I remember working on a few of these. The media player in the front was nice, especially for people who were flying, but could listen to music when they had to have their laptop off. Depending on how strict the flight stewardess was. Great video.
It's actually quite nice thing to use. Surely not as fancy looking as keyboard itself lit, but very functional anyway and they're pretty perfectly lit, just barely lighting keyboard, but nothing that would bother or reflect somehow. I wouldn't mind it even in modern machines. It's actually better as I have read ie. wifi password from paper with thinklight. Something that couldn't be done on generic lit keyboards
Watching this on a W530, the last generation (xx30) to have the ThinkLight. It lights up the whole desk almost, better than a backlit keyboard in my opinion.
Some of these thinkpads are a great way to get into classic DOS & classic windows gaming, they're easy to store and the driver support is always solid. You can cover most of the key gaming periods with a couple of models. Always great to find out more about some of these lesser known models, great video Colin!
Yep. Also typical IBM models don't have a Windows key, right click key, The two little keys on ← and →, blue Enter key, ThinkLight enabled not by a switch, but by Fn+PgUp
@@ethandodd8493 did they use IDE for the blue&white G3s? I know they did in the G4s, not sure when exactly they switched from SCSI (maybe you have a G4 instead too)
I have one too! Well, by that, I mean what's left of a 514TXV. *The ThinkPad iSeries was based on the Acer TravelMate 510 series!* 4:29 The Acer version had speakers on the front, on the same side as the CD player controls, so when the lid was closed, it kinda looked like a flattened boombox.
@@kbhasi well, the outer shell of many badge engineered cars is often changed too.. but the underlying chassis and so forth stays the same. I'd say having the trackpoint is fairly equivalent to a fancier steering wheel in a higher-trim GM brand or a Lincoln or something. Often times there can be real significant differences, even entirely new engines, with badge engineering!
Haha... I got mine for 20 euros a few days ago. You saved me a lot of research, Colin! Now I’m looking forward to have some time of to refurbish it. The software install is a mess ans there are minor flaws, like the cd controls not working and the battery ejection mechanism is stuck Really enjoyable video, as usual. Greetings from Spain!
When I first started at the computer shop I work at back in 2004 they had two of these fully disassembled in a box that had been returned multiple times for different issues. Guess it wasn't the most reliable machine, and now knowing the manufacturer... I get why!
I had one of these that I got in mid-2000. One important thing you forgot to mention: As expected from Acer, their build quality was absolute rubbish. The first one I got was dead out of the box, the second one died shortly after. The third one lasted 6 months before needing to go for repairs, at which point I negotiated with IBM for a model change. This one lasted about a year. I then switched to an iBook.
Worth noting: the thinklight was not exclusive to this model. It was fairly common for quite a while. The x60s I am currently typing on has one, and I use it all the time. More useful than a backlight IMO. S-Video output was also fairly common for a number of years. I remember seeing them on laptops up to the mid/late-2000s.
@@jothain Not just the x series. most of the A, R, T, X, Z and i series notebooks had them. Apparently some models had an amber led, but I've never seen that in person. Thinkwiki has a little bit more information as well as a few neat scripts to make it do things like blink or be used for notificiations. It should also be noted that the Thinkwiki page on the thinklight is incorrect regarding it being controlled by the BIOS. The EC handles it, as well as backlight control, which is why libreboot doesn't cause any problems there.
Yep, commonly used to show presentations on available video equipment at customer sites, but obviously useful for home use too. Today, that role is played by HDMI.
The ATi Rage Mobility is a great graphics chip, it's really a jack of all trades - the internal display scaling was superior to anything else on the market, and the S-Video output is built right onto the chip, making it a really cheap & easy feature to implement. Not to mention the built-in DVD decoding capabilities - the CPU on my Pentium III 500 Compaq Armada laptop that uses one barely goes above 20% CPU usage playing DVDs!
I had an I-Series turned on with Screen and HDD enabled all time running non stop for two years (one year ago). It is a way thinner one without the CD hot keys. It doenst feel like proper quality, but ... man, one of the best notebooks I had.
I once had a blue Acer model that could also play audio CD's. I dont remember the model number. I got it used and the on/off button was broken so it could not power on. I discovered that when I held the play button for 2-3 seconds the laptop powered on just as if I had pressed the real on/off button. Before I bought it the previous owner had installed an IBM screen into it. :)
I didn't know about IBM and Acer working together in building computers, but the Aptiva which I have with Windows 95 on it still works fine even though I can't use it online any longer. I purchased a ThinkPad last month used and it was made by Lenovo and had Windows Vista on it originally and the computer had Windows 10 put on it which didn't work with that computer. I put ArcaOS 5 (OS/2 Upgrade) on it and the computer works just fine now for what I need it for.
I love the use of a separate audio system, and the feet built into the laptop too, these days it is all about making things thinner and less features included. I use a Workstation-Class Laptop as my main laptop, an older Dell made unit, and it's the only reasonably modern laptop I could find with decent performance and a lot of connectivity regardless of price.
I've still got a i1420 in great condition.(except for battery of course..). Bought it in '98 for college work. Has a pentium in it. Was a good laptop for it's day. We got if from Circuit City and I can't remember it's price. However it was very competitive as I do remember thinking that it was a great price for an IBM. I didn't know about the Acer angle. That may explain its price.
the cd player functionality wasn't exactly an uncommon feature, models from toshiba, hp, dell, compaq, and many others did the same thing. models from HP even had a separate dual boot system to play DVDs and IPTV, remote controls were popular too.
