[ltp] Z61p/Z61m experiences needed

[Hamie]

On Thursday 18 January 2007 17:58, George Ruinelli wrote:
> Thank you all for your feedback
>
> Since 3 years, I'm working with a R40 and am happy with it. I'm a little
> bit unhappy because the negativ reports some of you wrote. I wanted to buy
> a T60 or T60p, but they aren't available anymore with a good resolution
> (15", min. 1400x1050) like Johannes also said.
>

My last laptop was an R50p (1600x1200 LCD) - bought in April 2004. The 
previous one before that was an A20p (1400x1050 LCD) - Bought in 2000 I think 
from memory. I can say that the 1600x1200 LCD was far better at the time than 
the 1400x1050 (Maybe due to 3 years extra use of course, but it was much 
broghter).

My current (6 weeks old) laptop is a z61m (Sorry, not a p). It has the core 2 
duo, and 1680x1050 LCD. I have 2GB of RAM (Came with 1GB, I bought another 
1GB from crucial.com/uk last week & spent 5 minutes fitting it.

> As I can say, the Z61p is the only one I could get from my studentshop,
> which has most the features I want. (Wouldn't buy it the normal way, it's
> to expensive)
>
> What I also would like to know:
> Is the screen glossy? (I don't think it is, but can't found infos about
> it). And how loud is the fan/how often is it running? My R40 is VERY
> silent, and I want to have again a silent machine like it.
>

The screen. It's not glossy. I sit with my back to the window at work, and 
leave the blinds open. I do get some glare off it, but it's pretty hard to 
tell the difference between my reflection in the screen (Wearing a black 
tShirt) and the reflection from the window itself... 

The fan is pretty quiet. The thing I notice most about my thinkpads is the HD 
noise. When new it's pretty quiet & it gets lounder as the laptop gets older. 
You can fix that for a few dollars from Singapore or HKG. No problems, so 
it's not a biggie... Although my r50p HD was a lot quieter than the 20GB one 
from the A20p (That I replaced with a 40GB and it's still going strong too).

Of course if I run it hard the temp & fan noise goes up, but I usually have it 
on 'ondemand' or 'conservative' so it's pretty cool anyway.

The ipw3945 wireless is a bit of a pain. There was a bit of debate about the 
policy daemon. Not sure why manufacutuers & vendors can't get their heads 
around the idea that a laptop is PORTABLE from one country to the next. 
basing channel & power use on where you bought the card with a proprietary 
daemon isn't necessarily any better than letting someone just set it.

The biggest complaint I have is the graphics chip. The z61m is an X1400 and 
the z61p is a FireGL5200. I couldn't get anything other than 1024x768 out of 
them without the proprietary ATI drivers. And they are pants! XV overlays 
crash the X server when you try to use them, and OpenGL overlays just crash 
the server when you start it up. And ATI just don't give a shit (I know, I 
logged a ticket & golt told again that I had to use what they felt like 
giving me, because they weren't even going to look at any linux problems). 
But I could rant about that all day & still get nowhere except frustration. 
AMD buying them seems to have done nothing AFAICS.


 
> George