This review is written from the perspective of a laptop technician. Our company sells several hundred laptops similar to this laptop every month. If you want to know what an industry professional thinks of this laptop then read on.

PRO'S: The IBM T23 was one of the best laptops that IBM produced. It has a light weight design and it's capable of almost any upgrade with minimal effort. It has a strong casing that protects the laptop from normal wear and tear. The Ultra Bay is a nice feature. You can take the CD drive out of the laptop and put a second battery in that slot for added battery life. You can add a floppy drive, zip drive, second hard drive, so it's a very versatile machine. I recommend the IBM ThinkPad videos at their web site. They show demonstrations of ThinkPads being burned in a fire, tossed out a second story, and it was all wet from the fire fighters, it was heavily damaged but still turned on. There was another video where the laptop was ran over by a truck and still turned on. The last one I remember was a mountain climber that took his ThinkPad to K2, where it survived in the freezing weather. I would put a link to the videos, but it's not allowed. I can't leave out that IBM has the best quality batteries. We rarely have to replace a battery in an IBM laptop. With a Toshiba it's almost expected that the battery will be worthless after two years. These are very durable machines.

CON'S: While I love ThinkPads there were a few shortcomings. Over time they tend to develop spots on the LCD, especially in the earlier versions, like the T20, T21, T22. The spots are sort of white in color and they are normally about the size of a dime. You can see through the spots, so it's still useable. They are really noticeable against a solid color background. It's just something to watch out for. I also wish they would have released a model with a touchpad mouse. They started using touch pads on the T30 model. 

Final Comments: I should point out that all models have something that wears out before everything else. If you are looking for a budget laptop that is very durable, fun to tinker with, and one of the most reliable models ever made then the IBM ThinkPad T23 is a great choice.