ThinkPad 570 PII 333 MHz - 13.3" TFT

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Average
Look & Feel	Good
Comfort & Portability	Excellent
Robustness & Durability	Excellent
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Size, weight, looks, build quality, keyboard
Disadvantages:	Built - in speaker

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I got this laptop as second hand, with upgraded ram and hard drive (128M, 10Gb), after researching into the laptop market, i was after an ultra-portable laptop that would not break the bank, and this, for �130 off ebay was the best thing i could ever have gotten.

To start off with my expectations, i expected to be able to get something really bulky and heavy, which would probably run windows 98 and i might have been tempted to make use of the system efficiency of linux or freebsd, but this laptop exceeded all my expectations and left me with a happy pocket!

The Pentium II 333 would not really cut it as a multimedia performer, or so i thought, but again, i was surprised just how capable this portable is! Basically, being a student and wanting to carry the thing with me everyday, this is ideal, weighing in at 1.8 kilos without the base, i can word process, write emails, i have it on a broadband internet connection which lets me stream radio and TV, being a web designer at spare time i also have Dreamweaver and Flash MX 2004 running perfectly! Also powerpoint and basic stuff the laptop handles beautifully!

I was expecting it to be too slow to watch movies on BUT again it has suceeded my expectations! First of all, avi and wma playback was very slow due to the 2.5MB graphics card not being exactly amazing, but with a 500k driver update i can now watch full screen (1024x768) Divx video which really flows without any glitches! Only glitches i do notice are when playing very high-bitrate video (eg DVD quality). That, i thought from a �130 laptop was impossible but again, i was very pleasantly surprised!!! Also to mention i am now running windows 2000 extremely happily which actually boots faster than my 2400 Athlon PC!!! Just incase anyone out there is interested, i am managing to run Truespace 5 (3D modelling program), which is really breaking all the rules (lol), it is however very slow but renders without crashes, and considering the 2,5M graphics card that is pretty amazing! Also both OpenGL and Direct3D modes work fine.

Sound quality from the sound card is as good as a PC one, there is also a teeny built in mic just above your keyboard (only mono, but picks up bass surprisingly well!), i also use it for recording mixes, it is perfect! Only downside in the sound department is the single built-in speaker on the bottom of the laptop, which leaves alot to be desired, distorts at higher volumes, but from an ultraportable you cannot expect mind-blowing audio and ground shaking bass!

The build quality is top - just what you would expect from IBM, and it looks (even now - in 2004) really nice, is extremely light for a laptop and the performance makes me forget the numbers (333, 128 etc) :)...And gosh it is so thin! Looking at it from a distance you would think it would break if you picked it up:)

The TrackPoint (the little pointing device in the middle of the keyboard that IBM doesnt want to let go of) is actually extremely nice to use and i think after i got used to it i even prefer it to the TrackPads, it is very accurate and you can get things done with much fewer 'pushes' than with the Trackpads (they are bloody annoying in my opinion), instead of having your finger constantly tapping and running across the pad (it can get painfull in long use), you can have your finger on the trackpoint constantly and have a fast, 'flowing' motion going, which is much more comfortable and uses less 'finger energy' if it makes any difference to you!! Only niggle is it tends to slowly 'drift' sometimes even when it is not used, very strange, but not a problem whatsoever! And talk about the keyboard!! Apart from a few annoying buttons like very small DEL, INS, HOME and END buttons (which always get cramped in laptop keyboards) all the other buttons are very intuitively placed and generally this is the nicest keyboard i have ever typed on! The buttons are clear, big, the keyboard spans across the whole width of the laptop, and they have JUST the perfect amount of travel!!!

Only real problem i have in particular is the battery life, mine holds charge but only about 10 minutes, i expected this when i got it because laptop batteries only tend to last about 3-4 years and degrade slowly, after i get a new one should give me a healthy 3 hours (there are options in the BIOS for automatic performance/battery life settings so you can conserve even more! There is also a hardware (physical) brightness adjuster slider on the bottom of the screen which can save you power too. Moving onto the screen, it is very crisp, bright, and the native resolution of 1024x768 on a 13.3" screen is just perfect! And the laptop itself is not much bigger, there is about 1 centimeter space from the corner of the screen to the corner of the lid itself which is nice (i hate the 'frames' around the screens on other models).

Overall, this laptop is absolutely fantastic, it is an absolute pleasure to use, it is ultraportabe, small, THIN!has plenty or connectivity (USB port is an absolute lifesaver), and AMAZING value for money, at its launch it went for $2500 (rip off even by IBM standards), now you can pick it up from ebay for pennies, add the ultrabase (with CD+floppy), new battery and an ethernet card (or even an 802.11 USB adapter) and you have an extremely nice piece of kit, last word of advice - ignore the numbers - processor speeds and RAM are mostly all marketing, this with win98 or 2k is same as an athlon 2400 laptop with windows XP!! (my friend has one LOL).

The best value thing you will ever buy!
You would not regret it!