The last couple of weeks I have been carrying around a Lenovo T61 notebook, the latest in the Lenovo T series. This notebook is a significant departure from the T60 that I had previously been carrying.
Specs
It has a clear bright LCD screen that is a 14.1" widescreen with a 1440x900 resolution and sturdy hinges that minimize shake while traveling. It also comes in a 15.4 widescreen,. Powering the graphics in our model you have an NVidia Quatro NVS with 128MB of RAM. This was good enough to score me 4.0 in Windows Experience index. This might be low because of drivers. You can opt for an Intel card with 256mb of memory if you are so inclined.
It comes with the latest Intel Centrino chipset a Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 that rated a 5.1 on the Windows Experience Index and 1GB of memory, that we bumped to 2GB. I wouldn't recommend anything less if you are planning on running Windows Vista.
It comes standard with a TPM 1.2 chip and compatible BIOS that makes secureing your drive with Bitlocker a breeze. Further specs on the Lenovo site here.
Design
With the business traveler in mind there are a number of new design points that separate this model from its predecessors, all of which are improvements. One of the first thing you will likely notice is that the audio ports have been moved to the front of the notebook for ease of use. No more propping a booted laptop on its side to find the headphone jack when you are cramped in the middle seat on your flight home from wherever you had just been. You will also find that it is now sporting a 1394 port also located on the front. Another noticeable change is the speakers have been relocated to the top of the keyboard.
Drivers
As with any platform that will ship after Windows Vista you will have to load a few drivers off the Lenovo web site if you are doing a clean install, you can grab all the downloads you need here. I have tried both x86 and x64 drivers on the notebook and all of the drivers performed great.
Summary
Lenovo has kept the business focus of the Thinkpad notebook line without being afraid to innovate. Staying true to the essence of the line they have built a solid performer ideal for the business traveler. My only complaint so far has been battery life. I had heard claims of significantly better batter life possible on the new lines, but I have yet to see that in my testing. Final rating - 4.5 out of 5 stars