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I have the opportunity to upgrade to a T61

M

manlymatt83

Lifer
Wasn't looking to "upgrade", but I found a T61 for a fairly good price, and I'm considering upgrading. It'll be not that much more money for me to sell my near-perfect-condition T42 and buy the T61.

I'm a bit confused on processors, etc. Was never a big hardware guy. My T42 has an Intel Centrino processor. The specs for the T61 are:

|TP889702U |Lenovo ThinkPad T61 8897-02U | | 1 | |
|CPUC2DLT527 |Core 2 Duo T5270 | | 1 | |
|MEM1GD26L |1G DDR2-667 | | 1 | |
|VCITX31 |Intel GMA X3100 | | 1 | |
|HDM80G5S |80G 5400rpm SATA HDD | | 1 | |
|CDTPC |CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive | | 1 | |
|NCI3945 |Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG | | 1 | |
|PCC2S9 |9 pin RS-232 PCMCIA serial port | | 1 | |
|MNTT14G |T series 14.1in XGA LCD | | 1 | |
|BATT616 |T61 6 cell Li-Ion battery | | 1 | |
|LPACT61 |T61 AC adapter + cable | | 1 | |

Can someone try to guide me into trying to figure out whether this is really that much better than my T42 I have now? My T42 has 1 GB RAM.
 
clock for clock the c2d is certainly going to be better than any centrino cpu. but centrinos in the T4x goes up to 2ghz, maybe over (i cant remember what Dothan topped out at). i still expect that youd be better off.

i went from a t40 to a t60, but my comparison wont do you any good, as the t60 i have is much better spec'd than the t40 was. (2gzh vs 1.5, 3gb vs 1.5gb)

id bump the ram up. get another 1gb stick at least, maybe a 2. ram is cheap now. im sure youd be very happy with the upgrade.

any way to know if the battery on the t61 is in good shape? it would suck if you had to replace that soon.
 
Depends on what you're going to use it for.
Also, if your T42 is a 15" SXGA+ screen, that's an IPS panel.. T61's are all TN's, so that in itself is a huge downgrade. If your T42 is a 14.1", that doesn't apply, IPS screens were only in 15" standard resolution form factor.

What are the specs or the 7-digit model of your T42?
That CPU is a Core2Duo which, as Sauron has said, is better than the Centrino, as it is dual core vs single core, even if it is only clocked at 1.4GHz.
That T61, according to Lenovo's 8897-02U page says it comes stock with 512MB of RAM, so that laptop has got either an extra stick in there, or was replaced by a 1GB stick.
You may also want to find out the condition of that battery, but that's not too difficult to replace, albeit expensive.

I myself upgraded from a T42 (2378-DXU) to my current T60 after it died.
Went from a Centrino 1.7GHz CPU to a C2D 1.66GHz T5500. The speeds were close enough that it didn't really matter, but that second core definitely helps out when I can use it. I went from a 60GB 7200RPM HD to an 80GB 5400RPM HD, and this was pretty much the most significant bottleneck. Windows XP boot times nearly doubled on the slower HD. This is also relatively easy to replace though.
RAM is very easy to replace, although it's cheaper for the T6x which uses DDR2 vs the T42's rather outdated and expensive DDR1.

Depending on what you do with the laptop, that integrated graphics can also be a hindrance, although if you don't need it, it does save you a lot of battery power over a discrete GPU.

One last question: Is your T42 suffering the loose GPU problem?
 
Centrino is not a CPU... it's actually a marketing device, or a very loosely-defined standard. Centrino is an Intel CPU, a specific Intel mobo (965?), and a specific Intel wireless chipset family. You may be confusing it with Celeron, which is a whole 'nother topic. I'm guessing you have a Pentium M in your T42... a "single core" version of the C2D in some ways. I don't think IBM ever made their T42 flagship notebook with a consumer-grade Celeron.

You'll mostly see 2 families of notebook CPUs right now, "Intel Core 2 Duo" and "Intel Core Duo". The only difference between them (and between them and the server grade "Xeons" for that matter) is the amount of L2 cache. Though cache will help performance across the board, it's biggest advantage is with video encoding , demanding games, or large spreadsheets. Basic file editing, internet browsing, movie watching, etc, will see a much smaller improvement, and you could easily get away with a "Core Duo". Just bringing it up b/c most salespeople will tell you Intel Core Duo sucks and it's really not the case.

Any T61 you go with should see a noticeable performance boost over a T42 (having just upgraded to a T61 from a T42P myself). Lenovo's very inexpensive 3-year mail-in warranty can't be beat either. Cheers.
 
Correct, I apologize for my mistake.
Centrino is a bit of a misnomer there, I should've said Pentium M to be specific.
However, as I understand it, Core Duo vs Core 2 Duo is more than just an L2 difference, Core2 is an updated architecture to the original Core design.
 
Originally posted by: DarkRogue
Core Duo vs Core 2 Duo is more than just an L2 difference, Core2 is an updated architecture to the original Core design.
Click to expand...

Correct. 2 different things though. My statement that the Pentium M is a single core version of a C2D is not really correct, but that's why I said "in some ways". Core evolved from Pentium M... so it was an oversimplification.

And I may have been mistaken about my terms... I thought Intel was calling it's snipped C2D a "core duo", but it looks like the brand is Pentium Dual Core. This is the one the salespeople will tell you is bad, but is the same thing as a C2D with 1/2 of the the cache snipped.

 
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