Lenovo ThinkPad X121e 11.6 inch Laptop (Intel Core i3 2357M 1.3GHz, RAM 4GB, HDD 320GB, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit)

I've had this laptop for a month now and I love it. I've always bought Sony Vaios in the past but found Sony only offer a low spec laptop in this size. So I decided to get this Lenovo one instead. It has a nice anti-glare screen which I personally find much better than the glossy screens which look like mirrors and cause eye strain. The keyboard is excellent. Keys are well-spaced, curved to match the finger tips and have a great, satisfying feel to them.

The battery is pretty good. It can last around 6 hours if there's just one program running, open up a few more programs and the battery will last maybe 3 or 4 hours depending on screen brightness etc. The power adaptor is quite small and light.

It has two methods of navigating. You can either use the square trackpad or the little red button in the keyboard and the buttons below it. At first I tried the trackpad as I was used to this with my old laptop but I found the double-tap very hard to master! I then started using the red trackball which I think Lenovo call a Navi button or something and this is much better and quicker. It also means less wrist movement than the trackpad so now I find myself never using the trackpad.

It's packed full of great specs: i3 processor which means you can go from power off to surfing the web in about 10-15 seconds; 3 USB slots (1 powered which is useful for any USB device that uses a bit of power); SD slot which I've used a lot and is handy for transferring files from my digital camera, built-in webcam which gives a pretty clear image and mic which I've tried out and works nicely. I upgraded to 8GB of RAM and it handles everything fine. I'm a web designer so I often have about 6 to 8 programs running at the same time and it's never showed any sign of slowing down.

It's pretty quiet. It's not completely silent - You can hear a slight noise from the fan but it's hardly noticable and certainly not annoying. It stays nice and cool too even when running for hours.

Connections are good. It found and linked to my Apple mac automatically without me doing anything at all and I was able to transfer files between the two machines. The wireless antennae is good. It picks up a stronger signal than my 5 year old Sony in the same room. 3G works well too. I used it when camping and got a connection from Orange and 3. One small note regarding SIM card slot - You can get 3G by placing a 3G SIM card in the back of the laptop. You have to take the battery out first and then slot the SIM into a little slot. There is a small hole right next to the SIM card slot which is the same size and shape as the slot you are supposed to put the SIM into . Take care when putting the SIM card in. I once accidentally put the SIM card into the little hole and the card dropped through the hole and into the inside of the machine. I had to unscrew the back panel to get the SIM back. Not a major issue but a bit of a silly design and a bit surprising considering the fantastic keyboard design.

One thing I love is the fingerprint reader. Now I can log into Windows and Yahoo Messenger with just a swipe of the finger. This usually works first time although occassionally you might need to swipe your finger a couple of times. It's so much better than typing passwords. You can also save log in details to websites and just swipe your finger when you visit them. This would be amazingly useful except it only works when using the Internet Explorer Browser. The Fingerprint software gives and error when Firefox starts up and doesn't work on the Chrome browser. (This is a fault with the software, not the hardware so I'm hoping a software update will fix this in future as I never use Internet Explorer)

All in all I love it. It's light, classy, feels high quality and runs quickly. I would highly recommend it.

This is a laptop for people who want to get things done.

The X121E excels in two areas: performance and portability.

The i3 processor it packs, despite being on the lower end, is easily fast enough for productivity tasks and even some image editing. It runs AutoCAD faster than my Dell Precision, which has the previous Core2 processor at over 2ghz and it handles browsing, MS office, and Photoshop with equal aplomb.

The chassis is thin and light, though it can't compare to the newer ultrabooks. Battery life seems to be at about 5 hours with usable brightness - more than enough for me.

The rest of the package is a bit mixed. The keyboard is excellent, with the action on the keys being satisfying and all of the right functions featuring enlarged keys. The trackpoint works as well as in any other Thinkpad, but unfortunately the touchpad with its integrated mouse buttons is too small and strangely textured. If you can't get on with the traditional Thinkpad nipple, you might have to invest in an external mouse.

The display also isn't great shakes, with an uneven backlight and poor viewing angles, but that applies to just about every laptop, unfortunately.

All in all, the X121E offers fantastic value for money and is one of the most capable ultraportables I've used.

I purchased my Thinkpad directly from Lenovo as they were doing fantastic rebates during the Black Friday sales. This is a very nice laptop which is replacing a similarly sized Dell M101z. Instead of using Windows 7, I wiped out the whole disk and installed Ubuntu Linux 10.04.03. It took a couple of days to get all the components correctly set-up, but there is a lot of information on the Web to help - everything is working fine now, including the sound/microphone/webcam and suspend. If one looks for an out-of-the box installation, just use Ubuntu Linux 11.10 (I did not retain it as I prefer to use the Long Term Support versions). Performance and battery life (4+ hours) are great compared to my previous Dell model. The only thing I struggled with a little bit is the touchpad, it took me some time to get used to it.