X-bit labs

14" Widescreen: Most Optimal Solution? 10 Contemporary Notebooks Roundup (page 12)

Category: Mobile

by Vasily Melnik

[ 06/07/2006 | 10:56 PM ]

LG LW40

The LW series is new and its debut has been a success largely due to the LW40 model. This notebook is a lucky combination of compact size and powerful configuration. It is designed in the traditional LG style:

There are no garish elements to distract you from your work. The designers only indulged themselves by placing a large logo of the manufacturer on the lid:

The indicators block is made very well:

It is well readable irrespective of the position of the notebook’s lid. There’s nothing on the front panel:

But the developer put two USB ports on the back panel for some reason:

These USB ports aren’t easy to work with and are too close to each other, making it impossible to plug in two large devices at the same time. Besides them, the back panel quite appropriately carries a power connector and a video output.

The rest of connectors are on the notebook’s sides. On the left panel, there’s a D-sub connector for an external monitor, a FireWire port, a single easily accessible USB port, and a group of audio connectors:

A separate line input is included into the latter, which is good. The right side is almost fully occupied by an optical drive:

Besides it, there are LAN and modem ports, a card reader and an ExpressCard/34 slot there.

The slot is two times narrower than ordinary ones, but it doesn’t matter much because there are still no peripherals for this as well as for normal-size ExpressCard slots. The LW40 comes with a high-quality card-reader which supports xD format among everything else – recommended for owners of Olympus cameras!