IBM ThinkLight sheds some light on the situation

With ergonomics and useful features playing an integral part of the notebook buying decision today, few vendors are leading the pack with small innovations that road warriors find invaluable in their everyday lives.

"Today`s road warriors need the ability to work in virtually any condition, often catching up on e-mail while out of the office when travelling, sitting in an airline lounge or a hotel room," says Johnathene Beyers, executive at the IBM Personal Computing division. "This is where features like long battery life, high-performance processors and wireless networking generally play a big role," she says.

"One such refinement integrated as a standard feature on all of IBM`s ThinkPad notebooks is the ThinkLight, a small high-power light which can be switched on and off at the user`s request to quite literally, shed some light on the situation," Beyers says.

Designed to help users work in low light conditions like long haul flights, dark offices and hotel rooms, the ThinkLight is a small focused, high intensity light that users can activate to shine on their ThinkPad keyboard, so they can carry on working without straining their eyes.

"Located unobtrusively in one of the top corners of the notebook`s screen and activated with a simple keystroke, the ThinkLight does not affect the battery life or performance of the ThinkPad, but enhances the user experiences significantly.

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"While many users would simply consider this a nice to have, large corporates have based their buying decision on the presence of this technology," says Beyers.

An example of one of these corporates is Lufthansa, which was looking for a notebook computer to issue to its pilots. Refinements like WLAN connectivity, long battery life and overall system performance were common to the majority of units tested, but the only notebook capable of assisting pilots to work in low light conditions like the cockpit of an aeroplane was the ThinkPad with integrated ThinkLight. As could be expected, Lufthansa selected IBM as its notebook vendor.

"While not all road warriors are pilots, the ThinkLight has proved to be a useful and in some cases critical feature for many users. Technologies like this are indicative of IBM`s leadership position in the market and with the company`s huge focus on research and development, similar innovations that meet market needs are sure to follow," she says.