IBM Lenovo ThinkPad T60

Lenovo announced the ThinkPad Z series, the Z60t and Z60m, in an effort to put to rest corporate grumbling over the lack of widescreen options. But now that Dell and HP have added widescreens to practically all of their business notebooks, it seems Lenovo has suddenly felt the same urge and gone wide with one of its best-selling laptops. The new ThinkPad T60 Widescreen ($1,999 direct) not only features 15.4 inches of screen space, but is light enough to give even the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Core 2 Duo) a run for its money.

The T60 Widescreen alleviates some of that burden by offering a 1.2-inch-thick chassis and a 5.7-pound frame—scarcely larger than the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Core 2 Duo), which is one inch thick and weighs 5.5 pounds, and lighter than the Dell Latitude D820 (6.5 pounds) and the HP Compaq nc8430 (6.2 pounds). And when you take into account that the standard-screen ThinkPad T60 (15-inch) already weighs 5.6 pounds, the extra couple ounces seem trivial. Of course, that's only if you're comparing the two 15-inch models; Lenovo hasn't yet introduced a 14-inch T60 widescreen option, so if you want a smaller ThinkPad, you'll have to settle for the Z60t for now. You can choose from two screen resolution options: WXGA (1,280-by-800) or WSXGA+ (1,680-by-1,050).

The T60 Widescreen's features are almost exactly the same as those of the standard-size T60. There are three USB ports, but you won't find a FireWire port or an SD card slot. You do have plenty of options for network connectivity. The system is outfitted with a Draft 802.11n card from Atheros, which is backward-compatible with 802.11a/g wireless devices. Of course, you'll need an 802.11n-compatible router in order to take advantage of 802.11n speeds (approximately 130 Mbps). Lenovo doesn't currently offer routers on its site, but you can get them elsewhere. Also, though the unit I tested didn't come with built-in WAN, you can configure it to include a built-in cellular modem that works with either Verizon's or Cingular's 3G network.

ThinkPad performance usually rocks, and the T60 Widescreen doesn't disappoint. With a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, 1GB of RAM, and discrete ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics, it's ready for Microsoft's soon-to-be-released Vista Premium OS. It beat the MacBook Pro on our SYSmark 2004 SE benchmark tests, despite the MacBook Pro having a higher-clocked processor (2.33 GHz). Battery options for the T60 Widescreen are the same as those for the standard T60: 56 Wh or 84 Wh. The T60 Widescreen's 56-Wh battery, which lasted 4 hours 8 minutes on the MobileMark 2005 test we conducted, will keep the system at its lightest possible weight of 5.7 pounds. You can upgrade to the 84-Wh battery for another $30; this will extend your battery life to 6:26, but it will also increase the system weight to 6.2 pounds./

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