IBM ThinkPad R40

In many ways, there's very little difference between the R40 and the ThinkPad R31 - certainly not enough to justify a jump of nine. The fundamental design remains identical, with the same 2.6kg weight, the same durable black plastic chassis, the same square-jawed looks and the same phenomenal keyboard - in terms of layout, key pitch and feel it remains the best in the business. IBM stubbornly sticks to its policy of not including a Windows key, though, so handy shortcuts like minimising active windows aren't possible.

Look a little closer, however, and you'll see that IBM's famous red TrackPoint has not only been enlarged to make it easier to use, but also been joined by a touchpad. We half-expected the 14.1in screen's resolution to be increased, but instead IBM sticks with the tried and trusted 1,024 x 768 pixels. It means icons and system text are both easy to read without fiddling about with Windows' dpi settings, but you're restricted to one main window when working - a 1,400 x 1,050 resolution makes it that much easier to view two or three programs simultaneously.

With the screen's brightness set to maximum and our benchmarks running at full pelt, the R40 amazingly lasted for almost two hours. This notebook can even match the new generation of Centrino notebooks under light use, as it kept going for over four hours. If there was a Pentium-M inside, rather than a 2GHz Pentium 4-M, we reckon it would have lasted for over five hours in this test.

It would also have been faster in our benchmarks - the R40's score of 0.99 now looks rather poor against the 1.45 we saw from the 1.6GHz Pentium-M Acer TravelMate 800 (see issue 103, p58). It's not particularly noteworthy in 3D either, with a return of just 1,520 in 3DMark2001 SE. WLAN is yet another area where this notebook falls behind the new generation of Centrino machines - there's no 802.11b as standard, although an antenna is integrated into the lid.

This particular version of the R40 (IBM's code is TR3F9UK) also has an uninspiring base specification, with a mere 20GB hard disk, 256MB of RAM, a DVD-ROM and a one-year warranty. At this price, it simply isn't worth buying. Nevertheless, IBM offers some decent deals via its TopSeller scheme; for example, WStore is selling a 1.9GHz version of the R40 with a combo DVD and CD-RW drive for just £970 at the time of going to press (code TR3CDUK). This is a much more tempting buy, especially considering IBM's excellent build quality and service, as reflected in its superb performance year after year in our Reliability and Service awards.