The first answer came last year: Lenovo has maintained the strong quality of the ThinkPad line. The ThinkPad X60 tablet/laptop hybrid answers the second question unequivocally: Vista is a strong asset for Tablet PCs.

The combination of Vista's new Tablet PC features and ThinkPad quality make for a compelling mobile computer. While its standard configuration is a bit underpowered, the ThinkPad X60 is a jewel of a laptop, particularly when you add RAM to the basic configuration, and a lovely Tablet PC.

The basics

That X60's basic configuration comes with a meager 512MB of RAM, although our test unit came with 2GB of RAM. The extra RAM is absolutely necessary. The test X60 reported RAM utilization of around 40 percent, which means that trying to run Vista with the standard RAM would have been painful.

The rest of the X60's standard configuration is a mixed bag. Standard, it comes with a 60GB hard drive, no Bluetooth and a 4-cell battery supporting the Intel Core Duo L2500 processor running at 1.83 GHz. The built-in Wi-Fi radio is supplemented by a WAN radio that works with Verizon's EV-DO data network.