What was the last IBM ThinkPad?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 มิ.ย. 2024
- The ThinkPad line of business and prosumer laptops began under IBM in 1992 and has been under Lenovo's umbrella since 2005. But that takeover wasn't as clean as you probably thought. With many ThinkPad fans considering 2005 as a watershed year when the entire line changed, I take a look at whether that's really true and at a specific example of late-stage IBM design, the ThinkPad X41T.
Fair warning - this video will make a case that the question itself is unanswerable. But it will hopefully give you a little bit more insight into how the ThinkPad line developed and what the takeover of IBM's PC division by Lenovo really meant.
Windows XP Tablet Edition content ahead!
Affiliate links - I get a cut of revenue from these:
Lenovo has a selection of current ThinkPads on Amazon: amzn.to/4cy8HtY
You can also shop for new, refurbished and vintage models on Ebay: ebay.us/9j6JLx - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Some of you caught my screwup between MB and GB about halfway through the video... yes, I misspoke (actually I miswrote the script and just read what I wrote). The X41T actually has one GB of RAM, not either four or one MB. I deal with so many computers that measure their RAM and storage in KB and MB, it's easy to mess that up once in a while.
I'll post any other corrections I need to here.
The Think Pad was the notepad given to employees starting before WW2 to encourage them to write their ideas down.
Achktually that makes it the first ThinkPad.
(Sry, i just had to. :D)
IBM themselves had branded think pads for employees. You can find them for auction.
@@gloriousstereo Living near one of the main facilities, no longer in use, there are still pads and signs that turn up in estate sales. I just bought a wooden desk plaque with "THINK" on it from the 1950's.
Can confirm that a guy with an IBM logo on his shirt came to fix my Lenovo ThinkPad just a few months ago, this was in Norway. I asked him about it and he said that they do that from time to time if they are free for it, but otherwise they send sub-contractors. Usually they serviced servers and mainframes.
I've been a ThinkPad user since the 90s, and the bigger deliniation for me is the transition away from the 7 row keyboard. After that, the ThinkPad just didn't feel like a ThinkPad anymore.
this makes the X230, T430 and W530 an interesting case, as it's possible to retrofit a 7 row keyboard taken from a T420 or T410 in them and have it work, but none of these machines ever shipped with a 7 row keyboard from the factory
I still haven't forgiven them for that.
Boy, I miss the days of all the buttons, lights and doohickeys! Thinkpad user for 20 years, working in IT with free access to decommissioned units. I knew the switchover was muddy but I didn't know it was THAT muddy. Cheers, from my P52 of which I have no immediate plans to replace anytime soon. Great video!
Actually... I'm really happy to see a new Modern Classic video. Very well done and interesting, as always.
Thank you for this cool history retrospective of IBM and Lenovo.
One aspect that make ThinkPad special is indeed the on-site warranty (3 years by default in EU). I also saw it in action with my P72 bought in 2018 (and that I still use to this day, still a beast for what I need it for and in pristine condition) when one of the two fans stopped spinning (in that case the laptop still boots and work in a degraded mode where the remaining fan is spinning at full speed all the time). After opening a ticket online, Lenovo immediately shipped at home the cooling subsystem part (which includes both fans and the pipes) from China, then a technician came at home to make the replacement. I vaguely remember he told me he worked for IBM. He had been repairing ThinkPad (and other stuff) for 25 years and although he never disassembled a P72 yet (was more used to T480 and smaller models) he did the disassembly and reassembly in 25 mins or so, which is no small feat as the P72 had to be almost entirely disassembled with its many screws and connectors.
26:09 The big disadvantage for artists who want one of these old Wacom-powered convertibles: Color and actual image processing power will be lacking. Not to mention battery life. I like the swivel top concept better but otherwise you'll probably want a much newer convertible for art. I checked, my 2021 ThinkBook 14s Yoga is still using a Wacom digitizer with 4096 pressure sensitivity levels, so it's not like convertibles are entirely going the way of finger touch anyway.
Im not a "Wacom-user" myself but i follow the drawing tablet scene evolve, i have couple friends that will pay
@@woldemunster9244 I have reservations on the dream device you mentioned, but maybe it can be cheap?
The IBM Thinkpad was one of the best PC laptops ever made. I think the last IBM branded ones that I own are my X61s and X201 from about 2008/09. I don't own a Lenovo Thinkpad, but people I know that do are quite happy with them. Weird thing is that my X61s actually has both the Lenovo and IBM nameplates on it. It says IBM on the palmrest and top lid, but says Lenovo on the screen bezel and bottom case.
