IBM ThinkPad A21p

WHAT'S HOT: IBM's best-equipped laptop, the ThinkPad A21p is the Lexus of portables, with superhigh screen resolution, a huge (32GB) hard drive, and a top-of-the-line Pentium-III 850/700 SpeedStep processor added to all the other little luxuries found on most ThinkPads.

Graphics editors, spreadsheet jockeys, and others who need to view as much detail as possible in their work will like the 15-inch screen's standard 1600-by-1200-pixel UXGA setting. The A21p's S-Video-out port lets you watch DVD movies on a TV, and the unit also has a video-in connection for capturing video from a video recorder.

Equipped with 256MB of memory--twice that of most notebooks--our review machine zoomed to a record-setting PC WorldBench 2000 score of 182, the fastest we've seen for a notebook running Windows 2000.

WHAT'S NOT: At 1.8 inches thick with the screen closed, the all-in-one A21p tends toward chunkiness. And at a travel weight of 8.3 pounds, it is on the heavy side.

WHAT ELSE: The A21p features the ThinkPad's traditionally sturdy, stylishly beveled black case and steady keyboard, with the familiar red eraserhead (or TrackPoint, as IBM refers to it) and easy-to-press mouse buttons.

Like all but the thinnest ThinkPads, the A21p includes a single modular bay that can hold a second battery or any of five drives (at this price, you get an 8X DVD-ROM drive). A side-mounted switch lets you pop out devices without fumbling for a lever on the bottom of the notebook. The A21p's fixed floppy drive sits along with the audio connections on the left side of the case.

Want your employees to share devices so you can save money? The A21p can use the same batteries and internal CD-RW drive ($389), 250MB Zip drive ($289), SuperDisk drive ($225), and second hard drive (10GB for $295) modules as IBM's thin-and-light laptop, the ThinkPad T20. Upgrades are a snap: You can remove the A21p's hard drive anytime you like with a single coin screw.

Though it's no boombox, the A21p sounds fairly good for a notebook. Three buttons at the top of the keyboard quickly and smoothly raise, lower, and mute the volume. A fourth button launches the ThinkPad Assistant (IBM's onboard manual), a slickly designed, thorough, but imperfect help utility. In some places definitions are too terse, and the illustrations are too small for easy identification of parts. Finally, the A21p's UltraPort connection, located at the top of the screen, lets you attach a small digital camera.

BEST USE: Though expensive, the top-of-the-line A21p will tempt companies looking for a ThinkPad desktop replacement to complement their traveling workforce's ThinkPad T20 notebooks.

SUMMARY

IBM ThinkPad A21p PC WorldBench 2000 score of 182, Pentium III-850/700, 256MB of SDRAM, 256KB L2 cache, Windows 2000, 15-inch active screen, 16MB of video memory, 32GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM drive, built-in modem, TrackPoint pointing device, 8.3 pounds (including AC adapter and power cord), Lotus SmartSuite. Three-year parts and labor warranty; free unlimited 24-hour tech support. $3390 888/746-7426 www.ibm.com/thinkpad