Lenovo ThinkPad X300 Diary Day 1: Triumphs and Tradeoffs

“Ah, that’s much better.” Those are the words my shoulders would say if they could talk. That’s because I just swapped my year-old, 5.6-pound ThinkPad Z61t for the highly-coveted (and highly-priced) 3.2-pound ThinkPad X300. I’m someone who commutes to work over an hour each way on the bus–don’t ask why–and travels around the country about five times per year, and being able to lighten my backpack while still getting a full-size keyboard is a huge deal.

I was also psyched about the prospect of built-in mobile broadband, as I need to stay connected during my whole commute to do online research, check e-mail, etc. We already awarded this delightfully thin and full-featured ultraportable our Editors’ Choice but I wanted to see if it was worth the steep $2,548 starting price ($2,936 fully equipped) for my own needs.

Good Keyboard, Not-So-Good Touchpad

The first thing I noticed with the X300 (other than the light weight) was the keyboard, which looks and feels identical to the layout on my Z61t. I found creating and editing documents on this machine delightfully simple. It’s the cursor control that was a bit of an issue. You see, I’m a touchpad fan, and the touchpad on the X300 isn’t just small; I found the texture to be too coarse and the speed too slow, even after I set the mouse pointer to the highest speed in the Control Panel. I found myself quickly switching to the pointing stick, which offers good control and speed but involves a bit of a learning curve.

I Refuse to Squint!

The display required even more of an adjustment. To me, 1440 x 900 resolution on a 13.3-inch panel is just overkill, as it makes text in documents on Web sites too small–and I have pretty good eye sight. So I immediately attempted to scale the resolution down to 1280 x 800 pixels. Sure, I could have easily just zoomed in on Firefox and other apps, but I’d rather not do the work.

Oddly, when I lowered the resolution, a black border appeared around the screen, so I contacted Lenovo and found out we didn’t have the most up-to-date drivers. Once I downloaded and installed them, we were good to go. After that, I found the LED-backlit display easier to use for productivity chores, but I could see myself going back up in resolution for editing photos.

Mobile Broadband Rules (If You Have the Means)

After activating the internal EV-DO Rev. A modem with Verizon Wireless, I really enjoyed being able to connect without having a card hanging off the side of my notebook as I do with my Z61t. I’ve actually programmed myself to place the Z61t in my backpack with the PC Card modem facing up. While waiting for my bus to depart from Port Authority in Manhattan, I downloaded a 15.8MB file in 3 minutes and 10 seconds, which works out to a reasonably fast 683.2 Kbps. Sites like nytimes.com and cnn.com loaded in only 6 seconds. $60 per month for mobile broadband  is nothing to sneeze at but on the X300 it’s a no-brainer expense, because to me it makes the machine 10 times more valuable.

Going the Distance

A good litmus test for any lightweight laptop I review is whether it can last both legs of my commute on a charge. I should be able to use it on the way home, shut the system down, and fire it up in the morning on the way into work and not have to worry about running out of juice. In this respect, the X300 shined. Even with mobile broadband enabled the entire time –1 hour and 12 minutes on the way home and 59 minutes going into the office — the X300 said I still had 58 minutes of runtime left.

My system has the larger 6-cell battery, but I’d rather have a little bit of a bulge on the bottom of my notebook than be forced to stop working. One other pleasant discovery: shutting down as I approached my bus stop took less than 15 seconds, compared to 30 or more on my Z61t. This is one of the benefits of having a solid state drive on board.

Stay Tuned for More (And Drop Me Suggestions)

So I’m pretty happy so far with the X300. It’s a remarkable design and despite some early hiccups with the touchpad and resolution I can see myself using it as my everyday notebook. Join me next time when I kick the tires of the GPS connection, try out the built-in webcam, and dig a little bit deeper into this ultraportables features and software.

Is there something you want me to try out? Feel free to leave some comments.