The IBM ThinkPad X23 offers just about every feature you'd want in an ultraportable laptop. Although not the thinnest and lightest on the market, it's still easy to carry at 3.5 pounds (without peripherals). It measures a reasonable 1.3 inches thick with the 12.1-inch screen closed. The X23 boasts a comfortable, near-full-size, eraserhead-equipped ThinkPad keyboard, with an 18.5mm pitch (distance from the center of one key to the next) and 2.5mm travel--very close to the standard 19mm and 3mm. You can buy the X23 with built-in 802.11b (aka WiFi) and Bluetooth equipment. Ours came with just 802.11b antennas in the sides of the screen. The X23 is the first laptop with a built-in CompactFlash card slot that we've seen. Many digital cameras and handheld computers use CF cards, giving you an easy way to transfer photographs and data to the X23. While other ultraportables lag behind with slower processors, you can order the X23 with an 866-MHz LV Pentium III-M CPU. The X23 turned in a PC WorldBench 4 score of 88--only about 12 percent below some portables equipped with 1.2-GHz Pentium III-M processors. The notebook's low-voltage chip is supposed to be slightly more power-hungry than the ultra-low-voltage processors used by most other ultraportables, but that didn't seem to hurt the X23's battery life. It lasted nearly four hours on one charge. The X23 can work with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive, an option for the notebook's UltraBase X2 docking station. IBM offers a complete range of other optical drives for the UltraBase X2's modular bay, as well as a 250MB Zip drive and a secondary hard drive, making the X23 highly expandable. And thanks to the UltraBase's strong stereo speakers, the X23 may be the best-sounding small notebook around. The X23 doesn't have internal drive bays, so it won't accept optical or floppy drives in its standard configuration, and it lacks built-in parallel, serial, and PS/2 connections. To add these features you'll have to buy the UltraBase X2, which includes a fixed floppy drive on the front and a modular bay on the side that you can fill with an extra-cost optical drive. Including a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive, the slice adds 2.2 pounds to the X23's weight. Except for the above-mentioned connections, the X23 offers all expected features, including modem, ethernet, monitor, headphone, and microphone ports. However, it includes only one PC Card slot. In addition to two standard USB 1.1 ports (one on the back and the other on the left side) it boasts IBM's UltraPort, a proprietary USB port located atop the screen. (IBM sells a handful of inexpensive gadgets for the UltraPort, including a small digital camera, a CompactFlash reader, a digital microphone, and a Bluetooth module.) The X23's keyboard features the same easy-to-use mouse buttons that other ThinkPads have, and a row of shortcut buttons at the top for controlling volume and launching the animated onboard manual. The hard drive is easily removable--a rare perk in an ultralight. It's easy to reach the main memory, too, but though the X23 supports up to 640MB of SDRAM, our review unit had all its sockets filled in a 256MB configuration. Thanks to the X23's beveled sides and strategic cutouts on the UltraBase, you can access all the X23's ports when it's docked. It takes some patient angling to line up the UltraBase's connectors precisely for attaching, but it releases easily via two large side levers. A lock on the bottom secures it to the notebook. If you're serious about owning the best ultraportable out there, the X23 is your best choice. It's light, it's slim, it's fast, and it offers just about every cool feature you've been dreaming of.
Buying Information
IBM ThinkPad X23 PC WorldBench 4 score of 88, 866-MHz LV Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, 512KB of L2 cache, Windows XP Professional, 12.1-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Mobility Radeon M6 with 8MB of SDRAM, 30GB hard drive, 6X DVD-ROM and 4X/4X/24X CD-RW combination drive, floppy drive, built-in V.90 modem and ethernet connections, eraserhead pointing device, 6.5-pound weight (including UltraBase X2 docking station with DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive and floppy drive, AC adapter and phone cord). 3-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free tech support. $ 2200 PC WorldBench 4 score of 88, 866-MHz LV Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, 512KB of L2 cache, Windows XP Professional, 12.1-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Mobility Radeon M6 with 8MB of SDRAM, 30GB hard drive, 6X DVD-ROM and 4X/4X/24X CD-RW combination drive, floppy drive, built-in V.90 modem and ethernet connections, eraserhead pointing device, 6.5-pound weight (including UltraBase X2 docking station with DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive and floppy drive, AC adapter and phone cord). 3-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free tech support.
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