Well researched. Informative. Thought-provoking. That’s what makes this channel great. Quality research producing quality content.
One of the simpler explanations in the expanding Lenovo ThinkPad range is this: X/T and higher are designed in Japan, L/lower are designed in China. Also, any large company tends to have a polynomial curve of expanding their laptop lineup and then shrinking them and then expanding them again, so it's always possible that the more economical ThinkBook line will eat up the lower ThinkPad line. (Owner of ThinkBook 14s Yoga and ThinkPad Yoga 260 by the way)
I subscribed to your content waaay back on a separate account for the p50 review. Every video that you make, I enjoy. Thanks a ton
Hey, I didn't even know you were uploading again, now there's some videos for me to catch up on. Welcome back, hope you're doing well!
Great to see you again
It’s like you read my mind: I asked myself the same question many times, thank you for the thoughtful analysis. Italian IBM fan here
Got a T470 for my engineering studies and works perfect for autocad, inventor, proteus, etc
16:36 - As Yngwie Malmsteen once said, "Less is not more! MORE is more!" 😁
Excellent video. I'm a bit of a ThinkPad fan myself.
My first ThinkPad was the T61 14" widescreen. It did not have the IBM logo.
I have about 7 ThinkPad's currently, the newest being the L460. I don't have the T61 anymore.
Some notes:
1. For me, the last IBM ThinkPad is the T61 with the IBM logo.
2. You said the X41T has a dual core CPU. Not true. It has a Pentium M CPU which is single core.
3. The X41T has a hard drive whitelist which means it will only accept certain hard drives and nothing else.
4. Centrino basically means the CPU and Ethernet and wireless are all Intel-made.
5. Later on, Intel introduced Centrino 2 (or Centrino Duo) which is the same as Centrino, but has a dual core CPU.
Thanks for a trip down memory lane. My T60 and X200s are the coolest laptops I've ever owned. The T450 also served me well, although it felt more like an ultra book than a rugged Thinkpad. They had so much character and I felt like a hacker whenever I pulled them out. Unfortunately the temptations of ARM has made me switch to MacBook Air M1 and it's just far more practical, while being as dev-friendly as Linux. I have to admit it's soulless and feels like an appliance, as watching this video made me miss my ThinkPads.
Awesome video.
IBM sent one of their veteran techs from the Southbury, CT facility to repair a Thinkcentre for my IT customer recently.
in the mid 90's I remember my SYSCO foodservice rep using this for the food orders! when they come into the restaurants Nifty!
Smart video as well!😊
The Active Protection Graphic always kills Me. With the Airbag coming out of the screen of the laptop. One of if not My favorite IBM graphics. The Absurdity of it is just, WOW.
Wish I had the 486 one with the butterfly keyboard that my dad had gotten from work.
Yeah that's the 701, very expensive nowadays if you can find one in good shape. That model in particular seems to almost always be completely falling apart when they come up for sale, and it's usually not even the keyboard mechanism that's the problem.
I had a T61p purchased new in Sep 2007. It had the IBM logo and shipped from China. It had the ever so useful Wireless USB. 😊
My brother got a used X41 Tablet for use in college, so this would have been 2010 give or take. If my memory serves the seller was the Cleveland Browns (came from their facilities in Berea). Now I don't know what specifically they used it for, but I suppose I can imagine some use cases.
cleveland browns is one of those names you could almost think it's made up thanks to pop. culture. oh well at least they weren't working on an old boat
I worked as on site support for a VAR that sold Lenovo about 10 years ago. What I found interesting was when we ordered replacement and RMA desktop parts they would come from IBM and not Lenovo
Yep, my replacement P50 keyboard was in an IBM box too...
I have (deep breath) a T60 (with the big 4:3 screen), 2 T61s (one with the nvidia graphics in it), an X200 (with the dock that adds a optical drive), a T510 (that I am trying to scrub the melting rubber paint off of), and a T480s I picked off of Amazon. We also have 2 Ideapads, which aren't terribly impressive, and the wife also has a Chromebook (our son used one all through high school). Apart from the Ideapads, they've all been pretty decent (and the Ideapad I used wasn't that bad, although the touchpad has died for some reason). Everything is running Windows 10, except for the X200 which is on 7 (because after 7, Microsoft fatally messed up the pen usefulness), and the T60 (it has some software on it that I can't get to work on anything else -- and it's the only one I have IBM branded). All in all, I've been really happy with them.
