7 ms·

The History of ThinkPad: From IBM’s Bento Box to Lenovo’s AI Workstations

112 points by zdw 5mo ago

dundercoder 5mo ago
I have a p50 or p51, it’s so heavy, just a tank. I think they called it the portable workstation. I have LOVED this thing. It ran any Linux distribution I needed, was speedy, keyboard never missed, it’s in a closet now in headless mode running proxmox.
- JoeBOFH 5mo ago
  I have a P50 or P51 and same. It’s a tank but love the thing. Mine is the model before they killed the drop on dock and I prefer that over the USB-C docks.
  - dundercoder 5mo ago
    I loved the drop on dock.
- mncharity 5mo ago
  A laptop to be carefully padded for protection... of people's walls and floors. Getting a bit geriatric now, but we've had fun.[1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL
- pjmlp 5mo ago
  I have used a few workstation models and I love them, even though they are tanks, the 15" models are a bit easier on the backs. They get the memory and disk extensibility, replaceable battery, dual GPUs, with the dedicated GPU being a good mix of performance, OpenGL/DX/Vulkan capabilities and battery.
- vitally3643 5mo ago
  I went from a T530 (circa 2013) to a brand new P16s AMD. I honestly love it almost as much as the old one. It's the best constructed laptop I've seen in the last few years. Lenovo has really gotten serious about repairability lately and I super appreciate it.
- WarOnPrivacy 5mo ago
  I bought a P50 for my mother in law some years back to replace her desktop. It sits out of the way, lid closed, with a monitor mouse and keyboard attached. She still uses it and takes it with her when she travels.
jasoneckert 5mo ago
I lived through this timeline, and with ThinkPads from different eras. Throughout, they were always considered in my science and computer science circles as "premium" laptops with excellent build quality, keyboards, and performance. The performance of my latest one (a P-series) always surprised me given the hardware specs.
jcgrillo 5mo ago
I still have my x61s, T460p, and currently running a T14 Gen 3. The x61s is just sitting there awaiting some future project. Hopefully it happens someday. The T460p has become a homelab server. I never should have sold my W500, that thing was awesome. I also have an 11e which is my burner Windows machine for doing sketchy stuff with cars.
- iberator 5mo ago
  you will NEVER understand it fully.... for you t460 is just a webserver, while for me t470s is my state of the art sole machine... IMO youu undervalue the magic and robustness of those laptops.
  - jcgrillo 5mo ago
    I could have kept running the ca. 2015 T460p as my primary laptop--it has 32GB RAM, and decently powerful CPU and GPU--but the T14 is lighter, has much better battery life, generates less heat, etc. etc. Maybe I don't "get it" but I'm pretty happy with the fancy "new" machine.
    - mcpeepants 5mo ago
      I just replaced a T530 with a T14 gen 1 (R7 pro), and…yes. Super happy with the upgrade, for less than $300 mind you, even though I still love the old thickpad. It will live out its years in the rack, taking up an impressive amount of 1U.
      - ssl-3 5mo ago
        I'm still "stuck" on the T530 for what many probably think are dumb reasons: 1. It's black. I used a laptop that was silver and white for years; it sucked. Being boring, non-flashy, and non-reflective is important to me since I get to use this computer in places where the lighting is outside of my control. 2. It has a 15" screen. That's the right size for me. (I do not care that it is larger heavier and heavier than alternatives; that part isn't on my radar.) 3. The keyboard is centered. It accomplishes this in part by lacking a numeric keypad. (I do not use numeric keypads because I grew up with an 85-key XT keyboard that could have a numeric keypad, or cursor keys, but not both at once...and I chose cursor keys.) 4. Ports. I often connect my laptop to other things. That's an important part of how I find utility with laptop computers. 5. I found it very cheap on eBay with a housing that still looked very minty. It's been a fine machine. CPU and RAM are maxed out (amusingly, the cheapest way I found to get the best CPU was to buy the whole bottom half of another T530 that already had one installed, so now I've got spare parts). The cheap third-party battery works for most of a workday in testing, and I've never run out when away from an outlet. It's lovely. It's hard to find anything more-recent that meets these requirements, but maybe I'll be able to score a used Framework 16 or something at some point.
DonHopkins 5mo ago
I loved my 760C, with a trackpoint so hot they had to make it red, 90 MhZ, 12" 800x600 16 bit color screen, Mwave DSP (audio, fax modem), tilt up keyboard with lego-like modular bento bays for battery, floppy, hd, cd, magnesium body, soft touch black coating that melted with age.
- DonHopkins 5mo ago
