Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Brandon — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:58:20 GMT

I'm sold, I want the thinkpad. It looks simple, it looks sturdy. I just hope quality has improved since the last time I had one.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

chrisavis — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:37:40 GMT

I will cast my vote for the T61p as well. I used a T60p prior to thr T61p and it was my fave machine until this newer model came along. I use the T61p in the same hardware config Keith has but with different software. It is a rock solid hardware platform and Lenovo is leaps and bounds ahead of most vendors when it comes to driver support.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Freddie — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:49:10 GMT

I would be interested to see the results of the MBP's sleep versus the ThinkPad going into Hibernation.

When you put the MBP to sleep it writes all the contents of the machines RAM onto a page file on the internal hard drive. From my understanding this is more in line with the hibernation feature in Windows.

So if possible, match up the two machines with equal amounts of RAM and do a OS X Sleep vs. Vista Hibernate test and see if the results are more in line with each other.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Alex — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:57:39 GMT

I don't know how you managed to get quite such poor results but the latest model MacBook Pro that I'm using to write this seems quite a bit quicker; it appears to sleep almost instantly but does take a further 10 seconds or so before the hard disk actually stops.

Interestingly my venerable PowerBook G4 takes around 2 seconds to sleep, including parking the hard disk and even less time to resume, so that's probably where the Mac's reputation comes from.

The MacBook Pro, running 10.5.2, does boot and shut-down a lot more quickly than the PowerBook, running 10.4.11, (and more quickly than my old Dell laptop running XP can hibernate or resume).

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Keith Combs — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:03:29 GMT

Alex, my MBP is the 15.4", 2.2GHz model with 4GB of memory. It's essentially the same as the T61p. Same CPU, GPU and amount of memory.

When I get back from MMS next week, I'll run some hybernate tests on my T61p to see how much time is added to it.

I think the real point of this article, like the article on file copy performance, is that a GOOD Windows machine makes Windows Vista perform more on par with the Apple MacBook Pro and OS X 10.5.2 (my current version). A bad windows machine doesn't.

Apple has a small number of machines to worry about (models sold). Microsoft and the OEM channel has thousands, with thousands of devices and hundreds or thousands of applications.

Who has the advantage? Depends on how you look at it.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Chris — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:45:52 GMT

Does the sleep/resume/hibernate work on Linux for the T61P? I have a Macbook Pro almost for this feature alone. I would love to get a Thinkpad T61P, I just can't find any information on this for Linux.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Keith Combs — Mon, 19 May 2008 06:55:48 GMT

Chris,

I have not tested Linux sleep/resume. I can tell you SUSE runs pretty well on the T61p, especially after you grab the NVIDIA video drivers from nvidia.com.

I currently have SUSE Enterprise Server 10 SP1 installed and it runs very well. However as usual, the wireless drivers don't want to work. That always seems to be a pain with linux, especially for latest gen chipsets like the Intel 4965agn.

See the lenovo website at http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-48NT8D.html for linux support.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Chris — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:12:53 GMT

Keith,

Thank you! I have never seen that link before. Great to hear about the video, but can you comment on the power management. Sleep, resume, hibernate?

That would seal the deal for me if these work.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Keith Combs — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:36:37 GMT

Chris, unfortunately I don't any drives at the moment to go back and install one of the desktop linux distros to. I have SUSE Enterprise server installed and it's hardly designed for power management testing.

You could probably ask some questions at http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2 or some of the linux forums on the grid for some of that. I think linux is pretty we supported on the T61p.

My big three are always video, wired networking, and wireless networking. If I have good video support and wired networking, then I'm good for the testing I do. I don't use linux while traveling so I don't worry about wireless much unless I want to use it on the couch while watching TV.

Fortunately the Intel 4965agn wireless chipset has been out a while now and kernal support should be in the new Ubuntu 8 release. I have not tested it yet. I had to compile support into SLED 10 as I recall. It was several months ago.

The T61p runs Windows Vista x64 great. It also runs Windows XP really well. You have lots of OS choices.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Keith Combs — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:37:58 GMT

I changed my mind and downloaded SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP2 (x86) which was released this week. It screams on the T61p. As expected, the Intel 4965AGN wireless card support is now built-in to the kernel that shipped with SP2.

I downloaded the 169.12 NVIDIA video drivers and have full native resolution support for my t61p LCD. I have the 1680x1050 screen.

So far so good. I haven't tested suspend or hibernate, but the shutdown and startup times are good so evev if it doesn't work, that would be a small price to pay.

Vista is still better, but for the first time nearly everything is working "out of the box" for a linux distro. SUSE has been my fav for years. SP2 just affirms why.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Matt — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:20:51 GMT

Why don't both computers get to use their house internet browser and mail programs? You tested the Thinkpad with a Windows operating system, Windows internet browser, and Windows mail program. But the Mac was tested with Apple's OS, Apple's internet browser, but with Microsoft's mail program (just designed for Mac). I use Entourage on my Mac Book Pro daily and I love it, but it without a doubt runs much slower than iMail. My experience is that everything in Microsoft Office 08 for Mac runs very slow compared to every other Apple program. I'd like to see a test using Vista with IE and Outlook and then OS X with Safari and iMail (and if you think iMail is too simple, double team it with iCal). Or, another fair test would be Vista with IE and Word and OS X with Safari and Pages or also Powerpoint and Keynote. I don't think it's fair to test either operating system with a competitors product. Or, do the exact same test in bootcamp just to compare hardware only.

re: Who's your Daddy MacBook Pro? The ThinkPad T61p

Keith Combs — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:35:12 GMT

I haven't done any application testing, other than to see how long it took for a web browser to launch and hit my homepage.