Best Laptop 2005

Michael Gartenberg | December 19, 2005, 05:39 PM

This was another tough category, there were a lot of contenders from a lot of different folks. I liked a lot of the stuff Toshiba is doing and the newest PowerBooks are excellent systems. There's also that new cool rev of the OQO. In the end, it came down to two from and both are from the same vendor. The Lenovo Thinkpad x41 Tablet and the new Z60t. In the end, I'm giving the nod to the x41 since it's just better suited to the way I work but the Z60t has a lot going for it as well.

What's Good – Well, the X41 is the successor to my laptop choice last year, the fabulous x40. IBM added a few tweaks here and there but mostly addressed my single biggest issue, the lack of Tablet functionality. Now that's been addressed and the x41 is a killer system. It's the first Tablet PC I've used where there is no penalty at all for the Tablet OS feature. It just works as a great notebook and when you need it in Tablet mode (like in that middle seat in coach on the way to CES) it's just there for you. Still no integrated drive and the screen is still XGA. But if you need more, you might want to look at the Z60t. Take the great IBM keyboard, add in a nice DVD burner and a 15" screen. Toss in a Pentium M and a gig of memory and a 100gb HD and you're talking about a first class system that will keep up with most desktops. The best part is that it's still only 5.5lbs so it's still truly portable. Now toss in integrated WiFi A/B/G and EV-DO and for wireless broadband and you have one of the best combination of mobile features I've seen in. It all works well together and battery life still holds at about 5 hours with the extended battery. All in all, Lenovo is proving they can carry the ThinkPad brand and take it to new places.

What's Missing – Not much really. It comes down to choice in terms of form factor, screen size and features. I'd like to see the X series get integrated EV-DO so I don't need to carry an external card and perhaps a faster GPU for when Vista ships. The z60 has a good screen but there are slightly better ones out there that could make it more of a multimedia system for entertainment but these are minor quibbles. Both machines are worthy of my vote for laptop of the year.