On the 16th of September at 2:30 in the afternoon, the Extreme Expedition team of St. Petersburg set a New World's record for altitude reached by automobile. The team forced their way up the tremendous peaks of the Tibetan mountains using three Lada "Niva" cars, driving to an unprecedented height of 5,726 meters and surpassing the previous record by over 100 meters. The expedition through Tibet was a long one, beginning in August and finishing in mid-October; throughout the trip, the St. Petersburg team relied on the IBM ThinkPad^® notebook to help them on their journey.

In many ways, this trip would have been impossible without IBM's generous donation of the ThinkPad computer. Throughout the course of their journey, the team maintained an extensive website that contained daily updates of their progress. Visitors to the Website could follow their progress on a map and read what the intrepid members of the expedition themselves had to report. The ThinkPad allowed the team to contact the outside world, even in the remote and harsh conditions of the Tibetan Mountain frontier.

The team confronted harsh and icy conditions throughout their journey up the mountain, and their portable computer was exposed to the same extremes that the team faced. Of course, paved roads quickly disappeared as the Lada automobiles scaled the mountain, and both the team and the computer were subjected to bumpy, jagged roads that might easily have felled a lesser adversary. The team faced extremes of temperature as well along the path, with temperatures ranging from -15 to 50 degrees Celsius.

Even under such abominable conditions, the ThinkPad performed flawlessly, faithfully sending along the daily reports of the team, and allowing the expedition to stay in contact with the outside world. "We faced a very real possibility of danger in this undertaking, but we were able to confidently push forward in the knowledge that IBM ThinkPad could promptly and efficiently alert rescue authorities of any danger incurred on the journey" - said Georgy Kotov, director of the expedition.

This new entry into the Guinness Book of World Records stands as a towering success for Lada and the expedition team. Additionally, IBM profited handsomely from this trip. In exchange for the ThinkPad, the team displayed the IBM logo prominently on each of the three automobiles on the journey. From start to finish, the trip covered 20,000 kilometers and passed through Russia, Kazakhstan, and China en route to its destination and many people witnessed the team's progress.

Additionally, press coverage of this event was substantial. Overall, at least 100 newspapers gave positive coverage of this remarkable event, several television stations covered the event as well. The expedition brought along a professional cameraman from the United States who captured the trip on film and will subsequently make a movie about the event. All in all, the expedition stands as a triumph, both for the expedition team and for IBM computers.

This may not be a typical user experience; individual experiences may differ.

ThinkPad notebooks and the Hard Disk Drives inside the ThinkPad notebooks are specified to work up to altitudes of 10,000 feet (3,048 meters).