Lenovo ThinkPad T60 Core 2 Duo Review

If you want to get something better than “just another laptop”, then Lenovo’s ThinkPad series is one of those different choices. Just think a little about its history - the design was inspired by a traditional black-lacquered Japanese lunch box, but the features were always ahead of the competition, or simply different, and today we’re going to talk about the Lenovo ThinkPad T60 Core 2 Duo.

The ThinkPad T model is a thin and light notebook, targeting the corporate market. The T60 series that we’re talking about today features the Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile technology, and its most interesting feature is the VMX enabled BIOS that allows its users to run fully virtualized operating systems via Xen or Vmware.

When thinking about my personal tastes, I found that the ThinkPad is the ideal choice - it comes in black, and that’s all I ever needed (it’s just like the shoes, but I guess there are more people having red shoes than red laptops…).

On the other hand, this computer is well built and reliable, and the fact that the hard drive is mounted on rubber that acts like a bumper, protecting it from shocks, while the active protection system pauses the drive when any sudden move is detected.

At last, the clam shell two latch design of the lid takes care of keeping the laptop closed when it should stay that way. Now, enough talk, let’s see the technical specifications of a ThinkPad T60 2623 model that’s priced around 1,700$, shall we?

Main technical specifications:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2 GHz/4MB L2 Cache)
Hard Drive: 100 GB SATA @ 5400RPM
Screen: 14.1″ SXGA+ TFT (1400 x 1050)
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 HyperMemory, 128MB on-board
RAM: 512GB DDR2 SDRAM @533 MHz (2×512MB)
Hard Drive: 100GB (5,400rpm)
Optical Drive: DVD Burner / CD Burner
Wireless: Intel Pro wireless 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express, Bluetooth 2.0, Infrared
Weight: 5.5 pounds
Dimensions: 1.0″ (H) x 10.0 ” (W) x 12.2″ (D)
Ports/Slots: 3xUSB 2.0, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 56K modem, VGA, Type II PC Card Slot, Express Card Slot, Port replicato

The Good:

• simple yet excellent design
• comes with Windows XP Professional
• excellent battery life
• it doesn’t heat up and it doesn’t make noise at all
• really good keyboard

The Bad:

• the screen’s quality doesn’t keep up with the rest of the computer
• there is simply too much preinstalled software that starts once you boot Windows (of course, you can remove it, but…)
• may be considered expensive by those looking for the best performance to price ratio

Conclusion:

The ThinkPad is a computer that you can rely on, and when I say this, I mean it. Its interesting features include a keyboard light and a fingerprint reader, and despite the fact that is priced higher than other notebooks that can get about the same benchmark results, there’s one thing that pushes the ThinkPad in front of the crowd - pay more now, be happy with it one, two, or three years later.

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