IBM THINKPAD R40 P4M-2.2G 60GB 256MB XPP DVD/CDRW 15-XGA 56K ENET (IBM-2681L7U)

Reviewed by: rjdzik

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Fabulous 15" screen; Ultra Fast; 60GB Hard drive; Surprising light; Rugged (so far); Excellent Wi-Fi capabilities (with the Cisco Aironet) PCI MiniCard; IBM ACCESS Support; No Problem Software Upgrade

Weaknesses: One 'swap-out' accessory bay; 1-year Warranty; Floppy Drive a purchaseable option (if you really care!); Stuck with base memory chip - especially if you get the full RAM.

Overall Evaluation: I almost made the mistake of going with Dell! I hesitantly bought the IBM ThinkPad R40 partly because it has only one 'swap-out'accessory bay for use by the DVD/CD-RW, DVD, CD, Floppy and other numerous accessories; and (at the time) a 1-year Warranty with no-upgrade options unless you were a business. To my surprise any reservations I may have had with the R40 were completely proven wrong. I purchased the optional Floppy Drive, and have used it once (I should have saved the money)! -- the UltraBay DVD/CD-RW Drive is all I've needed. It would be nice to have a longer Warranty period like some of the competing notebooks, but non-Business (or Homebased) Users can now purchase up to a 5-year Warranty. Granted I have a 2681 Model which has a 15" screen, 60GB Hard Drive, 2.2GHz Pentium 4M Processor with the 32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphic chip and max DDR SDRAM, so I can't guarantee other model types. It's blazing fast even with the CAD programs and other heavy number crunching programs I use. I've used Dell and Compaq laptops and I can say without reservation the IBM ThinkPad beats them all. No I am not a employee (or distributor) for IBM . . . But the ThinkPad R40 is a "rock solid" innovative and trustworthy notebook for the home or business User. If you don't believe me give it a try yourself, I'm glad I did!