Oct 2

Written by: George Ou
10/2/2008 11:13 PM

I just got my Lenovo X200 12.1" ultra-light laptop yesterday in the mail and here are the options I got.

• 6-cell battery (9-cell option)
• 7200 RPM 160 GB hard drive
• 2 GB RAM
• Intel P8600 45nm 2.4 GHz CPU
• No Camera or Mic in the lid this particular version
• Bluetooth and Fingerprint reader
• Intel Wi-Fi 5100 802.11 AGN
• Vista Business license with XP Pro preloaded

Buying mistakes you might want to avoid

I paid $1400 including shipping for the above specs and didn't get the 9-cell because of the 2-week delay and I figured that I'll eventually order a second battery anyways.  If I had to order again, I would have waited an extra week or two for the cheaper model for $1175 including shipping.  7200 RPM 250 GB hard drives are only about $100 and I would have ordered a 9-cell for about $180 to complement the 4-cell that comes with the cheapest model.

I might have been better off just ordering from Lenovo.com and paying the California sales tax because then I would have at least gotten a Microphone and Webcam.  Sure I have much better external mics and cameras, but having integrated ones is still good to have because it's convenient.

The good:

• Make no mistake, this is a road warrior's machine
• Intel Centrino 2 platform
• 2.4 GHz 45nm Penryn class processor slaughters the 65nm processors in the MacBook Air or other previous generation Centrino laptops with sub 2 GHz processors.  Despite the fact that this is a 25W TDP processor, its 45nm process makes it competitive with the 20W TDP 1.6 or 1.8 GHz 65nm processor in the MacBook Air in terms of power consumption.  The battery drain tests I've seen on the X200 are even beating laptops with Ultra Low Voltage 10W TDP 1.33 GHz CPUs!  2.4 GHz is not only a much higher clock speed, but you get SSE4 capability which doubles the performance of certain operations like video encoding.
• Integrated AT&T 3G or Verizon 3G wireless Internet option with 3G antenna built in to the display lid
• Integrated BlueTooth makes tethering to an Internet connected phone fairly convenient
• Glare-free and very bright 1280x800 display
• Bright enough to run at mid-level brightness even in brighter room
• Great price for this class of machine.  Most 12.1" notebooks in this class are much more expensive.
• Full size keyboard just like the 14" ThinkPad models
• Great battery life even with 6-cell, outrageous battery life with 9-cell
• Light weight

The bad (or good depending on how you see things)

• My only major disappointment is that the larger 6-cell battery extends down instead of to the back.  I hope the 9-cell extends back and down so that it doesn't get any thicker than it already is.
• Some people would fault it for the lack of a track pad and/or optical drive, but I personally don't care for either item.  I prefer the track point anyways and DVDs and videos can be ripped to the hard drive or better yet, played off the SDHC card so you can let the hard drive rest.
• Some people might find the dull harsh machine look of ThinkPads ugly and maybe it is, but the surface isn't slippery and doesn't put glare in your eyes.  It's nowhere near as pretty as a Mac Air, but all the ports on the side are way more practical.
• Would have been nice if an HDMI port was included.

Verdict

The bottom line is that I can recommend this computer for highly mobile professionals who want a powerful yet light and affordable notebook.

I'll be posting some more test results tomorrow on battery performance and tweaking.

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