Lenovo N100 > Reviews (7)

In 2005 Lenovo took over IBMs thinkpad business and have since continued to build their own branded PCs and Laptops that are aimed at a lower market, i.e. cheaper starting prices than previous IBM models, moving away from business users, more towards small business and personal users.

This review is based on the Lenovo I have borrowed for a couple of months for a new Web project I'm working on. It belongs to a mate and I am reviewing it based upon my experience. This review will not contain comparisons with other Laptops. Thanks for your attention.....

The first two things that struck me when I saw this laptop were the looks, and the screen. Some call it dark gray, I call it matt black, with a silver cover and hinge covers this unit looks sleek. Not the best about but its not bad for a relatively new business (even if they did take over from IBM). From opening the laptop you will be stuck by the keyboard and moreso by the amount of space around it. I prefer some room to rest my hands at the side of the keyboard as well as the wrist area and this certainly does it for me. There's a nifty little fingerprint scanner, I couldnt tell you if this works or how accurate it is as I 've never tried it.

One of my favourites on this Laptop are the little icons that tell you where the side ports are. No more tilting and searching for that USB or memory card slot. The little picture shows you exactly where it is without having to move.

On the left hand side there is a single USB, firewire, ethernet, PC card and SD memory card slot. On the right there are 3 USB ports and audio connections. on the back panel are D-Sub and S-Video connections. Round the front are 4 little LEDs to display WIFI, Bluetooth, Battery and Sleep modes.

The Laptop feels quite sturdy. There are fairley chunky hinges and it's not the lightest Laptop i've used so i am confident in it's ability to take a beating, although I'm not prepared to try it. I din't think it has the anti-shock capability of some laptops available but that is probably reflected in the price.

The keyboard is a little cramped but I have done a lot of typing and haven't found this to be a problem. Now that I am used to it's size I am typing away fairley quickly and not having to delete and correct mistakes.

The screen is 15.4 inch and I have the resolution set at 1280 x 800 and I find this a good size for most jobs I am doing, even watching DVDs. The picture is very sharp but the brightness no so good.

The speakers leave a lot to be desired. Don't try to watch a good movie unless you're using headphones or plugged into an external speaker system.

Connectivity - The Laptop I am using has a built in 56k modem, wifi enabled, bluetooth, ethernet connection and firewire. There is a button to disable the wireless connections (wifi and Bluetooth).

The CD tray is actually a double layer DVD burner, maybe a little overkill for a laptop in my opinion, but handy to have I suppose.

Now, from what I gather, this laptop has a 1.8Ghz Intel Core Duo processor, 512Mb ram, A GE Force graphics card and an 80 Gb hard drive.

I have to say I have played a couple of games including FIFA07, Deer Hunter and Settlers 2 and they've ran well, very well. I don't sopend a lit of time playing games though so can't give a good review of the graphics card. I'm currently working on some web stuff that uses Mysql and php and I'm passing large quantities of data across networks to try and break the site I'm working on. The laptop is handling large volumes of wifi traffic fine with no loss of data yet.

While I work i do listen to music and I've not noticed any problems with the playback when running memory and CPU intense applications such as virus scanning software.

Most of the time I'm working from mains power but working from the battery, doing the type of work I've just explained gives about 90 mins. On the train into work I get more than enough power for the 40 minute journey.

I would recomend Lenovo to anyone looking to buy a new laptop, although it is worth running comparisons as i'm not up in the world of competition.