IBM ThinkPad 310D review

For many years the only notebook choice for any corporate buyer has been an IBM ThinkPad.

The old saying 'no one ever got fired for buying an IBM' applied to the company's notebooks, as much as its desktops. Recently, however, it's seen its corporate market share eroded by companies like Toshiba, Dell and Compaq, and maybe that's why its recent ThinkPad range is aimed at a wider range of customers.

Just as other companies have moved down the price scale to get home and small business buyers, so IBM are following suit, which is good news for us budget-conscious types. The even better news is that when you buy from any big corporate, you get quality built in, which the ThinkPad range has always had in spades - and the 310D reviewed here is no different.

Right from the moment you touch the 310D, you can feel it's a quality notebook. ThinkPads have always been tough, and the 310D is no exception: the mouldings are thick in all the right places, and the screen back is hard enough to take the normal knocks.

When you open it up, the good feeling continues. The keyboard is exceptional, feeling almost exactly like most full-size models. What's more, it has great spacebar, shift and enter keys - often overlooked on notebook keyboards. Nestled in the middle of this keyboard is a trackpoint which controls the cursor, with two mouse buttons sitting on the wide palmrest below it. Above the keyboard are six LED lights that indicate the usual notebook status indicators - battery, hard disk, caps and number lock, and so on. In use, you'll be surprised at how quiet the ThinkPad is too; it's hardly even audible, even with the hard disk running. This adds to the quality feel.

Inside this particular ThinkPad you'll find a Pentium 133, 16Mb RAM, a 1Gb hard disk and a 10-speed CD-ROM drive. Surprisingly, the CD-ROM cannot be removed and exchanged with the floppy drive, as is becoming the norm on notebooks these days; instead you're able to run the floppy externally, and connect it to the ThinkPad with the supplied cable. Arguably, using the CD-ROM excessively will drain the ThinkPad's NiMH battery more, but the dual-scan screen makes up partially for that, ensuring that the power drain isn't too bad. Indeed during testing the ThinkPad managed an impressive three hours of word processing and other light Windows activity.

The dual scan screen is one of the ThinkPad's stumbling blocks. It's not particularly bright and becomes hard to view at odd angles. The 1Mb video RAM onboard can only manage to display 256 colours on the 800x600 screen, which is less than ideal, especially if you're doing any sort of graphics work. If you're desperate for a bigger desktop, though, the ThinkPad will allow you to run a 1,280x1,024 'virtual desktop', although only in 16 colours. The panel isn't as large as many other notebook screens either - 11.3in as opposed to the 12.1in or even 13.3in which is now often seen on higher-end models.

The rest of the ThinkPad is fairly standard: a PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard at the back, with the rest of the ports concealed behind one large flap - VGA, serial, parallel, and audio jacks. There's also a connection point for the floppy drive. The PC Card slots on the left-hand side hold the usual choice of one Type III or two Type II, and there's support for CardBus and Zoomed Video on one of the slots. The NiMH battery slides out from the front right of the notebook, and the hard drive can be removed after taking out one screw.