by Corey Glasper

Created on: December 23, 2008

The Lenovo X61 Tablet PC is a fabulous laptop for students almost hands-down. Being a student myself, and using it for a couple of months now, I can attest to its perfect usability for a student. In fact I'm writing this article with it right now. We'll do this via counting down, 5 being the best feature, and 1 being the, well, 5th
best.

5. Microsoft OneNote: This easy-to use program from Microsoft made its way to the top of my list thanks to the most basic need of a student, a notebook! With features such as separate notebooks for each class, different sections for each of those classes, different tabs within each of those sections, and even pages for each of those sections, organization(or in some of our cases, reorganization) is a breeze.

4. The Tablet Pen: Using forward thinking, Lenovo Partnered with Wacom for a "Penabled" screen. So far I've used it from everything from taking notes, to organization of files, to drawing, to playing games. Placed conveniently in the bottom right-hand of the screen, it's available in any situation.
Yet another wonderful feature on the X61.

3. Fingerprint logon: This feature makes it a thousand times easier to log on to ones profile. With an easy setup and even easier use, this should be a standard feature on all laptops from now on.

2. Rotatable Screen: This aspect contributes to the usefulness of OneNote and the Tablet Pen, and pulls directly from the Fingerprint Logon. This 12.1" screen not only has a pretty darned good resolution for its size, but is rotatable up to a full 180 degrees. This allows it to lay flat, much like a notebook. Coincidence maybe? I don't think so.

1. Size: This computer, while still powerful and quite resourceful, is also quite small. Being only 10.5 inches from side to side, by 8.3 inches from front to back, by a maximum 1.39 inches deep, and weighing 3.11 pounds(light!), this laptop fits under any arm, in any backpack, on any desk or lap, and should belong in your house.

Sounds great right? It is, and I didn't even mention the 3.5+ hour average battery-life. Still, everything great has its downfall (and I can't just show you one side of the string).
Here's a list from 1-5 in no particular order, of the badder' points of the Lenovo X61;

1. Memory:
I ended up going with the 2GB memory choice. Word to the wise: get 4GB.
Sad to say, Windows Vista uses up most of that 2GB it seems. Don't be cheap.

2. Thanks to the lack of sufficient Memory, upon rotating the screen the actual display lags badly, and goes black and blank for about 6 seconds. Not terrible to deal with, but gets annoying.

3. While the size is quite nice for toting around, it is still quite small. I sat it next to another computer, and it looked like a pocket PC.

4. (Not completely a problem with the X61, but still) Oh the constant pop-ups from Vista. Accept this program?' Accept this program you've already accepted?' If you can't guess, it gets pretty old.

5. Well, I'm not sure if this is actually a problem, but this thing is super-secure! Personally I think just a little too secure. I've gotten a couple too many different errors as the computer continues to run, what seems to be, properly.

But overall, the Lenovo X61 is an exceptional output from Thinkpad. I'm quite satisfied with my computer, and expect to be for quite a while.

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