Today's notebook PCs tend to fall into two categories; those you can carry around with you, and those likely to give you a hernia.
Lenovo's Thinkpad X61 sits firmly in the former camp. Weighing just 1.63kg, this ultraportable is the perfect travelling companion. Interestingly, this model is the first we've seen without the old IBM badge.
While it isn't built like a tank, the X61 is undeniably well made. The back of the 12.1in screen seems a little flimsy but, on the whole, the magnesium alloy chassis is certainly up to the rigours of day-to-day travel.
The keyboard also has a good, solid feel to it, but when typing at speed we kept catching our fingers on Lenovo's pointer control. This is an acquired taste and anyone used to a touchpad will surely end up plugging a mouse into one of the system's three USB ports after more than 10 minutes.
One neat touch is the Thinkvantage key, which offers a menu of valuable maintenance and security options. Thanks to a hidden partition on the hard drive, you can even use this to restore the entire system to factory settings.
The display itself is sharp, but with a native resolution of 1,024x768 it can feel a little cramped without careful window management. Once at a desk, you can use an external monitor at resolutions up to 2,048x1,536.
Lenovo offers a few configurations on the X61. Our model came fully loaded with a fingerprint scanner, both PC Card and SD card slots, Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g and Draft-N wireless, and mini-Firewire. There was no optical drive though - this requires an Ultrabase dock. Of course, without this installing applications could be difficult.
A Centrino Pro design, our model featured a nippy 2GHz Intel T7300 Core 2 Duo on an Intel 965 Express chipset, backed by 1GB Ram (4GB max) and an 80GB hard disk. Also noteworthy is the GMA X3100 graphics controller.
This offers functions traditionally left out of integrated designs, such as hardware Transform and Lighting, which should boost performance and compatibility with graphical applications and 3D games. In our tests, however, it scored just 448 in 3Dmark06 and a basic 3.0 Windows Experience Index.
Meanwhile, internal security hardware can be used to limit access to the system, encrypt data and generally keep your files from prying eyes. Add the fingerprint scanner and the X61 makes a lot of sense for those working with sensitive information.
Given the specification, our X61 felt as though it should be faster, and pulled in 4,026 under PCmark05. Lenovo says you can expect seven hours' operation with the standard eight-cell battery. The lack of an optical drive meant we couldn't run Mobilemark's DVD test, but in our intensive battery test it lasted two hours, 21 minutes, which is highly impressive.
Along with Windows Vista Business and Thinkvantage applications, bundled software includes the free Google Picasa for photo editing, Norton Internet Security with a 90-day subscription, the PC-Doctor maintenance tool and a host of other utilities. Given the price and the target audience, we'd like to have seen at least some basic office productivity software.
With its specific balance of features, the X61 is a solid system. Its excellent battery life and portability make it ideally suited to corporate life - especially where work involves highly sensitive data.
