Iain’s Blog

Last month we decided it was time to replace our creaky old laptops with something new and shiny. I’ve always liked the IBM ThinkPad range and after a bit of digging around I opted for the ThinkPad T60. The ‘T’ series is well up the model range and aimed like the majority of ThinkPads at the business / professional market.

In a previous job we deployed dozens of ThinkPads several years ago until IBM started to lose the pricing plot and were completely priced out of the market. They were just way too slow in keeping up with manufacturers like Acer & Dell etc which left comparable ThinkPad’s at almost twice the price of their competitors. Many people will pay extra for quality – but not many will pay double!

So it was always going to be interesting when the big corporate “nice but expensive” Personal Computing Division of IBM was sold off to the high volume Chinese company Lenovo in 2003.

ThinkPad pricing certainly started to return to more sensible levels following the merger but I hadn’t seen any recent ThinkPad’s and was interested to see if the original “quality” factor was still there.

So about the laptop then …

Aesthetics

Not much has changed here – in the last 10 years! You either love it or hate it I guess. Some subtle changes but broadly speaking this machine is the same sturdy & understated black that an original ThinkPad was 8 years ago. A bit slimmer – and a bit quieter but that’s about it. Good job I loved the old one then!

And it’s still got the inspirational ThinkLight – a feature which I proudly demonstrate to anyone who comes within striking distance! And a feature which almost always fails to impress! They obviously never use their laptop in the dark …

Performance

My model is based on the Intel Core Duo 2Ghz– Comes with 1Gb RAM but I added another 1Gb to give a total of 2GB. In my opinion this is really the minimum RAM for doing any real work under Windows Vista. Don’t know about the benchmarks but for all practical business purposes this machine is plenty fast!

Battery Life

Compared to my previous laptop the battery life is wonderful! But then I was only getting about 10 minutes before! I get about 3 hours of constant heavy use with both the WiFi and Bluetooth radios in constant use. That’s pretty good really – with more normal use, eg taking notes on and off, it could easily last all day. Practically speaking it means I can operate on mains in the office during the day- and don’t need to worry about power cables at home in the evening …

I’ve also got the optional combo power adapter which lets me run it from a 12v car supply – or from the seat power socket on a long haul flight …

Screen

I opted to go down a screen size from my previous laptop – from 15” to 14” – same resolution at 1400 x 1050. The smaller screen gives me a bit more portability – it’s lighter, smaller & gives slightly better battery life. I was worried that the high resolution on this physically smaller display would be hard to read – but the screen is clear and readable. I have noticed though that people who aren’t used to a high resolution display do find it hard to read – sometimes I knock it down to 1024×768 if doing a client demonstration etc. But then I found that on my previous 15” screen too. Hardly surprising I suppose when most clients are still running their 21” TFTs at 640×480!

And I just wish it was a wee touch brighter – usually it’s fine but on a bright day it’s just too dim.

Keyboard & Mouse

The usual IBM TrackPoint in the keyboard – and a good (but small) pad. The keyboard is the usual ThinkPad miracle – large keys with good travel – I’m never quite sure how they manage to fit it in! It does rattle a little when typing but that’s not really a criticism.

Connectivity

WiFi range seems good – better than any of my previous laptop/card combinations. Builtin Bluetooth is nice. And the bundled Lenovo tools manage the wireless connections really well – one of the best management utilities I’ve seen actually. The usual array of USB connections – but no firewire.

Operating System

The laptop came with Windows XP but this was quickly replaced with Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. As a pretty early adopter of Vista I was expecting driver problems – and I got driver problems! A good range of Vista drivers are available online but some are still a little on the buggy side. The Presentation module for instance which handles switching between the TFT & a projector just didn’t work at all – but the Vista controls do a fine job for this anyway. It is perfectly workable though with current drivers and I imagine the other minor niggles will be sorted out pretty quickly over the next few months.

Conclusion

So it would appear that Lenovo haven’t lost the ThinkPad touch! Still a quality laptop – and you’ll still pay slightly more for it – but in my opinion it’s well worth it. The ThinkPad oozes an understated quality that few other laptops can match. If only the screen was a little bit brighter it would be close to perfect!

My laptop gets pretty hard use on a daily basis so we’ll have to see if it sticks up to the rigors over the longer term ….

There are some good reviews of this machine online but here’s one that’s worth a read :-

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2767