IBM X40 23718LU

Well 1st off I’m coming from using a T40
Let me start with *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** this thing is very small and light.
I can see this machine going places I would never have taken the T40.

Build quality of this machine is very good for an ultra portable
There are no squeaks no pops in the palm rest or anywhere else.
The keyboard is firmly seated in its place all the way around the machine.
Trackpoint buttons are not squeaking.

Battery fits in its slot no wiggling
There is no bowing in the back between the battery and the bottom cover.
And a quiet fan.

Overall every aspect of this machine is better built than my T40 was.

The clear plates seem to also be made of better material they are not a clear
Plastic as the name suggests but more of a frosted black and the icons seem to just look better. It looks classier.

The keyboard also seems a bit better the matte finish is better done.
I find it a better tactile feel with a slight click with each keystroke and the keys don’t
Need to be pressed as hard.

The battery seems to also handle itself better, it is also made by Sanyo.
But it handles itself much better I have used it to about 30% and it always charges back up to its full capacity.
As with all batteries I am sure over time this will change but on my previous T40 I would loose Whrs. every time it went below 60%.

The think light is of an amber color as opposed to white. This to me is a lot less annoying.

Screen seems very bright and well balanced with good color on AC as well as battery.
I have no dead or stuck pixels.

For a 1.2 Pentium M as opposed to a 1.6 in the T40,
This machine seems quite zippy.
This would be a very zippy machine but the HD seems to be the bottleneck.

The palmrest does get a little warm under the left side where the HD is located. This does however seem to be the case in most laptops with the HD under the palmrest area.

The machine overall seems to run much cooler than the previous T40
This is probably due to the 1.2 Low Voltage Pentium M and the Intel Graphics but I like this the cooler the better.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-6/742306/MyX40(11)(Medium).jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-6/7 ... ide(Medium).jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-6/7 ... ide(Medium).jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-6/7 ... Medium.jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-6/7 ... tndBat.jpg

Congrats on getting a great machine. Nice photos too It looks tiny next to the T40 and I consider the T40 one of the smaller machines out there.

It's good to hear that the X40 is a very well built.

I did see someone using an X40 today from a distance, and it was equipped with the ultrabase and extended battery... I hope I can get a closer look at the machine sometime.

Thanks. Very nice photos, especially when compared to what IBM seems to regard as professional photography... a display nearly covered in dust, greasy fingerprints all over the TFT panel and such:

http://www-5.ibm.com/se/news/archive/im ... MX40_1.jpg

Nice photos!

I notice you have the 8-cell, I'm thinking of getting one. Could you post a few more of the 8-cell? maybe overhead with the notebook closed?

Thanks

IBM professional photography:

http://www-5.ibm.com/se/news/archive/im ... 40Left.jpg
http://www-5.ibm.com/se/news/archive/im ... autyR1.jpg

Nice! I have one as well (for four weeks). Love it to death. Just got back from a round the world trip with it and it is the absolute best machine to travel with. See my other post on the little 'water problem' I had. It might make you cry. I sure did.

Congrats!

David

Just added the last pic in the list for ya
stinkypete

Looks great, thanks!

So WHEN is IBM going to nudge the 40 GB 1.8-inch hard drive up to 60 GB? Will Hitachi do this? Tochiba? Any rumors or guesses?

Hitachi will do this and from what I have heard it is in the works.

I am more interested in the speed of the harddisk. My X40 takes 5 minutes to boot.

And that’s with a fresh 3 day old install without any extra tools. Only IBM Software....

A 60gb 1.8" disk has been announced and should be widely available later this year. Alas, the main market for the 1.8" disks seems to be ipods and the like, for which speed is not important. I haven't even read any rumors of a 5400 or 7200 1.8" disk, but others may be better informed.

I wish IBM had designed the X40 to take a standard 2.5" HDD

If you are serious about that boot time. you've got some serious issues
going on inside that machine. I have not actually clocked my boot time but it does not even seem slow. And I'm using this machine coming from a 1.6 P-M T40

You've got something seriously wrong on your system if your statement WRT BOOT time is accurate. The X40 I had for a client took about 45 seconds to BOOT to the desktop and then about 10 seconds to find one of my home WiFi networks.

Check the MS website for bootvis, download, install and run it and see if you can't clean things up a bit.

Could your system be looking for an inaccessible network on BOOT?

Is Norton AV scanning the HD on BOOT?

Report back.

Regards,

James

Provided that I'm not terribly misinformed, Apple uses the Toshiba 1.8" hdds. There was even a great upset lately because Toshiba announed larger drives for the iPod, a statement that Apple had not approved of:

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/toshiba.html

Actually the 1.8" drives made by Toshiba on the one hand and those manufactured by HitachiGST on the other hand are not interchangeable. They use a totally different form factor. In fact, the HitachiGST drives obey the new SFF8111 standard and aren't very widely used yet, actually I don't know of any other notebook maker other than IBM that uses such drives, while the Toshiba ones are quite common.

For a comparison of both types, with many photos, you can resort to the following Chinese article:

http://www.sundigi.com/article/product/ ... ?ga_id=750

Babelfish translation:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfis ... 0&lp=zh_en

Just one picture from it, showing (from left to right) the Toshiba 1.8", the HitachiGST 1.8" drive and a common 2.5":

http://www.sundigi.com/files/2003/08/13 ... VS/119.jpg


Yes, I second that, absolutely. I think this can't be stressed enough. I regard that even as a major drawback.

I agree that they should have squeezed in a 2.5" HD, there is just so much more choice there. The old TP 240 and the Japan-only S30 were as small or even smaller than the X40, but they used 2.5" drives. Still, I'm glad they used Hitachi rather than Toshiba. The Hitachi connector is the same as the standard 2.5" connector, so in a pinch you can still use a 2.5" drive, it just sticks out of the case.

It’s completely default. Only with NAV 2002 Default install. (So not NAV 2004 that scans about every thing you open)

Ill try bootvis 2morrow.

eriqesque, ygpm