Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet Edition review

Cool Yule rating: 4 stars
Price: Starts at $1,629 (model tested was $2,282)
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Description: The Lenovo ThinkPad X61 is a great investment for those looking for a tablet PC. Lenovo has done a great job maintaining the ThinkPad brand, which has long been known for its durability and full-size keyboards. Although the X61 Tablet has a 12.1-inch display, the keyboard remains virtually full size, and the only difference is that keys such as “Enter” are thinner (think more square-ish) than their larger brethren. In testing, this did not prove to be a problem.

The available docking station is a must for X Series ThinkPads, as they otherwise come without optical drives. Therefore, when left undocked, the X61 doesn't have a CD/DVD drive. For some, this poses an obvious problem – what to do when you're away from your docking station? The answer depends your use, but I found this barely posed a problem. Somewhat surprising is how infrequently I use CD/DVD drives anymore.

This posed a problem once, when I went to import a CD into iTunes and realized I had to go get my dock to do so. Considering the power saved on the battery, which was also impressive, and the thin factor that resulted from the exclusion of the drive, I found I was surprisingly comfortable with the thought of traveling without an optical drive. The computer alone comes with three USB ports, one FireWire, Ethernet and phone jack. The docking station has even more connection ports and does not block any ports on the computer while docked.

The tablet features are first rate. The screen swivels around and can be locked in place very easily. When in tablet mode, the screen adjusts to how you’re holding the computer. For example, if you’re holding the computer like a notebook, the screen orients itself to be read that way. If you turn it to a horizontal position, it changes back. Writing on the screen with the stylus was straightforward and simple, and worked extremely well.

The built-in software recognized my sloppy writing with much better accuracy than I expected and was a pleasure to use. It was nice to sit on the couch and scroll the Internet in a way similar to writing in a notebook.

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