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The Fujitsu LifeBook T4220 is designed to weather outside use better than your typical convertible tablet. It has a nice keyboard and performs well, too, all at a competitive price.

This successor to the LifeBook T4020 offers several improvements. The T series now uses Intel's Santa Rosa processor line, and the hard drive, sealed before, is now user upgradable.

Most important, the T4220 has a single, bidirectional hinge that is a first for a convertible and a major convenience breakthrough. When you want to switch between the tablet and notebook forms, you can swivel the screen right or left on its hinge--no worries about having to double-check a directional arrow or twisting the screen the wrong way on the first try.

The T4220 has a few protective features, starting with a shock sensor that protects hard-drive components during a fall by retracting the drive's read-write head. Sturdy plastic port covers attach to the notebook, so they can't fall off and disappear; they keep dirt and moisture out of the network, modem, and monitor ports. The T4220 also automatically shuts down the optical drive during tablet use to protect it from breakage.

Our unit came with a nonglare screen coating for outdoor use, a $150 option. The 12.1-inch, XGA, standard-aspect screen feels thicker than a standard tablet screen, needs firmer taps, and has a visible sheen. These things aren't too bothersome, however, and the special coating allows you to work in direct sunshine--as long as the screen is displaying a light-colored background. When I tried it with a solid-colored desktop, I could barely make out its icons, but the white input panel stood out and was easy to write in with the T4220's tethered digitizer pen.

The T4220 is a nice-looking, squarish, tri-tone unit that is thoughtfully designed overall. It has a small but comfortable keyboard. At 4.6 pounds, it weighs a tad more than the average convertible, but it doesn't feel heavy. Tablet buttons are plentiful and all within easy reach, plus they double as a combination-number input panel--serving as yet another layer of security beyond the built-in SmartCard slot and fingerprint reader.

Another nice extra is the modular bay, capable of holding the standard DVD burner, the included hollow weight-saving piece, or a second six-cell battery ($134 extra). A handy side release lets you eject and swap devices with one hand. Wireless communications is not completely covered--integrated mobile broadband is not an option--but Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are included. A $150 port replicator, which snaps onto the bottom of the T4220, adds a DVI port.

Equipped with a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor and 1GB of RAM, our $2099 review model earned a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 65. It's unimpressive in comparison with a ThinkPad X61t convertible that scored 75 (13 percent better), but the T4220 we tested came with a slower processor (a 1.6-GHz Core 2 Duo L7500), and the score is still well above the ultraportable average of 53. The T4220 can handle anything but sophisticated 3D games; in our tests such games wouldn't play at all because of the machine's shared video memory. Battery life was good, though, at almost 4.5 hours, about 30 minutes longer than the average ultraportable.

The only false step in the design is the screen latch, which you must manually rotate and line up for insertion into a small slot below the keyboard; with practice, though, even this goes fast. All in all, the Fujitsu T4220 might not be the cheapest or lightest ultraportable you can buy, but for tablet users desiring a little extra ruggedness and peace of mind, it gets along nicely with Mother Nature.

The small, white Micro Express JFT2500 defies expectations by being both extremely fast and affordable, two qualities not often found in the same ultraportable laptop. The catch? Lousy battery life. Still, if saving money on a light, fast laptop is paramount to you, the JFT2500 is a good choice for some home- and small-office workers.

Equipped with a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 processor and 4GB of RAM, the JFT2500 notched a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 92. That result is faster than the mark of any other model in our current test batch of ultraportables. In fact, only three desktop-replacement laptops have come close to matching its performance. A midsize HP Voodoo Envy M:152, equipped with Intel's new 2.6-GHz Core 2 Extreme X7800 gaming processor, earned a tying score of 92. Two large notebooks equipped with desktop quad-core processors, the Micro Express NP9261 and Eurocom D900C Phantom-X, scored 96 and 97 respectively.

Battery life, on the other hand, was way shorter than average in our tests--2.2 hours shorter, in fact, than the 4.2 hours that the typical ultraportable lasts on one charge. Only two other ultraportables (out of a field of 17 currently tested machines) ran down faster.

