IBM Laptop Reviews

"The hardest part is the 600E sound card, which is notoriously hard to get working in linux...Firstly the laptop BIOS must be set to Initialize and Quick Boot must be off...Both ACPI and APM work in this machine without any big problems..." read more »

"The IBM ThinkPad A31 sports the slowest processor in our group, a 1.8-GHz P4-M, but we were not sorely disappointed with its performance test results across the board...Still, the A31 is a good choice for users who want a bit of portability without breaking the bank..." read more »

"You might remember the name 'FireGL' from the good old days when Diamond was still around...ATi acquired FireGL about a year ago, and now the Starnberg specialists are responsible for ATi's high-end OpenGL workstation products that give NVIDIA's Quadros a very good run for its money...The Mobility Fire GL 7800 includes the same technology that is found in the Mobility Radeon 7500, so you will find the same Charisma Engine, Pixel Tapestry technology, Hydravision, and Powerplay power management that is in the Mobility Radeon 7500...However, you don't need to fear that A31p-ThinkPads with the Mobility FireGL 7800 will run 2D or 3D-gaming applications worse than those with the Mobility Radeon 7500...The ATi Mobility Fire GL 7800 in our A31p was in the 64 MB 128 bit DDR 4X AGP configuration..." read more »

"The X3550 is the first in a series of major improvements to IBM's Intel Server family...Heralded as Intel's answer to AMD's 200-series Opterons, Dempsey is the codename for Intel's Series 5000 range of 65nm dual-core Xeons, and the X3550 comes equipped with a pair of 3.73GHz 5080 models...With the imminent availability of Intel's low-power Woodcrest Series 5100 processor, you have to ask why anyone would buy into Dempsey now...Expansion options look very good, as PCI-X and PCI Express 8x slots are available..." read more »