The T61 (along with the X60/X61 series I reviewed previously) was the last of the great ThinkPads, with the classic design and features that Lenovo teased us with in the "Retro" 25th Anniversary ThinkPad, but failed to deliver.
Very good find, especially for $29. ThinkPads, even older ones are highly desirable machines imo, because of their durability, ease of repair, usability and price of used ones. I have a T420 from 2011, had it for 4 1/2 years now and I'm not getting rid of it anytime soon. It has taken me through high school and is now taking me through college. I love my ThinkPad.
I picked up a T61 on ebay for 30$ shipped still in original box. He took out the hard drive though. I threw a 240gb ssd, 6gb ddr2 ram and a T9500 with the bios update. It out performs my 300$ daily driver from 2017.
@@paulgjackson I'm waiting for battery to flash Middleton BIOS on my T61. It has T7100. Now thinking if play safe with Merom CPU T7800 CPU or take a risk of putting in Penryn T9300 CPU. I read about the analog vs digital temperature sensor. I know Middleton bios will remove the warning, but I wander how safe it is to run Penryn CPU on Merom board.
Nearly two years of having one, I love it. Still updates the drivers, still runs strong (especially with Nvidia), and plays music and edits videos really good. I could spend $500 on a newer laptop (I have it for backup incase my desktop needs work), but for what I do, it's not necessary. Ten years old, and still is great. Lenovo/IBM really put together quality products, they never really cut corners unlike a few other mfg's out there.
I have a few of those 4:3 14" T61s myself... one running Windows 10, one running Windows 7 (Japanese language), and one running Windows 2000... all with 8GB of RAM (in the case of Win2K, I put Advanced Server to get 8GB recognized and surprisingly all drivers work even with PAE enabled)
As usual, love your videos, and welcome to the ranks of T-61 fans. When my company forced me to upgrade to a new laptop a few years back, I went looking for one of these beasts, found A 15 inch version on ebay for $35 sans HDD, battery and memory. For another $20 on Ebay I upgraded the processor to a T7600, maxed out the memory to 8 gig from my big box o memory sticks and stuck in a 1 t drive. I highly recommend a SSD on this beast. Boot time is now 20 seconds from cold iron to desktop... And for when I need additional storage I've got the terabyte drive in an ultrabay.
If you use the laptop a lot at home, just take off the battery and just plug in the power cord. Really great video and you got the laptop for a really good price.
"just take off the battery and just plug in the power cord." No, this is useless. If you want to save the battery, stop charging at 90% (start recharging at 86%). Because High-Voltage charging damages LiIon cells extremely. You can do this in Lenovo Energy Manager.
segoiii My laptop is slower with the battery, is there something to fix it? Thats why i have always unplugged rhe battery if im using it at home for a long time. Been doing it since 2010 or so.
"My laptop is slower with the battery, is there something to fix it?" This shouldn´t be the case. I don´t know why. There is no special menu for the situation (running on AC with battery inside). As long as it isn´t deeply discharged, it should be okay to take it out, too. But if you just want to protect it, it isn´t necessary. As i said: LiIon extremely dislikes to be fully charged. It´s better to do 10 times 0% to 90% instead of 1 time 0% to 100%. Thta´s why, for example, Tesla recommends to stop at 90%. and only when doing long distances charging to 100%. LiIon is a bit like reversed PB battery. PB doesn´t like to be discharged below 30% while charging them to 100% is okay for them ...
Melvin Harris They were using it while Win7 was still in support, and I assume that's what they used for the machine. Best to say they either installed BypassESU on it, or chucked it for security lmao
Haha, "retro" I have an ibm lenovo thinkpad T60 from 2006, thats retro lol, if you're using the one he's saying is retro, I personally think its not, its pretty modern
I recommend that you flash the Middleton BIOS onto the Lenovo T61. With that you'd get the ability to put in a Core 2 Extreme, 8GB of RAM, and an SSD with fast speeds.
