6. Using The WinBook X610 Lightweight Laptop, Continued

The mouse touchpad is modestly sized (2.375" x 1.625" / 6.03 cm x 4.13 cm) but well-placed and pretty responsive. The right and left mouse buttons below the touchpad are easy to find by feel, offer quick, responsive touch and a reassuring quiet click from each one to confirm its use. Nevertheless, one of the authors found himself using an external mouse instead of the touchpad: a nice, compact Synapsis DS-2035 optical mouse served well on the road and a larger Microsoft Optical mouse did likewise in the office.

The display subsystem in the WinBook X610 is the Achilles heel of this system. You've already read about its relatively slow and lackluster performance and about its inability to stand up to strong ambient light or direct sunlight. The display is acceptable at its top (and normal) resolution of 1024 x 768, but the screen is neither exceptionally bright nor exceptionally clear. When working in a bright office environment, one of the reviewers had to tilt the screen back at about a 60 degree angle, rather than the more conventional 90 degrees, to really see the display well. While the X610 does have a built-in DVD player and can play back DVDs that experience is not as pleasant or clear as on other, more expensive laptops we've tested. To our way of thinking, this makes the X610 only of marginal use as a DVD player as does its short battery life.

The X610 has a typical set of ports and connectors, with nothing too exotic or fancy. Except for the AC power jack and the FireWire port, both on the rear of this device and not shown, you can see the collection of ports, slots and connectors on this machine in the following photos of its left and right sides.

On the left side from left to right: RJ-45 for wired Ethernet, RJ-11 for modem, DVD drawer (below), PC card slot (above), memory card slot (below), USB port (below).

On the right side from left to right: Headphone jack, microphone jack, ventilation port, USB port (1), USB port (2), VGA connector, locking cable port.