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The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 ultraportable laptop, which replaces the X201, is sure to be a hit with ThinkPad fans–as well as most everyone else. It’s fast and light, it has a great 12.5-inch display, and it continues the company’s tradition of superb input ergonomics, offering an innovative buttonless touchpad and a long-stroke keyboard. It also provides excellent battery life that you can stretch to a whopping 23 hours with a bottom-mounted battery slice. The downside? Not much, really. The laptop’s boxy, businesslike appearance and somewhat cluttered keyboard deck might lack the sex appeal some users are looking for.

Exact prices for the various ThinkPad X220 configurations are unavailable at this time: The starting price should be $979, with additional costs for better CPUs, solid-state drives instead of standard hard drives, and more RAM. CPUs range from an Intel Core i3 to a Core i7, the unit accepts up to 8GB of system memory, and storage options start with a 160GB hard drive and end with a 160GB SSD. The aforementioned 12.5-inch, 1366-by-768-pixel display is available in two flavors: one with an IPS panel for wider viewing angles, and one without.

Our $1299 (as of March 25, 2011) test model–with its 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M processor, 4GB of DDR3 system memory, and 7200-rpm, 320GB hard drive–turned in an outstanding WorldBench 6 score of 122. Not only that, but its integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU actually managed playable frame rates in some of our lighter gaming tests, reaching 41 frames per second at 1024 by 768 in Unreal Tournament 3 with medium detail, and 32.5 fps with high detail. And 1080p movies, even the high-bit-rate variety, play as smoothly as you could wish. Performance for any task outside of enthusiast gaming and high-end 3D workstation applications is of no concern with the X220.

Some of the keys are a tad odd on the ThinkPad X220, such as the extralarge Esc and Delete keys above the main alphabetical keys. However, unlike other vendors’ keyboard quirks, they help, not hinder your typing. As usual for Lenovo, the long-throw feel of the keyboard is nothing short of excellent. The touchpad is a buttonless design–you press down on the left or right front edge to click, which makes it easier to use than standard buttons when you’re using the thumb and forefinger of one hand. Two normal buttons sit above the touchpad, and Lenovo’s TrackPoint eraserhead pointing device is also in attendance. Mute buttons for the dual microphones and the 720p Webcam join the volume rocker and ThinkVantage (toolbox) buttons at the top of the keyboard deck.

The X220′s battery life is outstanding, and you can enhance it with options. Our test machine, with its six-cell battery, ran for a cool 7 hours, 15 minutes. You may also opt for three-cell and nine-cell main batteries, for less weight or longer run times respectively, and add a bottom-mounted $179 battery slice. The slide adds 0.4 inch of thickness but nearly doubles battery life to over 14.5 hours. For world travelers, the extra 1.6 pounds of weight and bulk will be an acceptable trade-off.

The ports and connectivity on the X220 are top-notch. The system has three USB ports, one of which is powered (for charging cell phones and the like) even when the laptop isn’t turned on. Optionally, with the i7 CPU, one port can be USB 3.0. You’ll also find an ExpressCard slot, an SD Card slot, a Wi-Fi switch, a VGA port, and a gigabit ethernet port. A dock is available with a multiformat burner, Bluetooth is on board, and the Wi-Fi is dual-band 802.11n (2.4GHz and 5GHz). Our test laptop arrived with IBM’s biometric finger-swipe sensor to facilitate security.

If there’s anything you should be wary of with the X220, it’s the number of “value-added” applications and unnecessary background processes. The Windows 7 Professional operating system has just about every software feature you need for a laptop, yet on our machine a quick glance at the Windows Task Manager revealed nearly 90 processes running and almost 30 percent memory usage–without one user application running. One or two of the background apps are worthwhile, such as the Bluetooth manager or the tool that shuts down the hard drive in case of a fall, but additional battery meters and Wi-Fi handlers are generally useless. A trial version of Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Office 2010 Starter are bundled.

ThinkPad users won’t find anything mind-blowingly different about this latest addition to the X2xx series, but the improvements are noticeable and all enhance the usability of the system. If you’re not looking for a supersexy laptop, or if you’re trying to get away on the cheap, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 is the best thing going in an ultraportable.

Tired of getting owned by your fellow gamers online? Maybe the FragFX Shark game controller is just what you need. The FragFX Shark pairs a wireless mouse and hand-held chuck, allowing gamers to utilize the precision of a mouse on a home console or the ease of a joystick on a computer.

