Dandy Thinkpads

IBM ThinkPads have a reputation as the Rolls-Royce of laptops, but the midpriced versions--the 365 series--always struck me as not quite being up to the quality standards of fancier models. Well, the newest versions have closed the gap. Like the 365, the new ThinkPads 380 and 385 are made for IBM under contract in Taiwan, but they are quality units and pack a lot of value at attractive prices. The model 380, starting at $2,199, features a 150-megahertz Pentium, 12.1-inch passive-matrix display, 16 megabytes of memory, and a 1.08-gigabyte hard drive. The 385D (known as the 380D in the version sold to corporate accounts) adds an 8X permanently installed CD-ROM drive above the floppy drive on the side of the notebook. The D series offers a choice of passive- or active-matrix screens, MMX Pentium processors up to a 150-Mhz, and hard drives up to 2.08 GB. Prices range from $2,499 to $3,899.

The commercial and the mass market machines share certain features. They have IBM's popular stubby pointing device, the track point. They have decent, if unexceptional, audio. And they have a special connection that works as a docking device to let the laptop plug into a full-sized monitor and keyboard configuration.