  To contextualize the "so hot" reference, that was from an actual full page IBM ad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581424 DonHopkins 4 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe >"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!" Enter "Lickable Pixels" -- the phrase that stuck to describe the Aqua era. Introducing Mac OS X's Aqua interface, Jobs said at Macworld in January 2000: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface) Then there was the red hot irresistibly sexy and well designed IBM Thinkpad TrackPoint -AKA- Keyboard Clitoris -AKA- Joy Button, and IBM's explicitly lascivious "So Hot, We Had To Make It Red" ad. https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_had_to_make_it_red/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_... Ted Selker, the inventor of the TrackPoint, told me the story of how that ad got written and refined by focus groups: He slyly suggested the slogan, and IBM's ad designers begrudgingly put it on the page in small text in the corner, below the photo and ad copy. Then they A/B tested it with the text a little bigger, then a bit bolder, then even higher, and it finally worked its way up to the top of the page in BIG HUGE BOLD TEXT! More about Ted's work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576 Ted Selker fondly reminds me of "Mr. Lossoff" the "Button Man" in "A Nero Wolfe Mystery” episode “The Mother Hunt”, where Archie drops in on "Mister Lossoff’s Distinguished Buttons” in the garment district of New York: https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724 https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724 He's totally THAT enthusiastic, a distinguished expert fiendishly obsessed with buttons! He even carries around a big bag of replacement Joy Buttons that he hands out for free like candy to anyone who’s worn theirs out. I know this from personal experience: Ted and his wife Ellen once ran into me working on my Thinkpad at some coffee shop in Mountain View, and Ted noticed my worn out Joy Button. He excused himself to run out to his car to fetch his Button Bag, while Ellen smiled at me and rolled her eyes up into her head and shrugged, and we hung out and talked until he got back. I really appreciated a nice new crisp one with fresh bumpy texture, because mine was totally worn down, and it made his day to get rid of a few. (I imagine their house has hoards of boxes and piles of bags full of them!) The common thread: design that makes you come. Back for more, that is. Buttons to lick till they click. Nubs to rub till they're bald. Products you touched obsessively until they're worn smooth. Tahoe gives us clownish corners we can't even grab. Apple dropped the ball -- and frankly, it's a kick in the nuts. ---- Here's what Ted wrote about some of the other people involved with the Thinkpad and Trackpoint design, and his canine envy: Ted> Actually i called it a joy nub (smaller than a joystick) and even made many vibrating joy nubs.... in fact i was flattered when Richard sapper decided to change it from a keyboard color to red and IBM came up with the marketing slogan "so hot we had to make it red" In fact Bob Olyha and Joe Rutledge worked really hard to put a 5 position gesture recognizer in the firmware of the trackpoints that are sold today (N,S,E, W and press)! (three d gestures were a fun challenge) Joe Rutledge, Barton Smith and Bob Olyha are the best contacts for software questions. The keyboards can be purchased easily I made many prototypes, many with force feedback and two handed scenarios, etc. the russian tea mouse was a special one which allowed a velcro on trackpoint the size of a thumb, nested in a mouse shaped object and a cover allowing for gross control from any movement of a large part of the body. The scollmouse (a poormans trackpoint scroller) was sold as a product that outperformed wheels for pointing (not a real strain gauge based pointing stick) Don> Didn't your dad help you design the material you made the original trackpoint out of? Ted> He did. (chlorinated butyl rubber) Don> Has airport security ever gotten suspicious of you carrying around a big sack of trackpoint nubs? Ted> i am jealous of the 6 nipples dogs have aren't you. Don> The virtual laptop sounds like a program that came with my old 90 mhz Thinkpad -- I think Ted Selker worked on it. It had a photorealistic virtual view of the laptop that you could turn around in different directions to see the various parts labeled, and it was integrated with documentation and status displays and control panels related to all the gadgets and interface plugs. For example, you could bring up the volume control panel by clicking on the speaker, and stuff like that! Ted> YEP, i tried to get rid of the book and irq setting the lpt1 grids of buttons.... i can't find our "best ideas" here is an early crappy image or two.... here is how we deployed it (still has problems) also i came up with an idea called wrapping paper instructions which never got deployed: no text it showed how to open the laptop, put in the battery, use the ultrabay, remove the disk, open the keyboard to get to stuff, turn on the computer, plug in the computer, and use the notebook latches.
buildbot 5mo ago