I still have and actively use (for ECU tuning on the go) a mid-2000s IBM R40e (e standing for economy). This model was also manufactured by Acer, as a cheap alternative to the R40 which was also manufactured by them. These models too are regarded as inferior by IBM purists but honestly, its physical build quality exceeds that of an actual IBM ThinkPad I used to have in the 90s. All I needed to do was make a new battery pack out of six 18650 batteries, reusing the old controller which now reads battery percentages wrong due to the chemical differences between the old batteries and the new ones, but it runs for up to 6 1/2 hours now and the screen is great! I put a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 in there to replace the 1.7GHz Celeron and upgraded the RAM to its maximum 1GB (the regular R40 supports 2GB) and it's quite good for what I use it for.
My first-ever laptop was a ThinkPad i1550. It was actually owned by the internet company I worked for who didn't bother to check whether I had it in the office the day they laid me off. Guess it ended up being part of my severance. But it was a company that first bought it. It ended up lasting me 7 years, though it was pretty worn out when I finally sold it (which I now wish I hadn't). It was far better built than the actual Acer laptop I bought afterwards (totally coincidentally), which didn't even last me a year before it physically broke during normal use. The i1550 was similarly much tougher than the first Lenovo ThinkPad I bought, the budget SL500. That thing just ended up in the garbage after both its power connector and screen backlight failed. (At this point, I probably could have fixed it, but didn't have the skills then.) I currently have an IBM-built 600X and a Lenovo-built P50, and I'd say the Acer-built i1550 slots somewhere in between them in terms of durability and just the "feel" of toughness. I will also say that it had the best keyboard of any of the four ThinkPads I've owned. It's funny how many companies have actually made ThinkPads!
Reminds me of the old Dell Latitude C600 I had some years ago, 2 bays (one for battery, the other multi fuction for floppy, CD or another battery), 750 MHz Pentium 3, Mobility Rage 3D, and a whopping 1600x1200 display.
IBM had given Lenovo the rights to ThinkPad, I had a T60 that had both IBM and Lenovo badges. I also had a Lenovo ThinkPad, model T431s (I got scammed trying to buy a T430s), now I have an Acer Swift 5. My T60 (I like to call it the Dinosaur, due to its Date Of Manufacture) was 2nd-hand and it ran Windows 7 Home Premium. On the first half-year of me owning it, the 250gb HDD failed. We (me and my dad) quickly got it switched, the 500gb HDD was running Vista Home Basic. I downgraded the XP Professional on purpose. Vista ran buttery smooth (SP2), but XP felt better and faster (since it matched the laptop's original OS). Then, the CMOS battery died. Then, the keyboard malfunctioned, killing the laptop (the power button was a part of the keyboard). Then, I got my refurbished T431s. I used it for half a year before giving it to my sister in exchange for a new Swift 5. I'm regretting the option of getting my Swift 5 since the entire bottom got bumped and dented by books (I use a laptop in school).
The iSeries is regarded as some of the lesser liked ThinkPads, due to the build quality being so bad, many of these broke. Quite a number of them I have came across, have broken hinges or cracked rear frames. Yours is in very nice condition, I skipped collecting these til I got the 'needed ones' in my collection. The original 300 was built by Zenith, and there was a PowerPC IBM laptop that was made by TadPole before the 800 series.
Wait a second, is this device made by the people that were later known as Wistron? Because it looks kinda Quanta-ish, but i think at the time, Quanta used quite a different bay arrangement for most of their products. I wonder since what year Quanta was the laptop ODM for IBM. They certainly were across 2000s, and they are an older company, as opposed to a bunch of other laptop ODM/OEMs.
not old because is perfectly functioning in modern world, there isnt a single modern day notebook that can compete with notebooks made until 2010 and thinkpads until 440/240 and all the 40 series. modern notebooks are superior only in performance but for everything else they're inferior (crappy build quality, crappy chicklet keyboards, hard to replace battery, very few ports and often no vga or any legacy port), remember to not upgrade to Windows 10 whenn win 7 support ends, just get a paid or good antivirus
Watching on a T440p. I've had it 5 years but I'd hardly call it old and it's still my primary work and general use machine. Over the years, I upgraded the screen and RAM, replaced the DVD drive with a HDD caddy but made it still be hot-swappable with the DVD drive, replaced the keyboard when the number row stopped working, and upgraded the wireless-N card to AC when I upgraded my home network. With an i7-4700MQ, 16 GB RAM, SSD and data HDD it's still an extremely usable machine today, and it's very easy to repair when something goes wrong.
My mom works evry day in a 430 and with 8gigs and SSD it s a fighter jet. It moves out. Dou you feel the T440 old. My daily driver is a T400 and still going strong with Debian, 4 gigs and SSD.
38911bytefree the problem with Linux is that many fn keys and software functions are not supported by that Linux thing. on my notebooks i run the os that is designed to run on the sticker and i use the license and install the correct version, not newer and not annother os, i also install the factory software to use all functions, they run fast almost like an ssd
That strangely looks a lot like Fujitsu life book. The only brand I know of include an LCD for status rather than indicator lights on the front portion
Just a heads up it looks like NONE of the models have a 1280x1024 display option for the screen and that that resolution was for EXTERNAL OUTPUT ONLY. At least according to the PDF you listed in the description. I went looking through the entire thing.
Fascinating bit of IBM Thinkpad history! May offer a bit of constructive criticism? For your blurred to focused shots I’d consider either increasing the speed that you go into focus at, or not starting the shot as unfocused (like you did for the final shot of the laptop during your outro). For me personally the other instances seemed to somewhat strain my eyes.
