The ThinkPad R52 is part of the Lenovo’s highly respected line of business notebooks with its focus being on absolute security.
Pick it up and you’ll realise it’s not a light machine at 3kg, but it feels immensely robust and durable. Open up the sturdy lid and you’ll see a fingerprint reader accompanied by a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip inside to bolster security. IBM’s simple fingerprint utility is part of the Access IBM suite. Press the blue button above the keyboard and tools appear for system and security configuration, data protection and recovery.
But it doesn’t end there: the integrity of your data is further protected by the IBM Active Protection System, which parks the hard disk’s heads when it senses sudden motion or vibration. Finally, the ThinkPad HDD Shock Absorber acts like an airbag, providing impact protection to help protect your data from yet more dangers.
Wireless is missing from the standard 184732M SKU and an 802.11a/b/g adapter boosts the price by $189. Infrared is present but Bluetooth is missing. There’s also a Type II PC Card slot as well as an ExpressCard slot. A gripe is the lack of DVD writer, Lenovo will send you a separate one for $459 but you’ll, amazingly, have to remove the combo drive and replace it yourself - something. Indeed, while IBM/Lenovo’s support is legendary, buying from the website is poor in the face of Dell. While you can customise a base unit, you’re mostly buying additional hardware alongside an existing system - something more fitting for a company’s IT department engineers, than an individual user - rather than IBM building to order, like Dell.
The keyboard is a joy to use, with a great feel and well-laid out buttons. The choice of touchpad or trackpoint should keep everyone happy too. Other neat touches are the small keyboard light for use in poor lighting conditions, and the front of the chassis, which supports the wrists in a comfortable typing position.
The battery will last four hours under light use and two when pushed hard, meaning it’s reasonably long lasting considering the standard size of the battery. An enlarged 9-cell battery costs an additional $249.
From a support point of view the R52 is a support engineer’s dream as the preloaded software image is compatible with those of the R51, X31 and T41, simplifying deployment and image management if you choose to mix and match your ThinkPads.
The R52 184732M isn’t the perfect ThinkPad, though. It only sports 512MB RAM and a single core 1.73GHz processor and achieved only 0.72 in our benchmarks. Also, the fantastic support is slightly diminished by the one-year collect and return warranty. We’d prefer more than the meagre two USB 2 ports too and the 40GB hard disk is small these days.
However, overall the ThinkPad R52 is attractive for businesses both in terms of company security, support and ease of use for the employee and higher performance versions are available at a prive. However, in the face of the Dell D620 it’s a no brainer for most. The Dell might cost more but is smaller, comes standard with a DVD writer, has a fast dual-core processor and bigger hard disk, much longer battery life and a three-year next business day warranty to boot.
