Core values
If you choose to customise your purchase, you can add an extra 4GB of RAM for £56.40 or a 128GB SSD for £240, not really a lot of options here. Of course, you could also opt to downgrade to a 2.1GHz 2310M i3 CPU which will also force you to ditch the Radeon card for Intel HD Graphics.
Sim card option available for mobile use
Also an option is an Ericsson F5521GW 3G modem, but this appears to only be available on the models with Intel HD Graphics, even though there is a (non-functional) Sim slot in this ATI Radeon model.
Adorning the sides of the ThinkPad you'll find two USB 2.0 ports, one USB/eSata hybrid port, HDMI, VGA, gigabit Ethernet, slot-loading DVD±RW and an SD reader. Certainly enough to satisfy most, but I would have liked to see the inclusion of USB 3.0.
While I’m quite impressed by the hardware Lenovo has packed into the E420s, I'm not overly thrilled with the 14in 1366 x 768 16:9 screen. Personally, I don't usually confine myself to such small displays, but I feel that the ThinkPad could benefit greatly from a 1440 x 900 16:10 panel. Don't despair though, if you can live with the limited screen real-estate then you'll be pleased to know that the picture quality is certainly good enough to justify the Radeon GPU.
Next page: Benchmark Tests
COMMENTS
Low res
Even the "businessy" models have started this slide to the mass market, cheap-as-chips 16:9 low-res panels. Does nobody realise just how badly they murder productivity? Or do people just watch films on the train these days?
2GB of dedicated graphics memory and a 1366x768 screen? It's like a match made in hea.... no, wait a second...
Vertical resolution is so important
My (work) ThinkPad T61 is 1440x900. It's the smallest number of vertical pixels I think is even slightly useful. I'd much rather have a 4x3 screen, especially since the advent of widescreen seems to have coincided with software using up more and more vertical space. If you use Google Docs within Firefox (pre v4 or on XP) or IE, a huge amount of your vertical space is taken up with toolbars, menus, bookmarks and the like. And the new Office ribbon isn't much better. Saving vertical space was the chief reason why I switched to Chrome for browsing.
Widescreen is completely inappropriate for most working purposes. I couldn't care less about watching movies on my laptop. I have a television for that.
I don't see it getting much better though.
Too Short; Too Fat
It would be a kindness to remind your readers that 768 vertical pixels are VASTLY inadequate for any serious use. Even browsing is a pain and 768 pixels are insufficient for any serious word processing and many spreadsheets. The only reason for that crazy screen shape comes in two letters: DV, followed by a repeated D.
My T400s is better, 1440x900, but still insufficiently tall and at the price of teeny, tiny type. Anyone who actually works on a portable needs 4x3 or even a square screen, with as much vertical real estate as possible.
So, please remind your readers that 768 pixels are not enough, unless the laptop is meant only for email and DVDs.
Suits more than suits...
I'd say with only 768 vertical pixels on that widescreen setup, it won't suit the suits that do anything more that powerpoint presentations. Widescreens that small are only fit for watching movies on a plane.
The world is vertical, webpages scroll vertically, emails scroll vertically, why would anyone choose to view the world through the IT equivalent of a Panzer's port hole?
Mine's the one with the "Campaign for 4:3 laptops" pin on the lapel.
@ AC 08:16
Surely you mean the noun "pedant", not the adjective "pedantic"...
So you know what's coming!