After seeing your ThinkPad X60 video (christmas 2017), I started searching for one, because I need a small, light, portable and powerful machine for the kind of work that I do on a laptop. So, after a week of searching for a perfect ThinkPad, I've settled on a X61. It has a T7100 Core 2 Duo, 3 GB of RAM and a 320 GB 5400 rpm HDD. It's my first ThinkPad and out of all the laptops that I own, it's the best. If you hadn't posted that video, I wouldn't have bought it
Back in November of last year I wanted a laptop for my personal needs for Christmas. I was thinking about buying a brand new Chromebook. Because they ain't that expensive and some were brand new at the time. But I did some research, and saw that some old (not really old) ThinkPads like the T410 and the T420 are still good machines today. So I instead bought a used ThinkPad T420 and it was my best decision ever. The keyboard is nice, and I instantly fell in love with the trackpoint. So much better than the trackpad
I pulled out a slightely newer thinkpad t400 from a dumpster in mint condition, it also has the very rare and good looking 1400X900 display. I also pulled out my best deal yet, a thinkpad x230 in near mint condition, still awaiting more... (typing this on my thinkpad t400
As an owner (also a thrift store find) of a T520 I LOVE the older generations of ThinkPads! Purpose built and beautifully designed to be a WORKHORSE..not something that is built for style. That being said seeing an earlier generation than what I own, the T61 looks interesting. Great find sir!
Love your videos! I recently got an IBM X60 for $40, love it! My main laptop is a ThinkPad x240, the TrackPoint sucks but I’m going to upgrade it to the normal track point on the x250. The x240 is speedy with the 500gb ssd I threw in it
The R61 is similar...I rescued a gently used one from a Goodwill in may area this week for only $20. Had a bad ram stick under the palmrest so it was in the "scrap laptop" bin. These and the T61 are both rugged and compact. The classic black design is indeed...timeless !
My T61 originally came with Vista too but after a few hours or sheer horror and realizing that nothing i wanted to run on it would run under vista i completely nuked it and installed my trusty Windows XP on it and you can tell that this machine is totally made to run perfect with that OS.
Haven't seen anyone else make a comment about this, but seeing as I've got a couple of R61's, I thought I'd pitch this in there. The holes on the bottom with the icon of the keyboard and the droplet are drains for spills. There shouldn't be any screws in those ones. That caught me a few times taking them apart and putting them back together again.
People typically didn't give Vista enough ram. There were also a lot of default services that were running that could be turned off to increase performance. It wasn't great but if setup correctly, was perfectly fine.
It was pretty rough at first, but most of that was from manufacturers not updating their drivers to support it properly. Then by the time Vista got pretty much fully sorted out MS released 7 so nobody really ever tried it.
because most peoples first experience with it was on a store bought PC with 512mb ram, 2ghz core 2 duo, and intel gma graphics. And also the UAC came up for literally doing anything.
I found one of those about 4 years ago at a thrift store ($25!) and it was in rough shape (missing keys, busted hinges). Ended up losing the graphics due to a heat issue (BGA desolder) -- somehow it had become hot enough to warp the chassis by the previous owner. Watched a video that LGR released and reflowed the main board and it came back to life. Ended up getting it back to working order. It's a very capable machine for its time. Loved it. Miss it too. I've had 3 T series IBM laptops and they're all great. T20, T30 and T61. Highly recommended if you can find them for a decent price.
VWestlife, I actually took a hard drive from a bios based Windows 10 laptop and put it in a 2009 EFI MacBook. Defying all odds, it booted into Windows 10! So yes, hard drive swapping usually works. In this case, I'm not sure how it pulled that off, but still amazing!
