Review: ThinkPad T42

IBM's ThinkPad series gains security, hard drive protection, smarter batteries

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: Laptops

IBM's latest power user ThinkPad is the T42.  The T series of ThinkPads provide the best combination between raw performance and portability.  The ThinkPad T series is what I use when I travel to demonstrate our latest software.  It's portable enough that I can lug it around but still powerful enough to show off our various programs.

The T42 I received from IBM is a bit heavier than the T40 it is replacing (about a pound -- 5.7 pounds).  While a relatively small difference, it is something I am definitely noticing as I lug it around.  But I am amply rewarded with a 15 inch display (instead of 14.1 inches).  Other details include a 1.8Ghz Pentium M processor.  The M series of processors aren't like other processors. The Ghz doesn't really tell the story.  In terms of every day usage, it "feels" about as fast as my 3Ghz desktop in terms of computing power. With the larger battery installed, it gets around 5 hours of real world battery use which means I can watch movies and what not on a cross-country trip.

My configuration also includes the IBM Multi-Burner DVD/CD-ROM drive burner drive which lets me make both CDs and DVDs.  The native display resolution is 1400x1050 which is quite useful when doing development, video work, or graphics design. Bundled software allows me to hit the Fn-Space bar to toggle between its maximum display and various lower "zoomed" displays for when I browsing or writing an article (such as this one).  The actual adapter is an ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility which translates to meaning I can play most of the latest games just fine on it if I want and this is also important for me since I'm coding parts of Galactic Civilizations II on it.

One feature I didn't really notice when I ordered it but am finding I really like is the new Finger Print reader (see #9 in the shot to the left). Instead of using a UserID and password to logon, I just put my index finger the finger print reader and it logs me in.  It's well, it's pretty damn cool.

The bundled software IBM has included has finally reached the point where I don't immediately try to scrub it all off.  I still remove most of it as it makes the default boot time take forever (IBM take note, IBM Messages is annoying!).  One piece of bundled software in particular I like --  IBM Active Protection.  Basically it monitors the stability of the machine in real time. I mean the physical stability. So any jarring or rapid movement and it'll instantly turn off the hard drive. 

One feature I've noticed other reviews haven't mentioned that is very important is the new way the battery is handled. In previous versions of the ThinkPad, the battery would keep charging even when plugged in. So IBM batteries tended to die out after around a year. But now the "Improve Battery Health" feature lets you turn that behavior off.

The included 802.11g connectivity has very impressive range (much the same as the T40's 802.11b).  IBM also includes a lot (arguably too much) wireless network software to make it "easy" to connect to a wide variety of networks.  In practice, I don't find this to be that useful as Windows XP SP2's wireless network features are more than enough.

In terms of usage, the ThinkPad T42 keyboard has keys that are spaced and sized the same as a desktop keyboard. The result is that moving from your desktop to the ThinkPad is a smooth transition.

There's not much to complain about here, overall it's a fantastic laptop for the power user. If you need a workhorse laptop that works both as a desktop and is quite portable, you can't do much better than IBM's ThinkPad T42.  Now how things will go with Chinese PC vendor, Lenova in charge remains to be seen. I have been using ThinkPads since 1994 and can't even imagine using any other laptop (particularly one without a trackpoint).  But for now, the ThinkPad T42 is my laptop of choice.

IBM ThinkPad T42
Configuration:
memory: 1.5 Gigs
Display: 15 inch
CPU: 1.8Ghz
Video: ATI M9600
Drive: 50GB
Price: $2,498

www.thinkpad.com

Latin4567
Reply #1 Wednesday, April 6, 2005 9:07 PM
I use a t-40... the T series is very stable
lenemery
Reply #2 Thursday, April 7, 2005 3:44 AM
only two complaints i have w my t42p is with the optional, smaller battery that fits in the cd/floppy slot. i'm used to dells where when the big battery dies, the smaller second takes over, so you can swap out the big battery with another fully charged big battery. but w the t42p, it seems that the smaller battery is exhausted before the bigger battery.

other oddity, is that when using external usb keypad, the numlck on the ibm keyboard turns on also. ie. you can't use the laptop keyboard for words while using an external number keypad for numbers. -lenr
RAd_Tad
Reply #3 Thursday, April 7, 2005 1:23 PM
I agree, it's a nice notebook, really good for on the road warrior, but it's pretty ridiculously pricey, if you don't mind my saying so.

