ThinkPad Z60m review

As promised, here is a quick review of our new Lenovo ThinkPad Z60m laptop. In brief: an outstanding piece of hardware, but not without a few quirks. Here are the exact specs for our model.

Background

I was watching Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote address at the beginning of the month, waiting to see if the rumors of a lower-priced, Intel-based iBook were true. When I discovered that they were not, and the new MacBook Pro was more than a little bit out of my price range, I fell back to "Plan B". I'd always wanted a ThinkPad, so I did some research and decided that the Z60m series seemed to give you the most bang for your buck. Some shopping on PriceGrabber turned up a Z60m for $1029 with free shipping. Five days later, it arrived. The gory details:

Design

I've always thought of ThinkPads as the Acuras of the laptop world: not flashy, but solid and full of features. This laptop is no exception. While some might find the typical ThinkPad design a bit bland, to me the all-black look says "this is a REAL laptop, not a toy." My model doesn't come with the titanium screen cover that some of the higher-priced Z series models do, but I wasn't really interested in it anyway. To me, it just seemed to add weight. Nonetheless, this is a really sturdy laptop. There is no flex in any of the parts, and the big metal hinge posts that hold the display to the base feel very solid. The laptop is not an ultra-light, but it is still lighter and thinner than our old Dell Inspiron 14".

Screen

The widescreen display on our model runs at 1280x800, which works great for everything that I have done with it so far. The contrast on the display is fantastic. Blacks are very deep and the colors are vivid. Photographs look outstanding. I do have a couple of concerns, however. The display isn't very bright, even when turned all the way up. In a dark room, it is no problem, but it might give you problems if you are working in a bright room or outdoors. I also was a little freaked out to discover what looked like a stuck pixel after using the laptop for a few hours. However, after rebooting, it returned to normal. This has happened several times since then in different areas of the display. I'm not sure what could cause this to happen.

The little yellow LED keyboard light built into the upper edge of the display is a nice feature, but is really only useful if the area in which you are working is completely dark.

Audio

The speakers are nothing to write home about, but are no worse then any other laptop I have used. The volume control buttons above the keyboard are great to have though. I haven't used the external microphone yet.

Input

The keyboard is simply the best I have ever used on a laptop, period. The hype about ThinkPad keyboards is justified: they are simply a pleasure to use. I like the fact that you get the choice of a traditional touchpad as well as the ThinkPad "eraser" TrackPoint stub in the middle of the keyboard. Both seem to work well, as do their respective left and right mouse buttons. I've found myself gravitating toward the TrackPoint most of the time because it requires less hand movement.

Battery

With the brightness on the screen turned all the way up and WiFi on, I'm getting about three hours of battery life. Not bad at all. If I turn the brightness down, I can stretch it to 3:30. I haven't tried to see how long the battery holds out while watching a DVD, but I would guess that you would get about 2:15-2:30. My model comes with the lighter (and therefore less powerful) battery. A beefier battery is available, but beware that it increases your travel weight as well as the battery life.

Wireless

The WiFi radio works well. It seems to be a bit stronger than the Netgear PC card on our old laptop.

Performance

The Pentium M processor and the 512 MB RAM make this laptop pretty speedy. I have used it mostly for development so far, and have no complaints in the performance department. I haven't tried the integrated Intel graphics chipset out against any games yet, but that isn't really what I have a laptop for...that's why I have a raging beast for a desktop!

Software

I have to admit that my biggest gripe about retail PCs and laptops is the insane amount of useless and/or annoying software that comes bundled with the machine whether you want it or not. This is, in fact, the most important reason why I recently chose to build my own desktop PC from scratch. PLEASE...just give me a clean hard drive with Windows XP and the minimum drivers required to get the hardware to work and NOTHING ELSE. Why do computer manufacturers insist on installing 928 pieces of shovelware at the factory, most of which just duplicates functionality that is already provided by Windows XP?

In this regard, the ThinkPad seems to be better than most retail machines. Most of the preinstalled software is Lenovo utilities that control aspects of the laptop such as the motion sensing hard drive protection, the ThinkLight keyboard light, etc. But I still found myself making a quick trip to the "Add/Remove Programs" tool after using the laptop for a few hours to remove a few choice bits of fluff...

Annoyances

I'll admit that a few things disappointed me about the Z60m only because I hadn't read the specs closely enough. For example, my model does not come with integrated Bluetooth or fingerprint reader. Both of these are available if you are willing to pay a bit more, however. In addition, it does have an IEEE 1394 port, but only a 4-pin one. It does have a media card reader built into the front edge of the laptop, but it doesn't read the CompactFlash cards used by our digital camera.