I was going through a couple of reviews on IBM laptops here at the forum and looks like I am going to be in the loner club of IBM lovers. So here it goes. I bought the notebook on which I am writing out this very review some 6 months ago. IBM thinkpad R51.
I needed a machine that gives me good performance and wireless moblity for my work, so after looking around I settled for R51. Why?, here are the reasons Features 1. Centrino 1.5 G 2. Wireless B/G (why b/g G wireless standard supports 54MBPS, while B supports upto 11 MBPS only) 3. 40 GB HDD 4. CD-RW/DVD ROM 5. Fire wire 1394 port 6. 512 MB RAM ( It actually has only 256 MB, but my dealer gave me a free upgrade) 7. Active HDD protection and restore features. 8. Free Lotus office suite (Though it will not match MS Office, but its legal) 9. 15’’ screen 10. 3 to 4 hrs of battery life Doesn’t sound bad at all does it?.
I had no issues with this machine, except for some driver problems in my CDRW drive, which IBM support guys quickly helped me fix over the phone and on top of that followed up couple of days later to ensure that it is working ok.
So now coming to the bad part, there are two things:
Wieght is on the heavier side - 2.8 KGs. It may not sound much, but lugging it around for a couple of days gave me real bad shoulder ache
The price, its a little on the higher side. But if you have some friends living in the US, its a good idea to ask them to get it for you, as its really cheap there and there is no problem with the customs also.