By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com
13/06/2007
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,40616226p,00.htm

Unless you put them side by side, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the physical differences between the two new Centrino laptops from Lenovo, the ThinkPad T61 and the ThinkPad R61. Both 14-inch models include all the important parts of Intel's revamped Centrino platform, including new Core 2 Duo CPUs, extra onboard Turbo Memory (for boosting access times), and 802.11n Wi-Fi. While the slightly bulkier Centrino Duo R61 aims for the sweet spot in the price-performance matrix, the more expensive Centrino Pro T61 is a little thinner, a little lighter, and adds Intel's Active Management Technology, allowing the IT department to manage the system from afar, even when it's in sleep mode or powered down.

Editors' note: This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design
Despite the new technology, this is still largely the same black, boxy ThinkPad you've come to know and perhaps love, but Lenovo is starting to add consumer-friendly features such as optional Webcams and media card readers. It's still pricey when configured for power users, but the typical excellent ThinkPad build quality makes this a system that should enjoy a long lifespan.

	The T61 does not depart from its black slab image. (Click for larger image)

Like the Lenovo R61, the T61 features a widescreen display, which is fast becoming the norm even in business-minded laptops. The chassis itself has been reinforced with a new internal roll cage, replacing the traditional solid magnesium alloy cover. The slightly concave roll cage, hidden under a composite cover, protects the LCD while helping Wi-Fi reception, which Lenovo claims can be negatively affected by an old-fashioned full magnesium alloy cover.

We're also firm fans of Lenovo's extremely small AC adapters. There's little point in carrying around a lightweight laptop if all the extra room in your bag is taken up by a huge power brick. Lenovo's two-prong adapter, in contrast, weighs around 230g and the brick itself measures just 101.6 x 38.1 x 25.4mm.

The road-ready design includes sturdy steel hinges and a shock-mounted hard drive. The ThinkPad keyboard is still one of the best laptop keyboards available, offering an extremely comfortable typing experience. The T61, in true Lenovo fashion, also features both an eraser-head pointing stick and a touchpad, each of which has a set of mouse buttons (the top set includes a scroll button in the middle). Above the keyboard are three handy volume buttons--the extent of the system's dedicated multimedia controls--and a blue ThinkVantage button which summons Lenovo's helpful preinstalled support-and-configuration utility. Our T61 review unit was missing the optional Webcam found on the R61.

Features
The 14.1-inch widescreen LCD display offers a 1,440 x 900 native resolution, which is a bit finer than the 1,280 x 800 resolution commonly found on 14- and 15-inch laptops. Text and icons are highly readable, and the screen has a matte finish, which we generally prefer to the glossy screens found on many consumer laptops.

The screen has a higher resolution than some 15-inch screens. (Click for larger image)

The ports and connections on the T61 are in line with what you'd expect from a mainstream business laptop, although we'd have liked to see one more USB port and an S-video output. The ExpressCard slot can be swapped for a media card reader in Lenovo's online configuratore. Our review unit didn't have Bluetooth (which is an available option), but it did offer a built-in 802.11n antenna for the very latest in fast Wi-Fi connection speeds. You will, of course, need a wireless 802.11n router to take advantage of it.

One major feature the Centrino Pro ThinkPad T61 has over the Centrino Duo R61 is the inclusion of Intel's Active Management Technology, where your IT department can remotely fix, update, or even recover your system after an OS failure, if you're still connected to your company network--even if the system is in sleep mode. It's a boon for large, enterprise organizations because your IT staff can push updates to all of the PCs on your network at once; it saves you from having to physically visit cubicles where the PC or laptop isn't running.

Performance And Battery Life
The Lenovo ThinkPad T61 can be configured with any of Intel's Santa Rosa-compliant Core 2 Duo CPUs, from the 1.8GHz T7100 to the 2.4GHz T7700. Our review unit included the middle-of-the-road 2.0GHz T7300, along with 2GB of RAM (expandable to 4GB) and a 100GB 7,200rpm hard drive. You can bump the hard drive up to 160GB, but the larger drives run at the slower 5,400rpm speed.

Like the other Santa Rosa systems we've tested, the T61 offered excellent performance but fell slightly behind its less-expensive cousin, the Lenovo ThinkPad R61, because our build of that model had a faster T7500 CPU. It was also slower than the non-Santa Rosa Lenovo T60, a long-time laptop favorite. The T60 has a slightly faster, although older, T7600 CPU, showing that the new Centrino Duo platform won't drastically change your computing experience. We expect to see larger performance gains once 800MHz memory is available for laptops later in the year.

In anecdotal testing, the T61 felt fast and was stutter-free, even while multitasking--but we'd expect nothing less from any recent laptop.

While the 128MB Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M graphics card is an option in both the T61 and R61 ThinkPads, our T61 stuck with the integrated Intel X3100 GPU, which Lenovo says will give you better battery life than running a high-powered graphics card. The system ran for an impressive 2 hours 29 minutes on our DVD battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery which sticks out a few inches from the rear of the system. That's a little more than 20 minutes more than the R61, which has the discrete video card option. Keep in mind, our DVD battery-drain test is especially grueling, so you can expect longer life from casual Web surfing and office use.


System specifications

Lenovo ThinkPad R61
Windows Vista Business Edition; 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M; 100GB Hitachi 7,200rpm

Lenovo ThinkPad T60
Windows Vista Business Edition; 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon V5250; 100GB Hitachi 7,200rpm

Lenovo Thinkpad T61
Windows Vista Business Edition; 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 965GM Express; 100GB Seagate 7,200rpm

Service And Support
The laptop comes with three-year international carry-in warranty at the Lenovo service center. The system battery, however, has only a one-year carry-in warranty. For Singapore users, an alternative to making a trip to the service center is to send it via the postal service for free during the warranty period. On Lenovo's support Web site, you can register your warranty after which the site will automatically detect your machine configuration and offer the appropriate support. A knowledge database is available for simple troubleshooting. Updated drivers, manuals and software upgrades can be downloaded as well. If the issue requires a professional assistance, a telephone helpline is available during working hours from Monday to Friday which will dispatch a technician onsite if required.