Lenovo T60 ThinkPad Laptop Review

For the last ten years I have primarily used IBM Thinkpad laptops.  (Now called Lenovo since IBM sold the division to a Chinese company called Lenovo).  I like the IBM laptops for one important reason.  They are reliable.  I travel constantly and have never had one crap out on me.  I take it home every day and on every road trip.  I always carry it with a padded insert in my briefcase or backpack which is something I would recommend everyone does, but many don't.

Recently, last August when it came time to buy another laptop (when I started Viewpoints!) I looked at the Toshiba, Sony, HP and Dell laptops.  Although they were a little cooler, had more features and were a bit less, I went for the one that would be most reliable and that I knew the best.  My previous company standardized on Dells and people were always complaining about the reliability.  This might due to their own behavior (such as loading the machine down with non essential software and not carrying the laptop in a padded bag) but I did not want to take the chance.

I upgraded to 1 GB of RAM because I have been told that is what effects speed the most.  Since August it has performed very well although there was one mysterious incident where it shut down abruptly for no reason.  I called tech support and they told me to plug it in (even though the battery was fully charged).  I did that and the problem went away.  However, just so you know when I asked them about repairing it they said I needed to FedEx it to them and they would take a week or two and then send it back.  The thought of being without my laptop for even a day was unacceptable.  Good thing the problem fixed itself.

Also, as side note, I previously owned a IBM Thinkpad Tablet model where the screen swiveled around and could be written on.  I liked it because it was lighter and smaller, but I found that after the first few weeks, I never used the tablet feature.

So, my bottom line is that if you want to reliable, sturdy laptop that rarely has issues, and you are willing to pay about a $200 to $300 premium, then get the Lenovo.

You might also be amused to know that to satiate my Mac envy I have put a Apple sticker I got with my iPod on my Thinkpad.  When I travel with it people freak out and ask all sorts of questions.  It is a real conversation starter.

I am very tied to the Windows operating system because I use Outlook so much for my contact management and I use Quicken, Salesforce.com and LinkedIn and I don't think they all work as well with Entourage (Microsoft's Mac Outlook client) on the Mac.