Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Long story short: this is an amazing computer with very few, forgivable, flaws
I spent a lot of time looking into the X201T because I'm someone who likes to buy computers rarely. The last computer I bought was a Thinkpad R61 in 2004, it did me well for six years and my wife uses it to this day. I have little doubt that the X201T will do the same.
The X201T is less a computer and more a collection of functions, which are made possible by the many ways to provide the computer with input. You have two mice (a red dot and a touchpad), two keyboards (a fantastic real one and one on the touch screen), a stylus (which is both a mouse and a keyboard), and your finger (the most intuitive way to operate Windows or use the internet, even if you're using the built-in keyboard). If you get a set of Bluetooth headphones/microphone you can even do a lot of things with your voice (the pre-installed speech recognition software works better than I expected), and you can control music from your ear. With such a wide range of options, interacting with the computer is smooth and natural.
Good thing too, because it can do so much. My work requires me to read and write, all the time, and the X201T is perfect for that. It is a great word processor - all the more so because editing Word documents with the stylus is quicker and easier than the mouse/keyboard combination. Instead of keeping a pad of scratch paper around for ideas, I just run OneNote in tablet mode. If you work with pdf's, the X201T will become your library and your filing cabinet. Having used the tablet to surf the internet, I am now convinced that the web was not meant to be accessed with a mouse. The X201T has all the same functions as an iPad, which makes it an extraordinary media player - I hook up my Bluetooth headphones and play the thing from my bag. If you want a television, the widescreen is actually pretty big and very bright (even without the extra brightness upgrade), and you can always hook it up to an external monitor. Of course, this thing destroys email, spreadsheets, and other normal computing tasks.
The computer isn't cheap and without a few accessories and upgrades it's not worth having. The docking station is a must, and Lenovo's tablet bag is critical if you want to work on the go. The multitouch option is a necessity; the 8-cell battery provides a little less power than I'd like (~ 5 hours of full functionality and about two more without internet or Bluetooth) but it's a heck of a lot better than the 4-cell battery; you'll want 4 GB of RAM (expandable to 8); and the 2.13 GHz processor is worth the investment. The upgraded warranty (the one that covers accidents) makes sense for me. That said, I was able to get all of this for about 2K in August 2010 - sellers on eBay buy these packages in bulk and undercut the manufacturer.
A couple of relatively minor downsides: forget about gaming (though Halo 2 works well on an external monitor), Windows Media player sometimes skips when I have the computer in the tablet bag and I go up or down stairs, it sometimes gets hot on the bottom when it runs for a long time in tablet mode, and multitouch capability is not built seamlessly into Windows. (You can zoom in Word, but only in 10% increments, and many Windows options are too small to touch with your finger. That said, Windows 7 is very well suited for a touchscreen on the whole.)Overall, I'm looking forward to the next six years with my new computer. I have no idea what we'll have by then, but I do know that the transition from notebook to tablet has reaffirmed my admiration of technological progress. The experience was similar to the one I had in 2004 when I moved from a desktop to a laptop. If you want to invest in a serious (and seriously fun) piece of technology, dump the iPad and pick up an X201T.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Lenovo ThinkPad X201 12.1" (2985F4U) Tablet PC i7-620LM 2G DDR3 320G HDD Docking Station (Windows 7 Professional)
No comments:
Post a Comment