3. Sturdy, Stable Case With Well-marked Connections, Continued

All remaining connections are placed on one of the two outer sides of the case. On the left side, you'll find the VGA port, modem and a single Gigabit Ethernet connector, as well as audio connectors. Last but not least, you'll also find a Firewire port. To expand the unit's capabilities with plug-in cards, you'll find two card slots. One of these slots may be occupied by an expansion card that conforms to the well-known but aging PC Card standard. The upper of the two slots is for cards that adhere to the newer, but not yet widely supported, Express Card standard.

Comparison between the Express Card and 32-bit PC Card technologies

The Thinkpad Z60m offers a total of three USB 2.0 connectors. In a time when USB has clearly become the standard device attachment interface, this strikes us as a little stingy.

An "x" on the upper card eject button identifies it as a PCI Express slot.

Positioning the S-Video connector on the front edge of the right side of the case seems questionable to us from an ergonomic perspective. The relatively thick video cable that would be used here is as likely to lead to tangles or trouble, especially with the DVD/CD drive right behind it. To our way of thinking, these cables are best positioned on the rear edge of a notebook's case.

The front edge of the case is sparsely populated with connectors

Most of the connectors are situated on the left edge of this case

Right edge: two USB ports, DVD/CD drive and an S-Video connector

This slider switch on the notebook's front edge toggles power to the unit's wireless components.

When the switch is turned on, the WLAN Manager software opens automatically.