Lenovo ThinkPad T61

I had an original thinkpad and it worked great with no problems for 6 years. So when it came time to upgrade two and a half years ago of course I bought another thinkpad. Turns out they were bought by some… company called Lenovo, well they suck now. I get a blue screen of death every few weeks in the middle of something and routinely loose whatever I am working on. The fan has always been very loud with costumer service useless. And now the fan or hard drive has started making a griding sound and they say i need to spend hundreds of dollars on a new one. Forget that I am going to go buy a DELL.

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I have used several IBM ThinkPads/Lenovo Thinkpads in my lifetime and I must say, without a doubt, they are sturdy laptops. They feel bulletproof in your hands, which is a testament to their… construction. This particular model was a bit disappointing to me at first, but once I worked out the bugs and got used to it, it has been ok. Here's the story. Its a solid laptop, as I said. It is fast with nice features that you would expect from a laptop. What sets it apart from the rest is its build quality. I had a few issues with this model though. The keyboard responsiveness has changed since the days of my T20. They keys now feel more plastic is their response. That may not be the best way to put it, but they are more clicky I guess. That was trivial and only took a couple of uses to adjust. Now...for the major issue I had. After about an hour of use, this laptop would totally freeze up. I did some online research and found two culprits. I am not sure which one resolved it but I turned off the hard drive shock protection (Active Protection System) and the advanced power management. After turning off both off these (and anything else for that matter that was extraneous), the problem went away. I also updated all the drivers via the ThinkVantage software. I know, I know...as a technical support professional, I should have tried only one thing at a time, but I didn't. My suggestion is that if you encounter this issue, try each of my sugesstions. Hopefully you will not encounter this freezing issue though. My company has purchased a large quantity of these and mine was the only one of the bunch to exhibit this problem. One other thing...I have tried this on two separate wireless networks. I used to have a Linksys WRT54G and had no connectivity issues. With my new Linksys WRT610n router on the 2.4ghz "mixed" mode, this laptop will not connect. The only way I can get it to connect is to drop down from the "mixed" mode (which is Wireless B, G, and N) to the "B-G Mixed" mode. Additionally, I had to enable SSID broadcasting for this laptop to initially connect to the network. If you understand wireless, you know that SSID broadcasting does not have to be enable to join a wireless lan. This Intel card inside seems picky about it though. Best of luck to you. You will not regret purchasing this laptop or any other Lenovo for that matter. Even with the issues I experienced, I would buy more Lenovos in the future.

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I have had this laptop for about 6 weeks, and it has been a disappointment from the beginning. First of all, nothing is easy, nothing is intuitive, and the various "help" functions are worthless. (When I… type in "wireless," it comes back as "no results"????) The speakers are worthless -- at the highest volume it is difficult to hear. I didn't buy this to watch movies, but I can't even hear video news clips and YouTube clips. The touchpad's scrolling function is truly frustrating. The thing will suddenly bounce from top to bottom of a document. Sometimes you can scroll to where you want it, then it suddenly jumps up or down. Then you have to try to find where you were in the document again. Calls and e-mails to Lenovo weren't helpful, though I did get quick responses. They've been snooty and act like I'm too incompetent for them to bother with. There are other problems with hibernation and the thing shutting down for no reason. If someone likes this keyboard, I'm sure they'll like it, but I've had a hard time adjusting after years on Dells. I tried to return this computer, but there's a 21-day limit (while I was still under the impression that I was doing something wrong), and I didn't want to pay the 15% restocking fee. Unless you know that you like ThinkPads and are technically savvy, I wouldn't recommend this PC.

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The UC Berkeley EECS department decided to get one of these laptops for all incoming graduate students and I honestly don't know anyone who has been happy with this laptop. The fact is that I have never… owned such a poorly designed laptop. From the onset, one finds problems with the sound drivers, starting up from standby, random power cycling, displaying on projectors/monitors among a multitude of other extremely annoying bugs this laptop has. If you buy the ultra-bay battery, ThinkVantage will make sure to drain the life out of it so that it is almost unusable within a few months. Every once in awhile your computer will be on but will refuse to display anything. And maybe I'd give Lenovo the benefit of the doubt, but when everyone in the office has the same problems, I'd have to say Lenovo really botched the T61.

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