A Thinkpad for little more than the cost of a netbook? Surely not! But the simple fact is that you can now buy one of the best-built PC laptopsfor about £400. Thinkpads have been the favoured machines for businessmen ever since they were built by IBM - but they''ve always come at a hefty premium - until now. The machine looks much bigger in photos than in real life - in fact it isn''t much larger than a netbook with most of the difference being accounted for by the deeper screen and a battery which protrudes slightly at the rear. Overall finish is sober and of an extremely high standard - this feels like an expensive computer. There is no internal optical drive, but you can buy an external USB DVD drive for only £40 these days. On the left hand side there are two USB ports, an Ethernet port and a combined microphone headphone jack. On the right there is a high power USB port and a card slot. The back has a VGA port and the mains connection. So it''s not over-endowed with connectivity, but there''s enough to get you going. Sound output is from a front downward facing speaker and is - okay; it is perfectly acceptable through external speakers or headphones. Lenovo have reduced the cost of the machine by sacrificing a few things under the hood. The chassis is now made of plastic rather than metal, but instead of the egg-carton construction of netbooks this is a solid piece of purest black. The machine is rigid with almost no flex. Despite the heavyweight construction it is light enough and small enough to fit into a bag and be carried round all day. The finish, inside and out, is matt and slightly textured - it resists fingermarks and should be up to surviving small scratches. There''s no clasp, the screen just opens up on a smooth, slightly resistant hinge - and stays there. The screen is good - but not outstanding (Sony VAIOs and Macs have superior colours and contrast). It has a glossy finish which can be hard outside - but the backlight is perfectly capable of producing good colours even under fluorescent lighting. The keyboard is a gem - Thinkpads have always been highly regarded in this respect and this doesn''t let them down. It is a chicklet style affair with flattened low-profile keys isolated from one another. The feel is slightly firmer than that of an Apple Mac keyboard, but is very pleasant to use for long periods of time. To accommodate the keyboard; some of the keys are a little small - the cursor keys are a little small for my liking; but the real annoyance for touch typists might be Lenovo''s continued insistence on switching the Fn and Ctrl keys. There is a superb trackpad on the machine - perhaps a little too far forward for my taste. But it is large enough to be useful and it supports basic multitouch functions. The keys are clicky and firm to use. As with all Thinkpads, the machine comes with a pencil eraser trackpoint which you may or may not ever use. I''m beginning to get used to the device and it is easier than using a trackpad - if very different to use. Wireless connectivity is the best I''ve ever had on a Windows machine. I''ve been able to connect to every base station straight away and got a consistently strong signal. This model doesn''t have Bluetooth although there is an option for it. The X100e is powered by an AMD CPU and like their PC chips it is slightly less powerful and slightly more energy hungry than Intel chips. It runs very hot - the base of the machine gets warm, but can be put on your lap, but there is an exhaust at back-left producing a steady stream of unpleasantly hot (but not dangerously so) air. The CPU has an effect on battery life and you can only expect three to four hours of normal use - a bit less if you are watching video; but you could if you switch to Lenovo''s battery stretch mode. The machine easily handles everyday tasks like word processing, email and the Web. Unlike netbooks it can easily run HD video (although which application you use has a dramatic effect on frame rate - Windows Media Player is the best I''ve found, outperforming the likes of VLC by some margin). The 2Gb of internal RAM (twice that of a netbook) really does make a huge difference in the usability of the X100e and it can be expanded to 4Gb through an easily accessible expansion port. The machine is sluggish in Lenovo''s default power-saving mode when applications might take a minute or two to open. You might never be so desperate as to use it. It comes with Windows 7 Professional which was a pleasant change from the usual XP. So far, W7 has been something of a revelation - it isn''t quite as slick as Mac OS - but it does its job, it is stable and actually quite attractive. My machine needed several updates including BIOS and graphics card drivers all of which were on the Lenovo site and installed without problems. The BIOS update is a must as it seems to have given the machine a turbo boost. The Lenovo won''t win any looks competitions when compared to a Mac or Sony, but it has a certain understated chic. If you are happy with a machine that doesn''t shout glamour you won''t go wrong with the X100e - it''s a stunning piece of hardware.
