Laptop and Computer Reviews

The Lenovo 3000 C100 is a decent budget laptop that delivers competent performance and long battery life, but other laptops offer superior features for a similar price. Lenovo has been sitting patiently, waiting to take the stage with its own brand of notebooks, but this is not the grand entrance I was anticipating. While the Lenovo 3000 C100 ($999) is a capable value notebook for small businesses and home offices.

Sandwiched between the power and speaker mute buttons located above the keyboard is a hot key for accessing the Lenovo Care portal, which launches multimedia applications, connects you to Web-based support services, and provides quick links to backup and system recovery tools.

The Lenovo 3000 C100 series is the company’s latest entry into the home midsize laptop market. Unlike its ThinkPad brethren, the C100 is a super budget machine; however, many comparable systems offer better value, including the HP Pavilion dv4000 and the Dell Inspiron E1505. You can configure your C100 to cost anywhere from $599 to $1,129. Processor options range from a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron M to a 1.73GHz

Intel Pentium M (newer Intel Core Solo or Duo processors are unavailable). The Lenovo 3000 C100 comes with 256MB of 533MHz RAM, upgradeable to 2GB; 5,400rpm hard drives in capacities from 40GB to 80GB; integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless; and an internal DVD/CD-RW or DVD burner. The notebook’s 15-inch display has a native resolution of 1,024×768 and is powered by integrated Intel 900 graphics. Each C100 has four USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin FireWire port, S-Video out, a 3-in-1 memory card reader, and a PC card slot. In addition to Lenovo’s standard one-year warranty, the company sells reasonably priced extensions of up to three years.

The Lenovo 3000 C100 offers a solid mix of multimedia ports, although not all of them are easily accessed. Three USB, plus FireWire, S-Video, and VGA-out ports are all mounted on the rear of the system, along with a Fast Ethernet port. A single USB port and two audio jacks (headphone and microphone) are more conveniently located on the left side, as is a switch for the tri-mode wireless network adapter. The right side holds a PC Card slot and a 3-in-1 media card reader.

The C100 has some very good features, among them four USB ports, a FireWire port, an S-Video port, and a 4-in-1 memory card reader (MS, MS Pro, SD, MMC). The 80GB hard drive is fairly large, and the DVD+R dual-layer drive is better than the optical drives in offerings from Acer (DVD/RW Combo) and Dell (single layer DVD±RW). The dual-layer drive comes in handy for things like backing up large amounts of data.

The C100 is more than capable of handling everyday office and multimedia applications and notched a Mobile Mark 2005 score of 203, which is about average for this class of processor. More impressive is the C100’s battery life; it lasted 5 hours and 2 minutes with the Wi-Fi turned on. Disabling the Wi-Fi gave us only three extra minutes of life, but we’ll take it.     

Configuration:- 

# Processor                    Intel Pentium M 740 / 1.73 GHz

# Data bus speed          533 MHz

# Cache size                   2 MB

# Ram                            512 MB / 2 GB (max), DDR II SDRAM - 533 MHz

# Display Type            15 in TFT active matrix

# Max Resolution        Max Resolution

# Wireless NIC            Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG

# Battery                      8-cell Lithium ion

# OS Provided             Microsoft Windows XP Professional

# Modem                   Fax / modem - CDC                              

# Hard Drive              80 GB - 5400 rpm

Lenovo 3000 C100 Reviews:-

# smarter-cnet Review: - Competent performance; very good battery life; comfortable keyboard; robust system-management and help utility; very small AC adapter. 

# Pcmag Review: - I would’ve told you that the Lenovo 3000 C100 is worth every penny, but with the advent of the Intel Core Duo processors and better offerings from Dell and HP, it’s hard to recommend the C100, even though it shares a stable with the excellent ThinkPad line of notebooks.

# Reviews.pricegrabber Review: - I haven’t been always looking for a inexpensive but sturdy laptop for my daily use. And I think C100 just fits my need. It doesn’t have a fancy looking. But it is solid built. Everything works fine. I will need to add 512MB more memory so XP can run more smoothly. LCD is bright but not with the ultra bight technique. Overall, it is a good low-end laptop that can do most of the jobs.