Would have been interesting if not very AI generated :(
- eoskx 5mo ago
  It is unfortunate because the content and subject matter isn't actually bad, but yes, there are definite AI-generated tells here.
  - runarberg 5mo ago
    Ahh, that makes sense. I wasn’t on the lookout, and opened the article with a full intention to read it. I after the initial skim (and being somewhat disappointed at the length of the thing) I read a couple of sentences for the sections which interested me the most, and that was it. I could not read any more. Now I know why.
- fresh_broccoli 5mo ago
  We have to get used to it, HN these days consists mostly of LinkedIn people and bots. BTW, the latter is often operated by the former.
  - add-sub-mul-div 5mo ago
    It's like the playing field was leveled exclusively for the benefit of the mediocre.
  - buildbot 5mo ago
    As neither (despite my username) this makes me sad
tecoholic 5mo ago
I would have bought one if they weren’t so pricey for the spec they ship. Similar specs on a IdeaPad goes I think something like 40% cheaper or more. I understand people loving heavy duty ones. But the ones I have run into in the past had poorer screens and were just clunky to carry around. What’s the trade off here? Why do people still want a Thinkpad. Edit: I just thought of one reason, some specs are not available in Ideapads due the power consumption and cooling needs I think. So Thinkpads on the lower end aren’t worth it?
- jojobas 5mo ago
  No trackpoint, no deal.
  - tecoholic 5mo ago
    Ha! That’s a valid point. My trackpad is crap on Linux.
  - dizhn 5mo ago
    My t480s has a trackpad yay. It is almost completely unusable due to how to clicky buttons are placed. awww.
- tempest_ 5mo ago
  The Ideapads I have encountered over the years are just absolute shit quality. Its even started to infect the thinkpad lines. I would not stray too far from specific X, T or P models (and they definitely charge perhaps an unearned premium for them)
  - tecoholic 5mo ago
    I have used an IdeaPad S540 for about 5-6 years. Upgrading RAM, WiFi modules along the way. Was bummed when Apple’s Mac Pro died on me 11months with no warning. And went back to IdeaPad again (this is where I gave up on Thinkpad). So I would swear by it. Not the current one, it’s got soldered RAM and I am less of a fan, but it just works - no issues.
  - 5mo ago
zetalyrae 5mo ago
Do people not realize what they do to their reputation when they publish bottom-of-the-barrel, unedited AI slop under their own name?
- eoskx 5mo ago
  [dead]
neilv 5mo ago
I just had my 25th ThinkPad anniversary, which started with a ThinkPad that was 5(?) years old at the time, and which I carried all around town (parks, cafes, student centers, libraries), every day, wrapped in a towel in my bag: https://www.neilvandyke.org/linux-thinkpad-560e/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/linux-thinkpad-560e/ ThinkPad was a very expensive taste. The key to being affordable to a poor student or open source developer was to acquire gently-used older models, keep them working, and run Linux. All useful skills, which I still apply. At MIT, Ted Selker (TrackPoint inventor mentioned in the article) had some retail boxes of the IBM SpaceSaver II TrackPoint keyboard on a shelf in his office, and one time he casually offered to give me one. I had to decline, since I craved that exact keyboard, knew exactly how much they cost, and couldn't accept such an expensive gift. They still fetch a good price used, and their looks aged pretty well (the alternative at the time was almost certainly a beige or light gray 104-key): https://www.ebay.com/itm/227342514769 https://www.ebay.com/itm/227342514769
- jcgrillo 5mo ago
  > acquire gently-used older models, keep them working, and run Linux. Even as a financially secure mid-career engineer this is still an excellent formula. Buy a "retired" Thinkpad on Ebay, upgrade RAM and NVMe if needed, replace battery if needed, then run it for a decade or more.
  - frantathefranta 5mo ago
    In a pursuit of saving even more money, I noticed a lot of T14 ThinkPads have missing/broken keys. Replacement keyboard is $20 and a few minutes of work. Worth about a $50-$100 discount.
    - neilv 5mo ago
      If you buy replacement laptop keyboards, be sure to test them promptly, not just stockpile them as spares. I started to see some poor-quality 'genuine' replacement ThinkPad keyboards. Bad action, bad fit of assembly with keycap catching on bezel, etc. I considered it not-unlikely that no more good ones would be made, since Lenovo had stopped selling laptops that used that part. So I stockpiled some good ones while I could, by sampling from a diversity of sellers. I wound up with 3 good spares, and 2 bad.
iririririr 5mo ago
Can someone explain how he is running inference at decent speeds on a CPU or integrated mobile gpu? This seems to be the most important part that he just fails to mention anything about.
brk 5mo ago
I repaired some of the early 700’s at IBM when they were still mostly in the hands of upper execs and no official repair manuals had been released. I’d get random unit showing up at our Madison Heights, MI repair depot addressed to me from names I only vaguely recognized.
