Economic Research: Lenovo T420

Lenovo T420

Compared with laptops seen at CES 2012--ultrabooks and other sleekly designed variations--the ThinkPad T420 is a dinosaur, from the outside, at least. Thick and bulky, with a keyboard studded with enough auxiliary buttons to look like a space shuttle control panel, the T420 is as old-school as a laptop can be. It's also solid as a tank; not a rugged laptop per se, but outfitted with a spill-resistant keyboard and magnesium roll-cage chassis that most laptops don't have. And it's got more ports and features than most laptops, fighting the currently popular minimalist style. The ThinkPad T420 is the laptop that escaped from your IT department, and might even be sitting on your desk as we speak. Lovers of older laptop tech won't be disappointed: a rubberized trackpoint sits in the middle of a set of thick, tapered keyboard keys, while large extra trackpoint-controlling buttons sit above the touch pad. You can light your keyboard with a top-mounted LED light next to the Webcam, thank you very much--no backlit keyboard here. Older ports are also here in force: everything from eSATA to ExpressCard, and even FireWire, is included. And, obviously, there's an optical drive (another feature frequently missing from laptops nowadays).