DELL LATITUDE E6420
Rental/day 153.85yuan Rental/week 355.56yuan Rental/month 444.44yuan +17% VAT	Processor	Core I5-2520M, 2.5GHz
	Memory	2GB DDR3 1333
	Hard drive	250GB SATA
	Media drive	DVD-RW
	Screen	14.1'LED 1366*768
	Network interface	1000M/802.11abg
	I/O	3xUSB 2.0，VGA-Out，PCMCIA
	Battery	6 cell
	Weight	1950g

The Lenovo ThinkPad T60 series is the first ThinkPad to be released with the new Intel Core Duoprocessor. The ThinkPad T-series can be thought of as the flagship of theThinkPad brand, it's squarely targeted towards business users andprofessionals. Durability, security, usability and performance are allimportant characteristics of the ThinkPad T-series. The T60 carries on thesetraditions with a jump in performance from the most recent T43 and some changesto configuration options available and the port and keyboard layout.

Design and Build

The ThinkPad T60 is a premium product with a durablebuild. For somebody that travels a lot or relies on their notebook to earn alivelihood, the difference between a sub $1,000 starter notebook and a premiumworkhorse is obvious. The ThinkPad T60 stands out with its durability viachoice of components, very sturdy case material and a strong protectivechassis. You pay a lot more for these features of a T60, but if you're on theroad, away from support, and miss a time sensitive opportunity because ofhardware problems -- you might just wish you had spent extra dollars for abetter built notebook such as the T60.

So how does the T60 excel build-wise? Basically the same as itspredecessor T-series notebooks did. The T60 body is a rugged plastic that doesnot flex. The magnesium reinforced lid won't flex and provides amazingprotection for the screen. The keyboard does not flex -- at all. The thickmetal hinges that attach the screen are very rigid and ensure the screen doesnot wobble. The keyboard is spill proof and has two drain holes to make sure ifyou do happen to spill your morning Starbucks coffee, the liquid is carriedaway from sensitive components and out through the bottom of the notebook. Thehard drive is shock mounted and the entire chassis is a newly designed magnesium"roll cage" (it offers 30% more protection that past T-serieschassis), and even if your T60 is dropped and broken the Active ProtectionSystem (APS) will stop hard drive activity to prevent data loss. The doublescreen latch system locks securely to make sure the screen stays down whenbeing carried around. In other words, there's no shortcuts being used in buildquality from past ThinkPad notebooks since the Lenovo takeover of IBM -- onlyenhancements.

Aesthetically the ThinkPad T60 remains pretty much the same as pastThinkPad T series notebooks, meaning from a few feet away you'd be hard pushedto tell the difference between a T40, T41, T42, T43 or T60 (assuming they'reall the same 14" size -- the 15" size was not introduced until theT42 came about). But with the T60 there are definitely some changes in overalllayout and aesthetic looks.

The first change you'll notice between the T60 and former T-seriesnotebooks is the UltraNav buttons have changed along with the hardware buttonsat the top (power, volume, ThinkVantage). Gone are the familiar red stripes onthe mouse buttons and blue stripe on the scroll bar button. The mouse buttonsare also squared off now and significantly smaller.

Screen

The ThinkPad T60 under review is a 15.0" variety with an SXGA+ (1400x 1050) and has what Lenovo calls "FlexView" technology to providevery wide viewing angles. Often notebook screens can suffer from colordistortion if viewed from angles that deviate from perpendicular viewpoints(straight on and level) -- the cheaper the LCD the worse the viewing angle. TheFlexView screen is a real treat though, the screen color and brightnessmaintains from just about any angle you try. Gathering people around yourlaptop to view a spreadsheet (or to view the latest version of your workoffices favorite online flash based cartoon) will mean everyone can see it,even those at the end of the semicircle of people. Also important and worthnoting, since the screen is matte (anti-glare) you won't get any nastyreflection of office lights on the screen -- but it is true colors are not asbold and contrasting as with the popular glossy screen consumer notebooks (i.e.Sony XBrite, Dell TrueLife, Fujitsu CrystalView, HP BrightView).