When installing older software, On the left side where it shows copy from disc information. What is the icon on the right that is always purple and always saying "Low" ....does it ever say high?
I think it always says LOW.. but the bar is meant to reflect disk usage. I remember it slowly filling up over the course of various game installs when I was little, just as the other two bars fill up as it's retrieving files off the CD and going through the install. And one time a really big game visibly made it climb, and it failed after it hit the top because there wasn't enough free space to finish the install (you'd think it could know that ahead of time, right? But no)
My friend bought one of these when they were near the end of the line and on special, it was a cheap and effective machine. I worked for IBM and knew these were Acer things and lacked the durability of the usual Thinkpads, so I encouraged her to get the extended warranty. The machine died just inside of 2 years of use, so only the extended warranty was covering it. The shop providing the warranty tried to fix it, but no luck, eventually they gave her a new bare-bones R60 to replace it. Machines used to go obsolete faster back then, this more than doubled the useful life of her purchase. Best extended warranty ever. The R60 was as solid as a T-series, she gave me the R60 and I gave it to my parents. It's in a drawer somewhere but I'm sure it runs to this day. Real nostalgia cringing at the multicolored buttons and glossy textured palmrest. *shudder*
I currently use 2 thinkpads, a little newer than the ones in the video, but I still prefer them mainly because of the trackpoint. I have never been able to get along with track pads.
Interesting. I've used a lot of ThinkPads starting with the 760. I liked the trackpoint but it hurt my hand after repeated use. I always had to carry around a mouse. The pcmcia network cards were a pain because the dongles were delicate. Never seen one with the independent CD player feature.
Yeah, that’s the key difference - contract manufacturing is nothing new, but it was kinda weird to see a company like IBM basically tell Acer “design a laptop that looks like a ThinkPad”. Granted, IBM actually did it’s fair share of contract design/manufacturing, an example of which I’ll be doing a video on eventually.
I bought a Dell Latitude D820 for some parts for mine, and the LCD has gone yellowish. My Dell Inspiron 4000's LCD isn't yellowed at all! It's just a little red tinted for a few seconds but clears up. Thew lcd in my Inspiron was made by IBM
Though they were not the same thinkpads, I remeber using such thinkpad computers with no toughpad and have only the nub in highschool in early 2000s. But only some research today that enables one to find out about such company deals between acer and ibm. The real question is when can we see ibm make a pc again?
The most I remember of ThinkPads was the one sitting on the judges desk during the O.J. Simpson trial, oh and the monkey on the commercials. Seriously Big Blue seemed like they wanted to shed their cold business exterior with a warm, fuzzy feeling that appeals to the mass consumer market. This model slipped under my radar, and I rather would have liked it. At that time in my life it was all about the LAN party. All of us geeks scoffed at the idea of a laptop as a serious gaming machine as we carried around our CRTs because of course those refresh rates and ghosting. Mine was a 19" Trinitron, and needless to say I grew up into a hefty boy. The trackpoint was something I rather liked, I miss the one I had on a Fujitsu Lifebook. Pointing devices are a sore subject with me, I hate mice. Try sitting at a library surfing the web while the teenager next to you is tapping his mouse. Trackballs are my favorite, followed by touch screen and finally track points. I never liked touch pads, they never seemed accurate to me.
Perhaps the biggest clue that IBM didn't design this is in the keyboard - it has a windows key, and it would be a very long time before IBM would generally include one of those - even my T43 doesn't have one.
It's not the first OEM'd ThinkPad too, the ThinkPad 300 and 300C were manucactured by Zenith Data Systems and well... It shows. mos6581.com/pictures/thinkpad-300c/chess.jpg
I remember an article in Time mag claiming the PC war was over and the winner was IBM. I laughed! My first IBM PC was the XT it was over 3 grand , one floppy, a 10 meg Hda, green monochrome 12 inch display and 256k. Boy was IBM ripping people off. I'm glad my company paid for it for I surely would not. I built my own from scrap parts. My company went broke! IBM laid off half of its workforce. IBM what a hoax!
The ThinkLight™ was one thing Lenovo should've kept, just like they kept the TrackPoint™. I can't stand "backlit" keyboards on laptops, but the ThinkLight was really handy, if you had to check something on a piece of paper, etc. in the dark. It was essentially a little desk lamp inside your laptop. This, and the generally very good ThinkPad keyboards is something they should've never gotten rid of. It's a shame current Lenovo Thinkpads have this chiclet keyboard, with nonsensical layout and a really lackluster backlight, which is uneven, unpractical and generally ugly. Also, no LEDs for caps lock, scroll lock and num lock. Instead you have a mute LED, a WiFi LED and the backlight - great, please give me back the regular LEDs, and the ThinkLight, while you're at it...
My T60 from 2005 is still the best laptop I've ever owned. It was there for me through personal difficult times 😢. It's comfortable keyboard is second to none.
Manufacturing vs design. Common practice to lift certain guts while still owning design elements that matter to the brand. Not much different to Kenmore or Craftsman in the pre-meltdown days at Sears. Sears spec’d what was important to their brands and got the rest as part of the package. I believe IBM did this again later when Lenovo built most of IBM PC Division hardware, including ThinkPads, before IBM sold the division to them.
