ThinkPad x61s
I have a new laptop. It is a ThinkPad X61s. Details:
- Processor: Intel(R) Core TM 2 Duo L7500 LV (1.6GHz, 4MBL2, 800MHzFSB)
- Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista Business 64 1
- Display: 12.1″ UltraLight XGA TFT, 2×3UltraConnect II antenna
- 4GB RAM – 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory
- Hard Drive: 160GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
- Battery: ThinkPad X60s Series 8 cell HighCapacity
- Warranty: 3 year on site 9×5 Next BusinessDay
Photos
These photo show the unpacking. The last two photos are of the laptop having trouble
with the USB CD drive. At the time I was trying to boot the PCBSD install CD.
About the laptop
People have asked me… why such a small laptop? I don’t need a workstation. I want a laptop.
I want it to be light. Long battery life. Smaller screen. Eh? Why? One word: planes.
Ever tried to use a laptop on a plane? There is very little room. Smaller is better.
The keyboard is nice. Very nice. The screen is sharp. Here is the
dmesg output
when running under PCBSD 1.5 i386.
Notice that there is about 3GB of RAM. The machine has 4GB. Hmm.
This is the reason I’m trying the 64 bit version.
FYI, when booting 64 bit, it froze on probing of ath0. The x61s has a switch on the front,
slightly underneath, which disables the wireless. I switched it off and tried again.
No good. It probes anyway. Let me try FreeBSD 7.0…
Dan and I had both hit the same issue, when using a usb cd/dvd drive with an x61 (or any other laptop) the bootloader spews…
As of 7.1 (currently in beta) it look like this has been resolved. The release notes indicate that usb booting in now supported. Just tested my laptop and 7.1-beta and i made it all the way to sysinstall 🙂
Nice to know i dont need an ultrabay to get bsd on my laptop, but i’m gonna wait for 7.1-release, only a few weeks away i imagine…
You’ve made a great choice there on the x61s, only other model i would recommend is the x300 – because of the ssd-disk, though im not sure how much longer battery time you would get with it.
We’ve sold a few x61s and they’re quite sturdy, the only one we’ve scrapped had a gigantic metal pipe dropped on it so it looked like a banana.