Compatible with the Mac, Windows, and PS3, the FragFX Shark is one of the few cross-platform gaming controllers out there. But due to remapping issues and a lack of practicality with Mac gaming, the FragFX Shark is probably best suited to first person shooter enthusiasts looking for smoother movement controls than what they typically get with a keyboard.

The FragFX Shark also comes with a mousepad and USB dongle that can fit into a PS3 controller slot or a conventional USB slot. The right-handed mouse is comfortable, with black and blue buttons on the right side of the mouse’s curvature that correspond to the four buttons on the PS3: triangle, circle, square, and X. The mouse was easy to grip and though it’s a bit larger than I’d like, it still felt natural to hold. As a wireless mouse, it’s also easy to use in a desk or couch setting.

The chuck is a black little device that is about a third the size of a conventional console controller and surprisingly light. The design is reminiscent of the PS3 in not only aesthetics, but in how the buttons are laid out. With your left thumb, you can manipulate the joystick while your left fingers can tap one of the three buttons in the front of the controller. There’s also a directional pad in the left corner of the controller face, and each direction has corresponding text for remapping the controller.

The dongle has two settings, one for keyboard, one for gamepads. It’s important to note that you can only change the setting from one to the other before your system boots up-doing so while your computer is running won’t have any effect. So if you have the dongle set to “gamepad” and want to switch it to “keyboard” and it’s plugged into your iMac, you’ll need to restart your machine. The mousepad is pretty generic, but is useful because it’s very stiff, so you can prop it your lap or your couch and use it effectively when playing on a console from a distance.

When it’s at its best, the FragFX Shark gives console players a major accuracy upgrade when playing first-person shooters. Not only is the mouse a more accurate way to aim than a conventional joystick arrangement, but the controller also enables “rapid fire,” which effectively turns weapons like sniper rifles and pistols into semi-automatic weapons. Of course, there’s good reason why the FragFX is banned from professional tournaments. The sensitivity of the mouse really does make a difference-if you’re comfortable manipulating a mouse at level 10 sensitivity, you can quickly pick off not only opposing player’s heads, but shoot the digital wings off digital flies. The difference between a conventional console gamepad and the FragFX Shark is night and day- but such gameplay improvements aren’t as obvious on the Mac.

For one, if you’re playing first person shooters on the Mac, you should already be using a two-button mouse. Games like Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4 require second mouse button functionality, and if you’re not using a two-button mouse, using your gun’s alternative-fire becomes a difficult proposition.

Still, for the Mac gamer, there’s still reason to like the FragFX. The FragFX mouse is a great two-button mouse and gives you four more buttons to map, which can be helpful to assign to different weapons, squad commands, or movement options. Though personally I find the “WASD” controls on the keyboard to be pretty intuitive at this point, if you’re a life-long console gamer, using the FragFX’s chuck will allow you to keep that joystick feel. With first-person shooters especially, movement can be much more intuitive while using the FragFX than your standard keyboard ever could. Perhaps most importantly, it’ll also let you stand further back from the computer screen and avoid hunching over your keyboard; compared to using “WASD” movement controls, from a posture perspective, the FragFX is a major upgrade.

But there are some caveats. While moving might feel better with the chuck, mapping buttons can be a complete pain. Even after going over the manual several times and calibrating the mouse sensitivity to that sweet spot that I liked, I still had to struggle to map the buttons for combat while playing Team Fortress 2. Both a Macworld intern and I couldn’t get one of the chuck’s middle buttons to ever map, which was a real pain. That said, we both enjoyed how smooth the movement felt and how easy weapon switching became while in combat. As advertised, we experienced no lag when playing with the wireless devices. Though it’ll likely take you a little while to get used to, we feel comfortable recommending the FragFX as a moderate upgrade over your conventional keyboard and mouse arrangement when it comes to first person shooters on the Mac.

Unfortunately, first-person shooters are about the only thing that makes sense to use the FragFX with. Third-person action games, like Darksiders or Assassin’s Creed 2, never feel right with the FragFX. The mouse always feels too sensitive and creates some major camera issues, while the mapping never quite worked for me-despite the press release’s claims of being able to map on the fly. After several tries to map the buttons correctly in Assassin’s Creed 2, I never was able to achieve a run, let alone any of the more complicated acrobatic combos. When my intern was able to finally get the game’s protagonist to run, we realized we had lost some of his combat moves in the mapping process. With a game controller, you never have to make such tradeoffs. Of course, Mac users only have a limited number of options when it comes to gamepads on the platform. Personally, I use an Xbox 360 controller when playing OnLive titles, as these are generally the only ones that require gamepad functionality.

