IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T43

HotHardware's Mobile Test Systems
A Sampling of Notebooks...
IBM ThinkPad R52 (1858-3BU)
  • 1.73GHz Dothan Pentium-M 740
  • Intel 915GM
  • Graphics Driver: 6.14.10.3984
  • 1 x 512MB Micron DDR2 PC4200
  • 8x DVD-ROM/24xCD-RW combo
  • 40GB Hitachi 5400RPM Hard Drive (ATA100)
  • 14.1" XGA display (native 1024 x 768)
  • Intel's 2200BG 802.11 b/g WiFi card
  • Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
  • 6 cell battery (10.8V, 4.8AH, 52WH)
  • 9 cell battery (10.8V, 7.2AH, 78WH)
IBM ThinkPad T43 (2668-4DU)
  • 1.86GHz Dothan Pentium-M 750
  • Intel 915PM
  • ATI Mobility Radeon X300 PCI Express x16 w/64MB
  • Graphics Driver: 8.082
  • 1 x 512MB Samsung DDR2 PC4200
  • 2x DVD+-R/DVD-RAM/24xCD-R combo
  • 60GB Hitachi 7200RPM Hard Drive (ATA100)
  • 14.1" SXGA+ display (native 1400 x 1050)
  • Intel's 2915ABG 802.11 a/b/g WiFi card
  • Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
  • 6 cell battery (10.8V, 4.8AH, 52WH)
  • 9 cell battery (10.8V, 7.2AH, 78WH)

In order to keep the list of notebook from getting exceedingly long and turning this page into a scrolling race, we are going to archive past notebook specs in a Excel file (XLS format), which will be updated with every notebook review (click here). If you have questions, please feel free to email the author.

General Performance: The Winstones
"Real World" Application Performance

Business Winstone 2004 from Veritest uses scripts to tests the performance level of a computer in business related applications:

  • Microsoft Access 2002
  • Microsoft Excel 2002
  • Microsoft Frontpage 2002
  • Microsoft Outlook 2002
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
  • Microsoft Project 2002
  • Microsoft Word 2002
  • Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
  • Winzip 8.1

Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 from Veritest uses scripts to tests the performance level of a computer in multimedia rich environment:

  • Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1
  • Adobe Premiere 6.50
  • Macromedia Director MX 9.0
  • Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 6.1
  • Microsoft Windows Media™ Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980
  • NewTek's LightWave 3D 7.5b
  • Steinberg™ WaveLab™ 4.0f

Higher scores here indicate better performance. You can read more about Business Winstone 2004 on Veritest's FAQ page. And you can read more about Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 on Veritest's FAQ page.

The scores are pretty consistent with results we have seen from similarly 915PM based systems on the market. The fact that the T43 keeps pace with the V6800V is what we expected, given the system configuration. We should still note that the V6800V is likely to have a lower performance than noted in the graphs above, because the standard deviation in testing the V6800V was about .5% greater than other notebooks we tested. The only oddity is the fact that our tested IBM R52 garners better scores, despite using a slower clocked CPU.

We left IBM APS, IBM Power Management, and other default enhancements on because that is the way most people are going to use the notebook. When we disabled all of these, we found a minor increase in performance.

We should note that our system came with a single SODIMM module, which means that dual channel technology was not being taken advantage of. This means that two SODIMM memory modules will increase the performance scores, somewhat.  IBM does ship T43s with a memory configuration of 1 x 512MB, which was the way ours was configured.


Tags:  Lenovo, ThinkPad, IBM, Pad, ink, thin, T4, think, K

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