New IBM Stinkpads a bit of a puzzle

IBM is just about to release the newest series of Thinkpad laptops, the R40, but there's something strange.

The machines use Celeron or Pentium 4 processors just as Intel is about to release its Banias series of processors, the mobile Pentiums that everyone has been waiting for.

In all other respects, the R40 seems to be just the thing to keep IBM competitive, most particularly for busy office users. The upper end of the R40 series comes with dual-band wireless LAN capability built in. It means the machines can use both 802.11b, the normal Wi-Fi standard, and 802.11a, the new faster version of Wi-Fi.

IBM has built in several features to make systems administrators happy with the new machines. There's an 'Access IBM' button that links the user to diagnostic and online help pages. There's also an interesting feature called RapidRestore which lets you erase the primary partition and recover from another partition. A boon for those "I got a virus by looking at a work-related website" type moments that keep cropping up. It should also make redistribution of the laptop to a new user much easier.

But back to Banias. The fact that IBM has chosen to release a new series of laptops without the new Intel processor is a strange one. Has IBM fumbled the ball and produced a simple upgrade to the R32 series just when Banias is about to make its big hit? Or has Intel fumbled the ball and created a new mobile processor that just doesn't cut it? Early Banias prototypes have been seen in the wild and seemed to do well but could Intel be having problems making enough of them? We think we should be told.

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