IBM Thinkpad

The IBM ThinkPad R50 is a sensible machine that's very good for business travelers and people who don't want extensive audiovisual fireworks. For better ergonomics, the R50 comes with both a touchpad mouse and those tiny mouse buttons. While some reviewers have suggested that these mouse buttons are inconveniently positioned, the choice of touchpad vs. buttons alone is welcome to those who suffer from repetitive stress injuries or carpal tunnel syndrome.One of the cool advantages of the R50 is that it comes with an LED to make typing a snap, even on dim airplane flights. While this LED may not replace a standard nightlight, it's a nice bonus, particularly if you travel on red eyes. In terms of ports, the R50 has everything you could desire, including an S video connection. That said, there are no serial ports standard with the R50.You can adjust storage of this IBM ThinkPad by unscrewing the hard drive and popping out the memory. The 256 MB RAM should be able to run most programs smoothly, but it may behoove you to upgrade to 512 MB just to be on the safe side. Especially if you're running e-mail applications simultaneously with Microsoft Word or XL documents, the 256 MB RAM may run a little slow.The one major downside to this computer is that its audio performance is lackluster. Sure, you can play sounds and adjust the volume easily, but the actual stereo is designed for business travelers, not for gamers or sound enthusiasts. Perhaps the best feature of the R50, and indeed of the entire IBM ThinkPad line, is its ruggedness--this unit can take a lot of abuse and still work fine.