I've managed to get a G41 and G50 side-by side. The two main external differences is simply that the G50 has a 'regular' Thinkpad power connector (the larger one) and the LCD is much brighter. The G41 is entirely IBM-branded, whereas the G50 is lid-branded IBM Thinkpad whilst the LCD bezel and base is branded Lenovo. The G50 BIOS has also list the 'IBM' name as well as a few less options...

The biggest difference is that the G41 has a Pentium 4 CPU rated at 3.06Ghz, whilst the G50 has a Celeron M running at 1.6Ghz. Is this the performance hit that it seems like on the surface? I mean maybe a Core 2 Duo at 1.6Mhz, with the right OS might somehow compare to a P4, but a Celeron!? Seems like a massive downgrade. But I don't really know much about comparing the two.. Any comments? I do wonder if I could upgrade the CPU to a Core 2....

I think perhaps both of these machines were actually manufactured by Acer or something like that? Funny how that worked with the transition of IBM IP to Lenovo.



Ideally, I'd like to replace both keyboards with less -shiny ones but they're not exactly common now. The keyboards are the same on the G40, 41 and 50 so you can easily do so.