Richard has had one for a while now… on Thursday I finally took delivery of my new Thinkpad T60p, and I’ve spent much of the weekend getting my data transferred across from my ageing T40.
Things I love about this machine… The keyboard is really nice and snappy, much nicer feel than the T40.
The screen is amazing, so bright, so sharp… and I’m running it in 1600×1200. I was never able to run the T40 at that resolution; even though it supported it, the display was too small and it just wasn’t comfortable to do so… I can see myself dropping back to a lower resolution as time goes by, but this is great so far.
It connects to my home WLAN at 54Mbps, which again my T40 didn’t do – it was only managing 11Mbps. Unlike some of my colleagues, I do use the Access Connections software, and it works very nicely.
Things I’m not so sure about… the new Fn-key layout is a bit annoying. I’d become very used to hitting Fn-F3 to blank the screen, and on the T60p by default that appears to do something with the power scheme instead – it can be configured, but as it happens it doesn’t seem to let me blank the screen once I’ve locked it using Ctrl-Alt-Del (that worked on the T40).
There’s a Windows key – which has halved the size of the Alt key, meaning that I have to be more careful when hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del!
The Ultrabay HDD adapter delivered with the machine only takes SATA drives, which means I couldn’t just load my existing T40 disk in and copy files across. Fortunately, I then discovered that the Ultrabay adapter from the T40 slotted in nicely so I was able to get stuff copied over much more quickly than I’d originally expected.
I have a Microdrive and a 3G/GPRS PCMCIA card… and I spent some time trying to put them both into the card slot on the T60. I finally discovered that the T60 actually only has room for one PCMCIA Type II card – the top slot in the card bay only takes the new ExpressCard standard. I won’t be using both the Microdrive and the 3G card at the same time any more.
Finally, my machine doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner and didn’t come with a port replicator, but I can live with those limitations.
More to come as I learn more about any possible foibles.
Here’s a nice review of the T60.
About that Windows key – hitting locks the computer and obsoletes the combination. Those of us who are digitally challenged (as in having less then the normal complement of 10 digits) find this shortcut easier. You might like it too.
Another thing to note about the T60P is that many VMWare images fail if memory protection is turned on. This is easily reset inthe BIOS, however. Beat my head against the wall for about a week on that one.
The docking station lets me use a second monitor at home. Both screens at 1600×1200 and the T60 is still faster than the P4 tower it sits on top of. I fact, I’ve just about stopped using my personal PC in favor of the T60. This thing rocks!
Heh, heh, heh…the comment poster does not convert < and > tags, I see. That was supposed to read:
hitting <Windows-L> locks the computer and obsoletes the <CTRL-ALT-DEL> combination.
— T.Rob
Nice tip – didn’t know about that, and it saves the extra [Enter] to lock the screen, too.