WillAdams 5mo ago
For more on this, the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad is highly recommended. Also, Jerry Kaplan's wonderful: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup touches a bit on the early history of it as a pen computer project. Still have my ThinkPad 755c, and still a bit bummed that I was never able to get OpenSTEP to run on it. (It's worth noting that when David Pogue complained of Steve Jobs using a ThinkPad after the purchase of NeXT by Apple that it was running NeXTstep and not Windows 95 as he claimed.) Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was a ThinkPad model (so that it would have a Trackpoint) and that it used Wacom EMR stylus technology --- wouldn't've been able to resist that.
- spankibalt 5mo ago
  > "Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was a ThinkPad model (so that it would have a Trackpoint) and that it used Wacom EMR stylus technology [...]." I really wish the Legion Go (2) was a ThinkPad detachable with Wacom EMR, IPS display, a keyboard folio with trackpoint, a removable battery, and a Switch-style dock.
sbinnee 5mo ago
I've recently purchased my first ThinkPad with intel ultra series 2 chip. Especially the weight is impressive. It weighs less than 1 kg! It's a fabulous machine. I appreciate that it has linux kernel modules dedicated to thinkpad family, which, I believe, is a culmination of decades of users' love described in this article.
scorpioxy 5mo ago
I'm a fan of thinkpads but I didn't much like the "AI" branding as of late. I tried to look at what it means exactly and all I could find is that nobody actually knows. I still ended up purchasing one because it was a reasonable price and it could run Linux flawlessly. My experience with their pre-purchase sales team was not good and almost made me go somewhere else. The build quality has improved over the past 5 generations or so. It was getting too plastic-y and felt brittle. Nothing like the original thinkpads though, those were built like bricks.
noufalibrahim 5mo ago
I've been a TP user since 2004ish. Almost exclusively. I had to use a mac for 2 years for a job in between but other than that, T series, Two X series machines (Which were my favourite) and finally, now an X1 carbon. The last one is the one I'm most disappointed with. The battery dropped to 75% of max charge in a month and it heats up quite quickly. I don't expect my next one to be a Thinkpad.
pjmlp 5mo ago
Using them professionally since 2006, and don't plan on changing, other than having Asus privately as well. All the Mac issued hardware that I touch are project assigned if it must be, and never managed to win my heart to switch. > ThinkPad is not dominant in the 2026 AI-laptop conversation. The Apple Silicon competitor class leads on raw inference per watt. Alone the facts that I can expand memory after acquisition, have native access to GL 4.6, Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate, with a CUDA GPU trumps that.
- sznio 5mo ago
  After using ThinkPads for years I decided to get a MacBook Pro just to see what's up with them. I went on a 2-week vacation so I didn't even touch my work ThinkPad for this time. After I returned I was immediately annoyed by the shit hinge, but pleased by the keyboard. ThinkPad keyboards are so nicer than MacBooks. Plastic is just nicer to the touch than metal. If Hackintosh was still possible I'd want a ThinkPad with an upgraded screen running MacOS
  - vladvasiliu 5mo ago
    Oh man, this just goes to show how different tastes are. I'm typing this on a ThinkPad and don't particularly care for the plastic. I much, much preferred the aluminum of my otherwise cheaper-feeling EliteBooks and my 2013 MBP before them. A friend used to have some XPS, and that thing was atrocious. It felt like a weird combination of mushy and sticky. I hated touching it. The ThinkPad isn't nearly as bad (yet?), but it's clearly something I'd change on it in a heartbeat if possible.
  - pjmlp 5mo ago
    I kind of appreciate OS X (written this way on purpose), for its NeXTSTEP heritage, and Apple pushing frameworks and alternative programming models that aren't stuck in being UNIX, C, C++ and nothing else. However I don't like at all their approach to hardware design, trying to be the Bang & Olufsen (or whatever) of computer world, in detriment of expansability. I rather keep my beige PC hardware kind of analogy.
kristianp 5mo ago
TIL about the PS/55 Note, a precursor to the 700C for the japanese market. And 85 key XT keyboards. I'm on my 3rd Thinkpad, this one is a P14s, 3 years old now and still powerful enough for most things, esp now that I'm on linux. My previous was an X1 Carbon, which I love for the light weight and one-hand hinge, but quickly became too underpowered for Win10 + Visual Studio + SQL Server, because of its u - low powered CPU and only 16GB of RAM. I was able to upgrade the RAM of the P14s, by buying one with 1 soldered DIMM and one empty slot.

112 points by zdw 5mo ago

I have a p50 or p51, it’s so heavy, just a tank. I think they called it the portable workstation. I have LOVED this thing. It ran any Linux distribution I needed, was speedy, keyboard never missed, it’s in a closet now in headless mode running proxmox.

JoeBOFH 5mo ago
I have a P50 or P51 and same. It’s a tank but love the thing. Mine is the model before they killed the drop on dock and I prefer that over the USB-C docks.
- dundercoder 5mo ago
  I loved the drop on dock.
mncharity 5mo ago
A laptop to be carefully padded for protection... of people's walls and floors. Getting a bit geriatric now, but we've had fun.[1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL
pjmlp 5mo ago
I have used a few workstation models and I love them, even though they are tanks, the 15" models are a bit easier on the backs. They get the memory and disk extensibility, replaceable battery, dual GPUs, with the dedicated GPU being a good mix of performance, OpenGL/DX/Vulkan capabilities and battery.
vitally3643 5mo ago
I went from a T530 (circa 2013) to a brand new P16s AMD. I honestly love it almost as much as the old one. It's the best constructed laptop I've seen in the last few years. Lenovo has really gotten serious about repairability lately and I super appreciate it.
WarOnPrivacy 5mo ago
I bought a P50 for my mother in law some years back to replace her desktop. It sits out of the way, lid closed, with a monitor mouse and keyboard attached. She still uses it and takes it with her when she travels.

jasoneckert 5mo ago

I lived through this timeline, and with ThinkPads from different eras. Throughout, they were always considered in my science and computer science circles as "premium" laptops with excellent build quality, keyboards, and performance. The performance of my latest one (a P-series) always surprised me given the hardware specs.

jcgrillo 5mo ago

I still have my x61s, T460p, and currently running a T14 Gen 3. The x61s is just sitting there awaiting some future project. Hopefully it happens someday. The T460p has become a homelab server. I never should have sold my W500, that thing was awesome. I also have an 11e which is my burner Windows machine for doing sketchy stuff with cars.

iberator 5mo ago
you will NEVER understand it fully.... for you t460 is just a webserver, while for me t470s is my state of the art sole machine... IMO youu undervalue the magic and robustness of those laptops.
- jcgrillo 5mo ago
  I could have kept running the ca. 2015 T460p as my primary laptop--it has 32GB RAM, and decently powerful CPU and GPU--but the T14 is lighter, has much better battery life, generates less heat, etc. etc. Maybe I don't "get it" but I'm pretty happy with the fancy "new" machine.
  - mcpeepants 5mo ago
    I just replaced a T530 with a T14 gen 1 (R7 pro), and…yes. Super happy with the upgrade, for less than $300 mind you, even though I still love the old thickpad. It will live out its years in the rack, taking up an impressive amount of 1U.
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
      I'm still "stuck" on the T530 for what many probably think are dumb reasons: 1. It's black. I used a laptop that was silver and white for years; it sucked. Being boring, non-flashy, and non-reflective is important to me since I get to use this computer in places where the lighting is outside of my control. 2. It has a 15" screen. That's the right size for me. (I do not care that it is larger heavier and heavier than alternatives; that part isn't on my radar.) 3. The keyboard is centered. It accomplishes this in part by lacking a numeric keypad. (I do not use numeric keypads because I grew up with an 85-key XT keyboard that could have a numeric keypad, or cursor keys, but not both at once...and I chose cursor keys.) 4. Ports. I often connect my laptop to other things. That's an important part of how I find utility with laptop computers. 5. I found it very cheap on eBay with a housing that still looked very minty. It's been a fine machine. CPU and RAM are maxed out (amusingly, the cheapest way I found to get the best CPU was to buy the whole bottom half of another T530 that already had one installed, so now I've got spare parts). The cheap third-party battery works for most of a workday in testing, and I've never run out when away from an outlet. It's lovely. It's hard to find anything more-recent that meets these requirements, but maybe I'll be able to score a used Framework 16 or something at some point.

DonHopkins 5mo ago

I loved my 760C, with a trackpoint so hot they had to make it red, 90 MhZ, 12" 800x600 16 bit color screen, Mwave DSP (audio, fax modem), tilt up keyboard with lego-like modular bento bays for battery, floppy, hd, cd, magnesium body, soft touch black coating that melted with age.

DonHopkins 5mo ago
To contextualize the "so hot" reference, that was from an actual full page IBM ad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581424 DonHopkins 4 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe >"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!" Enter "Lickable Pixels" -- the phrase that stuck to describe the Aqua era. Introducing Mac OS X's Aqua interface, Jobs said at Macworld in January 2000: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface) Then there was the red hot irresistibly sexy and well designed IBM Thinkpad TrackPoint -AKA- Keyboard Clitoris -AKA- Joy Button, and IBM's explicitly lascivious "So Hot, We Had To Make It Red" ad. https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_had_to_make_it_red/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_... Ted Selker, the inventor of the TrackPoint, told me the story of how that ad got written and refined by focus groups: He slyly suggested the slogan, and IBM's ad designers begrudgingly put it on the page in small text in the corner, below the photo and ad copy. Then they A/B tested it with the text a little bigger, then a bit bolder, then even higher, and it finally worked its way up to the top of the page in BIG HUGE BOLD TEXT! More about Ted's work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576 Ted Selker fondly reminds me of "Mr. Lossoff" the "Button Man" in "A Nero Wolfe Mystery” episode “The Mother Hunt”, where Archie drops in on "Mister Lossoff’s Distinguished Buttons” in the garment district of New York: https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724 https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724 He's totally THAT enthusiastic, a distinguished expert fiendishly obsessed with buttons! He even carries around a big bag of replacement Joy Buttons that he hands out for free like candy to anyone who’s worn theirs out. I know this from personal experience: Ted and his wife Ellen once ran into me working on my Thinkpad at some coffee shop in Mountain View, and Ted noticed my worn out Joy Button. He excused himself to run out to his car to fetch his Button Bag, while Ellen smiled at me and rolled her eyes up into her head and shrugged, and we hung out and talked until he got back. I really appreciated a nice new crisp one with fresh bumpy texture, because mine was totally worn down, and it made his day to get rid of a few. (I imagine their house has hoards of boxes and piles of bags full of them!) The common thread: design that makes you come. Back for more, that is. Buttons to lick till they click. Nubs to rub till they're bald. Products you touched obsessively until they're worn smooth. Tahoe gives us clownish corners we can't even grab. Apple dropped the ball -- and frankly, it's a kick in the nuts. ---- Here's what Ted wrote about some of the other people involved with the Thinkpad and Trackpoint design, and his canine envy: Ted> Actually i called it a joy nub (smaller than a joystick) and even made many vibrating joy nubs.... in fact i was flattered when Richard sapper decided to change it from a keyboard color to red and IBM came up with the marketing slogan "so hot we had to make it red" In fact Bob Olyha and Joe Rutledge worked really hard to put a 5 position gesture recognizer in the firmware of the trackpoints that are sold today (N,S,E, W and press)! (three d gestures were a fun challenge) Joe Rutledge, Barton Smith and Bob Olyha are the best contacts for software questions. The keyboards can be purchased easily I made many prototypes, many with force feedback and two handed scenarios, etc. the russian tea mouse was a special one which allowed a velcro on trackpoint the size of a thumb, nested in a mouse shaped object and a cover allowing for gross control from any movement of a large part of the body. The scollmouse (a poormans trackpoint scroller) was sold as a product that outperformed wheels for pointing (not a real strain gauge based pointing stick) Don> Didn't your dad help you design the material you made the original trackpoint out of? Ted> He did. (chlorinated butyl rubber) Don> Has airport security ever gotten suspicious of you carrying around a big sack of trackpoint nubs? Ted> i am jealous of the 6 nipples dogs have aren't you. Don> The virtual laptop sounds like a program that came with my old 90 mhz Thinkpad -- I think Ted Selker worked on it. It had a photorealistic virtual view of the laptop that you could turn around in different directions to see the various parts labeled, and it was integrated with documentation and status displays and control panels related to all the gadgets and interface plugs. For example, you could bring up the volume control panel by clicking on the speaker, and stuff like that! Ted> YEP, i tried to get rid of the book and irq setting the lpt1 grids of buttons.... i can't find our "best ideas" here is an early crappy image or two.... here is how we deployed it (still has problems) also i came up with an idea called wrapping paper instructions which never got deployed: no text it showed how to open the laptop, put in the battery, use the ultrabay, remove the disk, open the keyboard to get to stuff, turn on the computer, plug in the computer, and use the notebook latches.

buildbot 5mo ago

Would have been interesting if not very AI generated :(

eoskx 5mo ago
It is unfortunate because the content and subject matter isn't actually bad, but yes, there are definite AI-generated tells here.
- runarberg 5mo ago
  Ahh, that makes sense. I wasn’t on the lookout, and opened the article with a full intention to read it. I after the initial skim (and being somewhat disappointed at the length of the thing) I read a couple of sentences for the sections which interested me the most, and that was it. I could not read any more. Now I know why.
fresh_broccoli 5mo ago
We have to get used to it, HN these days consists mostly of LinkedIn people and bots. BTW, the latter is often operated by the former.
- add-sub-mul-div 5mo ago
  It's like the playing field was leveled exclusively for the benefit of the mediocre.
- buildbot 5mo ago
  As neither (despite my username) this makes me sad

tecoholic 5mo ago

I would have bought one if they weren’t so pricey for the spec they ship. Similar specs on a IdeaPad goes I think something like 40% cheaper or more. I understand people loving heavy duty ones. But the ones I have run into in the past had poorer screens and were just clunky to carry around. What’s the trade off here? Why do people still want a Thinkpad. Edit: I just thought of one reason, some specs are not available in Ideapads due the power consumption and cooling needs I think. So Thinkpads on the lower end aren’t worth it?

jojobas 5mo ago
No trackpoint, no deal.
- tecoholic 5mo ago
  Ha! That’s a valid point. My trackpad is crap on Linux.
- dizhn 5mo ago
  My t480s has a trackpad yay. It is almost completely unusable due to how to clicky buttons are placed. awww.
tempest_ 5mo ago
The Ideapads I have encountered over the years are just absolute shit quality. Its even started to infect the thinkpad lines. I would not stray too far from specific X, T or P models (and they definitely charge perhaps an unearned premium for them)
- tecoholic 5mo ago
  I have used an IdeaPad S540 for about 5-6 years. Upgrading RAM, WiFi modules along the way. Was bummed when Apple’s Mac Pro died on me 11months with no warning. And went back to IdeaPad again (this is where I gave up on Thinkpad). So I would swear by it. Not the current one, it’s got soldered RAM and I am less of a fan, but it just works - no issues.
- 5mo ago

zetalyrae 5mo ago

Do people not realize what they do to their reputation when they publish bottom-of-the-barrel, unedited AI slop under their own name?

eoskx 5mo ago
[dead]

neilv 5mo ago

I just had my 25th ThinkPad anniversary, which started with a ThinkPad that was 5(?) years old at the time, and which I carried all around town (parks, cafes, student centers, libraries), every day, wrapped in a towel in my bag: https://www.neilvandyke.org/linux-thinkpad-560e/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/linux-thinkpad-560e/ ThinkPad was a very expensive taste. The key to being affordable to a poor student or open source developer was to acquire gently-used older models, keep them working, and run Linux. All useful skills, which I still apply. At MIT, Ted Selker (TrackPoint inventor mentioned in the article) had some retail boxes of the IBM SpaceSaver II TrackPoint keyboard on a shelf in his office, and one time he casually offered to give me one. I had to decline, since I craved that exact keyboard, knew exactly how much they cost, and couldn't accept such an expensive gift. They still fetch a good price used, and their looks aged pretty well (the alternative at the time was almost certainly a beige or light gray 104-key): https://www.ebay.com/itm/227342514769 https://www.ebay.com/itm/227342514769

jcgrillo 5mo ago
> acquire gently-used older models, keep them working, and run Linux. Even as a financially secure mid-career engineer this is still an excellent formula. Buy a "retired" Thinkpad on Ebay, upgrade RAM and NVMe if needed, replace battery if needed, then run it for a decade or more.
- frantathefranta 5mo ago
  In a pursuit of saving even more money, I noticed a lot of T14 ThinkPads have missing/broken keys. Replacement keyboard is $20 and a few minutes of work. Worth about a $50-$100 discount.
  - neilv 5mo ago
    If you buy replacement laptop keyboards, be sure to test them promptly, not just stockpile them as spares. I started to see some poor-quality 'genuine' replacement ThinkPad keyboards. Bad action, bad fit of assembly with keycap catching on bezel, etc. I considered it not-unlikely that no more good ones would be made, since Lenovo had stopped selling laptops that used that part. So I stockpiled some good ones while I could, by sampling from a diversity of sellers. I wound up with 3 good spares, and 2 bad.

iririririr 5mo ago

Can someone explain how he is running inference at decent speeds on a CPU or integrated mobile gpu? This seems to be the most important part that he just fails to mention anything about.

brk 5mo ago

I repaired some of the early 700’s at IBM when they were still mostly in the hands of upper execs and no official repair manuals had been released. I’d get random unit showing up at our Madison Heights, MI repair depot addressed to me from names I only vaguely recognized.

