ThinkPad Lenovo T500: Intel Centrino 2 inside!

Centrino 2, WiFi n, Gigabit Ethernet, DisplayPort…
With the ThinkPad T500, Lenovo is offering a portable PC designed for professional use which is well equipped, is robust and which allows you to run any current applications without any noticeable slowdowns with Windows Vista.

We wanted to evaluate this machine as it is equipped with the new Centrino 2 processor running 2.26GHz (Intel Core 2 Duo P8400) making it a modern office laptop which has a little something extra. It comes with a 15.4” (1280 x 800) wide screen, 2 GB of RAM extendable to 4GB, a 160 GB hard drive (5400 rpm/min SATA) and an Intel Media Accelerator X4500 video chipset. For the networks, the T500 has an Ethernet Gigabyte port (10/100/1000), WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n (draft 2.0, theoretically 300 Mbit/s) as well as Bluetooth 2.0 and an integrated 3G+ chipset for connections with ultra-mobile peripherals (PDA, mobile phones, Netbook PC’s…)

The connectivity options are also more then you would usually see as while we still have the traditional 3 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, 7-in-1 memory card reader, we also have a Firewire port so that we can connect our video camera or external hard drive and the DisplayPort – a new digital display interface which will no doubt replace the DVI connector on laptops over time as they are too encumber some on a portable.

While this professional model weighs 2.7Kg, the announced battery life is 6 hours and 20 minutes. We should precise that there is also no integrated webcam, although this isn’t a problem, unless you have a lot of video conferences to attend. The RJ11 port which allows you to send ad receive faxes or make a modem connection, is still present, just under the CD/DVD writer.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T500 (NL34DFR) is available for 1,650 dollars, with the pre-installed programs being ThinkVantage, Rescue and Recovery, McAfee, PC Doctor Diagnostic, Intervideo WinDVD, Roxio RecordNOW… The product has a 3 year return to manufacturer warranty, with 1 year for the battery.