The ThinkPad line of laptops, originally owned by IBM and later sold to Lenovo, are business-class laptops designed to be portable without sacrificing performance. The ThinkPad T61 model, brought to market in 2007, is no exception. Though at 5 pounds and up, it is not the lightest ThinkPad, the T61 is thin and powerful, with dual-core processors and up to 4 gigabytes of memory.
Processor
Four processors were available as options for the T61: a Core Duo T7100 at 1.8 gigahertz (GHz), T7300 at 2 GHz, T7500 at 2.2 GHz and T7700 at 2.4 GHz. The first two processors, T7100 and T7300, have a 667-MHz front-side bus speed. The T7500 and T7700 both run at an FSB of 800 MHz. All four come with 4 MB of Level 2 (L2) cache. These are dual-core processors that pre-date both the Core 2 Duo and Core i3/i5/i7 Intel processor lines.
Memory
The T61 came with PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM running at 667 MHz. However, for a T61 built with a processor running at 800 MHz, the maximum RAM speed is up to 800 MHz. Standard RAM capacity choices for this model included 256 MB to 2 GB of RAM, but the T61 is upgradeable to as much as 4 GB of RAM. Because both RAM sticks are accessible through a panel on the laptop's back, upgrading is not difficult.
Screen and Graphics
Options for screen size included a regular 14.1-inch screen, a 14.1-inch widescreen and a 15.4-inch widescreen. The highest resolution, of 1920 by 1200 pixels, was available with a Wide Ultra eXtended Graphics Array (WUXGA) screen option, but the more mainstream resolution on a T61 is 1280 by 800 pixels. There were also three options for on-board graphics chipsets. The Intel options included PM965 or GM965 chipsets, or you could build the T61 with an nVidia Quadro with up to 256 MB of graphics memory. The Quadro models were NVS 140M and Quadro FX 570M.
Drives
The T61 uses a single hard drive of 60 to 160 gigabytes in capacity. These drives come in either 5400 or 7200 rpm speeds. The hard drive is easily upgradeable, although Lenovo recommends using the UltraBay slim drive adapter to add a second hard drive instead. The UltraBay slim bay on the T61 takes an optical drive, hard drive or battery. Available optical drives include CD-ROM, combo CD rewritable and DVD readers (CD-RW/DVD), DVD-ROM and combo CD rewritable and DVD writable (CD-RW/DVD-R) drives.
Size and Weight
The 14.1-inch T61 laptops start at 5 pounds and go up to 1.3 inches thick. For a 15.4-inch T61, weight starts at 5.9 pounds with a thickness of up to 1.37 inches. The 1.08-pound, 9-cell battery adds about a quarter of a pound to the total weight of either laptop.
Tags: hard drive, combo rewritable, dual-core processors, T7500 T7700, UltraBay slim