Though not really relevant to the Mac game experience, I also tested out the FragFX with a PS3. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I saw the FragFX hit its stride. My aiming was much improved and the rapid-fire functionality made certain weapons much easier to use. Instead of having to tap the R3 button to hold my breath and get more accurate aiming, the sensitivity of the mouse ensured I had a steady, exact aim throughout. In short, I can see why the device was banned from competitive use-it really does provide an advantage over normal gamepad functionality.

Of course, the trade off is that you’ll have to be patient with it. A friend of mine and I traded off playing with the FragFX and achieved varying success with various control mappings. We liked the precision, but would either find grenade throwing or weapon switching or something that didn’t quite behave how we wanted. Remapping on the PS3 is also far less intuitive, requiring you to hold down certain buttons to reset and then correctly lock in the correct mapping. Frankly, I’ve seen VCRs with easier-to-use programming sequences.

Macworld’s buying advice

The problem with the FragFX Shark controller isn’t that it’s poorly made, it’s that the target demographic isn’t mainstream Mac gamers but rather hardcore first person shooter junkies. Third-person action titles are limited primarily to OnLive and are thus better suited to something like an Xbox 360 controller than the FragFX. Strategy games, similarly, gain nothing from the FragFX. But if you’re looking for an advantage in Left4Dead 2, Call of Duty 4, or Team Fortress 2, the FragFX can offer players the best of both worlds: the exactness of a mouse and the smooth movement speed of a joystick chuck. If you see me playing a Steam game, be wary, because I’ll probably be using the device

The Acer TimelineX 5830TG sets itself apart from the 15-inch laptop crowd with its angular good looks. But it’s also a solid performer and a decent gaming machine, and–with 8 hours, 17 minutes of battery life–a long-distance runner. At a penny less than $800 (as of July 6, 2011), the 5830TG is a great deal, but you’ll need to spend some time culling the software herd for optimal results.

Componentry was pretty much state-of-the-art on our 5830TG-6402 test unit, the top-of-the-line configuration for the 5830TG. The CPU is an Intel Core i5-2410M; also included are 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive, and both Intel HD and Nvidia GeForce GT 520M graphics. The laptop turned in a WorldBench 6 score of 116–fast, but about average for the all-purpose laptop class. Thanks to the GT 520M, its gaming frame rates were acceptable on simple 3D games in our tests, but hard-core gamers seeking to play the latest and greatest should look elsewhere.

Watching video on the 15.6-inch, 1366-by-726-pixel display is a pleasant experience–everything we threw at the 5830TG played smoothly, including high-bit-rate 1080p material. The screen does suffer from a rather narrow optimal viewing angle, however. The sound is exceptional, thanks to Dolby Home Theater 4 technology. Like virtually all laptops, the 5830TG doesn’t offer a lot of bass, but the audio has spaciousness, as well as a punch that makes it extremely easy on the ears. The Dolby HD4 control panel allows for painless switching between presets for movies, music, and games.

The 5830TG’s Chiclet-style keyboard provides a full-size layout with a full numeric keypad on the right. It’s a short-travel keyboard, but the feel is pleasantly firm. The touchpad is positioned in line with the left edge of the spacebar, which puts it quite far to the left of the machine. This is great when you’re typing, and if you mouse lefty; righty mousers, however, might find it a tad awkward at times. The response is excellent, and the two discrete buttons are firm, but not overly so. Ergonomically, the 5830TG is not a Lenovo, but it isn’t far behind.

While the port arrangement on the 5830TG is average in number and type, Acer put a lot of thought and effort into making the connections easy to reach. All are placed well toward the front edge of the laptop, so you don’t have to go searching for them. You get four USB ports, one of which is USB 3.0, plus VGA and HDMI video output, as well as the usual audio in/out and SD Card slot. Even the SD slot is thoughtfully positioned–on the front edge of the laptop, just off the left corner.

The person in charge of port placement was obviously not in charge of software, though. By default, the 5830TG’s desktop is littered with icons, and the Windows 7 Home Premium installation is cluttered with over 90 processes running–too many. McAfee Internet Security is joined by Norton Online Backup, Nook for PC, Acer Games, Netflix, eBay, the Times Reader, and other items. McAfee, the Windows Action Center, the Acer factory-default backup, and more will frequently pop up to vie for your attention. The effect is hardly pleasant.

Although the first boot experience is a software melee, the Acer TimelineX 5830TG-6402 is a looker that will cover just about anyone’s performance needs. The overall result is top-notch, for less than top dollar. Users who don’t game might opt for the $600 5830TG-6862, which is Core i3-based and lacks the Nvidia GPU. Performance enthusiasts, however, get no Core i7 option.