IBM ThinkPad A22P
The A22P also offers both a video-out port for hooking up big screens and a less common video-in port, useful for capturing images from a camcorder (you must supply the video-editing software). We were very impressed with the A22P's long battery life, which we clocked at 4 hours, 22 minutes.
Withdrawing a device automatically puts the laptop in sleep mode; simply press the power button to return to your work. Need to save company dollars on add-in devices? The A22P can share batteries, an internal CD-RW drive, a Zip drive, a SuperDisk drive, or a second hard drive module with IBM's thin-and-light laptop, the ThinkPad T22. Upgrades are a snap: By taking out one coin screw, you can remove the A21P's hard drive in seconds.
The audio is pretty good for a notebook; buttons at the top of the keyboard quickly and smoothly raise, lower, and mute the volume. A fourth button launches the ThinkPad Assistant, a slickly designed on-board manual. Some sections are too terse, but overall it's an impressive reference, including helpful animations. The printed documentation, on the other hand, consists solely of one thin, plain booklet with a features overview and some troubleshooting information.
The A22P turned in a PC WorldBench 2000 score of 192, a small 5 percent edge over the typical Pentium III-1000 notebook with 256MB of RAM. IBM includes a license for Lotus SmartSuite, but you must call to order the software.
