Big Blue's ThinkPad 770 takes notebooks into thinner territory

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): When it comes to designing a high-end notebook to capture your rapture, it may be hard to beat Big Blue. Take IBM's ThinkPad 770 Series, for example. The super-duper 770 Series are definitely the ones to buy if you want to have everything on your notebook -- and if you have a bulging checkbook, of course.

Now that fat and heavy are out and thin and lightweight are in, leading notebook makers all over the world -- from the U.S. to Japan to Taiwan -- have a new quest: to design the thinnest and lightest notebook that has most computing amenities that the user might wish to have while on the road.

And who else would be more obsessed with the task of designing such a notebook than IBM? It was early last year that IBM engineering, manufacturing and service teams began a project called "Tiger Shark", and their main task was to find ways to build a notebook that was both highly portable and fully loaded.

Clearly they had to find out the latest technology in LCD panels, CD-ROM drives, floppy disk drives and hard disks in order to keep the thickness of the notebook to the minimum. They succeeded. The result is a notebook that is only 36.5 mm thick but has a bay for either a CD-ROM or a 3.5" floppy diskette drive.

Courtesy of PT USI Jaya/IBM, I was able to test drive a ThinkPad 600 Model 2645-41A. I was granted only one week to play around with it as quite a few other people were already waiting to get their hands on it.

Black Box

Like all other ThinkPads, this black notebook doesn't have any curved sides. It comes inside a beautiful carrying bag that can also accommodate your stuff in addition to the power adapter and the external floppy disk drive casing. Like all other ThinkPads, the notebook cover feels like velvet under your fingers.

The first thing that would strike you when you open it is the screen. It is also black. When it is not turned on, you would not realize it is the screen. When it is on, the screen gives crisp images in vibrant colors. The 13.3" XGA screen, designed in cooperation between IBM and Toshiba, has the maximum resolution of 1024 by 768 and displays 64,000 different colors.

Incidentally, the audio quality produced by the two speakers on the palm rest is not bad at all. Listening to Sadao Watanabe is extremely enjoyable.

The UltraslimBay is located on the right side at the front. Pulling out and inserting the interchangeable CD-ROM and diskette drives are easy. On the right of the body are the Infra-red port and a port for external microphone. On the left side are the port for the floppy drive when used externally, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), and the power-on switch. Thin, rubber-like lids cover all the ports. Because they don't use hinges, I guess they will last longer than the conventional hinged covers.

The TrackPoint III on this notebook is also adopted from the ThinkPad 770 Series. It has a third button that we can use for scrolling down a Web page or simulating a double-click. As with the ThinkPad 770 Series, there is also a magnifying glass utility that can enlarge your footnotes.

The keyboard is full-sized and has the feel of being quite close to the standard desktop keyboard. About the only thing that's missing, in my opinion, is a mechanical control for audio volume adjustment.

Modem

You may have noticed that some of the notebooks sold in Indonesia do not have a built-in modem while the same models sold in the U.S. do. It's because each country follows a different standard for public telephone call signaling. A modem may not be able to work properly if it is not tuned for the sound of the dial tone, the busy signal, electrical current, etc., of the local public telephone network.

Each country has a set of these codes, called the DAA table. (Nobody seems to know what DAA stands for, by the way, although you can find the list of DAA tables on the Web site of the International Telecommunications Union (www.itu.org).

The built-in modem inside the ThinkPad 600 has multiple DAA tables. Therefore, as you fly from one country to another, you can alter the DAA table by changing the name of the country you're about to make your call from. This facility makes the ThinkPad 600 a practical traveling companion, as it allows you to make modem connections from most of the countries in the world.

Besides the modem, the ThinkPad 600 is also loaded with a few useful software programs. They are loaded but not installed, so you still have a choice. Chief among these programs is the ConfigSafe utility that helps you track changes in configuration files as you install new software programs. It's also a tool that helps you recover in case conflicts occur. There is also IBM Anti-virus 3.0 that you can install on the system.

Being a network-managed notebook, it also comes loaded with Netfinity and Intel LANDesk Client Manager. You have to choose only one of these management tools, and it will let your IT staff manage your notebook easily -- for instance, help you fix problems through your company's network or Intranet.

The RingCentral helps you manage telephone calls. It features a speakerphone with speed dialing capabilities, mailboxes and faxes. It will also enable you to attach files to faxes. This notebook is also optimized for Intel Video Phone applications using Intel's ProShare technology.

Although it is unmistakably the leader in notebook design, IBM is by no means the only vendor of thin and lightweight notebooks. Hewlett-Packard, for example, has its Omnibook Sojourn, reportedly the thinnest notebook on earth so far. At US$5,799, however, Sojourn is so pricey that it seems HP is not even bothering to bring it to Indonesia.

Sony, which has been making excellent PCs and notebooks for some time, has come up with VAIO PCG 808, a 1,5" thick notebook that will intensify your craving. As far as I know, Sony's VAIO notebooks and PCs are not yet available here in Jakarta, either.

Therefore, at the moment it seems that if you want to follow the latest trend in mobile computing, you may want to have a close look at IBM ThinkPad 600. But, then again, with the US$4,500 that you would need to fork out to pay for this awesome notebook, you could feed 400 jobless people for an entire month.