Huzzah, a new ThinkPad X41

After two months of deciding exactly what new notebook i wanted to use and carefully creating a matrix of features i felt i needed ,my lamentations were answered yesterday in the form of a brand new spiffy Lenovo X41 tablet PC. I unpacked it late last night,charged its battery, ran some perfunctory performance tests, brought it up on my home wireless network and groaned a giant satisfactory sigh of relief.

I plan on making this my primary computer so I'll write more about it later. But my initial reaction is "WOW!.

I first saw this machine as a prototype while i when I was a member of IBM's Mobile Advisory Council. I thought it would be ideal then and I still think it's a phenomenal machine. Specifics that attract me are:

+solid construction, no squeaks, and everything about this machine is incredibly smooth.

+light weight. When I first saw the tablet prototype I carried a seven pound ThinkPad, which was one of the best machines I ever used and sold me on the ThinkPad line. This little gem is a feathery 3.5 pounds but performs like a full-featured, but much heavier machine. I guess I can take the bottle of Motrin (for sore shoulders) out of my notebook bag now.

+the X41 is fast and most of all flexible, Its 802.11 antenna has the gain I need to connect to my wireless network in the house, or on a neighbor's unsecured network across the street at my mom's house in rural Azusa,CA. It's just plain great.

+durable, this machine is rock solid and its reliability is buoyed by  ThinkPad'sActive Protection program which uses motion sensors to protect the hard disk and it's data. Again, I saw this technology as a concept on the IBM Mobile Advisory Council and felt that it would be a godsend. Over the years, I've wiped out three notebook hard disk drives and Active Protection is yet another reason why I think the ThinkPad brand is a step way ahead of other notebooks.

+ Security-- I really love Lenovo's layered security measures and ThinkPad leads the way again with it's biometric fingerprint reader and other forms of protection. A special note of thanks to Gartner's Martin Reynolds, also a member of the Advisory Council, for his continuing pressure on IBM/Lenovo to adopt biometric security on its ThinkPad line.  It's a great addition.

Well, I just unpacked this beauty and decided to send my old HP4000 to Iraq with my cousin the Master Sergeant, the last of Bill Sele's grandsons to wear a uniform and the three chevron's of a non commissioned officer.

I'll write more about my new X41 in the months to come here at ForbesOnTech.typepad.com