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Saturday 12 August 2006, 7:43 AM
The best ultraportable of its era
The ThinkPad X22 is a pre-Centrino ultralight laptop. That means that it doesn't get the amazing battery life of its successors and its a bit larger and heavier. That said, it is still am amazing piece of hardware that fulfills all of the promises of the ultraportable laptop back then, and even today.
At only 800MHz you may think it would be slow, but the Pentium IIIm is actually the same core as the Pentium-M Centrino, and is faster than you'd expect. I have a 1.6GHz Centrino ThinkPad X41 right next to it, and running the same software the difference is not particularly drastic.
What it lacks (mine anyway) is built-in wireless and the flexibility of a second battery. Where the X41 has a choice of 4 and 8 cell batteries with another 4 cell that clips to the bottom, the X22 gives you its main cell (4 or 6 cell) and thats it. Mine has the 6 cell, though with over 80 cycles on it it won't run more than 3 hours anymore.
Build quality is even better than the new ones, though at 3.7lbs its a full pound heavier and quite a bit bulkier. I actually feel like I'm using a full-size conventional laptop when I move from the X41 to the X22, but next to almost anything else out there this thing is still tiny.
They are selling VERY cheap on eBay these days, about $250-$300, and at that price, its a steal.
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