Brightness wise the T60 screen under review is very good, it's thebrightest ThinkPad screen that I've experienced in fact. But ThinkPad screensare not known for being the brightest and best, just adequately bright and goodenough for business use. So I'll say that the T60 screen being reviewed isbright, it's equivalent in brightness to a current Dell e1705 17" consumeroriented notebook I have in hand (see pics above), but I'm sure there's a 5%audience out there that might wish there was one more notch increase ofbrightness available.

The screen lighting is very even, there's no areas of darkness or brightness-- indeed it's what makes the T60 FlexView screen all the more amazing, it's soevenly lit and crisp from such vast angles.

Also, keep in mind, my comments here reflect the use of a 15" SXGAFlexView screen T60. Experiences may differ with a 14" size screen, thereis no FlexView offering on that screen size.

Speakers

The T60 speakers are located at the front bottom area of the notebook. Thespeakers are actually not half bad, they certainly get loud enough tocomfortably hear a DVD movie from across a room. The sound quality doesdeteoriate as loudness increases -- more static and tinny sound becomesapparent at the loudest level. Even at the louder levels though the sound isnot grating and serviceable -- good news if you prefer not to have to carry externalspeakers. As usual though, the recommendation is to have a pair of headphonesif you want bass or what can be considered very good sound quality.

Keyboard / Touchpad / Pointing Stick

The ThinkPad keyboard is the best there is, there's zero flex, every keyfeels individual, every key has great travel/feedback and the keyboard isfull-size. There are changes on the T60 keyboard however, the Windows key andMenu shortcut key have been added to the T60 as Lenovo starts to integratethese keys across the ThinkPad line (starting with the Z60 series). It neverbothered me not having the Windows key as I don't use it. With the introductionof this key, the ALT key suffers the most in being sized down, in doing a fewALT-TAB commands to switch between open windows I found I hit the Window-TABkeys instead. Kind of annoying, but you learn and muscle memory kicks in so youknow how far to stretch (or not stretch) to hit the ALT key or Windows key ifyou use that.

The T60 has a pointing stick, I love using this and find it much easierthan the provided touchpad -- it makes it so you can move the cursor around thescreen without having to lift your hand from the keys, a much faster and easierto control style of input. But the great thing is that if the pointing stickisn't your cup of tea then you've got the touchpad to fall back on.

As mentioned in the design section, the mouse buttons have been squaredoff and downsized, the feel of the buttons is still the same but overall Ithink uglier and not as easy to find via feeling. They're still better thanmost any other notebook though, the travel and feedback from the mouse buttonsis good.

Worth mentioning, the F8 and F9 keys now can be used in conjunction withthe Fn key as shortcuts. Hit Fn + F8 to bring up a display to disable thetouchpad or disable TrackPoint. Hit Fn + F9 to bring up an applet that allowsyou to easily detach devices such as the multi-bay optical drive.

Conclusion

The ThinkPad T60 is easy to recommend, if I were an ITmanager and had to choose a notebook to equip a sales force with notebooks I'dgo with this. It's highly durable, very easy to use, looks extremelyprofessional and gives you a multitude of connectivity options. Furthemore, ifyou get the nice FlexView screen that mine came with, you'll have what Iconsider one of the most pleasant to view screens on the market. Theinput/output port selection still isn't where I'd like it to be, strangely eventhe latest tiny ThinkPad X60-series beats the T60 in port selection (althoughthe X60 has no optical drive, it does have FireWire and an SD card slot inaddition to everything else the T60 has -- talk about getting beaten by youryounger and smaller sibling).

The new Core Duo processor veritably tears through anything a businessuser will throw at it, and with an X1400 or better graphics card installedyou'll have to be somewhat concerned with the workforce blowing time on games.So if you want a T60 notebook for yourself but find that it's too pricey, andyes you do pay a pretty penny for such a premium level notebook, then you mightwant to start lobbying to your manager and IT department now to adopt T60notebooks -- it's a treat to use and I'm sure can make you more productive.