Great video as always. Did you use a polarisation filter when recording this? There's what looks like cross polarisation on a few surfaces on some shots.
i used to own an i series 1472, i played Resident Evil 2 and Total Annihilation on it for a long time, i remember the volume knob broke and i was able to fix it with some aluminum tape but eventually the sound died completely and then the rear usb port also went bad and would short out the power to the laptop when i inserted an usb drive into it. I also remember it costing like 2800$ at circuit city
First IBM is the ThinkPad R40 that I bought 3 years ago at a thrift store. Upgraded the RAM to 1GB, DVD drive to DVD-RW (swapped the drives, but I will get the correct drive for it), 20GB HDD (needs a new one, preferably an mSATA to IDE) TrackPad, ThinkPoint, ThinkLight (lights up the whole 9 yards), Pentium 4M 2GHz Wireless ABG integrated, Windows XP Pro SP3 installed, and the display is easily swappable by removing the two keyboard screws, disconnecting the wireless card antennas, and removing the screws holding in the display ribbon cable. I have the original display in storage as it got a bit brighter when I cleaned the display, but it still works. I also bought a used ThinkPad docking station (better version that uses a 4 pin power brick), the power brick, and external floppy drive so I can copy files to diskettes for my older systems that aren't connected to the network. I also have a ThinkPad 380D that has a DSTN display and could use a TFT active display for DOS gaming as the sound chip is actually DOS compatible, needs a new rechargeable battery from Ni-MH to Li-Ion, even the ThinkPad R40 battery does hold a charge, but needs a calibration.
You realize the ThinkLight made it all the way to IvyBridge right? It isn't that historic of a relic! I'm watching this on a T420 w/ an i7 2760QM (PM 9000+), which itself still has a thinklight... as does my T430 w/ a 3760QM that passmarks over 10K... better than most of today's laptops, even the powerful ones. The 430 also has a backlit keyboard though, courtesy of myself. But yeah... heck, even my HP EliteBook has the same LED ThinkLight up top design... which I believe also held out until sandy or ivy.
The 12" model pictured must have been owned by an IBMer as it has an icon for the IBM Global Network Dialer, the long defunct program once used to access IBM by modem/broadband. The name "ThinkPad i Series" is a little odd sounding to me as "iSeries" was the name used for IBM's AS/400 line of midrange systems from 2000-2006 (very appliance-like systems, menu driven, EBCDIC, though today with more UNIX features). This laptop got to the name first, so all's fair.
1999: Acer makes Thinkpads
2005: Acer makes _Ferraris_
Temas&Historias Yup!
@@TemasHistorias well,yeah!
2019: Acer makes junk
@@griffin8062 Well, its cheap
and all total cr*P
I remember working on a few of these. The media player in the front was nice, especially for people who were flying, but could listen to music when they had to have their laptop off. Depending on how strict the flight stewardess was. Great video.
My T520 has a Thinklight. These were used on a ton of Thinkpads.
Yes. My T61 also has a ThinkLight.
It's actually quite nice thing to use. Surely not as fancy looking as keyboard itself lit, but very functional anyway and they're pretty perfectly lit, just barely lighting keyboard, but nothing that would bother or reflect somehow. I wouldn't mind it even in modern machines. It's actually better as I have read ie. wifi password from paper with thinklight. Something that couldn't be done on generic lit keyboards
Probably inspired by how certain cars illuminate the center console and cupholders with a small overhead light
I love this feature on my x220. The backlit keyboard on the P1gen2 is good, but I do wish it had both as they fill slightly different needs.
There were also a few HP Elitebooks that had something similar. I recall using it on the 8560P
Didn't know Acer made Thinkpads too. Great video Colin!
Yep, it was based on the TravelMate 510 series.
And also a Ferarri laptop
Always wondering, someday _lenovo_ sells ThinkPad E•L to Asus, instead focusing on main X•T•P series....*eh
I was wondering why the plastic had that acer look.
I have a Acer Aspire A515-54
Watching this on a W530, the last generation (xx30) to have the ThinkLight. It lights up the whole desk almost, better than a backlit keyboard in my opinion.
Some of these thinkpads are a great way to get into classic DOS & classic windows gaming, they're easy to store and the driver support is always solid. You can cover most of the key gaming periods with a couple of models. Always great to find out more about some of these lesser known models, great video Colin!
It's really interesting to look back at these old laptops, and see how far we have come.
it's strange to see an IBM Thinkpad without blue enter key
Yep. Also typical IBM models don't have a Windows key, right click key, The two little keys on ← and →, blue Enter key, ThinkLight enabled not by a switch, but by Fn+PgUp
@@windowslab4820tbf old ibms had black enter too
Love the independent CD player...
Really looks like a dual card bus slot... weren't these laptops the pinnacle of innovation? 💻
Hey jr
There are IDE based SSDs available for these machines. Throw one in and see if it makes a difference. Just remember to disable/never run defrag.
Veer Maharaj ooh i might get a ide ssd because i have a blue and white powermac with a dead drive
@@ethandodd8493 did they use IDE for the blue&white G3s? I know they did in the G4s, not sure when exactly they switched from SCSI (maybe you have a G4 instead too)
Have you tried it, are they any good? I'm thinking about buying a few but don't know much about how good they are.
@@kaitlyn__L I believe all PowerPC machines had IDE (except the G5 machines, which used SATA)
I have one too! Well, by that, I mean what's left of a 514TXV. *The ThinkPad iSeries was based on the Acer TravelMate 510 series!*
4:29 The Acer version had speakers on the front, on the same side as the CD player controls, so when the lid was closed, it kinda looked like a flattened boombox.
Ah, badge engineering :)
@@kaitlyn__L
In this case, more than that. Even the shells are completely different, and there are different pointing devices.
@@kbhasi well, the outer shell of many badge engineered cars is often changed too.. but the underlying chassis and so forth stays the same. I'd say having the trackpoint is fairly equivalent to a fancier steering wheel in a higher-trim GM brand or a Lincoln or something. Often times there can be real significant differences, even entirely new engines, with badge engineering!
