Intel's Core Duo Launch - Notebook Performance Revealed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 5, 2006 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Lenovo T60 - The Tangible Intangibles
The construction of the T60 is top notch, as is the case with all Thinkpads. The screen latches onto the rest of the notebook at two points, but the latch is operated by a single lever at the front of the notebook.
At around 5lbs, the T60 isn’t an ultraportable but it is light enough to carry around while offering the screen real estate to get some serious work done. While the X series is better suited for the constant traveler, the T series is good for the user that needs to get more of a desktop experience while sacrificing a bit of mobility.
On the right side of the notebook you’ve got the Thinkpad UltraBay, which on our sample was outfitted with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. You can replace the DVD drive with an extra battery that will supposedly bring the T60 up to a full 9 hours of battery life. Given what we’ve seen with the standard 6-cell battery, a second battery should have no problems almost doubling the battery life you get out of the box. We’d like to put that claim to the test, but once again we’ll have to wait for final hardware.
Next to the UltraBay there are two USB 2.0 ports stacked on top of one another.
On the back of the notebook there is the power connector for the AC adapter as well as vents to draw in cool air for the CPU’s heatsink.
The front of the notebook has an IR port as well as a button to manually disable the wireless adapter. Having the latter is always useful from a battery conservation standpoint, as well as being simply more convenient than trying to disable the wireless adapter in software.
On the left side of the notebook we’ve got some more vents for the CPU’s heatsink/fan, a VGA output, both phone and Ethernet jacks, mic-in and headphone-out, a vertical USB 2.0 port, Express Card slot and a legacy PC Card slot.
The T60 we reviewed was outfitted with a 14.1” SXGA+ screen with a native resolution of 1400 x 1050. The resolution and screen size are well matched for one another and was quite comfortable to work with, even for long periods of time.
The screen itself features a decent backlight and doesn’t use any high-contrast coating. The maximum setting on the backlight however isn’t the brightest we’ve seen, we would characterize it as about average for a screen of this size. The panel is sufficient for the needs of the T60 but it is by no means stellar.
As a Centrino Duo notebook, the T60 we reviewed relied on the integrated Intel graphics to drive the panel. Intel’s integrated graphics, as you can guess, work just fine for normal day to day tasks but don’t plan on getting any sort of real gaming done on this notebook.
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OvErHeAtInG - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
You hit the nail on the head. The increased power consumption would not be worth it. And IIRC was pointed out in the article, higher memory freq would provide a really minimal performance increase since the FSB is already lower bandwidth than that.psychobriggsy - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice the strange mention of three compaq laptops on page 13 IIRC of the review?Anyway, this looks like a good product from Intel which will keep them ahead in mobile areas for the foreseeable future. AMD may catch up of course, but we will see what they offer later this year. I'm sure that revision F will be good though, and DDR2 will reduce power consumption on AMD notebooks a bit more.
Stolichnaya - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Looks like the 'i' is going to crash on it's left side any time...nserra - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
You are all dreaming here, thinking that amd can release a processor (platform) as good as this for the notebook area. The only extra is the 64 bit.They lack all the others, and primary ones:
-Good platform from one of their partners.
-Low power chipset to couple with the processor.
-Brand recognition....
nidomus - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
coughfanboycoughBrucmack - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I'm normally not a spelling nazi, but this is the second time I've seen this on Anandtech, and it's really annoying...On page 5, the word you're looking for is "segue", not "segway".
Shark Tek - Thursday, January 5, 2006 - link
Great package but I don't have money for it :(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1908402,00.as...">Dell Inspiron E1705
Type: Gaming, General Purpose, Media
Operating System: MS Windows XP Media Center
Processor Name: Intel Pentium M T2500
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
RAM: 1024 MB
Hard Drive Capacity: 80 GB
Graphics: nVidia GeForce Go 7800GTX
Primary Optical Drive: Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW
Wireless: 802.11a/g
Screen Size: 17 inches
Screen Size Type: widescreen
System Weight: 8.2 lbs
Calin - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
But that isn't a portable laptop, is a towable one :(Shark Tek - Thursday, January 5, 2006 - link
That power consumption will be equal or better than previous Pentium-M generation. Now lets wait for AMD what they have to offer when they launch the Turion64 X2.They wont be sufficient to compete with "Core Duo" the only real advantages over intel are 64 bit support and cheaper cpu prices, nothing else.
Intel will leap forward a few more years in the mobile market.
Viditor - Thursday, January 5, 2006 - link
Keep in mind that you're just making an "enthusiastic guess" here...
AMD has started a new process of strained silicon on their 90nm chips which is specifically targeted at reducing power and increasing effeciency.
These are released in new steppings rather than new architectures (remember Rev E cut power requirements in half compared to previous generations of 90nm chips).
Even more important is the platforms...remember that the Turion isn't even 1 year old, and the platform designs are still minimal at best. It would be foolish to discount AMD at this point.
That said, Intel deserves hearty congratulations on the duo and it's platform! 2006 is going to be an interesting year...!