Lenovo ThinkPad X300 review

However, the double sets of mouse buttons seem to run counter to the overall theme of simplification that the ThinkPad X300 embodies. In order to make room for the TrackPoint's buttons, the touchpad is placed rather low on the wrist rest, with its buttons near the laptop's front edge.

Fortunately, the ThinkPad X300 is thin enough that we could use the touchpad with our wrist resting on a desk surface -- or on our leg, when the laptop was in our lap. Of greater concern is the fact that, during our lazier typing moments when our wrists dropped to the wrist rest, we were likely to graze the touchpad and accidentally misplace the cursor.

The ThinkPad X300 is an interesting exercise in minimalism. The laptop lacks some features that would be considered standard, such as an expansion card slot or multiformat memory card reader, both of which are found on the Toshiba Portege R500. But it adds features that will likely be of higher value to mobile workers, such as WWAN, wireless USB and even GPS.

More notably, it incorporates many features that the MacBook Air does not, including two more USB ports, an Ethernet connection and a built-in DVD burner. These additions make the ThinkPad X300 a realistic choice for use as a primary computer, which is a major advantage over its Apple competitor, especially given the price.

Performance
Like the MacBook Air, the ThinkPad X300 incorporates Intel's new small-form-factor Core 2 Duo CPU, though with a slightly slower clock speed. That slower speed is at least partly to blame for the ThinkPad X300 trailing behind the MacBook Air on the multimedia multitasking portion of our performance benchmarks.

The ThinkPad's 2GB of RAM helped it keep up with the MacBook Air on our Photoshop test, where it also scored well ahead of the Toshiba Portege R500. As with any Core 2 Duo system, the ThinkPad X300 proved more than adequate for typical business productivity tasks, including Web surfing, media playback and running office applications. We were able to conduct a full morning's work while streaming music over the wireless connection without any stuttering or noticeable performance issues.