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Eight hours battery? Just look at the size of it!

The good news is that IBM has released a truly portable ThinkPad that will give you a full day's work on a trans-Atlantic flight. It includes wireless built-in, too - if you want it. The bad news is exactly what you'd expect ... the battery weighs a ton ...

"Heavyweight features in a light-weight unit" is IBM's claim - and, to be fair, the new X30 ThinkPad is small neat, and pretty light-weight too, at 1.6 kg. But that isn't the way to get eight hours; to do that, you have to buy a second battery, says Mike Walker, brand Team Leader for ThinkPads at IBM.

And that, as you'd expect, is a lump, capable of powering a Pentium III processor and a high-res display for the extra five hours - weighing nearly half a kilo on its own, it takes the system weight to 2.05 kg total (4.5 lb). It's a daunting prospect, but softened by the realisation that it costs only a hundred and fifty quid, and you don't have to clip it to the under-side of the machine - you can put it on the floor, and connect it with a USB cable.

The machine can be bought without wireless.It's not obvious why; you save only about £120 on the price if you go for the barebones machine without wireless or security chip; if you buy the wireless (bluetooth included) you get the security chip thrown in - no option to do without it. With wireless and security and VAT you are looking at around £2,300 total. The built-in wireless is going to work better than any plug-in card, with the antennae built into the sides of the system lid, not screened by the TFT or next to the cpu and fan.

We'll be reviewing the notebook within a fortnight, if IBM can live up to its delivery promises.

Just for fun, at today's launch, Mike Walker announced that it was, coincidentally, the tenth anniversary of the ThinkPad brand. He didn't manage to find a sample of the original 1992 ThinkPad 700C - but he did manage to dig out the original PS/2 Portable, just to remind us of how much things have changed.