2:37. The Centrino isn't actually a processor series; in order for a laptop to qualify for the Centrino badge, there has to be an Intel Core processor of some type, no dedicated graphics (only Intel integrated graphics), Intel branded wireless cards, and/or Intel-provided Bluetooth cards.
it's not really. it had no hard drive, no battery, no charger...a functioning t60 can be had for $100 (max), and the only way he stayed below that is by already having a charger and HDD laying around (the latter of which he caddied with cardboard?!?), and buying a shitty battery, which is a mistake -- I would take a fully functioning one, in good condition, for $100 every time over this frankenstein.
I had a T61 for a couple years at work - - great machine - had a T20 before that which I still have along with some R40's - all good... I still prefer the the trackpoint over a trackpad (assuming you don't have a separate mouse).
Something i always loved about the T61 and T60 were the small touchpads. I have no idea why Lenovo felt it was necessary to size them up to dimensions where your wrist constantly touches the damn thing? >_< Also… you know you're living in the USA when things like ThinkPads are literally thrown after you in thriftstores for just a few pennies. :o Over here in Europe you would NEVER find such laptops that cheap anywhere. Unless with several components missing or sold as dead unit.
Apple popularized large touchpads and greedy Lenovo wanted piece of that market so they redesigned ThinkPads with MacBook in mind ( my theory ). What they don't understand is why we loved old "retro" design in the first place. Also anyone that i know and is a serious TP user is just using trackpoint no one uses that oversized piece of crap ( although poor trackpad performance is probably because of bad drivers or Windows ).
Yeah, that's why i even got a thinkpad ever since i could use one of a friend who had one and let me organize a few photos for him and burn a picture CD (i think it was on a T40 or R40). When i used it's trackpoint i was instantly convinced and just kept using that instead of the touchpad. On a Laptop without trackpoint i can see why people want a bigger touchpad but on a laptop WITH trackpoint having a oversized touchpad is the most ridiculous design flaw ever.
alcohol will take the sticker residue off btw. no damage to the rubber coating. just be gentle because heavy scrubbing would likely wear away the rubber coating since its just applied to plastic.
Currently, I'm using this old ThinkPad T61 that I recently put back together. Not such a bad experience with Windows XP so far. I'd say the speed of this machine can compete with my newer Dell Inspiron 3252. Fan is kinda noisy though. Sounds like it has bad bearings, but it runs smoothly. Came with Vista Home Basic.
I am a thinkpad enthusiast! I run an x220 with Linux, it’s a brilliant combination, we bought another one to run windows 7 for my daughter, good for homework and runs SIMS 4 very well. I think your channel was the incentive to get a thinkpad!
I once bought a ThinkPad for upwards of 200$ second hand. I tried to play games on it, but was annoyed that it only had certain sounds. I did not know at the time that it did not support OPL2 sound, although digital audio worked fine. I don't know where it is, but I might get it working again. Emulators worked great on it.
$29 + battery is an amazing bargain! The general opinion is that the T500 or W500 is identical but easier to upgrade. These tend to cost more though on Ebay, especially in the UK where prices are often stupidly high.
Just ressurected mine with a new ebay battery and Lubuntu. Runs very well for most daily task like coding, youtubing, etc and kinda fun in a retro minimalist sense.
Good condition, especially the Brezel and keyboard, but the fins of the radiator look slightly bent, could explain the noise of the fan. You can buy cheaply on ebay faster CPU, there is even a Quad COre modding how too. The LCD display can also be easily replaced or alternatively, if a good LCD is installed, it is possible to convert the old CCFL lighting to a LED Backlight. P.S. it's not the slowest CPU built in,was also sold with T5250, Pentium Dual Core T23x0 or Celeron M it is possible to install X9000 CPUs which are very cheap on eBay
remember i was taking a computer course just around the time Windows Vista was released and the teatcher was all excited about Vista and talking about it all the time 😄
I'm sure you can remove the video card and swap it for an Intel card. Unless it's soldered to the motherboard. This is coming from a mainly Dell enthusiast though. I'm pretty familiar with the Inspiron E-series and Latitude D-series. I know in the Inspiron 6400 that the dedicated GPU is connected via daughter card. I haven't actually seen a T61 with dedicated graphics.
