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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1827
Who's the Innovator? PowerBook v. ThinkPad T40
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
March 15th 2003
1" and a titanium shell maketh not a TiBook.
A story at the San Jose Mercury says the Titanium PowerBook (note: last year's model)
had finally been trumped. By IBM's ThinkPad T40, no less.
Indeed, the Mercury goes so far as to say that the T40 "smokes the TiBook and the
12-inch PowerBook" in battery tests. Indeed it does.
With two batteries.
Admittedly, the second battery is free. Nice. But as a former owner of a ThinkPad (a
340c, IIRC), I can attest to the fact that some of their batteries aren't manufactured
very long. So I was told by IBM when mine died. "Which batteries?" I asked. "Yours,"
said Big Blue.
A quick click over to IBM's site gives you a bird's eye view of the T40. The T series
all feature a 14" screen and there are three models to choose from, ranging from
$1,849 to $2,299. That's roughly comparable to Apple's 12.1" Mini-Me and the 15.2" Ti
at the low end.
The T40's also 1" thin, and the standard 40GB HD runs at 5,400rpm (good, if heavy on
power consumption). But there are some notable shortcomings.
The ThinkPad is still enmeshed in 802.11b - that's Old Airport to you and me. Think
Spirit of St. Louis v. Concorde.
Then there's the video cards. Yes, there are better ones that can be specified. But
16MB Radeon 7500s are iBook territory. Not TiBook. Not even the high-end iBook, which
sports 32MB VRAM. For that money, 32MB should be mandatory.
And DVD-ROM for the two lower-end models, with Combo for the high-end? What century
are you living in, guys? Where's the slot-loading DVD-R/CDRW combo?
USB 2.0? Not on board. It's a $99 CardBus option. But so it is for PowerBooks. If you
want it. Meanwhile, they have FireWire as standard for fast connectivity, and
networking as well, like FireWire Target Mode. And you have to pay $129 for 10/100
Ethernet CardBus? $149 for BlueTooth? (standard on the PowerBook-12).
At least the T40 gives you the option of expansion bay drives, like Zips and hard
drives, something the PowerBook G3 Series still has over the latest PowerBook G4s.
And, given IBM's entry ticket price for a Zip 250 ($279!) is kinda steep, I can think
of cheaper places to get my G3 expansion bay devices. But we digress.
Quite apart from the fact that the T40 is clearly in a different class from the TiBook
- the 15.2" widescreen differentiates them for a start - we're just left wondering why
the Mercury drew such an inane comparison. And if you think Apple's prices for RAM are
high, try IBM's. What's their profit margin on those 512MB modules?
And please, Big Blue, get rid of the 'nipple thing' you use as a pointer in the center
of keyboard. I almost launched my own personal class action against you and your
first-born due to my swollen, bruised fingers last time (and it will be the last time,
I promise you).
Here's a positive suggestion? How about you dump x86 and Windows, make LinuxPPC
standard on all ThinkPads and make them run on nitrous with that high-octane PowerPC
970?
Oh wait - that's the PowerBook. With another flavor of *nix, of course.
Auto journalists used to have a label for 1970s Rolls-Royces: "Crap, well-cooked."
Care to put a label on the T Series?
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