IBM R40 Thinkpad

A well-built workhorse, but nothing out of the ordinary.

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Price: £1256

Manufacturer: IBM

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Verdict

Pros:

Battery life; keyboard; value.

Cons:
Less than stunning spec; a little portly around the midriff.

Overall:
A well-built workhorse that doesn't excel in any particular area, but has the reassurance of the IBM name behind it.

David Fearon., Personal Computer World 28 May 2003

Although the reputation of IBM's legendary Thinkpad series is based largely on high-end models, the company has never focused exclusively on the club-class brigade, as the newest incarnation of the R40 shows.

The Thinkpad range shows no signs of change when it comes to aesthetics; the R40 has the same purposeful but distinctive black styling with a rounded wrist rest area that the series has sported for years.

This design certainly isn't broken, so it's to IBM's credit that it has resisted the urge to fix it. This model is lacking in the slim and sexy department though, measuring 42mm high and weighing in at a slightly less than sylph-like 2.7kg.

The R40 is no flagship for IBM, as it is endowed with adequate but not stunning specifications.

The 14.1in TFT screen with its 1,024 x 768 resolution looks a little pedestrian when compared to some of the super-high resolution offerings to come our way this month, but it's bright, clear and adequate for office applications.

The heart of the machine is a 1.6GHz Celeron processor. Don't confuse Celeron with Centrino: the former is Intel's lowest-performing processor, while the latter is its new integrated power management and connectivity system.

Supporting the Celeron is 256MB of Ram and a 20GB hard drive, which rather unusually is made by Hitachi rather than being one of IBM's own Travelstars.

Graphics are handled by a standard ATI Mobility Radeon chipset with 16MB of Ram - the lowest of the Mobility Radeon range.

The Celeron processor and relatively low clock speed don't do the machine any favours when it comes to benchmarks.

The R40 delivers a Sysmark score of 142 at a time when the higher-end machines are comfortably exceeding 200, and a 3Dmark of 1,464 when others are topping 4,000 with their 64MB graphics chipsets.

But the advantage of the low-power processor and graphics system is that they're not too power-hungry.

Consequently the R40 manages an excellent three hours of battery life, which is a lot more important in most situations than a few extra frames per second in Unreal Tournament.

Also more useful than graphics for those on the road is the fact that the machine has an 802.11b wireless local area network adaptor built in.

Ports and connectors consist of two PC Card slots, two USB2, parallel, VGA, network, modem and S-Video. A further concession to the budget is the fact that the R40 is fitted with a CD-Rom drive rather than a DVD or combo drive.

It may not set the world on fire with its specifications, but the R40 has some neat IBM design touches.

For a start, it brushes aside arguments about whether trackpoints or touchpads are superior by sporting both.

In use, we found ourselves switching between the two as circumstances demanded: the touchpad is good for quickly scooting the mouse pointer across the screen, while the trackpoint seems a little more efficient for precision cursor placement.

The R40 boasts IBM's unique and amusing Thinklight, a little white LED set into the lid above the top of the screen that shines down onto the keyboard to illuminate it in the dark.

It's not a perfect solution and could do with being a bit brighter, but it's better than nothing.

IBM has a reputation for providing excellent keyboards and this model doesn't disappoint, with large keytops and full travel terminated by a soft and pleasing thump, rather than the clatter of many budget notebooks.

One negative design point is the fact that the underside of the machine gets uncomfortably warm on the left where the Ram resides, but this isn't a problem unique to IBM.

You wouldn't have to look very hard to get a notebook with the same components for less money from another manufacturer, but there's no doubting the confidence the Thinkpad name inspires.

The R40 will make an excellent machine for those who want a notebook to use rather than to pose with.

Contact: IBM 0800 169 1458
www.ibm.co.uk

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