Some of the non-ThinkPad Lenovos were actually pretty decent - I've had a couple of 3000 C200s, and whilst the specs were a bit behind the times in some areas, they were built to almost the same standard as the ThinkPads were, even if the keyboard wasn't on par. It is also amusing how some of the later "IBM" ones had both IBM and Lenovo logos on at the same time.
When I got my Thinkpad x60 tablet use everything was pretty much still alright apart from the latch.
That latch is just always broken by default
I love my thinkpads!! I have a shelf of them, they're definitely my favorite laptop that's available!!
Great build quality. Nice Linux support.
IBM has some professional services where it does on-site repairs of devices. Apple even uses IBM to facilitate repairs at business offices. There are a number of companies that carry out these repairs at customer sites, and one of them is just IBM. Where you see IBM doing these repairs depends greatly on where you live and how close that is to some metropolitan areas. It’s certainly possible that some people see IBM carrying out repairs while some others see more regional services companies.
I once had a laptop catch fire while I was using it, so rest assured there's ALWAYS a way it could crap out worse!
That X41T screen hinge, control layout and locking clip are basically unchanged in my 2010 X201T.
I'm still using my X61 Tablet with maxed out specs.
On my desk I still spot a W701 and X301. Both currently work fine except the batteries are no longer sold anywhere including AliExpress.
Currently, I'm looking for the thickest ThinkPad, the hard to find G40.
Thinkpads were the most desirable pieces of technology in my group of friends between about 2003-2007. But they had some severe drawbacks people tend to forget now:
- first of all the price.. a similar specced machine from other manufactureres was less then HALF the price of a ThinkPad.. as a student you could get a 50% discount (I think that program still exists today) and they would still be 500 bugs more then a similar Dell machine..
- they had mediocre displays (at that timeframe) with bad reaction times and an overall grey tint to them
- and they were bad for gaming (because you couldn't get them with gaming GPUs)
the build quality was something else though- especially when they still had the magnesium cases
Wow this really opened my eyes, i used to diss lenovo as a school laptop type thing kinda like chromebook but nope pretty good laptop choice!
I have a 6th Gen X1 Carbon (8th Gen i7) and my wife has a 4th Gen X1 Yoga (8th Gen i5). I bought them off lease/refurbished for less than a cheap Dell or HP. Theyre borh stellar machines that still perform great running Windows 11.
Hi. Mine is a 380D (1997?) / 80 MB RAM / OS/2 WARP / (proudly) made in Mexico. It looks and works fairly well. I have installed NT 4 and both SuSE and Red Hat Linux. And I still work on it, just for pleasure. Greetings. (By the way, I also have a PC 5170, and runs MultiMate, Word 4, WordPerfect 5.1, Quattro Pro - that is a tank!)
Thank you for pointing out the Asus ROG Flow X13 and how there's no equivalent ThinkPad even close in terms of Performance, Weight and Price... A machine with similar specs that can run Adobe Premier + After Effects easily (or DaVinci Resolve) does not exist in the ThinkPad lineup for that weight class. There's been a severe lack of dGPU models. If Asus can do it, Lenovo should be able to.
I don't honestly think there's a comparable model to the ROG Flow X13 from anybody. The newer models have 4060's in them and they're from last year now. Nobody else is doing that in a 3lb 2-in-1 subnotebook. I will say that $999 even for the one I got was a deal. I still see this same model for $1,299 or so now and it's more than a year later. So normally I know they're not quite that cheap.
I think Doslab electronics makes SSDs that replace those tiny hard drives
i Still have my P50 with 32 GB RAM and 1TB NVME SSD. It is A Running Desktop Replacement.
Thank you for that Video.
Same here. Just turned 8 years old. Daily driver.
There is no clear distinction between IBM's Thinkpad and Lenovo's Thinkpad tbf. Thinkpad simply become Thinkpad and that's how the thing goes.
For me Thinkpad has become their own line-up regardless of the switch to Lenovo. Lenovo did their best to modernize it but you can still tell it's the same Thinkpad when you use one. And the good thing is some of Thinkpad's greatness trickle down to Lenovo's other range of laptops.
24:46 Isn't there a version for thinkpad? (Lenovo Commercial Vantage)
Use the Lenovo Commercial Vantage to regain the ThinkPad style UI. Also, the Commercial Vantage does not have any ads.
The IBM ThinkPad TransNote was something that was a phenomenal product, and still intrigues a lot of people. I don't find anyone ever talking about it though.
