Originally posted by UBTom
I'm a happy owner of a Thinkpad X31 myself. Before that, I was stuck with a Apple Powerbook G3 which weighed nearly 10 pounds with all the attachments.
The weight difference is like night and day. That Thinkpad X31 with all the attachments (except the base unit with the DVD drive) weighs 3.5 pounds. BIG consideration when one needs to run around campus all day.
The Thinkpad T41 weighs a bit more at 4.5 pounds, but I think I like having a built-in optical drive better.
I love my X31 and I have it in the car with me all the time. It is very easy to carry all the time.
I had a hard time choosing between the T40 and the X31, but I'm glad I went with the X31. Sometimes I eye the T40 when I see someone using it, and I wish I could borrow one for a few days to see if it the size makes a big difference.
If you need an external drive for DVD/CD-RW I found a drive that lets you use it without an external power supply. It only cost me around $130 and it is slightly bigger than a CD, but about 0.8" thick. I don't carry it unless I'm on a long flight and I want to watch a movie (although you could also put the movie on your hard drive if you own the movie). The problem is that is a relatively unknown brand and it doesn't have the polish of a a top brand name product.
Here's a link to it:
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=BUS-DR8X24&c=PG
You can find it at a local Microcenter store if you want to try it and maintain easy return privileges, but it costs $200 there. They don't advertise bus-powered on the drive but I have seen that it works. The only thing is that battery life goes down from the 4.5 hours I get without it to about 3 hours while playing a DVD on it. (BTW the dimensions on the website are of the box and not the unit).
Panasonic has announced an official bus powered drive but I don't think it has hit our shores yet. A quote from
www.pricejapan.com was around $330, and I didn't see the need to spend an extra $200 for a brand name. It should be cheaper when and if it comes here.
http://www.akibalive.com/archives/000363.html
IBM has a gorgeous external bus powered DVD burner of similar dimensions that matches the color and style of our machines, but it costs $500.
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/s...d=-840&langId=-1&partNumber=22P9163&storeId=1
I did quite a bit of research on these and I thought I'd share in case you or someone else finds it useful.