A Computer Repair Tech's Rant

Left Side View Here's a shot of the left side of the machine with the LCD closed. You can see the intake for the CPU heatsink/fan assembly, VGA out, Modem/LAN ports, Headphone/Mic jacks, 1 USB2 port, and the PCCARD/ExpressCard slots.

Right Side View Here's a shot of the right side of the machine with the LCD closed. Youc an see the Ultrabay Optical Drive (a CDRW/DVD combo drive in this case but a DVDRW is available), 2x USB2 ports, and the lock port.

Bottom View Here's a bottom view with the battery removed. No, there are no doors on the bottom for memory access. Both SODIMM slots are beneath the palmrest directly underneath the touchpad. You can also see the docking station connector.

Front View Here's a shot of the front of the machine with the LCD open. You can see the general layout of the machine, and the fingerprint scanner on the right side beneath the arrow keys.

Keyboard Here's a shot of the keyboard and palmrest. The windows key is clearly visible between the CTRL and ALT keys. You can also see the new media functions that were added as secondary fucntions to the arrow keys. I dont much care for the silver color of the volume control keys. It looks cheap. Actual key feel appears to be fairly good, however.

Left Side View Here's another shot of the left side, this time with the LCD open.

Right Side View Here's another shot of the right side again, this time with the LCD open.

Bottom View Here's another shot of the bottom, this time with the battery installed. This is the standard battery, and like the T4x series, an extended runtime battery is also available.

So what do I think? Well, overall, I think it will be an improvement over the T4x design. I really like the way the base chassis is constructed. Its quite rigid, with very little flex to it thanks to the new "roll cage" design. Having to tear off the palmrest to install memory is a bit irksome, however. I really dont like the silver accent colors used on the buttons. They make it look cheap. The inclusion of the windows key will offend alot of thinkpad purists, but I can see why they did it... I just wish they'd picked a better location for it.