James Alfaro

IBM recently celebrated 10 years of its notebook series, the ThinkPad. 950 industry awards and years of innovation later, the IBM ThinkPad continues to lead the industry in both design and functionality. On the occasion of its tenth anniversary the company announced that it would continue to focus on research and design initiatives to maintain a technological edge over the competition. This includes distributed wireless service auditor, antenna and design improvements, advanced thermal cooling technology, features for autonomic computing, and adding intelligence to low-powered wireless technology.

The ThinkPad line, launched in 1992, was named after the small, paper notebooks embossed with the IBM founders’ one-word slogan, Think, carried by IBM employees for decades. Over the past 10 years, the ThinkPad has gone from weighing almost seven pounds to less than four pounds, from not having wireless access to offering three separate wireless access capabilities. Explained James Alfaro, consultant, IBM Mobile Computing, Personal Systems Group, “The ThinkPad has dual antennas built into the display that boosts signal strengths significantly. In fact, during tests conducted the antenna was able to receive signals up to a distance of more than 340 feet.”

For enhanced security IBM has adopted the TCPA standards for encrypting information loaded on the notebook. In most machines the encryption of data is done in the memory itself and this poses a security risk as the HDD can be hacked. IBM has developed a Security Chip, a cryptographic microprocessor that supports functions such as key encryption for privacy and digital signatures for identification. Says Alfaro, “This chip is included on the motherboard and protects data by encrypting information. And as it is a separate entity with memory of its own, it can conduct all the processing by itself and also makes it difficult for non-authorised users to hack into the system.”

The ThinkPad’s bright red pointing stick—the trackpoint—embedded in the keyboard and Rapid Restore PC, a one-button backup of a user’s HDD for quick recovery from operating system crashes and viruses, are the other key features being promoted by IBM.

IBM’s future plans include a cut in prices, especially of the entry-level notebook, to increase sales. Towards this end, the company plans to cut down on manufacturing cost by standardisation of processes and by outsourcing non-key areas to specialist companies. The production of CD/DVD drives, for example, will be outsourced to other companies while the hard disk drives (HDD) will be IBM’s as IBM believes that they still make the best HDDs in the world. IBM is also planning to include video facilities in the notebook as according to Alfaro, video conferencing is becoming more of a necessity than ever. Storage capacity has already touched the 60 GB level and is soon expected to cross the 100 GB level.

Over the past 10 years IBM has sold close to 15 million ThinkPads. The company has seen an upsurge in the last two years with more than five million units being sold in 2000-02. In India though HP leads IBM in the notebook market, IBM plans to do far better in the second half of fiscal 2002.