ThinkPad Honey-Net

Everybody has “honey-dos”. Mostly we do take care of them as fast as we can and move on to something more interesting. So, why am I writing about it then? It’s a weird topic, I know, but just bear with me on this.

My wife is an elementary school teacher, a very good one who goes above and beyond slaving away at an often thankless, but societally important task. However, unlike the vast majority of these folks toiling away with our young ones, my wife hasn’t always worked in elementary education and is very comfortable with technology. She’s more than willing to try anything that might be effective with her charges. 

For her first eight years of teaching, she (and I) have worked in a school district which is pretty advanced in relation to the availability of technology. Although, we don’t issue notebook computers to students until the 5^th grade, a C.O.W. is often available for teachers to use in grades K-4. That’s “Computer On Wheels”, which is a specially adapted cart that holds a set of notebook computers and their power adapters as well as a printer. However, this last fall, she began working at a neighboring district that not only doesn’t have notebook computers for students , but doesn't have C.O.W.s available either. Each classroom has 2 desktop computers for student use and that’s it. With many resources being electronic and more every day, that’s simply not enough. As a matter of fact, one of my projects over the Christmas break was to take some old cassette tapes of stories and converting them to digital. There'll be more of this type of things to come....trust me.

I had recently upgraded her laptop computer from a ThinkPad Z61m to a T61. So, she asked me what I thought about her taking the old machine up to school I told her that I thought it'd be fine, but that she needed more than one machine; more like 4 or 5 (that's how many groups of desks she has). And furthermore, that the age and speed of the machine really didn't matter as much as long as they could all be made similar (or identical) so that the kids could operate them easily. 

Around that time, I had dealt with a rash of dead, dying, or returned due to replacement computers which ironically were largely the same or similar models. It became fairly obvious that they fell in two groups; T4x P-M computers, and older A3x P4-M computers. Although I would have loved to have done the T40/41/42s, there was only one of the 3 that wasn't dead! The only working one was an older personal T42p that had been passed on to my father-in-law. It's screen was the "last gasp" before dying red, but I had another screen in the garage. However, both of the A31s were running fine! So, I settled on one configuration, and made them identical through cloning the hard drives. Then I began checking with various acquaintances I've made through the ThinkPad Forum and I lucked out! One guy I know out in California had 2 more A31s that he was trying to get rid of and said I could have them for the cost of shipping!

To say that I'm ecstatic would be an understatement! Although, the T4x machines are newer, faster and just generally more advanced, IMHO, there's been no ThinkPad since the A31 went out of production that has replicated it's flexibilty and toughness. It's not an accident that they were chosen for Space Shuttle and International Space Station use. They really are tough: I don't know if they are 3rd-grader tough, but they are pretty robust. Plus they have big easy to see 15" screens and weigh enough so that the kids aren't tempted to try and move them around too much. 

This will give me 4 identical machines that uses the same cloned image and will be easy to support. In fact, although those machines haven't arrived yet, I have 3 drives already cloned ready to go! Two for the machines and one as a spare in case one of them fails at some point. Of course one of the things about the A31 series that I personally love is their modularity. You can pretty much configure the machine any way you like. It's one of the last laptop computers made that, aside from the hard drive, not only had a had two other drives, but they bays are modular. Over it's production run, pretty much anything that any one could conceive of was made for it. These devices ranged from the prosaic floppy disk drive, to a secondary battery or various optical drives, but they didn't stop there: IBM not only created some unusual devices which included hard drive adapters, but to cap it all off, a special adapter-frame that the user could fit either a number keypad or a Palm Pilot! 

What's not to love? It's almost like the James Bond's Little Nellie that arrived in two suitcases and "Q"!