne · Post by **Anodyne** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:15 pm

Hmmm, I thought it was a 15.4 but I checked the IBM website, you're right, it must be a 15 inch.

Yes, I think the fan has to run all the time to circulate air through the chassis...There is an air vent on the side and back where you can see copper cooling fins inside. However, if you are not working on anything graphic-intensive, the fan is not running very loudly. You can just barely feel the air moving out of the vents. However, if you switch to something heavier-duty, like AutoCAD or a game, you can hear it 'whirr' up and feel a warmer breeze blow out. Usually I 'tune it out' after I have been working a while, but when I turn it off I do notice that the low hum is gone.

I would not say the T60 is noisy, but it is not silent either. As I said, my experience with laptops is somewhat limited, but this one is quieter than my last one. If it was not so close to me (by its nature a laptop is close to you) I probably wouldn't notice the hum. It is really just the sound of the air whooshing, I don't think it's really a fan noise.

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:45 am

Cheers for the additional info. I guess some of the whooshing will be the HDD anyway (from what I've read likely to be a Hitachi). My Tosh is basically silent bar HDD (Samsung) until it has to do anything of note..then the fan ramps up. I guess it has 3 levels all clearly noticeable, the highest being quite noisy. From what you've said the T60 sounds acceptable.

The other unit I was considering was the Macbook Pro which I believe runs very quiet but rather hot. I've got to make some more enquiries about that as I've heard that some PC apps still don't work quite as they should even with the Windows on Mac setup via Bootcamp.