@@FSM_Reviews Sadly it's soldered to the board on the T61. The nVidia versions were notorious for GPU failures, the integrated graphics and earlier T60(p) with ATi graphics didn't have the issue.
Regarding "Impossible to install a already installed HDD/SSD in to a different PC": I do that all the time (for testing). Since Windows Vista that works absolutely flawless, as long as you watch out for AHCI/IDE and GPU drivers, because switching from AMD/Intel/NV to something the likes can cause problems. And i like that Lenovo is thinking about bringing back the old style keyboard as an option on new ones. I'd love a Ryzen Mobile Thinkpad with the old style keyboard...
Ah, wonder if my old T61 still works.... first I gave it to my mother for basic web browsing, then it went to my brother as a spare until he got a new one. This made me feel that I want it back and see how it's doing. Probably no issues. I remember that my kids walked over it when they we're toddlers, didn't do anything to the beast. Indestructible.
Judging from the thumbnail I was hoping you had either found some Thinkpad "Retro" logos or had found a way to replicate the look and done it on your T61, lol. I'd love to have the multicolor Thinkpad logo on my X220t.
I have 5 T60's, 3 T61's and a T500 in my collection, all in relatively good condition which I got for free. Nicely built machines, but I wouldn't use them as a daily driver, they are just not fast enough. A few of mine have the same rattly fan issue too, so it may be a common problem.
I had one of these until very recently. Mine had the quadro graphics and c2d, great machine that served me really really well. I run linux primarily, so it sang on this hardware. Great find!
I have the W530 with 32gb of RAM and absolutely love it. It is a total beast of a laptop. I love the chiclet keyboard. I know people love to hate on the newer thinkpads but compared to other laptops they are pretty awesome.
There are quite a lot of 'unseen' features to the new type of Thinkpad: www.pcworld.co.nz/article/print/525149/research_development_behind_lenovo_t440s_ultrabook/; it would be nice to have a "best of both worlds"-type model...
I won't disagree they kind of lost their way with time. The W530 was possibly the last truly great thinkpad with downgrades in several ways after that, but even their newer P series is pretty darned nice and I'm likely going to eventually replace the 530 with one. Even though I have a backlit keyboard, I kind of love the overhead keyboard light built into the monitor bezel.
Serviced one of these a while ago. Old beast but quite well built. With an SSD, I bet it would still be decent enough for basic browsing and media playback.
To be honest, I can't stand how the display bezel is not symmetrical in the T61 (even the 4/3 display version is like that). You forget about it when you use it, but then you remember it again. But other than that, it's a great computer. My T60 also had a rattling fan. I lubricated it with a drop of motor oil. About 3 weeks later the noise started coming back, but it wasn't as bad as before. A few months later I lubricated it again, and it's still quiet enough for now.
Well it could be worse. The Display of the Thinkpad Edge 535 is too low and it feels like it's completely off. Makes you feel like you constantly have to look over the edge of the keyboard. Somehow Lenovo experimented with weird display bezels a lot.
A display with thick borders on both sides is ugly, but I'd prefer it to something asymmetrical. Of course I wouldn't complain in a situation like this one where the computer was a great deal and works fine, but it's definitely not the best design. I know ThinkPads aren't designed to be pretty, but very few models have this cosmetic flaw.