It's been on my shopping list for a while. They're not cheap if they're complete (which they kinda have to be). But someday I hope to have one.
While I love Thinkpads, I honestly don't care if it's IBM, or Lenovo as long as it's a quality product that does the job I need it to, and they still do that which why I buy Lenovo laptops, and Thinkcentre Tinys. Also great video 👍
I will gladly admit that my preferred Models of Laptop are ThinkPad AND Qosmio, the only two computers that do NOT let you down
Still using a T420 in 2024 as a perfect portable desktop
Still on my desk...
what's the highest android-x86 that you could get running on that t41 thing?
T61 the last with the IBM logo and 4:3
In terms of design, the t420 broke with the t430, this new lousy keyboard layout. Nevertheless, the t430 and t530 were still chunky thinpads and super upgradeable. I still have an x230t in which you can put two SSDs and a third in the docking, thanks to the RAM upgrade to 16gb it is still usable with Windows 10 after 11 years.
I don't know how many people got excited about the t440, there's no video from Louis Rossmann.
The upgradeability of new thinpkads is like that of Apple. RAM is soldered and you can install an m.2, a single one.
This started when only one RAM bar was expandable and one was soldered.
Laughable were thinkpads with 8gb soldered RAM, and that in 2022/23 I laughed my head off with my 10-year-old. Probably designend to be eWaste
I had an IBM ThinkPad x60 with an external "dock" that you could put an external gpu in for a long time.. A question for ThinkPad aficionados/experts, what is the last model of ThinkPad that had a "dock" like that? I might like to get something like that again.
The W500 iirc
Wasn't the FIRST ThinkPad a paper pad that employees used to carry around to jot down ideas?
The problem with premium work laptop is always the price, there is a reason why ThinkPad enthusiast doesn't just willy-nilly buy latest X1 carbon Gen 11 or last gen, most of people i know bought gen 7 or 8 on cheap, those laptop is always on sale from office clearance, still usable. The point is most of average user doesn't want shove $1000-2000 for a laptop with no gaming (or apple) moniker attached to it, and those would've are corporation or offices with money.
lenovo did also took over the server high end work stations
My work had a Thinkstation tower that messed up a few months ago, and an IBM guy came to fix it.
I still have my R50p from 2005... but it's far from the last.
Wow, that was a long video to say "It's an unanswerable question.". 😂
Not that I disagree, mind you.
While I did know Lenovo bought IBM's entire PC division, I had no idea they kept the division's spirit alive as well!
The Lenovo-IBM deal seems like literally the perfect corporate buy-out. Usually you end up hearing how these deals always end up burning one of the companies, if not both, usually the latter.
But here, both IBM and Lenovo seemed to have got something out of it, with only the bureaucratics of end-user support seeming to be a mess.
Also that X41T seems awesome! I couldn't help but notice the lock switch on the display bezel. With an orientation switch button next to it. Does that thing have an accelerometer? 😳 If not, what does it do?
To be fair when the last M keyboard left Lexington Kentucky the decline was already on
I hope IBM will be back to the PC market again.
I Love Lenovo. I love Thinkpad. I'll always be a Lenovo fan boy. It's just a dependable brand.
Watching this on a P50 using Linux lol.
18:33 I suspect you originally meant to say gigabytes, as 4 MB would barely run Windows 95.
Out of my vintage 1990s throwaway laptops I've acquired, the IBM and Toshiba ones stood the test of time better than other brands. I find them still usable even today for some tasks.
Yeah I actually miswrote it and just read what I wrote, like Ron Burgundy.
Lenovo Thinkpad are still my favorite laptops, they are cheap, well made (mostly, there are a couple of stinkers) and they give you the best hardware for your buck of most machines.
waht model thinkpad is this one @ 19:03
If it's really 19:03 that you mean, it's the X41T.
Believe it or not I am watching this on an IBM X31 in win xp using Oprah
They changed the standard keyboard layout. Bad idea.
Best wishes.
My main computer is still a 2012 W520. It says Lenovo, but there is absolutely no difference between it and an IBM branded machine. So it's sort of a meaningless question. Thinkpads were still Thinkpads after IBM sold off the division.
I agree that it's meaningless, but it's a question that does get asked a lot. And every time I post anything ThinkPad-related, I get lots of "ThinkPads are just cheap Chinese crap these days" type comments. So it's a video I've been meaning to do for a while, basically since the last ThinkPad video I did.
