20 million Thinkpads later...

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 11 Nov 2003 at 12:47

Horne described the project where data is stored by 'punching' data onto a plastic film using tips that are 'nano-sharp' as a 'frightening technology.'

'It could mean the death of the hard drive as we know it,' he said. 'With Millipede you can fit 800TB in the same physical dimension as a current 80GB disk, and it consumes far less power with nano-mechanical operations.

It's still at inception stage, but we do actually have working samples. But it's not tomorrow that we'll see this.'

Linux also has a part to play, particularly in the price sensitive small business sector, which Horne said is 'one of the largest growth areas' for Thinkpad sales.

'The Linux market is one of the few markets that is 100 per cent customer driven,' he said. 'Other products are forced on the customer. For example, with Centrino you're always going to get a Pentium M processor - you can't choose a Mobile Pentium 4 chip.'

However, he said that the demand for Linux-based Thinkpads is being met by the channel, which is more easily able to provide the custom-designed implementations of the software that is often required.

'Demand is not great enough for a Linux preload,' he said. 'And we couldn't offer preloaded machines as we'd have to provide a different version for each Linux distribution. So we won't go down the route of standardised preloaded machines.'

However he said that IBM has been involved in selling Linux Thinkpads directly. 'We have had successes in Germany selling Thinkpads directly to customers with Red Hat preloaded. They wanted things like Bluetooth, which was supplied by IBM on Thinkpad T30s,' he said. 'Linux is not going to go away. It definitely has a future and a share of the market.'