Lenovo Thinkpad T61? Still a good upgrade?

[The President]

I've been watching a few cheap second hand Lenovo T61 laptops on Ebay.
I have heard good things about the T61 + Pro tools combo Mbox 2, can anyone confirm this?

I currently have a old Toshiba M70 Laptop. Works very well with Pro tools 8 & previous versions. How ever it's getting tired & probably want an upgrade.

Any feedback regarding the T61 would be great.

[caruso7r]

Considering you can get an i-5 quad core for $600.00 with 4gigs of ram, a 500 gig drive and windows 7 included, What do you think? Click Here.
EDIT: I realize I didn't really answer you question, but if you look around a little you will find some great deals on new laptops.

[The President]

Thanks Caruso. My budget isn't very hefty. If you could shed some more light into which models would be pro tools friendly? Can't afford a MAC.

[Hotcrazyfruit]

Originally Posted by caruso7r

Considering you can get an i-5 quad core for $600.00 with 4gigs of ram, a 500 gig drive and windows 7 included, What do you think? Click Here.
EDIT: I realize I didn't really answer you question, but if you look around a little you will find some great deals on new laptops.

The Lenovo T60 and T61 are both 100% compatible with protools. Who knows what kind of fire wire chip sets are in a 600 dollar i5 laptop?

OP, my advice to you is to only upgrade if you find you simply can no longer do work on your machine. At the studio i worked at over the summer, we had a 9 year old mac pro dual 1.8GHz processor, with 1 gig of ram. Thats right, it lasted 9 years. Its still in service to this day, but i had to replace the hard drive, as on the last few days of the post gig, it died (the session was on an external).

Best of luck,

Nick

[caruso7r]

The President, If you're planning on upgrading to Pro Tools 9, the rules for windows 7 machines have changed as far as the type of drive you can run. Fortunately with W7 you can run usb drives as audio drives for PT so while the t61 is a supported machine, it won't have the horsepower you want to run PT9. That's why I suggested an i5 or more to get. If you have the time and luxury of trying some different Laptops from your local store, I would do just that as even though AVID has supported a few laptops on their list, there are plenty of others that will run PT9. For example I'm running PT 9 on a HP dv 6 2071 and it has integrated graphics, but I haven't had one hiccup with this machine running PT9 I did have a couple of issues when running PT8 but resolved them quickly. For some reason PT9 is more friendly with my HP and of course my MBP unibody also. I have around 10 computers, 4 which are running PT and the rest I have tested but they're not main PT machines. IMO you might be limiting yourself if you stay on 8 instead of upgrading to 9. The toshiba I gave you the link to may be worth trying out. Just my $.02

[The President]

Thanks alot for your opinions & help.

What kind of machine is going to allow me to run PT9? Keeping extreme costs out of the equation.

[albee1952]

One advantage of the T61 is that many of them(but not all, so always check) came with a separate graphics card. Another advantage is that the optical drive can be replaced with a second hard drive caddy(some other laptops can do this as well, but not all of them). A T61 is still in my sights until I have model numbers in hand as I can't afford to take a chance(already been thru that and bought 3 laptops in 1 year as the first 2 would not run PT at all).

[The President]

Quick question about the T61's. Do the the models with integrated graphics work fine with PT'8 as well?

[The President]

Quick question about the T61's. Do the the models with integrated graphics work fine with PT8 as well?

[aka21stCentury]

There was an early adopter of the Toshiba i5 in the link above. He had huge DPClatency issues and couldn't use it as an audio machine. I think the post was at Jule's forum www.gearslutz.com

I started a thread re: Windows machines with TI chipsets. I went to Best Buy with DPClat.exe on a thumb drive the Geek Squad wouldn't let me test them. Circuit City closed here. Haven't been to Frys. Go with the HP AVID approved for PTs 9.

Arrrg! Wish I could afford a new Macpro or 17 inch powerbook. My G-4 tower is a whiner (like me) and my silent Quad Core ASUS build is refusing to install XP, under AHCI I guess I have to slipstream a Disk. Arrg! Tried this with the Leopard installer as well to delete the 867 mHz limit G-4 CPU with Pacifist. Now I must learn ISO buster. It's a head buster.

The HP Laptops seem to be a proven commodity with 9, use what Digi has tested and forget about Lenova or IBM you never know what firewire chip is onboard. Lenova discontinued TI firewire, word on the street was at one time they were using Texas Instruments 1394 then firewire removed altogether because of surface mount component supply issues... there are only 4 plants making all these laptops in the World. Phillips has a virtual monopoly besides TI on surface mount components -- but that is changing for the worse with China entering into the equation. Namely RICOH, VIA, etc.