OMG you find the original one HOLY CRAP
I like yo pfp g
Haha... I got mine for 20 euros a few days ago. You saved me a lot of research, Colin!
Now I’m looking forward to have some time of to refurbish it. The software install is a mess ans there are minor flaws, like the cd controls not working and the battery ejection mechanism is stuck
Really enjoyable video, as usual. Greetings from Spain!
When I first started at the computer shop I work at back in 2004 they had two of these fully disassembled in a box that had been returned multiple times for different issues. Guess it wasn't the most reliable machine, and now knowing the manufacturer... I get why!
I had one of these that I got in mid-2000.
One important thing you forgot to mention: As expected from Acer, their build quality was absolute rubbish.
The first one I got was dead out of the box, the second one died shortly after. The third one lasted 6 months before needing to go for repairs, at which point I negotiated with IBM for a model change. This one lasted about a year. I then switched to an iBook.
Sheep
Worth noting: the thinklight was not exclusive to this model. It was fairly common for quite a while. The x60s I am currently typing on has one, and I use it all the time. More useful than a backlight IMO. S-Video output was also fairly common for a number of years. I remember seeing them on laptops up to the mid/late-2000s.
You're right. I think almost all of the old X-series have them.
@@jothain Not just the x series. most of the A, R, T, X, Z and i series notebooks had them.
Apparently some models had an amber led, but I've never seen that in person. Thinkwiki has a little bit more information as well as a few neat scripts to make it do things like blink or be used for notificiations. It should also be noted that the Thinkwiki page on the thinklight is incorrect regarding it being controlled by the BIOS. The EC handles it, as well as backlight control, which is why libreboot doesn't cause any problems there.
Yep, commonly used to show presentations on available video equipment at customer sites, but obviously useful for home use too. Today, that role is played by HDMI.
The ATi Rage Mobility is a great graphics chip, it's really a jack of all trades - the internal display scaling was superior to anything else on the market, and the S-Video output is built right onto the chip, making it a really cheap & easy feature to implement. Not to mention the built-in DVD decoding capabilities - the CPU on my Pentium III 500 Compaq Armada laptop that uses one barely goes above 20% CPU usage playing DVDs!
I had an I-Series turned on with Screen and HDD enabled all time running non stop for two years (one year ago). It is a way thinner one without the CD hot keys. It doenst feel like proper quality, but ... man, one of the best notebooks I had.
1:15 - The Display Triangle: contrast, brightness, refresh speed - pick two. (For external displays, it's worse because there's also size/weight, price, power-consumption, etc.)
I'll always prefer something with accurate colours and good contrast at 60Hz than something with crap at 240! In a modern day setting, of course.
I once had a blue Acer model that could also play audio CD's. I dont remember the model number. I got it used and the on/off button was broken so it could not power on.
I discovered that when I held the play button for 2-3 seconds the laptop powered on just as if I had pressed the real on/off button.
Before I bought it the previous owner had installed an IBM screen into it. :)
I didn't know about IBM and Acer working together in building computers, but the Aptiva which I have with Windows 95 on it still works fine even though I can't use it online any longer. I purchased a ThinkPad last month used and it was made by Lenovo and had Windows Vista on it originally and the computer had Windows 10 put on it which didn't work with that computer. I put ArcaOS 5 (OS/2 Upgrade) on it and the computer works just fine now for what I need it for.
Oh. god I had this, I remember the multimedia keys.
Missed my two broken T30 (bad videochip) that much, i got myself a T530 last year :)
i miss these laptops, dont know why, but i just love older tech 🤪👍
Older technology can generally be more reliable.
I love the use of a separate audio system, and the feet built into the laptop too, these days it is all about making things thinner and less features included.
I use a Workstation-Class Laptop as my main laptop, an older Dell made unit, and it's the only reasonably modern laptop I could find with decent performance and a lot of connectivity regardless of price.
I've still got a i1420 in great condition.(except for battery of course..). Bought it in '98 for college work. Has a pentium in it. Was a good laptop for it's day. We got if from Circuit City and I can't remember it's price. However it was very competitive as I do remember thinking that it was a great price for an IBM. I didn't know about the Acer angle. That may explain its price.
Watched this on my T430 that I just got a few days ago.
I watched this on my T470 that I got earlier this week too
I got a T520 last month as well...really great for a 7 yrs old laptop
I watched it on my T420
Also have a T430.
@@iantotten9417 wow 11 years laptop
so many quirks in this thing... just that alone suggests it is not a "real" thinkpad.
DooM guy?
doomdude
Amazing editing. Very well told. Great video. I had never heard of this Thinkpad. Thanks.
the cd player functionality wasn't exactly an uncommon feature, models from toshiba, hp, dell, compaq, and many others did the same thing. models from HP even had a separate dual boot system to play DVDs and IPTV, remote controls were popular too.
I still have and actively use (for ECU tuning on the go) a mid-2000s IBM R40e (e standing for economy). This model was also manufactured by Acer, as a cheap alternative to the R40 which was also manufactured by them.
These models too are regarded as inferior by IBM purists but honestly, its physical build quality exceeds that of an actual IBM ThinkPad I used to have in the 90s.
All I needed to do was make a new battery pack out of six 18650 batteries, reusing the old controller which now reads battery percentages wrong due to the chemical differences between the old batteries and the new ones, but it runs for up to 6 1/2 hours now and the screen is great! I put a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 in there to replace the 1.7GHz Celeron and upgraded the RAM to its maximum 1GB (the regular R40 supports 2GB) and it's quite good for what I use it for.
