Lenovo 3000 V100 Laptop Mag

The Lenovo V100 battery rounds out the Lenovo/ibm 3000 series by filling in the ultraportable gap. The 12.1-inch widescreen V100 isn't as thin and light as its cousin ThinkPad X60s, but with a built-in optical drive and 1.3 megapixel web camera it's more integrated and perhaps more convenient for some people.

Overall, despite the reflection issues with a glossy display I'm a fan of the richer colors you'll get. It was a good choice for Lenovo to offer this.

The lenovo 3000 V100 battery display is overall pretty good. It could be a notch brighter in my opinion, it's not as bright as some competing 12.1" notebooks such as the Dell XPS M1210. Also, the vertical viewing angles are quite poor, you'll have to choose a perpendicular angle of viewing to get the best screen coloration. Horizontal viewing angles are quite good though. Light leakage is minimal, but there is some at the bottom of the screen.

Build and Design

You right away notice the V100 as lenovo 3000 v200 battery is no ThinkPad because of the rather interesting curvy design. The back of the notebook is curved, evoking the look of some of the curvier cars on the road. In physics many will have learned that a curved back-end tear drop shape is the most aerodynamic form, but I don't think Lenovo had any ideas of accelerating this notebook up to top speeds.

The coloring is an all silver outside with black on the inside. Overall the look is quite plain, it's not exactly exciting but steers away from being brazen, so therefore it could still be carried around as a notebook for business users -- and Lenovo n100 battery does fully intend to sell this to small business types.

The casing is made of a sturdy plastic. The build is durable, there's a slight amount of flex on the palm rests if you push in hard, but nothing that will sink under the light downward pressure of one's palms. The lid offers adequate protection, push in and you'll find some ripples on the LCD -- it's not as convincing as say the mag-alloy ThinkPad lid but more than serviceable. Just don't sit on it while it's in your backpack and there will be no worries.

One thing that struck me about the V100 is that it's not as light as you might think, and it shouldn't be classified as an ultraportable (an ultraportable is a 1.0" or thinner notebook that weighs under 4lbs). With the 6-cell battery it weighs about 4.4 lbs, which is most definitely portable and easy to carry, but 1.5lbs more than the ThinkPad X60s and nowhere near as wonderfully thin as that notebook. Of course, you get a built-in optical drive and other goodies with the lenovo n200 battery V100 that aren't on the X60s battery so you trade weight for features.

Speakers and Audio

The V100 as lenovo t60 battery speakers are located at the very front of the notebook. The speakers are actually not too bad, the loudness is good and clarity decent as well. I was surprised to have even adequate speakers on this sized notebook. They're leaps and bounds better than the Dell battery ThinkPad X60s 12.1" screen notebook that has a speaker located on the bottom side. Still, if you want what can be called very good sound you'll need headphones or external speakers to plug into the line-out port on the left hand side.

Heat and Noise

The V100 as vgp-bps8 is a very quiet system that stays nice and cool. Even when running benchmark applications on this notebook things didn't really warm up and the fan was either inaudible or didn't need to kick in. High marks go to the designers for making a notebook that has a good cooling system. Ever since using an Apple MacBook that runs at 140 F in normal usage, which is apparently considered normal to longtime Apple notebook users, I'm more appreciative of notebooks that don't cook your lap when used.

Despite the fact we're dealing with a smal 12.1" screen notebook, the keyboard on the V100 as vgp-bps9 is full sized. Except for the "Home" and "End" key, all of the major keys are there with dedicated buttons you'd usually use. The top row of keys is slightly undersized to fit properly, but still very usable. The feel of the keyboard is good, it's firm overall with a very slight amount of flex on the bottom right side -- you have to push hard to discover it though. The keyboard is "ThinkPad like" but not as good or the same feel in my opinion. The touch of the keys seems somewhat lighter and the travel not quite as far or as pleasing.

