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Lenovo Thinkpad R61

80

Very Good

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3 User Reviews | add yours »

Pros
Comfortable keyboard
Cons
Poor sound

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Lenovo Thinkpad R61 Review

by Carla Thornton

Slim size, light weight, and keyboard illumination make the R61 ideal for taking on the road.

A classic ThinkPad, the R61 is full of nice features you don't usually find in a laptop, such as the ThinkLight, an LED that illuminates the keyboard. The R61's 14.1-inch screen and 5.8-pound weight make it an ideal travel companion, too. For a work-oriented notebook decked out with all the trimmings, this model is hard to beat.

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The first-rate keyboard includes both a touchpad and an eraserhead nub, as well as dedicated Internet forward and back buttons. An integrated fingerprint reader, located in the right palmrest, makes log-ins a breeze once you set it up. You can hot-swap devices--the dual-layer DVD drive or an extra battery, among others--in and out of the right-side modular bay with one hand. On-screen documentation and system recovery utilities are just a button press away.

The 2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7500-equipped R61 performed admirably in our speed tests, with a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 80. The R61's 3-hour, 19-minute tested battery life is good.

The $2004 ThinkPad R61 is a nicely designed machine that deserves consideration as a travel-worthy portable.

Carla Thornton

User Reviews for Lenovo Thinkpad R61

Reviewed by: altos

Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks

Strengths: Build quality, keyboard, Lenovo (IBM) sofware.

Weaknesses: Bundled trial software (crapware). It takes too long to remove MS Office and Symantec trial versions.

Overall Evaluation: I totally disagree with "satishnag". The Thinkvantage suite is excellent. It even lets you configure the ethernet adaptor for multiple connections. One can have a setting for the office, another one for home, etc. The additional utilities such as moving user accounts and files are much better than the ones built into MS WIndows. It has been the best new Windows computer experience. I have used Dell laptops for years. I think I became a Lenovo convert. I agree with the PCW review, it is an excellent machine at a good price.
Reviewed by: satishnag

Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks

Strengths: The laptop came with decent look & feel.

Weaknesses: I got this laptop online & its one of the worst customer service I encountered... I did not like the LCD screen as it was not as mentioned on there site & it was dull... & wireless network did work... the thinkvantage products that they send are useless & actually causes all the issues. Called up the IBM tech support for troubleshooting & they asked me to send the 2 day old laptop to there Solectron outsourced partner...& they asked me to download latest drivers... I refused to sent it them to repair & their incompetent customer support would not listen to the problems & they asked me to 15% restocking fees... I returned the laptop anyway & I did not want to feel bad all the while I was use it....

Overall Evaluation: Please avoid the laptops at all cost, unless your company is buying it for you.

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