Big Blue's ThinkPad 770 takes notebooks into thinner territory
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.