The rest of the design is satisfactory. At 4.4 pounds, the JFT2500 is a little heavy for a notebook with a 12.1-inch screen. The 1280-by-800-pixel display is reasonably bright and easy to work with. The small white keyboard felt a little too snug at first, and I was disappointed to find my favorite keys--Ctrl, Del, and Page Up and Page Down--somewhat buried, but typing quickly became comfortable. The lower casing, a nice contrasting black, has a fair assortment of ports and slots, including three USB ports and an ExpressCard/54 slot--but no FireWire.

Our review unit came with no productivity applications. If you don't need the Windows Vista Business operating system, you can save $20 by configuring the JFT2500 with Windows XP Home. Full Wi-Fi comes built in, but Bluetooth is an extra $25.

With its short battery life, the Micro Express JFT2500 would be a poor choice for frequent travelers; but if you can work around this shortcoming, it's a cheap entry into the world of fast, light notebooks.

Lenovo's buttoned-up ThinkPad X300 ultraportable laptop computer may not have the MacBook Air's superslim, spartan style, but from rock-solid construction to piled-in perks, this notebook--with a street price of $2696 at time of testing--offers just about everything that matters to the business traveler.

The Air and the X300 do have some similarities. They both have crisp 13.3-inch displays, although the X300 has a higher resolution--1440 by 900 pixels versus 1280 by 800--and with both, you can get a 64GB solid-state drive (it comes standard with Lenovo's machine, but tacks about $1000 onto the Air's price).

Whether you're afraid of dropping your laptop at the airport or accidentally spilling some coffee on the case, the X300 is built like--and resembles--a black-box recorder. The keyboard is spill-resistant, and the textured carbon- and glass-fiber exterior is supposed to protect the innards. Unlike most ultraportables, the unit has both an eraserhead and a touchpad. The keyboard feels great, with full-size keys.

The X300 is a little on the chunky side for a true ultraportable--just over an inch thick and weighing 3.4 pounds (4 pounds with an AC adapter) versus the Air's 3-pound heft. Then again, you can pop a disc in the ThinkPad's integrated, paper-thin, 3-ounce DVD drive and watch movies (the Air's optical drive is an external model).

The X300 has a decent amount of power for an ultralightweight notebook--in fact, it performed surprisingly well against other ultralight models. With a 1.2-GHz Core 2 Duo L7100 processor and 2GB of RAM, it scored a 64, outpacing the MacBook Air by a healthy 7 points in our WorldBench 6 benchmark tests. On the other hand, the X300's performance is exactly average compared with the broad field of ultraportables we've tested. It also posted an average score in our battery life tests, lasting 4 hours, 22 minutes on a charge.

Another thumb in Apple's eye is the X300's many features. Here you have a notebook not much thicker than the Air, yet not only does it manage to include a DVD drive, it also has three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA-out port for an external display, a Webcam, headphone and microphone jacks, and an ethernet port. The Air has a Webcam, but it has only one USB port, and you have to use an optional adapter to connect via ethernet.

To make life even easier, the X300 has the one shortcut key to rule them all--the ThinkVantage button. Most notebooks have some sort of shortcut to helpful utilities or a "For Dummies..." version of the control panel. However, the ThinkVantage button accesses by far the most helpful, complete, and concise collection of such tools. You can use the button to access a backup utility, to set security protocols, or to find a wireless data connection, and if your computer won't boot, the button will make the computer boot a small non-Windows OS from a hidden hard-drive partition, after which you can diagnose problems and even download drivers, if necessary.

And when you do start searching for wireless connectivity options, you are fully covered with the X300: The notebook has built-in support for 802.11a/b/g/n, wireless WAN, wireless USB, and Bluetooth. Finally, it has the "gee-whiz" feature of the month: GPS (somewhere, an army of travelling salesmen are cheering over that addition).

What the ThinkPad X300 lacks in style, compared with the Air, it more than makes up for with better features and more functionality.