Great School Laptop
Written: Aug 16 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Fast; Good Storage; Basically a little desktop
Cons: Graphic card; A little slow to boot up
|
|
|
| XenoGearAlpha's Full Review: Lenovo ThinkPad A20 2629 (262962U) PC Notebook |
The IMB ThinkPad A20M is the perfect desktop alternative for college students as it offers speed, ease of use, and expandablity all in one cost-effective package. Mine was ordered on special offer from my school, which means that it came with pre-installed network utilities and a bunch of school software. On the downside, my monitor is smaller and (I think) the hard driver is smaller. But if I can overlook those small minuses, I think just about anyone else can, too.
This particular model is equipped with an Intel Mobile Pentium III running along at 500 MHz. Granted, that doesn't put my A20 at the top of the laptop speed food-chain, but it's plenty for a college student and even plays games just fine. The monitor is active matrix and the resolutions vary from 640x480 all the way up to 1280x960 on some models with the entire color spectrum covered (that is, 16 bit, 24 bit, 32 bit). I've seen many hard drives available for this model. Mine came with a 6GB hard drive installed, but I am considering upgrading to the 20GB drive compatible with the UltraBay 2000, which is probably the best laptop innovation since the portable CD-ROM drive.
Basically, the UltraBay 2000 was the determining factor that helped me choose this computer. It's SCSI without all the hassle. The UltraBay device, which ranges from CD-ROM drives to hard drives, can be changed as easily as you would change a CD or a floppy diskette without any problems. The UltraBay 2000 almost eliminates the immediate need for a Docking Station, which is great for students who have very little money to spare. I can't list all the devices here, but check out ibm.com for more information.
A close contender for the ThinkPad A20M was the Toshiba Satellite 1625CDT. It had essentially everything the ThinkPad had to offer (except the UltraBay), and I didn't know which one to go with. After checking around many computer stores, numerous salespersons pointed me in the direction of the ThinkPad purely because of IBM's past record. Pretty much everyone said that IBM simply builds a better laptop than most others. This surprised me but, in retrospect, I do not regret my purchase.
All in all, this is an exceptional laptop that normally has a very nice pricetag. I expect to keep this computer for a very long time. The only problem I can see is that it doesn't really have a good graphics card; it only has an ATI Rage Mobility, which doesn't run EverQuest (NOOOO! JUST PUT IT IN MY VEINS!!!!). Other than that, I highly recommend this laptop.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
XenoGearAlpha
|
|
Member: Christopher Hall
Location: Villanova, Pennsylvania
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 3 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.