IBM Thinkpad T23

The sturdy, light T23 is perfect for the road.

Price: £2696.63

Manufacturer: IBM

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Verdict

For those who need a sturdy laptop with good performance, the T23 is ideal. It's not cheap but, with a titanium case, solid build quality and the latest mobile chip technology, it's a cut above your average rebrand job.

Niall Magennis, Personal Computer World 05 Mar 2002

You don't exactly think of style when you think of IBM, but its Thinkpad notebooks have proved quite a hit with the fashion conscious, thanks to their slim design and sophisticated looks.

IBM has pretty much found the formula and stuck to it over the past few years. But the formula is a good one, and is more than evident in this two-spindle notebook for the road warrior.

A titanium composite is used for the T23's casing. Not only is titanium extremely strong, it's also very light which makes it ideal for use in laptops. For its size and features the T23 is impressively light, weighing in at around 2.22kg.

The T23 uses Intel's new 830 mobile chipset. This is designed specifically for the Tualatin mobile processor (now called the Pentium III-M), and is built using the 0.13micron manufacturing process. This model uses a 1.13GHz Pentium III-M with 512Kb of Level 2 cache and enhanced Speedstep power saving technology.

The processor is backed up by 128Mb of Ram, which is a bit stingy for a machine running Windows 2000, especially in this price bracket. There's an integrated 56K modem that IBM says is V.92 ready and an Intel 10/100 network adaptor. Other ports include infra-red, two USB and serial and parallel. There's also a PC Card slot supporting two Type II cards or one Type III card, but unfortunately there's no Firewire port.

The 14.1in TFT screen is very bright and clear with a good viewing angle and has a resolution of 1,024 x 768. It's driven by an S3 Supersavage/IXC with 16Mb of Ram. It's not going to hold a torch to a Geforce2 Go, but then this is not a machine aimed at those interested in gaming.

The T23 has a new Ultrabay Plus slot for optional storage. Ultrabay 2000 devices are compatible with this bay. This model ships with an eight-speed DVD and a floppy, but CD-RW/DVD, LS120 floppy and zip drives are available as options. Alternatively, you can use the slot to house a second battery.

Just under the lip at the top of the screen you'll find the Thinklight. This is a tiny light that illuminates the keyboard in the dark. It is activated by holding down the Function key and tapping the Page Up key and, because it's an LED, it draws hardly any power even if used for long periods.

Another stalwart of the Thinkpad range is the Ultraport connector found on the outer housing at the top of the screen. It acts in much the same way as a USB port but is proprietary. IBM currently has Bluetooth, camera, microphone and Compact Flash card reader modules available for it.

We've loved the keyboard on the previous Thinkpads and the T23 is no exception. In fact, it's one of the best keyboards on any laptop. The keys feel solid without being clunky and there's none of the flexing that you'll find on other keyboards.

One addition that we especially liked was the scroll button. Instead of having up and down scroll buttons, there's a single button that you hold down and then push the trackpoint up or down to mimic the action of a scroll wheel on a mouse.

Another innovative touch was the system restore feature. Pressing F11 at boot-up will restore the system to its factory settings from a hidden partition of the hard drive.

One slight disappointment was the battery life. At one hour and 57 minutes it was just average and not on a par with other 830/Pentium III-M machines we've seen. Unfortunately, the T23 refused to complete the entire Sysmark 2001 test, but it did produce an Internet Content Creation score of 149 that would indicate it's a decent performer.

We liked the T23 a lot. It's expensive, but then it's aimed more at the business market than your average consumer. What you are paying for with Thinkpads is build quality, and the T23 has it in spades.

Contact: IBM 0800 169 1460 www.ibm.com/uk

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