You can swap hard drives from Windows 98 PCs too. Windows 2000 and XP usually blue screen, and newer versions of Windows usually work well, and install correct drivers like in your case.
grandma has one similarly-specced. upgraded her to a T7700 and 4GB a while back. haven't heard any complaints for her very small workload. the 15.4" T61 was a different chassis. the widescreen T61 and T500 shared quite a number of similarities in parts. the T400 and T500 were technically the last of the great thinkpads, but you still have to replace some parts to get them to snuff-- the keyboard on the much later-branded models are flimsier underneath the newer into the 2010s they go, and thankfully uses the same connector and layout for both on the T400 and T500 for the T61. they were also the last 16:10 (or 8:5 if you really want to piss someone off) thinkpads that made sense. the improvements over the T61 including the ability to shove T9000/P9000 CPUs with 6MB of cache that have a faster FSB than the T61 make them much more desirable from a performance standpoint, and the W500 has a lot of interchangeable parts with the T500 as well, making parts-a-plenty on hand. some T500s also included switching Mobitlity HD3650 graphics, whereas it was an always enabled HD3450 with no way to turn it off on the T400. these models are getting extensively rare and I'm glad to say my T500 has one. it rarely gets turned on ever, but it does exist. some pressure modification is required to keep the GPU part of the heatsink properly clamped to the die so it doesn't fail, but it does the job. (if you ever get one of these and need to install the drivers, you need to install the Lenovo-supplied ATI/Intel switching graphics driver first, then update the Intel side of things afterwards with one of those drivers. from there, switching graphics is still selectable from the power manager battery tray icon context menu. )
besides the normal laptop issue with old well used machines after 10 years i.e. failing batteries & display screens, heat paste on processors drying up loosing cooling capacity so keep vents clean as W500 has screens that restrict cooling. the T61 has a couple others 1 the CPU likes to let go of solder pins even if not running as hot as the newer W500 units which also do it. then hardware limits are barely able to keep up with todays sound, video and processing needs maybe lagging of freezing a bit on some games etc. but with practice you can learn to fix/replace bad parts be careful with them even though they are true Road warriors with cages and drop protection. as parts are beginning to dry up. for sound/graphics use the W500 is twice as good. the 65watt PSU is gonna get warm so use the 90watt PSU for both TPs. the W520 uses a 175watt PSU so...
the CPU fans in the ThinkPads often need replacement after a few years because they just die off and wear out. Had to do this with my T410 once because it was totally dead and didn't really cool anymore. It was quite a hassle because it required some Laptop surgery because i had to take out the copper cooling vent and pipe as well but it was worth it. Afterwards the thing worked fine again and it sounded a lot healthier than before. So if you don't mind some hardware puzzling it's something you might wanna consider doing. Replacement parts are thankfully not that expensive.
I miss my dad's old T60. I wish he didn't have to get rid of it, but it was issued to him by IBM, so he had to turn it in after they issued him a W510, which gave him nothing but problems.
Very nice laptop I just bought the 4 x 3 aspect ratio version of this off eBay for £105. It has a 14 inch screen, 1024x768 resolution, a core 2 Duo T 7400 processor with 2 GB of RAM and dedicated Nvidia graphics. I'm really looking forward to using it.
i think lenovo chose a 16:9 display over a 19:10 or 4:3 display because they didn't expect to sell a lot of them so it would be unpractical and very expensive to make a relatively large 4:3 or 19:10 display when most 4:3 and 19:10 displays are smaller and used for smartphones, phones, feature phones and smart watches.
After watching this video I was inspired to fix my IBM T42 laptop. Right now I'm in the process of restoring it I would love to throw windows 7 on it but it can only support 2 gigs of really old ram and it has one of those older style hard drives with those needle like connectors on it . so I cant really do much as for upgrades, but I will be able to get a copy of windows xp running on it soon.
Definitely standing the test of time, I'd browse the web on one. Upgrade to 4GB if its not already there, put a SSD in there, and it will do very well. I've got a bunch of videos on my channel for upgrading these and doing maintenance. Keep the Thinkpad videos alive!
Omfg THAT WAS MY FIRST LAPTOP 😭😭 I still have it stowed away in my closet. Great laptop. I ran the hell out of that thing back in the day haha !! Edit: I am talking about the 1st thinkpad you showed, not the t61
old enough to only cost $50 on ebay which is where I got it not too long ago. I use this computer for collage work mostly, however it is my main PC when I'm not with my desktop.