WillAdams 5mo ago

For more on this, the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad is highly recommended. Also, Jerry Kaplan's wonderful: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup touches a bit on the early history of it as a pen computer project. Still have my ThinkPad 755c, and still a bit bummed that I was never able to get OpenSTEP to run on it. (It's worth noting that when David Pogue complained of Steve Jobs using a ThinkPad after the purchase of NeXT by Apple that it was running NeXTstep and not Windows 95 as he claimed.) Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was a ThinkPad model (so that it would have a Trackpoint) and that it used Wacom EMR stylus technology --- wouldn't've been able to resist that.

spankibalt 5mo ago
> "Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was a ThinkPad model (so that it would have a Trackpoint) and that it used Wacom EMR stylus technology [...]." I really wish the Legion Go (2) was a ThinkPad detachable with Wacom EMR, IPS display, a keyboard folio with trackpoint, a removable battery, and a Switch-style dock.

sbinnee 5mo ago

I've recently purchased my first ThinkPad with intel ultra series 2 chip. Especially the weight is impressive. It weighs less than 1 kg! It's a fabulous machine. I appreciate that it has linux kernel modules dedicated to thinkpad family, which, I believe, is a culmination of decades of users' love described in this article.

scorpioxy 5mo ago

I'm a fan of thinkpads but I didn't much like the "AI" branding as of late. I tried to look at what it means exactly and all I could find is that nobody actually knows. I still ended up purchasing one because it was a reasonable price and it could run Linux flawlessly. My experience with their pre-purchase sales team was not good and almost made me go somewhere else. The build quality has improved over the past 5 generations or so. It was getting too plastic-y and felt brittle. Nothing like the original thinkpads though, those were built like bricks.

noufalibrahim 5mo ago

I've been a TP user since 2004ish. Almost exclusively. I had to use a mac for 2 years for a job in between but other than that, T series, Two X series machines (Which were my favourite) and finally, now an X1 carbon. The last one is the one I'm most disappointed with. The battery dropped to 75% of max charge in a month and it heats up quite quickly. I don't expect my next one to be a Thinkpad.

pjmlp 5mo ago

Using them professionally since 2006, and don't plan on changing, other than having Asus privately as well. All the Mac issued hardware that I touch are project assigned if it must be, and never managed to win my heart to switch. > ThinkPad is not dominant in the 2026 AI-laptop conversation. The Apple Silicon competitor class leads on raw inference per watt. Alone the facts that I can expand memory after acquisition, have native access to GL 4.6, Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate, with a CUDA GPU trumps that.

sznio 5mo ago
After using ThinkPads for years I decided to get a MacBook Pro just to see what's up with them. I went on a 2-week vacation so I didn't even touch my work ThinkPad for this time. After I returned I was immediately annoyed by the shit hinge, but pleased by the keyboard. ThinkPad keyboards are so nicer than MacBooks. Plastic is just nicer to the touch than metal. If Hackintosh was still possible I'd want a ThinkPad with an upgraded screen running MacOS
- vladvasiliu 5mo ago
  Oh man, this just goes to show how different tastes are. I'm typing this on a ThinkPad and don't particularly care for the plastic. I much, much preferred the aluminum of my otherwise cheaper-feeling EliteBooks and my 2013 MBP before them. A friend used to have some XPS, and that thing was atrocious. It felt like a weird combination of mushy and sticky. I hated touching it. The ThinkPad isn't nearly as bad (yet?), but it's clearly something I'd change on it in a heartbeat if possible.
- pjmlp 5mo ago
  I kind of appreciate OS X (written this way on purpose), for its NeXTSTEP heritage, and Apple pushing frameworks and alternative programming models that aren't stuck in being UNIX, C, C++ and nothing else. However I don't like at all their approach to hardware design, trying to be the Bang & Olufsen (or whatever) of computer world, in detriment of expansability. I rather keep my beige PC hardware kind of analogy.

kristianp 5mo ago

TIL about the PS/55 Note, a precursor to the 700C for the japanese market. And 85 key XT keyboards. I'm on my 3rd Thinkpad, this one is a P14s, 3 years old now and still powerful enough for most things, esp now that I'm on linux. My previous was an X1 Carbon, which I love for the light weight and one-hand hinge, but quickly became too underpowered for Win10 + Visual Studio + SQL Server, because of its u - low powered CPU and only 16GB of RAM. I was able to upgrade the RAM of the P14s, by buying one with 1 soldered DIMM and one empty slot.