IBM released its new ThinkPad R50 series during the fall of 2003. The R Series of notebooks from IBM used to parade as a budget class, that’s no longer the case, the R Series is in fact quite close to the high-end T Series in performance and specs. The ThinkPad R50 (Battery) of course features IBM’s easy to distinguish classic black case and with a 13” x 10.4” x 17” (W x D x H) dimension specs we see that it has grown slightly from the previous generation. With a 15-inch XGA screen (14.1" also available) and weighing a modest 6.6lbs, or 7.1lbs when combined with the AC adapter for travel weight, the ThinkPad R50 can serve as a good desktop replacement or as a reasonably mobile laptop if you’re on the go. The ThinkPad R50 is a diverse laptop, so let’s dig into the details and see if it’s worth your consideration for purchasing.
ThinkPad R50 Review Unit Specifications
The ThinkPad R50 (Battery) used in this review has the following configuration:
- Pentium M 1.4 GHz (Centrino processor)
- 512MB DDR333 RAM (CL2.5)
- 14.1" 1024x768 XGA screen
- Radeon 7500 Mobility graphics card with 32MB RAM
- 5400 RPM 30 GB Hard Drive
- Built in 802.11b Wi-Fi
Shortcomings
It’s always best to get the bad news aside and focus on the good, so let me now talk about the only two failings I can think of with the R50:
1. The screen. It's not bad. It's actually somewhat better than the screen on the old Toshiba Satellite 3000 I have, but it's not as nice as Sharp's Actius screens, or Sony's black LCDs, or some Digital Camera (Battery)'s screen. The default settings are lacking in contrast and brightness, and it is easy to imagine the image would get washed out in glare. The vertical viewing angle is a bit small (about 20 degrees before color and contrast reversal start to happen), but the horizontal viewing angles are fine (about 130 degrees). It was clear this was meant as a no-nonsense business laptop, and not a multimedia machine. Having said that, the display is crisp and sharp for text and CAD work that I do.
2. No standard FireWire port, if you want fast data transfer from such things as Digital Video Cameras then you need this. It is true that some models come with IEEE1394 (FireWire), but mine did not. To compensate for this shortcoming in the R50 you’ll have to purchase a FireWire PCMCIA card.
Usability
The R50 is a joy to use. The keys are wonderfully tactile, and the TrackPoint navigation stick with the new Soft Dome cap is very comfortable to navigate with. The buttons for the TrackPoint are likewise very well designed. The TrackPad does not fare quite as well. For some reason, it always feels a little too small, and the buttons are flush instead of raised, making them harder to click. The motion of the TrackPad is also not quite as satisfying as with the TrackPoint. However, the extra features of the TrackPad are quite convenient - scrolling areas for horizontal and vertical scrolling, and customizable hotspots are nice to have. I ended up using the top left corner of the TrackPad to simulate the Windows key.
What amazed me most about the ThinkPad R50 (Battery) in operation was the sheer silence. I could not hear the hard drive spinning against ambient noise in my home. Even more impressive, with the R50 on my lap, I could not feel the hard drive or the DVD-ROM spinning! While parked on my lap, the bottom surface of the R50 was never the slightest bit warm during normal usage. It did warm up a bit when running 100% CPU utilization with consecutive SiSoft Sandra tests (a benchmark application designed to push a PC to its processing limits to record performance), but other than that, it was always comfortably cool to the touch.
The speakers were also quite a bit nicer than I'd expected, especially for a business model laptop. Please realize that the ThinkPad R50 was not designed to be a music machine though, you’ll need decent speakers to hook up via the headphone out jack to get really good sound.
Active Protection System
The much-hyped APS (Active Protection System) on the Tthinkpad R50 and Thinkpad T42 (Battery) is a feature that causes the ThinkPad to park the heads of the hard drives when the notebook senses it is falling. I doubt I'll be testing how effective that is in an actual fall, at least not intentionally, anyway. In practice, I find the APS program is a little too sensitive, and I miss being able to set sensitivity settings in the software - you get a simple on/off, and another option for ignoring repetitive motions caused by such things as trains and buses. Still, it doesn't cost me any trouble, and the day it saves my data might make it all worthwhile. In the meantime, I amaze and astound my friends with the 3D real-time position readout!
Design and Build
The R50 is a very nicely proportioned laptop, and strikes an ideal balance for mainstream laptops. The lines on it are very smooth, with a nice blend of chiseled edges and contours. Of course, it's in the standard IBM matte black casing.It has the typical oversized "hood" on the outer edge of the screen. Love it or hate it, the beveling does serve a purpose to stiffen the cover. It does not provide any appreciable shading from glare, however. The latch on the screen is a twin-hook arrangement, but it only needs a single sliding switch to unlock it, and it can be easily opened with one hand. The hinges to open and close the screen are solid chunks of metal, and open with a smooth action. Some laptops you’ll find creak or feel cheap when you lift the screen , the Thinkpad R50 (Battery) suffers no such issues.
The top surface of the R50 has a nice, rubberized feel that is quite easy to grip. The keyboard is full-size, and very tactile. It's missing a Windows button, and it's not for want of space. Credit it to typical IBM stubbornness. IBM lists the ThinkPad R50’s weight as 6.6lbs (2.5 kg), but it is actually lighter than my old Toshiba Satellite 3000, which was also supposed to be "2.5 kg". The weight of the R50 is a comfortable one, and not burdensome in the least.
No comments:
Post a Comment