My Fujistsu Siemens M7400 cost half the price of that, and has just as good features. Although my processor is Pentium M 1.6 Ghz (built april 2004), and it's almost 1.5 lbs heavier, and has Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Gives me 4-5 hours of battery life.
eh.. wut am I trying to say here???

Oh well, if you're satisifed, that's all that matters
Frogboy
Reply #4 Thursday, April 7, 2005 10:26 PM
Yea, but you said it all. 1.5 pounds heavier is significantly heavier.  I get at least an hour more (if I'm just surfing I get closer to 6.5 hours) battery life. I have a faster processor, and it's an Radeon 9500 video card.   These things matter a lot more than some fairly insignificant amount in price for what it's used for.  And does yours burn DVDs/CDs (not at half the price it doesn't).  How much RAM is on it?  Much of my costs came from half a gig and a half of ram and the dual DVD/CD burner.
Tryzub
Reply #5 Thursday, April 7, 2005 10:33 PM
I searched so long for a laptop. I needed one for work. I'm a developer, not of graphics or of video, but worse - client/server applications. If I boil down what I do, I develop front-ends for databases. I needed something that could handle the full Java J2EE SDK, Oracle 10i or MS SQL 2000, a java-based server component for rendering applications build with C, yada yada yada. On top of this, I would need to run another "set" of these applications on a VMware instance concurrently.

I finally decided on the Alienware Area 51-m 7700. After reading your review, Brad, I'm perplexed. I hope I've made the right decision. I'm not too concerned about weight. I'm carrying a 6 pound laptop now, along with an external firewire drive (my laptop is a Toshiba with a 20 gig HD), so by the time I get all loaded up with laptop, drive, cabling, etc. I'm carrying 11 pounds easy.

I expect to receive my laptop in the next week or so. I'll post my experiences with it if anyone would be interested. I paid $1,500 more than you did, but I've got a few more features. My hope is that what I've purchased will blow away anything else out there (competitively priced). My intent was to buy now what I wouldn't need to upgrade for 2-3 years.
Frogboy
Reply #6 Friday, April 8, 2005 4:50 PM
The Alienware laptops are supposed to be quite good.
Tryzub
Reply #7 Friday, April 8, 2005 5:12 PM
Well that's "the buzz." Here's hoping it's not just a fancy website and other marketing tactics.

I'm using an HP Pavilion zv5000 at the moment. It's got 1 Gig of RAM and an AMD 3200+ 64bit processor. I haven't looked much into the board's specs or the architecture of the RAM, processor, etc so I don't know what the on-die cache is or even BUS speed, but it's doing the job for now. The graphics card is only a GeForce 440 Go card (yeah, my 3-year old Toshiba had that card, too, and this HP is brand new from CompUSA) so I've not tried to do anything that would tax it.

Anyway, this laptop is going okay with 1 Gig. Have you notice a substantial increase in performance when going up to the 1.5 gigs?
kona0197
Reply #8 Friday, April 8, 2005 5:56 PM
Nice review on the thinkpad Frogboy. The only reason I have never considered a thinkpad is because of the pointing device and I think they have always been in my eyes cosmetically ugly. I see they have finally added a touchpad but still I don't like the way they look. No offense.
Shotgun989
Reply #9 Friday, April 8, 2005 7:00 PM
I have to say that Ghz are really irrelevant. I have (and am writing this on) a 2.4 GHz laptop with 486 Mb Ram, but only a 512 or 1024 Kb cache. This really bottlenecks things for me. My 1.6 GHz desktop with a equal amount of ram keeps up with my laptop consistantly. I have stopped being one of the many who looks purely at the meaningless number with "Ghz" infront of it. I scrape by with what I have though...
flipdoubt
Reply #10 Sunday, April 10, 2005 6:18 PM
I know it seems like it is forever and a day away, but I keep telling myself I should wait for Longhorn. Other than waiting forever (and a day), do you think there is any validity to this tactic? Do you think Microsoft will force a hardware paradigm shift to come out with Longhorn?

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