- Very Long Battery Life
- Excellent Warranty
- Active Protection System
- Lacks Productivity Software
- No Optical Drive
- No FireWire
- Intel Pentium M 1.2 GHz Low Voltage Processor
- 256MB PC2700 DDR Memory
- 40GB 4,200rpm Hard Drive with Active Protection System
- 12.1" XGA Display and Intel Extreme2 Graphics with 64MB Shared Memory
- Integrated AC'97 Audio
- v.92 56Kbps Modem, 10/100 Ethernet and Intel 802.11b Wireless
- Two USB 2.0 Ports, One Type II PC Card Slot and Secure Digital Slot
- 10.5" x 8.3" x 1.1" @ 2.7 lbs.
- Windows XP Professional
3/24/04 - IBM has a tough job trying to improve on the already successful ThinkPad X31 ultraportable, but they have managed to do just that with the ThinkPad X40
Powering the new ThinkPad X40 is a Pentium M 1.2Ghz Low Voltage processor. This is a good mix of performance and power consumption that helps the X40 continue the extremely long battery life of the X series. Matched to the CPU is 256MB of PC2700 memory.
The latest feature for the X40 is the new Active Protection System. This helps to protect the hard drive from damage in the event of the system being dropped or bumped. It does this by sensing the motion and parking the drive heads. While this is a valuable feature for many, some do complain that the drive will park the heads while they are working on the system in conditions such as an airplane.
Storage this time is provided by a slower 4,200rpm 40GB hard drive. This decreases the performance some but it is still acceptable. There is no optical storage standard with the system. Users have the option of either using an external drive or the very well designed base station expansion that also has space for an optical drive.
The display continues to use the 12.1" XGA LCD display, but the dedicated graphics processor has been dropped in favor of the Intel integrated graphics. This means less 3D capability, but many looking at ultraportables do not care.
In the end, the ThinkPad X40 continues the trend of excellent ultraporables from IBM.
