Stuck on whether I should upgrade Thinkpad Z60M to Z61M

[infernojericho]

Here's the deal, I already own a high end Thinkpad T42, and I got another Widescreen Z60M (Pentium M 2.0Ghz, single core, 15' WSXGA, 1.5Gb RAM, 80GB SATA HDD, X600, DVD-RAM) last Christmas...tempted by its titanium cover. I thought it is a special limited edition but apprarently it is not...

I recently found out that Thinkpad Z60 series will be updated with the Z61 series (Intel Core Duo 2.0GHz T2500, 15' WSXGA, 512MBRAM, 100GB SATA HDD, X600, DVD-RAM, Bluetooth).

I am a regular gamer, and I do play games, I find the X600 128MB on my Z60M to be somewhat mediocre but still acceptable, I have to do a lot of tinkering with the game settings to get a playable framerate. The Z61m comes with X1400 128MB + Hypermemory.

Apart from that, I was quite surprised that the Z61m actually comes with a built in webcam!

I just read a review on the Z61M
(http/www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2987&review=Lenovo+%28IBM%29+ThinkPad+Z61m)
And I was quite surprised that the super pi on the Z61M (2.0Ghz Core Duo) took 1m 16s, while my Z60M (Pentium M 2.0Ghz) is only 20 seconds slower, at 1m 36s.

Here are the questions I am struggling with:
1. What are the performance boost from X600 to X1400?
2. Do you think I should sell my Z60M, and add some bucks for the Z61M? How much do you think the Z60M's worth these days?

I simply have no idea what to do, since I'm sure when Vista debuts next year, there'll be new notebooks with these Hybrid hard drives.

Is it worth all the hassle of upgrading the Z60m to Z61m for a slightly faster display and a Core Duo CPU? So should I wait for the summer of 2007 instead? Or sell my Z60M and add some $$$ for the Z61M???

Thanks!!!

 

[killernotebooks]

IBM's hold their value pretty well. You can usually get quite a bit for them on Ebay.

As far as the x600 to the x1400 you can check out my Mobile Graphic Comparison page and see that the x1400 is pretty low end. I do not have the x600 on there, but if I remember correct they are about the same thing.

You are going to get a decent overall boost going to the Core Duo ...

Even more for multimedia rendering and such...

I would recommend going with an x1600 GPU for gaming, I don't know if they have an upgrade like that (but secretly I know they don't, so this is where I slip the Wakazachi in there) which is going to be WAY better. Then I would go with a Killer Notebook because you could get the custom laser etched aluminum skin for your system and be the coolest of the cool. Even though I think the WXGA is a great resolution for 15.4" screens, I will soon be offering the WSXGA+ (which I think is too small). The nice part about the Wakazachi is that you aren't going to go through this hassle of upgrading your whole machine, you can just upgrade the processor to core-duo2, upgrade the hard drive to the hybrid hard drive..

If you saw American Psycho with Christian Bale, the business card scene... he would have the customized aluminum skin.