Accountants are boring. We all know it. They’re good solid workers, but are not known for their fun and spontaneity. When was the last time you saw a stylish accountant? Are they bred to be dull?

Can you guess where I’m going with this yet?

The Lenovo ThinkPad is no slouch. In fact it has the latest and greatest technology shoehorned in, but it’s clad in a body that positively cries out to be ignored. It’s the ugly child of the ultrabook series.

But this gives it a certain cachet: this is the ultrabook that you could leave out in the open, safe in the knowledge that it’s resemblance to the original Thinkpad will mean no one would steal it.

I’ve moaned about Dells being boring, but jeez, the Thinkpad takes the biscuit. If anything is more dull than this, I think the genre will need redefining.

So if you have a really boring but reliable employee who might have a heart attack if you bought them an HP or shock horror, an ASUS, I highly recommend dropping 2K on the ThinkPad. You can tell them you found it at the back of the cupboard and it’d been there for 10 years and they’d believe you.

Now I have to give Lenovo some credit, it’s not often I see a modern top spec ultrabook with a VGA port. I’m not sure if Lenovo found a box of them lying around, or if the state of IT is so bad, VGA is still the only way of connecting our technology to a screen (it isn’t, check out the Actiontec Screen Beam).

Pros:• Storming battery life• Won’t get stolen• Probably bulletproof, dropproof and waterproof (not tested though, let us know how your’s gets on)

Cons:• The Pros might not be entirely factual - YMMV• It’s ugly, like you need to slap some pretty into it

Summary:The Thinkpad doesn’t appear to have changed from its early iterations in its styling. That evolution hasn’t occurred. Maybe that retro devices are coming back in means that the ThinkPad will have a revival.

After all, what it’s designed for is what it does extremely well. It’s the workhorse, powering through menial tasks like a champ and crunching numbers, saving you money. Just like an accountant?