Digital Trends

Lenovo ThinkPad X61s August 8th, 2007 | by Josh Norem

Use and Testing

Setting the system up was fairly easy; we plugged in the battery, attached the AC power adapter, and hit the lights. The first time Vista boots, it goes through an excruciatingly long “detection” phase where it’s doing who knows what, but after the initial boot, things are much faster. By our watch, it required 1:10 to fully boot to Windows, which is reasonably quick and very tolerable.

Once we were up and running, we were amazed at how fast and responsive the X61s was. As we stated before, its 2GB RAM allotment has a lot to do with this, but this system is also running a fast dual-core CPU and the new “Santa Rosa” chipset, which has the fastest FSB speed ever available on an Intel notebook.

We used it like a typical road warrior, taking it with us everywhere we went, connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots, typing e-mails, surfing the net, etc. Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Even putting the system back in the dock — or removing it — takes less than 20 seconds and is easy to do (once you’ve read the instructions).

The cooling fan on the CPU comes on a lot, but that’s not surprising, given how small this notebook is and how cramped it must be inside the chassis. It’s not a loud fan, but you can hear it. Overall, we’d say it was on about 50 percent of the time we were using the notebook, which is decent.


Conclusion

Thin-and-light notebooks have always been about compromise, due to their small size, but Lenovo has done a commendable job of getting around those compromises by offering the docking station and extra batteries. This is a notebook that does not compromise on performance one iota, as it’s very fast, which is surprising to see (and feel) on a notebook of this size. Though we think the keyboard feels a bit cramped and the included software could use some tweaking, the overall package is very good. It’s a shame there are not more pre-sale configuration options. Lenovo told us it sells pre-configured SKUs, and that’s that, which is a pity since its competition offers much more choice when configuring a notebook to purchase. That said, the configuration options it did choose were great, and offered all the power and storage we could ask for in a notebook of this size.

If your notebook rarely leaves your desk, this is not the notebook for you. But if you’re on the go a lot and need a thin-and-light that packs the power of a desktop replacement, the X61s is a very solid offering that might break your bank, but certainly won’t break your back.

Pros:

• Very portable and lightweight
• Great performance
• Slick features

Cons:

• Keyboard feels cramped
• No touchpad
• Battery life lower than claimed