Hey, where’d this Lenovo outfit come from alla the sudden? How’d they muscle in on the notebook racket? It all went down thiswise: the big IBM cartel couldn’t take the heat and lammed it outta the notebook PC game, see? Wasn’t worth the chump change, they said. Now, Lenovo was in back of the operation all along, doing the dirty work, so IBM figured they’d dump all the action in Lenovo’s lap and let the little brothers catch the guff. As usual, the Big I walks away with clean hands while some penny-ante mugs get done up brown, right?

Only, no, wrong. Turns out Lenovo had a little more of the old gray head pudding than IBM gave ‘em credit for. They picked up the Thinkpad ball and ran like Red Grange with Tabasco in his shorts, and now they’re sitting on top of a nifty little operation while the IB boys sit around kicking themselves.

Where’s that get us? It gets us to the Lenovo Thinkpad R51E is where it gets us. A real business-class notebook, pure uptown stuff: an Intel Centrino Pentium M 1.6GHz processor, 60GB hard drive, 15” TFT screen, 802.11b/g Wireless, the whole bit. And this ain’t no glass-jawed hothouse orchid, brother – it’s solid as New Hampshire granite and built for roadwork. Now every gray-flannel straight from Yonkers to Frisco is dragging one of these Thinkpads around like a kiddie with a Radio Flyer. Everybody had these Lenovo saps pegged for clowns, not least IBM - but who’s the clown now, Big Blue?

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