subject: Get What You Want At This Moment [print this page] When you look at the latest ultraportable Thinkpad T60 Battery, it would seem that little has changed since we gave the Editors' Choice to the Thinkpad X60 Battery last year. The Thinkpad R60 Battery features largely the same design as its predecessor--it still lacks a built-in optical drive--but adds a low-voltage Core 2 Duo processor and Intel's latest Centrino Pro platform, plus new security and power-management features. The end result is a laptop that doesn't take up much room in a laptop bag and yet still packs plenty of performance oomph as well as a screen and keyboard that are comfortable for working long stretches away from the desk.
If you must have an ultraportable with an optical drive, look to competitors' laptops, such as the Thinkpad T61 Battery and the Thinkpad X61 Battery--though both those models feature smaller screens.About the only area where the Thinkpad R61 Battery doesn't match its predecessor is battery life: whereas a year ago the ThinkPad X60s had the longest battery life we'd ever measured, the ThinkPad X61s posted a battery life that was still longer than average, but not chart-topping. Nevertheless, we'd gladly trade endless Lenovo Laptop Battery and the built-in optical drive for the ThinkPad X61s's great balance of comfort, performance, and portability.
The Thinkpad X300 Battery is virtually identical in design to its predecessor. While the lightest Thinkpad T400 Battery configuration weighs a spritely 2.7 pounds, our test unit, which included the "ultralight" display option but also a weighty extended battery, weighed 3.4 pounds (the extended battery also adds 1 inch of depth and 0.3 inch of thickness at the back). By comparison, both the 3000 V200 Battery and the 3000 N200 Battery weigh less than 3 pounds and incorporate optical drives, though they feature single-core processors and smaller displays. Though it's clearly not the smallest laptop battery on the market, the ThinkPad X61s is one of the smallest Core 2 Duo options we've seen and is definitely compact enough to carry every day.
While most manufacturers have converted their ultraportable lines to wide-screen displays, Lenovo has outfitted the 3000 V100 Battery with a lightweight 12.1-inch standard-aspect (4:3) screen. While we've definitely come to love a wide-aspect ratio (16:9), we also appreciate that the 3000 C200 Battery offers a bit more screen real estate than, for example, the 10.6-inch wide-screen 3000 Y410 Battery, while keeping a smaller design than the 12.1-inch wide-screen Toshiba Satellite U205. The display on the ThinkPad X61s is remarkably bright (222 cd/m in our Labs measurement); its 1,024x768 native resolution doesn't exactly send shivers down the spine, but it does suffice. The screen's matte finish minimizes reflections, making it a winner for typical office productivity work.
I found the battery life to net between four to five hours of use on the 8-cell extended Lenovo battery. With Vista the system likes to occasionally go wild in the background almost pegging the processor, eating up precious power from the battery at times. I also had problems with the ThinkPad X300 Battery management software competing against Vista's power management settings. After every reboot settings such as HD spindown, standby, LCD shutdown, etc. were all changed back to the default Vista settings. Even though I had the Vista and ThinkPad T400 Battery settings both set to Never for every power option, it still returned to 5-10 minute intervals after every reboot. I found myself returning from a coffee break to the computer shutting itself down, only to have to spend another minute powering it back up. Compared to Windows XP, Vista has been horrible in my uses for power management or power efficiency. It was hard to ever have a moment just sitting where the HD didnt start seeking like crazy, or the CPU going under load wearing the battery down.