This was an excellent video, and you made the perfect point that IBM always experimented with different form factors and materials since the beginning, something which the so called “IBM loyalists” seem to be oblivious to.
My first ThinkPad was an R51 manufactured sometime in early 2005, with no Lenovo markings on it, however after it died I got another R51 from a friend, a later made unit that does have Lenovo markings on it, yet they were identical barring screen size and GPU spec, however both variants could have existed at either time they were made.
I’ve owned many Lenovo ThinkPads, from the T60, the first of their own designs, to the P14s Gen 3 from 2022, and many others in between like my beloved T420, and all of them were excellent. There were a few duds here and there, like the T440 TrackPoint debacle, but honestly, even IBM had duds or models that weren’t successful, that’s just the way it goes with a product line, not all products are winners, but quite honestly, Lenovo have and continue to make great ThinkPads worthy of the name. They’re still better than most other laptops out on the market.
To answer your question of who they were designed for, the answer is large companies. In my experience in Beer Distribution over 20+ years, I ONLY used think pads. Every 5 years or so, they were all collected and everyone got new ones. If you worked in the stores designing planograms, you got the tablet version with JDA space planning. If you worked in the office, you got the cheaper version. Right before covid I used my last thinkpad, that had upgraded ram, harddrive, and I was on my second locking lid. When the company sold, over 500 think pads were gathered up and was part of a firesale.
Thanks for your comment. My real question was who the X41T specifically was intended for. ThinkPads in general were aimed at businesses and more professionally-minded individuals, yes. But the X41T seems like kind of an odd duck.
@@ModernClassic I think it was for as I said, on the fly space planning. Grocery stores, gas stations, big box. I would walk down the cookie aisle and the nabisco rep had the same Think Pad tablet. It's a possibility.
@@ModernClassic we used the X41t (super slow 4200 rpm hard drive) for field mapping it was very popular for utilities, mapping, oil/gas etc.
they dumped all those stuff into lenovo
Lenovo has sullied the ThinkPad brand by making their laptops just like the competition, the only distinction being the name and the trackpoint which isn't even available on all their ThinkPad models.
I'd suggest actually watching the video. You might like it, and you might learn something!
18:33 - 4 MEGAbytes eh? Hot stuff. 🤣
Woops, you got me. I may have even written MB in the correction...
Do you fly Boeing planes? If so, how do you feel about that?
Airbus, but I commute on Boeing planes all the time. No problem with it.
This is easy to answer. Can you still get the HMM with a comprehensive list of models with a table of FRUs? Does it have a trackpoint? Then it's a Thinkpad. I am going to be a sad man when the trackpoint dies because the ignorant and clumsy cannot master it. i haven't used a mouse with any regularity since the 1990s. I am not kidding :)
I don't think they'll ever retire the TrackPoint from the ThinkPad line, but if you look at their web site right now, they are starting to really de-emphasize the ThinkPad line in general. You have to go looking for it, whereas it used to be their main line in the US, and the default when you went to their US site. So there may still come a day when we just have no ThinkPads, which would mean no TrackPoint.
X41.
wow and zamzam water
or girl
I'd consider the final thinkpads that had real IBM DNA had 1) 7-row keyboards 2) blue enter key 3) Magnesium alloy used in their frame/body 4) non-"chiclet" style keys. As soon as all of that was gone... it was cheapened down to nothing. Modern thinkpads are a joke, all the worst design decisions copied from everyone else, difficult to take apart and fix, I just cannot recommend them anymore vs before they were class-leading.
>Beginning with theword Actually.
That's why we have the "Ackchyually" meme. Some people can't help themselves but to start every paragraph with either 'actually', 'technically', 'generally', or 'basically'. I guess it makes them think they sound intelligent. lol
I'd probably say the ThinkPad was truly dead round about when we lost the 7 row keyboard, the spill-proofing, the magnesium alloy midframe and the useful HMM document which actually contains FRU listings.
That wasnt the end of the decline though, the batteries got sealed away inside, the reliable docking port was replaced with USB-C jank, display bezels turned into stickers that are ruined after removal, the X series dipped down to 1 sodimm slot before eliminating user replacable RAM all together and the keyboard deck is now so thin that the trackpoint is painfully unresponsive.
They've even pulled the same shit as Apple by riveting the keyboard into the palmrest on the newest models. It now takes a complete disassembly to swap that out.
we dont trust huawei, why trust lenovo?
Or, why not trust Huawei *and* Lenovo?
Let me see your finger