Bought a T61

Haven't even seen it yet, but it's supposed to be a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with:

1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T7100 (Merom, I think, they call it)
3GB of RAM
80GB HDD (probably 5400rpm)
Intel Graphics X3100 (I assume)
1280x800 widescreen (I'm guessing 14.1" rather than 15.4", although both are possible)
DVD-RW/CD-RW recorder (Ultrabay Slim Super Multi-Burner Drive, I'm assuming)
two hours of battery life when gaming
a dock of some sort (has to be Ultrabase X6, I think)
mass of approx. 2.5kg not including the dock

The 14.1" widescreen would obviously be preferable in terms of portability, whereas the 15.4" widescreen version would be better in terms of potential battery life with a very significant margin, because it would seem that the 14.1" wide cannot be equipped with a nine-cell battery. BUT there might be hope, as a different page on the Lenovo site would suggest there is a 9-cell for the 14.1" wide. If this proves to be true, I really hope my T61 is a 14.1".

All in all, sounds like a promising 'puter and a great improvement over my customized X40. This one'll probably attract some botch jobs as well. The acronym SSD springs to mind, especially as I hear there's a hacked BIOS which increases SATA transfer rates on T61s. Also might consider a MB+CPU+GFX swap if a promising (and cheap) donor T61 crops up, as my future laptop in its current state (digest that) has the lowest spec components possible in those departments. Battery upgrade to a new 9-cell is inevitable, but there's not that much room for botching in replacing a battery. Or is there?

Certainly the most promising upgrades performance-wise would be the SSD (maybe a 40 or 60Gb OCZ Vertex 2) and the battery upgrade. The MB swap would be a huge project and would not really offer that much more bang for the extra buck. Would be a fun one, though. Stay tuned.

Further info: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T61