>Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet 1 Week Review

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I’ve mentioned before my need for a light weight machine. I thought this was going to be a UMPC, but I learned something about my Computing needs with it and soon returned it.

I started to look around for a mini laptop such as a Fujitsu P1610. Soon after the Samsung Q1U came out, the Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet was sent out to key Bloggers for evaluations. I followed these posts as I was putting the Q1U through its paces. I liked hearing about the performance of this nice little Tablet.

Three weeks after returning the UMPC I decided to purchase a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet.

I received it a week ago. I’ve held off from blogging about it until today, to give myself time to get the feel of it and tweak it to my needs.

So here is Lenny.

As you can see the screen is a smudge magnet. The flat black case can also collect smudges as well, but that is like all other ThinkPad’s I’ve had in the past.

I like the inset of the two USB, Firewire and stereo jacks. On GottabeMobile.com Rob Bushway showed off a new Logitech VX Nano Mobile Mouse that has a wireless USB that fits perfectly in the nook.

Since the x61 doesn’t have a CD-Rom I use an application called Alcohol 120% that I’ve blogged about already in dealing with no CD-Rom on the UMPC. Its a program that allows you to mount a ISO file as if it was a CD-Rom or DVD. I use the SD-Card slot shown above (the little blue line) to store all my ISO files.

The Lenovo comes with a 8-cell battery that so far has given me about 4 hrs without ever really running it down below 30%. If I wanted I can turn on battery stretching which turns off several features such as Display Brightness, 30 sec Idle screen, Disables all wireless devices, Disables any optical drives, and mutes the audio. I’ll probably test this out later on as to how long I can get a battery to run. Eric Mack turned on battery stretch at 8:30am and at 10 still had 67% left. He even took the X61 on a flight from Boston to LAX on one charge. Very nice.

You can see on the bottom of the Tablet the docking port for the Ultrabase, which has a CD-Rom, extra battery and a list of other ports and functions. It also adds extra weight, which is not what I’m going for.

I did upgrade the memory from 2x1Gb Dimms to 1Gb Dimm and one 2gb Dimm. The silver color dimm is the 2Gb that I installed.

Others have mentioned, as well as I did above, that the display seems to attract fingerprints and smudges. I highly suggest in purchasing a micro fiber cloth to keep it clean. I’ve also purchased lens alcohol wipes to clean the really tough parts.

When the screen comes up all the smudges and finger prints mostly disappear and you can see everything fine.

One thing I’m not happy about is the latch. Its a inch long piece of plastic. It was created to be able to push through the top of the screen so you can latch the display closed in slate mode, then push it the other way to latch the display closed in laptop form. Unfortunately I must have opened the case when not unlatching all the way because now the little piece of plastic comes out completely from the top of the display. It will sit in the hole and it can hold the display down in the slate mode. It doesn’t hold the display down tight as it originally did in laptop mode. I can live with this for now. When its closed in laptop mode I usually have it in my bag that holds it closed.

Speaking of the bag. I used to have this ratty old leather Dell Bag. Its seen many many summers and has been used for all sorts of laptops. I mentioned once before that I am a Tech bag collector and that I’m always on the look out for a new bag that will help me carry around my stuff. What the stuff entails changes year form year. All depending on what I’m doing at that time.

Rob Bushaway & James Kendrick posted they both received a Tom Bihn Buzz bag for evaluation. They both wrote right off the bat they liked it. So I ordered one as well.

 I’m really enjoying this bag. It has two pockets. The back pocket has two sections. The back section is for the laptop where its padded and the front section is for what ever. I keep a Portfolio to hold my papers. The front pocket holds my pens and cable bags.

I’ve cut down my needed items to make the weight of the bag below 10 lbs. Which is a big difference to the Dell bag I carried previously. It was tipping at 20 to 25 lbs.

I plan to use this bag while riding my bike to work when the office moves in September.

Over all I really like the Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet. It has the perfect mixture of being a smaller tablet and being powerful enough to run the many programs I need opened at once.