HardwareCentral - IBM ThinkPad X40 Review

IBM ThinkPad X40 Review

The Key Difference

April 20, 2004
By Eric Grevstad

The Key Difference

Undocked, the notebook offers two USB ports (one with a proprietary power plug as noted), Gigabit Ethernet, 56Kbps modem, VGA monitor, and microphone- and headphone-jack connectors, as well as one PC Card slot and one Secure Digital flash-card slot; anyone still clinging to hopes of editing videos with the ThinkPad will give up at the lack of an IEEE 1394 port. There's a cooling-fan vent on the left side, but the X40 rarely gets warm or noisy enough to notice.

Attach the X4 UltraBase, and in addition to the modular bay you'll get old-fashioned parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports (one apiece) as well as modem, Ethernet, and three USB ports. A function-key combination brings up a software control panel for switching the 802.11b/g and Bluetooth antennas on or off.

We must give special praise to the X40's keyboard. Though the notebook's size is small -- the keyboard stretches all the way to the system's left and right edges -- IBM has kept its tradition of offering a full 18mm vertical stroke (matching the horizontal pitch or key spacing) for a desktop-comfortable instead of stiff, shallow typing feel.

The decision we admire most is that Big Blue dared to leave off Microsoft's mandated, rarely-used Windows and context-menu keys, rather than cram them in and shrink the Ctrl and Alt keys and spacebar, yet found room for handy browser Back and Forward keys on either side of the up arrow. (A configuration utility lets you map the Windows key to the right Alt key if you insist.)

With no room for a touchpad, IBM's trademark TrackPoint mini-joystick is embedded in the keyboard, with two smooth-operating mouse buttons below the spacebar and a slightly awkward drag-to-scroll lever between them. Audio volume up, down, and mute buttons are provided, as is a clever gimmick for night flights on dark airliners: Pressing Fn-PgUp activates a tiny LED lamp atop the screen that dimly illuminates the keyboard.

Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking

Along with Windows XP Professional, Norton AntiVirus 2003, and RecordNow and WinDVD software, the X40 comes with an array of friendly IBM utilities for configuring hardware options, switching between wired and wireless networks, and other management tasks, plus what the company calls the Active Protection System -- a sensor that detects sudden motion and parks the hard disk to reduce the risk of system crash in a spill. We resisted temptation to hurl the ThinkPad against the wall or run over it with a car, but knocked it from our lap or desk to the floor several times, and the notebook never skipped a beat.

Even more impressive is Rescue and Recovery, which works even if a virus attack or accidental file-deletion spree has trashed the Windows installation: Interrupt bootup by pressing the blue Access IBM button above the keyboard (which also launches various diagnostic and help screens when Windows is running), and the ThinkPad loads a built-in, Linux-based utility toolkit including diagnostic tools; the Opera Web browser for downloading patches or other files if an Internet-connected Ethernet network is available; and a rudimentary file manager for copying items from the hard disk to safer storage.

The latter let us copy various documents to our USB flash drive (once we found them; the hard disk that's drive C: under Windows appeared as D: or E: on the rescue screen). If there's no alternative to losing your data, you can also perform a complete factory-image restoration of the hard disk, though the latter took over two hours -- much slower than other hidden-partition- or CD-based recovery tools we've used. (And then we had to do it again: The system, undocked during the first rebuild, didn't detect the combo drive and didn't bother installing WinDVD and RecordNow.) Still, the pushbutton assistant promises to be a boon for IT managers and frantic users alike.

We said earlier the X40 has one rival in our eyes for the compact-and-lightweight, cost-no-object crown. That would be Sony's Vaio TR series, which we reviewed when it debuted last summer: Comparably equipped to our ThinkPad-and-dock bundle, the Vaio TR3AP1 has the same $2,300 price tag, a slightly slower 1.0GHz processor, a more crowded keyboard, and a more DVD-worthy wide-aspect-ratio, glossy-black, 10.4-inch screen.

Instead of a detachable base, the Vaio has its DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive built in (and is also available with a DVD-RW drive, in a pricey $3,000 model). Its battery life is in the three- to four- rather than five-hour range. Its screen-mounted gadget is a videoconferencing camera instead of a keyboard lamp.

Either would make a business traveler overjoyed. We'd rather watch a movie on the Sony, but we'd rather crunch through messages, spreadsheets, and presentations on the IBM.

Pros:

A 3.2-pound flyweight (4.9 pounds with optical-drive docking base) with admirable battery life and built-in diagnostic/recovery tools
First-class keyboard; numerous neat little touches

Cons: