IBM P 260

Advantages: Bread and butter, bog standard box, predictable and easy to deploy
Disadvantages: Not the lowest price for specification

...was, however, a disappointed to notice that the sound jacks were still located round the back. Still - the CD rom has an earphone socket, and a volume control, which is an increasingly rare commodity these days. The 2.53GHz Intel P4 chip and 133MHz memory bus provides quite respectable performance, although by current standards is tending towards the mediocre. The 40Gb 7200rpm hard disk drive is reasonable enough, and whilst not exactly designed for high-end data serving, matches the rest of the system specification pretty well. The list price for such a system is around the thousand dollars mark - or around £700 in Sterling - that includes an operating system but no bundled software or monitor. The standard onboard video is strictly designed for supporting a standard business applications, any attempt to use high-end video... Read review

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Advantages: Quite a fast drive.
Disadvantages: One of the "Deathstar" drives.

...Whether you are thinking of buying this drive (2nd hand, most likely as it's a couple of years old) or own one of IBM's 60GXP, 75GXP or 120GXP models, read on for important information about issues with these drives and fixing them. ** THE DRIVE ** Capacity: 40 GB (38.3 GB as reported in windows) Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM Interface: ATA-100 Average seek time: 8.5 ms It's a fast enough drive. It seems to perform quite a bit better than the 5400 rpm 45 GB Western Digital drive I had, it's quite a bit quieter and this one's not dead ... yet. ** BORROWING NAMES FROM STAR WARS ** The main reason I thought I'd write a review on this drive, is to hopefully help a few others who have this or one of the other 60GXP, 75GXP or 120GXP models (as I've read these are equally affected). It didn't take long for a lot of people... Read review

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Advantages: Good extra features. Can play CD's from keyboard
Disadvantages: Price?

...Now here’s an opinion that nearly didn’t get written, mainly because I’m too busy using the damned thing to write about it. I’m talking about my IBM Rapid Access Keyboard. I have been using this for about 18 months now, and if I remember correctly it cost me about £30 from PCW, the shop whose name I can’t bring myself to say in full! Since keyboards can be had for a fiver upwards, what’s so special about it? Well, nothing from the “Immense Bowel Movement”* is ever going to be cheap, but it does carry some extra features, which set it part from the “fiver jobs”. *Some “IBMers” have their own pet theories. “I Bin Moved” is one heartfelt cry, whilst German employees have been known to call it “Ich Bin Müde” – I am tired. Firstly... Read review

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