IBM Thinkpad T30

WHAT'S HOT: The T30 is IBM's first ThinkPad to include both a touchpad and IBM's standard eraserhead--a design that should win over a lot of people who have never gotten the hang of IBM's pointing stick. The touchpad's set of dedicated mouse buttons are just as comfortable as the eraserhead's, and unlike the buttons on most other notebooks, they depress deeply for solid feedback. The T30 is well-equipped for roaming--our review model came with both Bluetooth and 802.11b connectivity built in.

WHAT'S NOT: At $2949, the T30 is expensive compared with other similarly equipped laptops. A floppy drive costs extra--$79 for an internal model or $99 for a USB model--and the printed documentation consists of one slim troubleshooting manual.

WHAT ELSE: The T30 turned in average performance across the board for a 1.8-GHz Pentium 4-M notebook, with 2.5-hour battery life and a PC WorldBench 4 score of 95.

The edges of the T30's lower casing and screen frame have complementary angles, so they cleverly make a perfect box shape when closed. Besides this case change and the addition of the touchpad, the T30 is a welcome replay of its predecessor, the T23. It includes the same high-resolution 14.1-inch screen and weighs about the same at 5.7 pounds (not counting the AC adapter or floppy drive).

The modular bay, on the right side, can hold any one of six devices, including a Zip, SuperDisk, or second hard drive, or even a pop-out cradle for IBM's WorkPad C500 Series PDA. (Ours came with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive.) The T30 offers all legacy connections except a PS/2 mouse/keyboard port. An S-Video port located on the back lets you watch DVD movies on a TV.

The T30 inherited the T23's robust set of front-mounted speakers and handy volume buttons above the keyboard. IBM has made the animated onboard user's manual easier to use by dividing the contents into three at-a-glance categories that help you drill down to a topic quickly.

Memory and storage continue to be fairly easy to access, although removing the hard drive is a little awkward because you have to keep the lid open in order to slide it out.

UPSHOT: A product of several generations of impressively designed, middle-weight notebooks, the T30's more flexible wireless and pointing device options should please almost any mobile worker.

SUMMARY

IBM ThinkPad T30 PC WorldBench 4 score of 95, 1.8-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M, 256MB of DDR266 SDRAM, 512KB of L2 cache, Windows XP Professional, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 AGP with 16MB of DDR SDRAM, 40GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 8X/8X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.90 modem and network interface, dual pointing devices, 6.7-pound weight (including AC adapter and phone cord); Lotus SmartSuite Millennium. Three-year parts and labor warranty; free 24-hour toll-free technical support $2949 888/746-7426 www.ibm.com/thinkpad