My first-ever laptop was a ThinkPad i1550. It was actually owned by the internet company I worked for who didn't bother to check whether I had it in the office the day they laid me off. Guess it ended up being part of my severance. But it was a company that first bought it. It ended up lasting me 7 years, though it was pretty worn out when I finally sold it (which I now wish I hadn't). It was far better built than the actual Acer laptop I bought afterwards (totally coincidentally), which didn't even last me a year before it physically broke during normal use. The i1550 was similarly much tougher than the first Lenovo ThinkPad I bought, the budget SL500. That thing just ended up in the garbage after both its power connector and screen backlight failed. (At this point, I probably could have fixed it, but didn't have the skills then.) I currently have an IBM-built 600X and a Lenovo-built P50, and I'd say the Acer-built i1550 slots somewhere in between them in terms of durability and just the "feel" of toughness. I will also say that it had the best keyboard of any of the four ThinkPads I've owned. It's funny how many companies have actually made ThinkPads!
Reminds me of the old Dell Latitude C600 I had some years ago, 2 bays (one for battery, the other multi fuction for floppy, CD or another battery), 750 MHz Pentium 3, Mobility Rage 3D, and a whopping 1600x1200 display.
I grew up in IBM designs from everybody. These videos mean something to me.
4:47. I'm watching on an upgraded ThinkPad T61, and I could hear a noticeable difference from the internal speakers to the direct output.
IBM had given Lenovo the rights to ThinkPad, I had a T60 that had both IBM and Lenovo badges.
I also had a Lenovo ThinkPad, model T431s (I got scammed trying to buy a T430s), now I have an Acer Swift 5.
My T60 (I like to call it the Dinosaur, due to its Date Of Manufacture) was 2nd-hand and it ran Windows 7 Home Premium.
On the first half-year of me owning it, the 250gb HDD failed.
We (me and my dad) quickly got it switched, the 500gb HDD was running Vista Home Basic.
I downgraded the XP Professional on purpose. Vista ran buttery smooth (SP2), but XP felt better and faster (since it matched the laptop's original OS).
Then, the CMOS battery died.
Then, the keyboard malfunctioned, killing the laptop (the power button was a part of the keyboard).
Then, I got my refurbished T431s. I used it for half a year before giving it to my sister in exchange for a new Swift 5.
I'm regretting the option of getting my Swift 5 since the entire bottom got bumped and dented by books (I use a laptop in school).
That Windows Key, I don't even have that on my T42 from 2003
The iSeries is regarded as some of the lesser liked ThinkPads, due to the build quality being so bad, many of these broke. Quite a number of them I have came across, have broken hinges or cracked rear frames. Yours is in very nice condition, I skipped collecting these til I got the 'needed ones' in my collection. The original 300 was built by Zenith, and there was a PowerPC IBM laptop that was made by TadPole before the 800 series.
I have a 390E like yours but I broke the case on it and I can't close the laptop anymore because it will just break itself even more.
my toshiba satellite and sega gensis cdx had built in cd players that worked while they were pwoered off
As does mine. I have a Satellite Pro 1900.
Wait a second, is this device made by the people that were later known as Wistron? Because it looks kinda Quanta-ish, but i think at the time, Quanta used quite a different bay arrangement for most of their products.
I wonder since what year Quanta was the laptop ODM for IBM. They certainly were across 2000s, and they are an older company, as opposed to a bunch of other laptop ODM/OEMs.
I seem to recall at some point in the early 1990s there were IBM desktops not made by IBM but I have not been able to verify which models.
The ThinkPad 300 was built by Zenith Data Systems, IIRC.
Watching it on an old T440... Still, technology has come a long way!
not old because is perfectly functioning in modern world, there isnt a single modern day notebook that can compete with notebooks made until 2010 and thinkpads until 440/240 and all the 40 series. modern notebooks are superior only in performance but for everything else they're inferior (crappy build quality, crappy chicklet keyboards, hard to replace battery, very few ports and often no vga or any legacy port), remember to not upgrade to Windows 10 whenn win 7 support ends, just get a paid or good antivirus
Watching on a T440p. I've had it 5 years but I'd hardly call it old and it's still my primary work and general use machine. Over the years, I upgraded the screen and RAM, replaced the DVD drive with a HDD caddy but made it still be hot-swappable with the DVD drive, replaced the keyboard when the number row stopped working, and upgraded the wireless-N card to AC when I upgraded my home network. With an i7-4700MQ, 16 GB RAM, SSD and data HDD it's still an extremely usable machine today, and it's very easy to repair when something goes wrong.
My mom works evry day in a 430 and with 8gigs and SSD it s a fighter jet. It moves out. Dou you feel the T440 old. My daily driver is a T400 and still going strong with Debian, 4 gigs and SSD.
38911bytefree the problem with Linux is that many fn keys and software functions are not supported by that Linux thing. on my notebooks i run the os that is designed to run on the sticker and i use the license and install the correct version, not newer and not annother os, i also install the factory software to use all functions, they run fast almost like an ssd
My T420 is still my daily driver
The laptop speakers aren't actually that bad. It may lack bass, but it has more range than I expected.
Pretty much all laptop screens, especially business models, have tradeoffs. No single screen does it all.
That strangely looks a lot like Fujitsu life book. The only brand I know of include an LCD for status rather than indicator lights on the front portion
Just a heads up it looks like NONE of the models have a 1280x1024 display option for the screen and that that resolution was for EXTERNAL OUTPUT ONLY. At least according to the PDF you listed in the description. I went looking through the entire thing.
