ThinkPad has a clearly defined place in our affections as the serious business laptop that costs a fortune. You probably wouldn't buy a ThinkPad with your own money but you hope like heck that your company will provide one as part of your package.At this point your correspondent wishes to point out that he is self-employed so the sight of a ThinkPad drives him into a rage of childish envy. It's all so unfair that these people are given a ThinkPad for free!
This makes the ThinkPad Edge particularly interesting as it is a budget ThinkPad or, if you prefer, a ThinkPad that you might consider buying for cold hard cash. The ThinkPad Edge is available in a 13.3-inch chassis without an optical drive or 15.6-inch with a tray-loading DVD writer. Both sizes of screen have an HD resolution of 1366x768 pixels.
In addition to making a decision about the chassis you also have to choose between AMD and Intel hardware for the CPU and graphics. This means that there is no such thing as a typical ThinkPad Edge and in addition there is a long list of options to navigate. Our review sample was a relatively basic model that came without 3G mobile Internet hardware, and the 4GB of RAM was installed in two modules so there is no scope for an upgrade unless you start chucking away the existing memory.
The guts of the hardware all come from Intel's shop and include the 2.27GHz Core i5-430M CPU, HM55 chipset, GMA 4500HD graphics and 802.11b/g/n wireless. While the graphics won't win any plaudits from gamers, they do a perfectly serviceable job and support the HDMI output on the left-hand side of the chassis. Lenovo has also included a VGA output which should guarantee compatibility with pretty much every projector on the market.
The arrangement of the ports and connectors is very convenient. On the rear there is a single USB 2.0 port, with two more USB ports on the right hand side along with the optical drive and power connector. On the front of the chassis there's a card reader and then we have a slew of connectors on the left side. These consist of the Ethernet port, an ExpressCard 34 slot, VGA and HDMI graphics outputs, a headphone jack, a regular USB 2.0 port and a combination eSATA/USB port, which gives a total of four USB ports. The final feature is a 2-megapixel webcam set in the lid of the laptop.
Lenovo changed the Operating System on our sample from the default option of 64-bit Windows 7 Professional which should appeal to the typical ThinkPad customer. We were startled to see that these changes took the nominal price for the ThinkPad Edge to £1,154 before it was discounted to £831 on Lenovo's website. Give or take a bit, that's £200 more expensive than a Dell Inspiron 15R with a similar specification, however we haven't considered the all-important ThinkPad factor. For instance, there is air bag protection for the hard drive and Lenovo includes its usual suite of ThinkVantage Toolbox and System Update 4 software.
The keyboard looks smaller than you might expect as it doesn't have a number pad on the side. It looks good and feels superb when you type, with an excellent action and rock solid stability. There is a TrackPoint set in the keyboard with three mouse buttons positioned below the space-bar. Move further down and you'll see a regular touchpad and two more mouse buttons, so you can either work the Lenovo way or settle for controls that will be familiar to any laptop user.
The arrangement of the ports and connectors is very convenient. On the rear there is a single USB 2.0 port, with two more USB ports on the right hand side along with the optical drive and power connector. On the front of the chassis there's a card reader and then we have a slew of connectors on the left side. These consist of the Ethernet port, an ExpressCard 34 slot, VGA and HDMI graphics outputs, a headphone jack, a regular USB 2.0 port and a combination eSATA/USB port, which gives a total of four USB ports. The final feature is a 2-megapixel webcam set in the lid of the laptop.
Lenovo changed the Operating System on our sample from the default option of 64-bit Windows 7 Professional which should appeal to the typical ThinkPad customer. We were startled to see that these changes took the nominal price for the ThinkPad Edge to £1,154 before it was discounted to £831 on Lenovo's website. Give or take a bit, that's £200 more expensive than a Dell Inspiron 15R with a similar specification, however we haven't considered the all-important ThinkPad factor. For instance, there is air bag protection for the hard drive and Lenovo includes its usual suite of ThinkVantage Toolbox and System Update 4 software.
The keyboard looks smaller than you might expect as it doesn't have a number pad on the side. It looks good and feels superb when you type, with an excellent action and rock solid stability. There is a TrackPoint set in the keyboard with three mouse buttons positioned below the space-bar. Move further down and you'll see a regular touchpad and two more mouse buttons, so you can either work the Lenovo way or settle for controls that will be familiar to any laptop user.
