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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stmok - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
I admit it, I have no use for the Weener (Windows) keys. Its a pointless feature to have if you use other OSs or migrating AWAY from Windows. Its like Nvidia's chipset firewall solution...Another pointless feature for "Windows Only" users. (Which causes more trouble than its really worth).With Lenovo adopting all these "everyone else has it" features, its not the same ThinkPad anymore. They don't stand out technologically, like they used to.
Granted, the fingerprint scanner and keyboard light is interesting, but that's all there is. My old R40 ThinkPad has a keyboard light as well. So I guess the only thing is the fingerprint scanner.
As for ThinkVantage, that is useful...To some extent.
I tried to "clean restore" WinXP from the hidden partition (as Windows requires a clean installation after 2 or more years of use), and I get a crapload of errors. The Trackpoint or Touchpad seem to be no longer detected, and so on. And other error messages. I couldn't get past finishing the install. So I unhid that WinXP Partition, and formatted the sucker clean, gained 8GB back of HDD space. Which is enough for a quadriple boot...Win2k, Slackware, FreeBSD and Solaris. (And they all work fine with the Trackpoint/Touchpad).
Scarceas - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
I think Apple will focus their Intel support on the Yonah designs. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Mac Mini or something that was essentially a Yonah desktop.And I am quite glad that IBM/Lenovo are finally putting a Windows key on their Thinkpads!
Hope that carries over to their rack-mount KVM's, as well. Drives me nuts....
littlebitstrouds - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I wanna see a desktop board with this chip in it... then overclock the heck out of it. I bet that thing would scream.raskren - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Hmmm...Looks like an extremely competitive if not flat-out better Intel solution.
So where is Beenthere's a.k.a. CRAMITPAL's canned comment?
stateofbeasley - Sunday, January 8, 2006 - link
The fanboi is probably too demoralized to come out and troll. The numbers don't lie -- Core Duo is fast and efficient, and the Centrino Duo stuff is going to make Intel a pile of money.Beenthere tried to claim the opposite in his comments re the AnandTech preview, and he got run over like a Prescott in the way of an Athlon 64. Come to think of it, Beenthere's claims about Core Duo were about as stupid as claiming Prescott >>> Athlon 64.
uly - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
"Intel 3945ABG Wireless solution""starting to look at platforms and solutions"
"the 3945ABG wireless solution is what is known as"
"915 chipset and 2915ABG wireless solution"
"wireless solutions have both been undergoing reductions"
"Pricing (with 945GM chipset and wireless solution)"
"it did give us a nice solution"
Another definition of 'solution' is something that is diluted or watered down. Wonder if Intel appreciates having their products looked upon from that perspective. (cred: buzzkiller dot net)
Anand, whenever you find yourself about to type 'solution' in the future, please think, do I really want to sound like I'm copying from the presskit?
Other than that, nice review.
raskren - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
You read this hunting for the word "solution." Please, this is part of everyday speech, not a buzzword.uly - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
It's part of everyday speech - for PR guys. It's also pretentious - the customer should decide the solution for himself.> You read this hunting for the word "solution."
No, I read it and buzzwords like solution kept popping out at me, so I used grep to do a quick wordcount. Seven times repeating mindless marketing drivel! C'mon Anand, I know you can write better than this.
sprockkets - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
The inside meant that this computer had an Intel chip inside meaning better performance than those other people, way back in 1993, not that Intel focused on the insides of the computer.Watch it and this will actually be bad for them. All those people won't even recognize the intel they knew with the new logo. "Leap Ahead"? How original.
henroldus - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
the only mistake in this excellent article is that they use the wrong memory with ddr2-533.the new core Duo supports DDR2-667.
I am wrong when I mean that this could be a bottleneck?
maybe the performance will raise with this memory but also the powerconsumption because of the higher frequency.