Laptop - Lenovo ThinkPad X300

Lenovo's buttoned-up ThinkPad X300 ultraportable laptop computer may not have the MacBook Air's superslim, spartan style, but from rock-solid construction to piled-in perks, this notebook--with a street price of $2696 at time of testing--offers just about everything that matters to the business traveler.

The Air and the X300 do have some similarities. They both have crisp 13.3-inch displays, although the X300 has a higher resolution--1440 by 900 pixels versus 1280 by 800--and with both, you can get a 64GB solid-state drive (it comes standard with Lenovo's machine, but tacks about $1000 onto the Air's price).

Whether you're afraid of dropping your laptop at the airport or accidentally spilling some coffee on the case, the X300 is built like--and resembles--a black-box recorder. The keyboard is spill-resistant, and the textured carbon- and glass-fiber exterior is supposed to protect the innards. Unlike most ultraportables, the unit has both an eraserhead and a touchpad. The keyboard feels great, with full-size keys.

The X300 is a little on the chunky side for a true ultraportable--just over an inch thick and weighing 3.4 pounds (4 pounds with an AC adapter) versus the Air's 3-pound heft. Then again, you can pop a disc in the ThinkPad's integrated, paper-thin, 3-ounce DVD drive and watch movies (the Air's optical drive is an external model).

The X300 has a decent amount of power for an ultralightweight notebook--in fact, it performed surprisingly well against other ultralight models. With a 1.2-GHz Core 2 Duo L7100 processor and 2GB of RAM, it scored a 64, outpacing the MacBook Air by a healthy 7 points in our WorldBench 6 benchmark tests. On the other hand, the X300's performance is exactly average compared with the broad field of ultraportables we've tested. It also posted an average score in our battery life tests, lasting 4 hours, 22 minutes on a charge.

Another thumb in Apple's eye is the X300's many features. Here you have a notebook not much thicker than the Air, yet not only does it manage to include a DVD drive, it also has three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA-out port for an external display, a Webcam, headphone and microphone jacks, and an ethernet port. The Air has a Webcam, but it has only one USB port, and you have to use an optional adapter to connect via ethernet.

To make life even easier, the X300 has the one shortcut key to rule them all--the ThinkVantage button. Most notebooks have some sort of shortcut to helpful utilities or a "For Dummies..." version of the control panel. However, the ThinkVantage button accesses by far the most helpful, complete, and concise collection of such tools. You can use the button to access a backup utility, to set security protocols, or to find a wireless data connection, and if your computer won't boot, the button will make the computer boot a small non-Windows OS from a hidden hard-drive partition, after which you can diagnose problems and even download drivers, if necessary.

And when you do start searching for wireless connectivity options, you are fully covered with the X300: The notebook has built-in support for 802.11a/b/g/n, wireless WAN, wireless USB, and Bluetooth. Finally, it has the "gee-whiz" feature of the month: GPS (somewhere, an army of travelling salesmen are cheering over that addition).

What the ThinkPad X300 lacks in style, compared with the Air, it more than makes up for with better features and more functionality.

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MSI Wind launch was delayed by ripped movies, family photos?

Here's an interesting, albeit confusing, story: we're getting word that MSI has recalled some Wind laptops running SUSE Linux, since some random oddities had snuck onto the disk image. Namely, illegal screener copies of movies and some family photos. That could explain MSI's temporary delay in shipping this thing out -- a preemptive recall -- but the when, where and what of the recall are a bit hazy, so we recommend rummaging around for the files just in case they're eating up your hard drive room or contain that one flick you were dying to watch with large "Screener copy!" signs flashing past.

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How would you change Acer's Aspire One?

Judging by the amount of mods already available for Acer's contribution to the netbook world, we'd say there's a fair amount of things folks would like changed on the Aspire One. Of course, that's not to say the machine isn't worthy of praise as-is, but there's nothing wrong with a little dreaming. Would you have preferred a 6-cell battery right out of the box? Is that touchpad a touch too small for your chubby fingertips? Would you rather it run a little less like Zune Guy and more like Usain Bolt? With the sudden surge in competition in this sector, there's really no excuse for a poor showing -- let Acer know exactly what you really wanted from the tiniest Aspire.

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Zepto's Hydra A17 leaves no cliche unturned

Let's see, we've got tons of black, a semi-gothic dragon thing, a "Z" in the brand name and a mythological creature in the product name. Yup, Zepto's new Hydra A17 is exactly what gamers need. Sure, the P9500 Core 2 Duo processor, 1920 x 1200 17-inch screen and NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX with 1GB of VRAM don't hurt. There's even a subwoofer and 4GB of RAM, yours for a mere £2,029 (about $3,585 US). Luckily, you can strip this one down to £1,420 (about $2,510 US) but you'll have to sign over your gamer cred at the door -- we might not even let you thread safety pins through your eyebrows.

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