Thinkpad 240 - Great machine, great price
Written: Apr 22 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: See Review
Cons: See Review
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| soupacn's Full Review: Lenovo ThinkPad 240 (260921U) PC Notebook |
Introduction<P>
Surprisingly, I hadn't heard of the 240 before, I suppose IBM hasn't done a good job of publicizing it. Researching it on IBM's informative web site gave me a lot of things to compare to the Sony. It offered a Celeron 300, 6.4 gigs of hard drive space, 64megs of RAM, and a 10.4 inch active matrix screen all in a package less than an inch thick and under 3 pounds. And I was able to find it for $1045 at www.pcwonders.com. After reading a number of reviews on the net of the 240, I found most of them to be positive, the only recurring complaint was about its screen. Now that I own a 240 I can say that I have absolutely no complains about its screen, I have no idea why anyone would fault the LCD for brightness or anything else. In fact, after using it for a weekend trip and returning home, my 19 inch sony CRT actually appeared blurry. Looks like I've been spoiled by the 240's LCD!
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Pros<P>
- Integrated VGA out, parallel, and serial ports. No need for a port replicator. Also, the Thinkpad has an integrated PS/2 port. This was a must for me since one of my biggest uses for the machine was MP3 playing in the car, controlled by a numeric keypad hooked up to the PS/2 port.
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- Trackpoint pointing device. I absolutely can't stand touchpads and I think pointing sticks like the Thinkpad's are the way to go.
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- Better keyboard. After trying the others' keyboards in the store I realized that although many were almost as big they didn't type nearly as well. The keys felt like little chiclets and hardly depressed at all. The 240's keyboard is certainly good enough for extended notes on (my hands are relatively small, this may not be the case if you have large ones.) IBM has also continued to include an inverted-T layout for directional arrows, a helpful convienence.
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- Faster processor. For the money, I don't think you can beat the performance of the Thinkpad. I can word process, connect to the internet, run the AIM client, have Internut Exploder open, and play MP3s all at the same time with no slowdown. Its speedier than I was expecting. No word yet on the Quake3 framerate test. :-)
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Cons<P>
- I'd prefer an external power switch so I could power it up without opening the cover. This comes in handy in the car when I'm using it to play MP3s.
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- I wish it had an external volume control. Instead, you can raise, lower, or mute the sound by function-key combinations, but again this requires you to open the lid, not practical in the car.
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- Even with APM, battery life sucks. Playing MP3s yielded me little more than an hour before the battery was kaput. Less CPU intensive tasks may offer a little more time but probably not much. I've looked into getting the extended battery, but the lowest price I can find on that is $200! It promises 3 hours, but I wonder how much I'd see in real life.
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- Speaker placement sucks. Although the sound quality is noticeably better than on my 560, IBM has placed the speaker where your left palm rests when you're typing. This results in the otherwise tolerable 1-watt speaker being muffled even more. Moving it to between the mouse buttons would've made more sense to me. Fortunately, I don't often use it.
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Conclusion<P>
Overall, I would highly recomend the 240 to anyone looking for a relatively inexpensive, ultraportable laptop that doesn't skimp on speed. I'm very impressed by it. I choose the Thinkpad 240 for the following reasons: 1) Excellent price/performance ratio. 2) Dimunitive size yet functional keyboard. 3) Thinkpad reputation of quality from my 560.
Recommended:
Yes
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soupacn
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