I've used a laptop with pretty much exact the same specs (1280x800 screen, intel t7100 cpu and 4G of memory) for the last decade. Only recently I switched to a refurbished dell desktop machine because the laptop developed a bad case of "falling apart due to age and not so pleasant use". It served me well, just slow. I have to be honest, a CPU made after 2012 is a blessing.
I was a little late to the thinkpad game, so I prefer a touchpad to the eraser. Consequently, my biggest gripe about the modern thinkpads is that they removed the physical mouse buttons at the base of the touchpad! If they brought them back I'd definitely replace my 2 aging T530s, but they will do for now.
Just finished upgrading my T61 with the the middleton bios, 128GB SSD, 4GB ram, Penryn CPU, and WUXGA+ screen. Runs Linux like a beast (with a finely tuned custom kernel of course.) About to upgrade my T520. Thinking about getting a T60 to mess with CoreBoot/LibreBoot.
Did you have Merom CPU originally? I'm planning to upgrade from T7100 to T9300. I'll be flashing Middleton bios as soon as I get new battery from eBay (original is flat and not charging). I wander how Penryn CPU plays with that analog temp sensor, if you had Merom CPU originally.
We have exactly both the X60 and the T61 at home, sadly not working :(. My T61 was my laptop in sophomore year of high school and loved the keyboard. Ran XP and Windows 7's betas on this thing, and loved it!
This reminds me, I remember upgrading all my pc hardware, including a replacement HD, all with the same windows installation, and it worked fine (I imaged the existing drive and switched them). I think that windows install lasted like 6 years.
I've got one of these. Great computers for light web browsing and document stuff. Mine is currently running XP Business with the original hard drive intact. Might eventually upgrade the drive to a low capacity SSD.
You should get a T420, they're probably one of the newest machines with the old ThinkPad features. I personally use a T430 but I don't really mind the newer style keyboard, maybe I'm just used to it!
I have a ThinkPad T61p that I got a couple of years ago. It's a very rugged laptop, with metal hinges and supports. You probably can fix the noisy fan issue easily.
I have one and the one complaint I have is that the DDR2 memory is now pretty expensive to upgrade it from 4GB to 8GB. Because of this, I haven't verified it can run 8GB. I've heard contradictory comments.
I have a maxed out Thinkpad W500 which I was lucky enough to get for free, with the 1200p display, a 3.06ghz C2D T9900 as an upgrade to the T9600 that was in it originally (runs a lot cooler despite the higher clock speed due to the newer silicon stepping), 8gb of ram, 750gb Seagate Momentus SSHD running the OEM install of Vista Buisness with all the bells and bloatware that it comes with. Only issue with the machine the cropped up a while ago is the display open/closed switch has gone bad and starts flicking the screen on and off (and making the machine go to sleep) progressively faster as the machine warms up, despite the screen still being open, I think it’s the display cable that’s gone bad but I’m not entirely sure as I have no idea where the display open/closed switch is actually located. Otherwise it’s my favourite Thinkpad out of all of the Thinkpads in my collection.
I have 3 ThinkPads R61, R400 and R500, I use the R500 as my full time laptop, Core 3 Duo P7370 @2.00GHz 8GB RAM and a Kingston V300 128GB. Still impressed with how well it keeps up with most modern systems. I got it cheap off ebay, when it arrived I was shocked to find it was like brand new, no wear, no damage nothing. I appreciate them wanting to take the ThinkPad 25 back to their roots, but I dont think the quality is anywhere near that of the previous Thinkpads..... Plus most of them LOOK so outdated now, nobody will steal them :P Also when I swapped my desktop from an Optiplex 780 to a ThinkCentre M91p I never reinstalled Windows 10 and it works perfectly.......
