Confirmed: IBM to roll with Crusoe TM5400 ThinkPads this year

IBM has demoed a Transmeta-based notebook, but officially the company isn't committed to shipping it as a product. Naturally nobody actually believes this, and a blab today from Taiwanese notebook manufacturer Quanta Computer confirms that Big Blue will be rolling out quantities of the beasts, under the ThinkPad 240 X-series banner, by the end of the year.

According to a Bloomberg report earlier today Quanta will be shipping smallish quantities of Transmeta 240s, probably using the Crusoe TM5400, to IBM before the end of the year.

The 240 is of course the dinky one, and low-cost, low-power Transmeta CPUs are just the sort of thing that ought to make volumes take off very nicely. So maybe IBM is planning a low-volume suck-it-and-see for 2000, but is anticipating a steep ramp to go with the processor ramp (they're being fabbed by IBM, so IBM should know) through 2001.

Quanta is also building Transmeta-based Web appliances for Gateway and AOL, and has a $1 million stake in the company. But post IPO we expect this to look rather more serious as a slice of the action. ®