Hardware
Overall hardware construction: Very impressive. It feels quite rugged, the look is sleek and subtle, and it only weighs a bit over 5 pounds. Also fairly compact.
CPU: The pentium M 715 (1.5 GHz) seems quite ample and response. Even when I only had 256 MB of RAM in the machine to start, it was surprisingly fast. Interestingly enough, I'd say it was more responsive than my wife's Compaq with a Celeron M 360 with 256 MB of RAM.
When I scale the processor down to 600 MHz, it still feels pretty fast for most tasks.
RAM: Only 256 MB included by default, but okay with the free 256 MB upgrade that was included.
Graphics: ATI Radeon 7500 (?) built in. I haven't had a chance to test much, but so far, not bad.
Audio: Sound is a little tinny, but we're talking about a business laptop's speakers here.
Storage: I haven't had much time to get specs on it, other than that it's 40 GB at Ultra DMA-5. Seems fast enough, although my defrag is taking a long time. (Then again, it started out with more than 10,000 files fragmented.)
Keyboard, Touchpad, Trackpoint: All very nice. The keyboard is a joy to type on. The touchpad feels nice as well. I haven't had time to decide whether or not I like the trackpoint, but it does feel well-built. As for the most common complaint (one of my own), there is no Windows key, but you can emulate it. (For instance, by the right <alt> key.)
Cooling: Well-done, and very quiet. It must be doing its job well, as I can feel a good hot blast coming out the side even when the fan is on low speed. The bottom of the laptop doesn't get particularly hot.
Wirelss: Built-in wirelss seems to work well. Reception is good.
USB: No problems.
LCD: Much brighter than my wife's 15" and my home Samsung 15" screen. Pure joy to work with.
Power Management: Great. I'll write more later.
Battery Life: I did at least 2.5 hours with wireless and the chip at its full 1.5 GHz speed with time to spare, while doing intensive software updates.
Goodies: It has an accelerometer that detects if the laptop is being shaken or dropped, and it parks the hdd when that happens. Seems to work nicely. Adapts to recognize and ignore repetitive motion, and sensitivity can be set.
Built in LED to illuminate the keyboard in the dark is a nice touch. Keys to turn off screen, etc., work nicely.
Software
One sore spot: I bought the laptop refurbished, and software out of the box was spotty. The drivers didn't work out of the box. (Had to download at least the wireless drivers.) No DVD decoder software included. (e.g., WinDVD.) Largely a pain in the rear. However, I suspect this all has more to do with the fact that it's refurbed. I'm in the process of resolving any of these complaints now.
Update manager: This is pretty cool. If you install IBM's new "Thinkpad Software Installer", it searches IBM's site for updates to the BIOS, drivers, and software. This is absolutely the first thing you should look for after you get some networking up. I love this software.
Power Management software: I'm too tired to write on it now, but it's very good. Allows multiple power usage profiles, both for with and without AC power. Estimates of battery life seem accurate. Power profiles can even do nifty things like dim the LCD when the battery reaches 30% to reduce power consumption. Very slick. More on this later.
Other: A few nice configurators that help set up power management, custom key assignments, the touchpad, etc.
Overall, the impressions are good. Not sure if I'd do this refurbed again, but on the other hand, I got a $1400 laptop for $900. At worst, I buy an OEM copy of WinXP for $85. Not too shabby. Besides, I'll be installing Linux soon, anyway. :)
Pictures coming soon, probably tomorrow. -- Paul