For all modern laptops you now only get one LCD panel option. (1:20, 1:28, 1:35, 1:43)
Watching this on a Lenovo Ideapad, I guess the modern day equivalent of a "consumer grade" Thinkpad, :p
I don't think it's a consumer grade as it's based on Acer TravelMate which is the Acer's business notebooks lineup.
Fascinating bit of IBM Thinkpad history! May offer a bit of constructive criticism? For your blurred to focused shots I’d consider either increasing the speed that you go into focus at, or not starting the shot as unfocused (like you did for the final shot of the laptop during your outro). For me personally the other instances seemed to somewhat strain my eyes.
Yes, this effect is a bit annoying
When installing older software, On the left side where it shows copy from disc information. What is the icon on the right that is always purple and always saying "Low" ....does it ever say high?
I think it always says LOW.. but the bar is meant to reflect disk usage. I remember it slowly filling up over the course of various game installs when I was little, just as the other two bars fill up as it's retrieving files off the CD and going through the install. And one time a really big game visibly made it climb, and it failed after it hit the top because there wasn't enough free space to finish the install (you'd think it could know that ahead of time, right? But no)
Wow I finally got notified about one of your uploads after like 4 months.
same here
Have you guys clicked the bell icon?
@@Montisaquadeis yes otherwise I wouldn't have said anything
1:09 miss that installer GUI progress bar.. Lol
My friend bought one of these when they were near the end of the line and on special, it was a cheap and effective machine. I worked for IBM and knew these were Acer things and lacked the durability of the usual Thinkpads, so I encouraged her to get the extended warranty. The machine died just inside of 2 years of use, so only the extended warranty was covering it. The shop providing the warranty tried to fix it, but no luck, eventually they gave her a new bare-bones R60 to replace it. Machines used to go obsolete faster back then, this more than doubled the useful life of her purchase. Best extended warranty ever. The R60 was as solid as a T-series, she gave me the R60 and I gave it to my parents. It's in a drawer somewhere but I'm sure it runs to this day. Real nostalgia cringing at the multicolored buttons and glossy textured palmrest. *shudder*
I love it when extended warranties upgrade you to the base model of a newer machine :D
something similar happended with x200's, a chinese company made a low spec versions of these (just with intel atoms)
I currently use 2 thinkpads, a little newer than the ones in the video, but I still prefer them mainly because of the trackpoint. I have never been able to get along with track pads.
What about macbook touchpads?
Interesting. I've used a lot of ThinkPads starting with the 760. I liked the trackpoint but it hurt my hand after repeated use. I always had to carry around a mouse. The pcmcia network cards were a pain because the dongles were delicate. Never seen one with the independent CD player feature.
The funny thing is that the 390E you placed next to it was also manufactured by Acer, but completely developed by IBM and sold to business users.
Yeah, that’s the key difference - contract manufacturing is nothing new, but it was kinda weird to see a company like IBM basically tell Acer “design a laptop that looks like a ThinkPad”. Granted, IBM actually did it’s fair share of contract design/manufacturing, an example of which I’ll be doing a video on eventually.
390 = broken hinges
@@38911bytefree I lubricated mine befor it could break. Was hard work to get them apart though.
I bought a Dell Latitude D820 for some parts for mine, and the LCD has gone yellowish. My Dell Inspiron 4000's LCD isn't yellowed at all! It's just a little red tinted for a few seconds but clears up. Thew lcd in my Inspiron was made by IBM
Wow. Excellent production quality. This makes my tech videos look like garbage and I think I needed that to be better. Thanks!
My floppy drive just ceased to exist to the BIOS for some reason
Until last Year my Father used a Windows xp Laptop from Medion and it had a similar Light for the keyboard, but you had to slide it out
The "ThinkPad" prototype was featured in '2001: A Space Odyssey."
Though they were not the same thinkpads, I remeber using such thinkpad computers with no toughpad and have only the nub in highschool in early 2000s. But only some research today that enables one to find out about such company deals between acer and ibm. The real question is when can we see ibm make a pc again?
Another great video Colin! Really enjoyed your swooping shot at 4:27. You put a lot into these videos and I always really enjoy seeing your uploads.
After seeing the iSeries logo, I was excited at the possibility of an AS/400 laptop.
There is also Thinkpad made by LG, only exclusive in South Korea
Acer Thinkpad...
Lost manufacturer maybe
id love to try this ibm notebook out
The most I remember of ThinkPads was the one sitting on the judges desk during the O.J. Simpson trial, oh and the monkey on the commercials. Seriously Big Blue seemed like they wanted to shed their cold business exterior with a warm, fuzzy feeling that appeals to the mass consumer market. This model slipped under my radar, and I rather would have liked it.
At that time in my life it was all about the LAN party. All of us geeks scoffed at the idea of a laptop as a serious gaming machine as we carried around our CRTs because of course those refresh rates and ghosting. Mine was a 19" Trinitron, and needless to say I grew up into a hefty boy. The trackpoint was something I rather liked, I miss the one I had on a Fujitsu Lifebook. Pointing devices are a sore subject with me, I hate mice. Try sitting at a library surfing the web while the teenager next to you is tapping his mouse. Trackballs are my favorite, followed by touch screen and finally track points. I never liked touch pads, they never seemed accurate to me.
Perhaps the biggest clue that IBM didn't design this is in the keyboard - it has a windows key, and it would be a very long time before IBM would generally include one of those - even my T43 doesn't have one.
