Da Life in Da Auzzie~: IBM T60p Review

The night before I came to Melbourne, My Sony VAIO S-58GP broke down. It was later determined to be caused by the motherboard.

Thus, I came to Australia without a laptop.

It was a total disaster.

Being new in Melbourne without many friends is already a real sad thing. To have totally NOTHING to do as I cannot go online and everything closes at 5pm is totally pathetic.

Through help from my dad's friend, Im finally told a few months later that a laptop is being sent to me to be used by me temporarily, and I was told that it will be a Toshiba machine.

Being at that state, sending me a Pentium 3 machine will be like a gift from heaven.

As the package arrives, the first thing I saw as i open the box, is this logo:

IBM?!

I have never planned or even thought about using an IBM machine. And after Lenovo taken over IBM's PC Division, my impression towards IBM machines is pretty bad...

However, all I could thought of is: "Anything will do, I just want to go online..."

Opening up the laptop lid, a small ATI logo attracted my attention...

I did the initial Windows setup, then checked the specifications....and got blew away by it:

Processor: Intel Core Duo T2600 2.16Ghz
RAM: 1GB
Hard Disk: 100GB
Screen: 15' SXGA (Maximum resolution 1600x1200)
Graphics Card: 256MB GDDR3 ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 (Will go up to 512MB if RAM is >= 1GB)
Others: Bluetooth, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, Infrared, Fingerprint Log-in

Only to realize, its a blardy workstation -_- The IBM Thinkpad T60p

The whole design of the laptop, what can i say, is the exact same as all of their laptops in the past. Black, metal hinges (i love that), IBM logo on the lower right, same look for the casing, a small LED light at the top center of the lid, etc etc...

Very simple design as well...laptops makers like HP, Acer, Sony are putting lots of buttons on their design, buttons like to play the player, stop, forward, backward, etc etc. As for IBM, only volume mute, volume up, volume down, and the ever so famous ThinkVantage blue button. I have to say, this is the best layout ever.

Who actually uses the other buttons except for these 4? I know i didnt.

The keyboard, another strong point of IBM, is smooth to type on and comfortable. Unlike some laptops with sloppy keys, the keys are firm and gives just enough hardness to the finger when pressed, making the typing experience a total....SYOK

As usual, it comes with a pointer and a touchpad, and this time, also a fingerprint sensor to log in, which, is getting very common in most of the new laptops. Im now using the finger log-in to log into windows instead of typing password...i would say, much much more convinient. Just make sure u still do remember the password just in case ;)

Now, the lid of all IBM looks the same from the beginning till the end, but the truth is the material used has been changing as time passes. As for this laptop, the lid is made out of carbon fibre, which give a real smooth/cool feeling when u slide your palm across it...and it is suppose to withstand pressure much better than plastics. Of course....Im not gonna try anything on it =P However, i did do a small test by pressing the lid while the lcd is on...usually on normal laptops that uses plastic, the lcd would have discoloration due to the pressure, for IBM, nada, coz the pressure never reached the lcd...this shows the higher durability of it compared to other.

The laptop comes with a 16x DVD-RAM Burner, and 3 USB ports, which 2 of them are place on the right side of the laptop together with the burner...

Ive tried the burner burning both dvds and cds, so far no problems...my VAIO used to give me some problems with burning cds, not sure why though...

However, the positioning of the 2 USB ports is a lil flawed. There are being placed one up one down very closely, which caused devices with slightly bigger usb plug to obstruct the other port.

The left side of the laptop consist of the third usb port, headphone and mircophone jacks, PCI-Express slots, Serial port, modem port, and network port. I would say it is equally satisfying. Something is lacking from this workstation though, which is a 1394 port. Considering this laptop being a workstation, a 1394 port should be included as it would be necessary, however for me only as a student user, i dun mind not having it. =P

Design of laptops is now following a trend of putting all the ports to both sides of the laptop instead of the back. This is due to the realization of the more ergonomical factor is contributes. IBM can be seen adapting to this trend, however, the power port is stillk being positioned behind the laptop, taking 1/3 of the space behind, leaving only 2/3 of the space for the battery. The battery that came with this laptop do bulges out a little, however, i think it is a 9 cell battery instead of a 6-cell that usually comes with new laptops.

Looking at the front of the laptop, the speakers are positioned on the front side facing downward, a flaw in this laptop. The speakers a soft, and facing downward made the sound hollow, I do need an extra speaker when i watch movies or listen to music. To the most left is the infrared port, which i tried and worked perfectly and the wireless on/off button, which is also common in most laptops.

The bottom of the laptop has all the usual stuff: Windows license, MAC Address, etc etc, and also a docking station's port, which i do plan to get once i save enough money =P

Looking into IBM's ThinkVantage functions, i am impressed. Usually most laptop manufacturer would customize their own utilities tools to allow users to maintain their own laptop. Main importance of these tools are of couse the user-friendly-ness and usability of it. IBM struck both the highest points compared to other laptops I've seen.

They are easy to use, really, one hit at the blue button, a screen of selection of tasks appears immediately:

You can customize what goes to the Quick Links, you can do tasks like backing up ur data, recovering ur backup, creating secure partition (a partition of ur choice of size with password protection), manage ur devices, update the systems, and many more...but the one i found most "fun" with, is the hard disk shock detection system.

Basically, the laptop is being placed with sensors that is able to detect the movement of the laptop. Thus if sudden movement like lifting the laptop up, dropping it, or even shaking the table the laptop is on, the software will automatically lock the hard disc immediately to avoid the needle in the disc to break or to scratch the disc itself, they even have visualization for it:

The program is able to detect how is the laptop being moved. So if u tilt the laptop tp ur right, the picture's laptop will tilt to the right as well, coool eh???

Now...I have been using this laptop for around 6 months, and i have to say that it does provide all my needs and satisfy all my demands. However, there is a few cliches i need to state...(time to get into the bad stuff =P)

The GPU overheats.

Yeaps...

I was playing Warcraft 3 campaigns (out of boredness and the only game i have right now), which i set all settings to the highest, including the resolution which is to 1600 x 1200 (the details are amazing), after playing around an hour, my laptop just shut off by itself. Total blank. Ive checked around online and in forums, which i concluded is most probably the overheating of the GPU. A disappointment indeed.

The LCD of the laptop is not the glossy kind where most new laptops have to enhance the colors. However, i do find it a positive point as when i was using my Sony laptop with the glossy screen, I can see reflections of lights on the ceilings clearly on my screen. It gets even worse if u work outdoors under the sun. Thus its really up to the user of which one they prefer.

This laptop weighs around 3kg. No matter what, it is a workstation, and for a workstation, it is pretty darn light. The impression of IBM machines being big n bulky is not supported by its own weight. =)

Anyways...

I do not have a more graphic-demanding game to test on this machine, thus not sure how far can the GPU bring me...will try it once i can get my hands on some games like half life 2 (waiting to buy the C&C 3 actually =P)

Might post about it when i try...but this is the first time using a workstation, and honestly im seriously in love with it. The only time Im this satisfied with a laptop was my Dell Inspiron 8200 with Radeon 9000 and 2.2Ghz P4-M, which was used by me for 4 years. =)