[jyl]

In the past year I've had a IBM T42p and my current IBM X40. Both have been great machines.

Excellent battery life, great keyboards, good performance, handy features/utilities, portable and compact, and solidly constructed. I get 5+ hours battery life with the extended battery and all power conservation enabled. I like the IBM trackpoint and find it more precise than a touchpad, but the T42p has both. I switched to the X40 for its smaller size.

IBM has traditionally focused on the corporate market. Their notebooks are pure corporate machines - all flat black, no silver accents, no DVD/MP3 buttons, no curvy styling. Reminds me of the black slabs in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The PC business has been sold to LeNovo, the leading Chinese PC vendor, and LeNovo is now led by an ex-IBM CEO and headquartered in New York. I wouldn't expect any major changes in the quality etc of the IBM-branded notebooks.

Some of my colleagues have the IBM Tablet, X41. It is a conventional keyboard-based notebook that can be converted to a pen-based tablet. I had a Compaq tablet PC a couple years ago and wasn't convinced, but apparently Windows Tablet XP has improved a lot, and the people here now like their tablets.

I've had Compaq, Dell, and Toshiba notebooks as well, but I like the IBMs best. Probably 70% of the notebook PCs used in my industry are IBMs.