I’ve got a new laptop, which made me briefly popular in the office yesterday (In the same way that there’s apparently an umami taste, I’m sure there’s a gene that regulates the receptor for the smell of newly opened electronic goods, and it’s only expressed in geeks), as various techies gathered around to appraise the goods.

And the upshot was – that the machine looks somehow familiar.  Let’s play a merry game of spot the difference: 

Here’s my old laptop – a 2-year old Lenovo T61p.

And here’s the spanky new Lenovo W500.

Lots of late nights in the style labs eh?  For the picky, the audio sockets have moved, as has the mic. There’s a webcam built in and to top it all off, we have a Windows 7 sticker and a very promising “lenovo ENHANCED EXPERIENCE” (sic). 

The good news is that these machines are rock solid – the T61p has travelled round the world with me and never missed a beat. Just what I want from a corporate machine. Let’s hope the same for the W500 – initial thoughts are promising: fantastic 1920x1200 screen and 8Gb RAM are going to help of course :)

I had to intervene with some drivers when installing 64-bit Windows 7 though – all sorted, and let me know if you want the details.

Final thought – unboxing this thing was as exciting as opening a piece of Ikea furniture, although less assembly was required.  Obviousy Lenovo don’t have the aspirational life-style community in the cross-hairs just yet…