How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
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How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
1–10 of 143 posts
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#2Something to be said about the 25th anniversary selling out in very little time. I was watching it and wondering if I should get one (I missed the keyboard from my w520 but not the weight), but had the decision made for me by it selling out very quickly.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#3Very pleased with how ThinkPad-y my P51 is, even though it also manages to be a thoroughly modern notebook.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#4I'm amazed that there is no mention of the sheer repairability of these devices.
I don't think I will ever encounter a laptop line that is generally so user-accessible. A couple of regular screws and you pop the case. A few more and you can replace the entire keyboard. The hard drive was held in by a single screw in most models and you could easily swap it in without even popping the entire case. The RAM had it's own bay that you could access by removing a single crew. The Ultrabay mechanism was also a huge nod to the design philosophy of making the user feel like the hardware was his/hers to do with.
It's incredibly sad to me that we've abandoned that for the sake of "thinner". I wish I had a legitimate use for older hardware so I could justify picking up one of the IBM-era Thinkpads from eBay and just maintain it into perpetuity. Like the cars of yesteryear that you could mend with some string and a brick. Sure they're not "sexy" and it won't get me likes, but it's actually mine.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#5I had the 701c "butterfly" described in the article. My previous laptop had been a no-name 486 brick with a black and white screen that I bought at a Taiwanese electronics mall for ~$2000. It was barely portable. The 701c, by comparison, was small and durable, had a nice screen, a faster modem, and easily fit into my daypack. I bought it used for about $800 in 1996 and carried it with me throughout Southeast Asia and wrote my first book on it in a cheap hotel in Penang. The previous owner, bless his soul, had even installed Doom on it.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#6I'm amazed that there is no mention of the sheer repairability of these devices. I don't think I will ever encounter a laptop line that is generally so user-accessible. A couple of regular screws and you pop the case. A few more and you can replace the entire keyboard. The hard drive was held in by a single screw in most models and you could easily swap it in without even popping the entire case. The RAM had it's own…
Unfortunately they are going away from that. X280 the same as X1 series do not have easily swapable battery (you can still replace it but you have to get inside of the machine). X280 also don't have Ethernet port even tho there is a room for it. They are replacing SD card readers for useless microSD card readers. X280 have also soldered RAM with no expansion slot. Thinkpads was and to some extend still are great machines, but Lenovo is slowly going in to all glued together, non fixable direction
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#7I'm amazed that there is no mention of the sheer repairability of these devices. I don't think I will ever encounter a laptop line that is generally so user-accessible. A couple of regular screws and you pop the case. A few more and you can replace the entire keyboard. The hard drive was held in by a single screw in most models and you could easily swap it in without even popping the entire case. The RAM had it's own…
> The Ultrabay mechanism was also a huge nod to the design philosophy of making the user feel like the hardware was his/hers to do with.
At first I agreed with you, reminiscing that I really loved Ultrabay customizability - switching between a battery when I was on the road, a CD drive to load software when I was in the office, and a hard drive when I needed to archive stuff.
Today though, in the age of fast bandwidth, all-day batteries, and USB, I'm struggling to think of what I would do with an Ultrabay. The closest I can get is that I could use a battery on the road, and a space-saver empty bay around town, but...that's what external batteries are for these days. The more I think about it, the more I think the fondness for Ultrabays only makes sense in the 1990s/2000s, but there's a good reason they're gone.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#8> Hortensius, however, says that what keeps ThinkPads relevant is trusty productivity rather than any specific aspect of a given model. [...] “It’s because I can count on it that those things matter.”
Funny to read this, as I await my Lenovo X1 Carbon to come back from repair, as it shut off one night and never came to boot again. I've also got an ~~IBM~~ (edit: it's a Lenovo!) Thinkpad X220, a motherboard-only shell that I plonked my own hardware choice into, taped a slew of Debian stickers onto and haven't had a fault with, ever.
I'll defend the Thinkpad brand with a religious fervour, for the same reason Peter Hortensius says in the article. But under Lenovo's stewardship, I'm left with a lot to be desired.
I hope I was just unlucky with this X1 Carbon, that fervour is willing to give Lenovo a second chance, here.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#9I use a lowly X220i (i3 variant of the X220) every single day. It's been upgraded to 8GB RAM, a 128GB SSD and dual-band wifi.
The 9-cell battery get me 5-6 hours of web surfing, email and Youtube, and it still feels like a new laptop, despite being ~7 years old.
My work-supplied T440 feels like a toy in comparison.
Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)
#10> Hortensius, however, says that what keeps ThinkPads relevant is trusty productivity rather than any specific aspect of a given model. [...] “It’s because I can count on it that those things matter.” Funny to read this, as I await my Lenovo X1 Carbon to come back from repair, as it shut off one night and never came to boot again. I've also got an ~~IBM~~ (edit: it's a Lenovo!) Thinkpad X220, a motherboard-only shell…
Once my current computer dies I'm done with lenovo for a while. Admittedly I got a mid range computer (yoga 2 pro) not a Thinkpad, but I don't think that excuses the fact that screws simply fall out of the bottom of the machine. Screws which require a nonstandard screwdriver of course. That being said, it is still kicking at almost 4 years, but it has been sent in for repair twice. I'm contemplating my next laptop as a relatively disposable Chromebook running arch.