The touchpad is a different story. I miss using a pointing stick that you get on the ThinkPad series, but can handle a touchpad if it is a good implementation. The V100 touchpad is not a good implementation. The mouse buttons are some of the worst I've used, they're very stiff, clicky, cheap feeling and the travel can only be described as awkward. The touchpad is often erratic, despite my playing with the configuration. It's just overall not good. Maybe because I'm so used to the superb usability of the ThinkPad Ultra Nav input I'm being harsh here, but on the competing Dell M1210 notebook I give high marks for the touchpad and mouse buttons so I'm confident saying this is an area in which the V100 simply falls flat. Get a wireless mouse, you'll need it.

You can see that the Lenovo V100 built-in camera performs much better in a typical room lighting situation than both the XPS M1210 vgp-bps9a camera did and also the Apple iSight camera (look at the artwork in the background to see that the V100 camera captured more detail).

It would have been really nice if the camera rotated like it does on the sony laptop battery Dell M1210 vgp-bps9/b, that way this could be a great notebook to take to class and capture lectures on video.

While the camera quality is good, the included "BisonCap" software is absolutely awful. I've used a lot of notebooks with built-in web cams, some have a button on the keyboard that launches the camera and software that makes it easy to then take a picture or video. The V100 and BisonCap does not (make it easy). Check out the "File" menu options (pictured below), this web cam software wants you to allocate file space for a video. Allocating memory and file space is what made some developers run from C++ to Java, the average user looking at this BisonCap application will just plain run away. Hopefully you'll be using a Chat program such as AOL IM / MSN or maybe Skype in conjunction with this camera and not the included BisonCap application.

Battery

The V100 I've been using has the 6-cell longer life battery, it sticks out of the back as you can see from pictures in this review. I unplugged the V100 at 100% charge and then set the screen brightness level to half on the V100 vgp-bps9a/b . I ran a benchmark program, played some music, surfed the web, transferred files, used the camera and did a few other minor tasks on the V100 and then let it simply idle as the battery drained down. After 2:57 mins the battery conked out. This isn't too bad given the fact wireless was left on. You could squeeze more battery life out by lowering screen brightness. If you played a movie with full screen brightness, I'm guessing the battery would run down at about 2.5 hours. I'd definitely recommend going with the 6-cell battery, the 3-cell simply wouldn't provide enough juice.

Software

Lenovo includes an InstantOn software feature that allows you to watch movies, listen to music or view pictures within a quick boot operating system. The Lenovo dell d630 battery Care software makes it easy to update your system and keep it secure. There's also some unwanted trial software on there though, the Corel image application is particularly annoying in that it's automatically associated as the default app to open any type of image and as soon as you plug in an external device with images it will want to open and have you pay to register and use it. Oh well, every manufacturer is including these trial software applications and we all just train ourselves to uninstall it I suppose. Overall though, Lenovo is not as bad as others at loading the system up with junkware and the Lenovo Care software is good to have. I already mentioned how bad the included web camera software is, I won't berate it again.

Conclusion

The Lenovo V100 is a decent portable notebook offering and nice addition to the 3000 series. I think the key for the V100 will be pricing, the 12.1" form factor is turning into a competitive field as is witnessed by the release of the XPS M1210 inspiron 1525 battery and the V100 inspiron 1526 battery on the very same day. If you want to have a small notebook that's simple to carry around and still offers very good performance and attractive features, the V100 should be on your list to consider. The excellent web camera image quality, good keyboard, good selection of ports and of course the advantage of having a built-in optical drive in a 12.1" form factor are key decision components. The V100 as inspiron 1501 battery would fit well for a small business buyer or as a second computer in the home that can be easily carried on vacation or other trips.

Pros

• Good performance with the Core Duo processor


• Runs very quiet and cool


• Good keyboard


• Great image quality on the optional web camera


• Integrated optical drive in a 12.1" form factor


• 5-in-1 media card reader is really nice to have


• Included Lenovo Care software and built-in finger reader offer nice security features

Cons

• Design is ho-hum and not as exciting as some other competing 12.1" notebooks


• Touchpad is poor and mouse buttons are awful


• Provided BisonCap web camera software is clunky at best, borderline unusable


• Not as rugged or well built as the ThinkPad X60 cousin notebook


• Calling this an ultraportable is a stretch, it's about 4.4lbs and heavier than you might think with the 6-cell battery which is absolutely necessary to get 3 hours of battery life. Ultraportable means 1.0" thin and about 3 - 4lbs by most definitions.