It's not the first OEM'd ThinkPad too, the ThinkPad 300 and 300C were manucactured by Zenith Data Systems and well... It shows. mos6581.com/pictures/thinkpad-300c/chess.jpg
I have one of these with the crappy screen. Apart from that a pretty cool laptop
I'm watching this on my T440p
On my T400. What a machine the T440p.
I love these old laptops of the 2000s
I remember an article in Time mag claiming the PC war was over and the winner was IBM. I laughed! My first IBM PC was the XT it was over 3 grand , one floppy, a 10 meg Hda, green monochrome 12 inch display and 256k. Boy was IBM ripping people off. I'm glad my company paid for it for I surely would not. I built my own from scrap parts. My company went broke! IBM laid off half of its workforce. IBM what a hoax!
Just by the four button statement, yup, Acer.
What’s the Epidemic Sound song used during the audio player part?
I absolutely love the aesthetic of the original design thinkpads.
The ThinkLight™ was one thing Lenovo should've kept, just like they kept the TrackPoint™. I can't stand "backlit" keyboards on laptops, but the ThinkLight was really handy, if you had to check something on a piece of paper, etc. in the dark. It was essentially a little desk lamp inside your laptop. This, and the generally very good ThinkPad keyboards is something they should've never gotten rid of. It's a shame current Lenovo Thinkpads have this chiclet keyboard, with nonsensical layout and a really lackluster backlight, which is uneven, unpractical and generally ugly. Also, no LEDs for caps lock, scroll lock and num lock. Instead you have a mute LED, a WiFi LED and the backlight - great, please give me back the regular LEDs, and the ThinkLight, while you're at it...
This wasn't the only ThinkPad not built by IBM. The ThinkPad 300 from 1990 was built and designed by Zenith Data Systems.
HP Omnibook XE3 had same player upfront
My T60 from 2005 is still the best laptop I've ever owned. It was there for me through personal difficult times 😢. It's comfortable keyboard is second to none.
I like the click it makes when you close the laptop
Manufacturing vs design. Common practice to lift certain guts while still owning design elements that matter to the brand. Not much different to Kenmore or Craftsman in the pre-meltdown days at Sears. Sears spec’d what was important to their brands and got the rest as part of the package. I believe IBM did this again later when Lenovo built most of IBM PC Division hardware, including ThinkPads, before IBM sold the division to them.
"ibm thinkpads are only for business"
have you ever SEEN a linux femboy?
The short lived Z line from around 2006 was also not made by IBM, just before Lenovo came on IIRC.
Yeah, at the dawn of the 21st century, IBM embraced one of THE biggest things of the 90s:
"M U L T I M E D I A"
Toshiba did the same move, but with DECENT sound and TV out.
@@38911bytefree my first laptop was a Compaq Evo N610c and it too had S-Video output. Design-wise it was pretty close to a thinkpad.
Great video as always.
Did you use a polarisation filter when recording this? There's what looks like cross polarisation on a few surfaces on some shots.
i used to own an i series 1472, i played Resident Evil 2 and Total Annihilation on it for a long time, i remember the volume knob broke and i was able to fix it with some aluminum tape but eventually the sound died completely and then the rear usb port also went bad and would short out the power to the laptop when i inserted an usb drive into it. I also remember it costing like 2800$ at circuit city
This ThinkPad has a WINDOWS KEY.
First IBM is the ThinkPad R40 that I bought 3 years ago at a thrift store. Upgraded the RAM to 1GB, DVD drive to DVD-RW (swapped the drives, but I will get the correct drive for it), 20GB HDD (needs a new one, preferably an mSATA to IDE) TrackPad, ThinkPoint, ThinkLight (lights up the whole 9 yards), Pentium 4M 2GHz Wireless ABG integrated, Windows XP Pro SP3 installed, and the display is easily swappable by removing the two keyboard screws, disconnecting the wireless card antennas, and removing the screws holding in the display ribbon cable. I have the original display in storage as it got a bit brighter when I cleaned the display, but it still works.
I also bought a used ThinkPad docking station (better version that uses a 4 pin power brick), the power brick, and external floppy drive so I can copy files to diskettes for my older systems that aren't connected to the network.
I also have a ThinkPad 380D that has a DSTN display and could use a TFT active display for DOS gaming as the sound chip is actually DOS compatible, needs a new rechargeable battery from Ni-MH to Li-Ion, even the ThinkPad R40 battery does hold a charge, but needs a calibration.
So that's why I always had this weird vibe while seeing Aptiva's. It's basically an Acer underneath
My T43 that can run Windows 10 32bit does NOT have a Windows Key.
You realize the ThinkLight made it all the way to IvyBridge right? It isn't that historic of a relic! I'm watching this on a T420 w/ an i7 2760QM (PM 9000+), which itself still has a thinklight... as does my T430 w/ a 3760QM that passmarks over 10K... better than most of today's laptops, even the powerful ones. The 430 also has a backlit keyboard though, courtesy of myself. But yeah... heck, even my HP EliteBook has the same LED ThinkLight up top design... which I believe also held out until sandy or ivy.
speakers still better quality than Lenovo y520 :DDDDD
That's clearly a USB 2.0 port. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I have a Packard Bell with an 800x600 screen, and (Hardware wise) is exactly the same.
Didn't Acer also make some of IBMs Aptiva home PCs?
The 12" model pictured must have been owned by an IBMer as it has an icon for the IBM Global Network Dialer, the long defunct program once used to access IBM by modem/broadband. The name "ThinkPad i Series" is a little odd sounding to me as "iSeries" was the name used for IBM's AS/400 line of midrange systems from 2000-2006 (very appliance-like systems, menu driven, EBCDIC, though today with more UNIX features). This laptop got to the name first, so all's fair.