IBM ThinkPad R40e review

We always praise IBM for the quality of its machines, and this R40e is no exception. The keyboard has a fantastic feel, and only the continued absence of a Windows key counts against it. As the only notebook to use a trackpoint to control the cursor, the IBM takes a bit of getting used to. Once familiarised though, it's often quicker and more accurate than a touchpad.

IBM doesn't sell the R40e with a wireless adaptor as standard, but we've allowed manufacturers to include a separate PC Card. IBM's choice was its brand new 802.11a/b/g PC Card, which costs £73 from dabs.com. This allows connection to any of the wireless LAN standards, but still lags behind Dell's internal solution, which offers Bluetooth connectivity.

Unfortunately, build quality and wireless connectivity are the only areas where we can commend the IBM. Performance from the 2GHz Mobile Celeron was significantly less than the ACi with its desktop Celeron. The Emerald Pro, with its 2.6GHz CPU, managed 0.84 in our 2D tests, but the IBM only just scraped over 0.7. Its 3D performance was also the worst here.

The 30GB Fujitsu hard disk is smaller than most and there's only a DVD-ROM rather than a combo drive installed. The battery allowed us to play our DVD movie for one hour, 25 minutes - not long enough for most films. However, the R40e lasted for two hours and 45 minutes under light use.

Watching movies on the 14.1in TFT, which delivers a crisp, bright XGA image, is enjoyable, but the viewing angles are no better than the rest this month. Horizontal angles are worse than the latest generation of panels.

With only a couple of USB 1.1 ports and a legacy parallel port offering wired connectivity to peripherals, the IBM isn't over-endowed. An adaptor to allow parallel and serial connections is available, but takes up one USB port. And don't forget that the wireless card takes up the single available PC Card slot.

Of course, none of these shortcomings are particularly surprising considering the £499 base price. Even adding the wireless card on top, the R40e is still the cheapest notebook on test, beating Watford by £27.

Unfortunately for IBM, this doesn't mean a Best Value award. Watford's notebook is a much better proposition, despite sharing IBM's poor one-year, return-to-base warranty, as it offers much better performance and a DVD/CD-RW drive. Only consider the R40e if portability is a crucial factor on a tight budget.