IBM Thinkpad T30
IBM's Thinkpad T30 impressed us with its basic physical styling and ease of use, but sadly let itself down in when it came time to perform.
At 2.6Kgs, it was the second lightest notebook in our roundup, but this was hardly surprising. Where most notebooks in this category go the full 'desktop replacement' route, the Thinkpad T30 is surprisingly small and easy to carry. From a purely visual point of view, it looks almost like every other Thinkpad we've ever seen; same black colour, same double latches on the screen, intermittent use of red highlights on key buttons. It would seem that IBM is wavering in its otherwise rock-solid attachment to the Trackpoint, instead opting for what it calls the UltraNav multi-pointing system. That's a fancy marketing name for sticking a Trackpoint and touchpad onto the notebook, an arrangement that usually sees us inadvertently hitting the touchpad while typing. This was less of a problem on the T30 than on other systems, possibly due to the overall smaller size leading to a more tightly packed keyboard.
Like most other Thinkpads the most design thought has gone into the chassis, which is rock-solid. If, as its size would suggest, you were going to take this notebook on the road, it would survive quite a large quantity of abuse before giving up the ghost.
From a specifications viewpoint, the T30 gets beaten by pretty much every other notebook in our roundup; a 2GHz Pentium 4-M processor runs the whole shebang along with a 16MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 and 256MB of memory. For its stated purpose -- essentially corporate usage -- that's probably more than enough. Anyone with a serious business need for more grunt would probably be looking at a larger screened notebook, for a start; this is much more of a travelling notebook.
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Power trip: Four high-end notebooks tested Introduction 1. Acer Travelmate 426LC 2. Fujitsu Lifebook E7010 3. IBM Thinkpad T30 4. Toshiba Satellite 5200 Benchmark results Specifications |
IBM Thinkpad T30
Company: IBM Australia
Price: AU$5099
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 24 26
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