The "New" ThinkPad Circa 2020

Roughly, every 3-4 years "I" get a "new" ThinkPad. This goes back to around 1997/98 when I was working at Texas Tech and decided I needed to have a laptop for the first time. Up till then, I had only had desktops; first a vendor built 386 clone, then a self-built (with help from my brother) 486 clone, then a Toshiba Infinia Pentium which got traded out for an IBM Aptiva "S" Model (Stealth). I'll probably do a desktop retrospective at some point, but this post is about my love for the portable computer..... of which I've only ever used ThinkPads. Oh, I've owned and worked on lots of others, but as far as my personal machines..... they're ThinkPads.

 

I bought that first machine used, but under warranty which I would take advantage of quite a lot! In the day of the big chunky laptops with poor battery life, I chose a different road with the IBM ThinkPad 701c. And right there, the die was cast. This is often considered one of the, if not the seminal ThinkPad that made it neck-and-neck the most iconic name in portable computing along with the PowerBook/MacBook. 

So emblematic in fact that the 1996 movie Mission Impossible cast those machine as the techno opponents, with of course, the PowerBook as the "good guy"! As for my "Butterfly", it did the mundane work of typing personnel evals while drinking coffee at Barnes and Nobles. Eventually, even media icons age and the 486 powered machine 701 gave way to a 600.

These could rightly be called the progenitor of the modern "thin and light" system machines of today's "business class". They had mainstream processors, a decent size screen for getting work done without an external monitor, but built with a docking port to connect with all manner of peripherals as well as the corporate network. However, it was a the last of the original ThinkPad breed built the old way with virtually no flex and rubber covers or sliding doors covering all it's ports. They were simply too expensive to build and sell at the 1998 prices ranging from the high $2000s to the fully-spec'd version in the $4000s. However, this would create the form-factor that I would return to time-and-time again.

The 600 Series would be replaced by the fully developed thin-and-lights in the form of the T20s (T20, T21, T22, T23), followed by the T40s (T40, T41, T42, T43) with a detour of T30 not withstanding,...... which I'll write about at some other time. To my eye, these were rough and ready versions of the 600 Series with a lot of cost-cutting. Gone were the port covers as well as the soft-touch coating an any parts that wasn't the lid! There's other things, but those were the main ones. However, they did their job and were much easier for a budding IT manager (me) to buy at the $2000-3000 range! These machines would take the ThinkPad from the Pentium III age all the way to through the Pentium-M era. 

Then came the Core Duo/Core2 Duo series of processors from from Intel as the computing world headed into multi-threaded computing. These were the early Lenovo years after the heart-breaking IBM buy-out. They were also the "try-hard" years for Lenovo trying to prove to the world that they were worthy of carrying on the ThinkPad banner. So they brought out the X300/301 which I saw as the true successors of the old 600s with it's include every feature under-the-sun and 13.3" screen design. I jumped from the T42p to the X300, then on to the X301 and loved these machines till it became obvious that the end was near for the C2D CPUs, especially the "SU" low-powered units in these machines. Which brings us to today.....uh actually.....last week!

For the last 3-4 years I've been running the 2012 introduced T430s. So yeah, it's going on 8 years old! If you're a long time computer builder/user, you're probably aware that unless you are a gamer or a high-end professional, the need to upgrade regularly has long-since past. Everyday task can be easily accomplished by older machines as long as they have an adequate amount of RAM (8Gb) and a few upgrades such as an SSD. This machine has an Ivy Bridge gen i5, 16Gb of RAM and a 512Gb SSD in mSATA form. It's been running Windows 10 without a hitch for the last 6 months. If that's the case, why are we talking?

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you'll know that I'm an opportunity kind of guy. That and a few issues have pushed me to make the current change to the T450s. So, let me list them and explain why I use the type of machine that I went with and you can decide for yourself if you'd have done the same thing. Reasons I use the type of machine I do:

• I need like to use a "thin and light" because I often carry it to a client location, so I like to try and keep my machines in the sub-4lb range.
• Virtually all of my clients use windows machine so it works out better if I do the same.... so no MacBook (although I've considered that quite a bit, plus the next reason). 
• I'm cheap, and I don't need high level processing ability. I don't game and my machines don't do CAD or high-end photo/video editing. So, no Razer Edge or MacBook. Selling in large numbers to corporations makes a machine cheap to buy when they come "off lease".
• It needs to be compatible in a number of ways to the typical PC. These include video output capabilities, ports, media etc.  and OS.
• I like my machines to be rugged. They do travel on occasion. 
• They can't be too big since most of it's life is spent on my nightstand.

Why decide to upgrade to the T450s from the T430s now:

• First and foremost, I really dislike the screen on the T430s. When I moved to this machine, I had downgraded from a higher pixel density of an X Series to the 1600 x 900 HD+ on the T430 because of my aging eyes. Turns out that I was wrong. It wasn't the pixel density that was causing a problem for me, it was the crappy TN screen on the T430! ThinkPads have on and off been saddled with bad screens. Beginning with the T440, but specifically T450 can be found with an IPS full-HD (1920 x 1080) panel.
• I pretty much never use the optical drive on the 430, so that was no loss.
• I skipped that x40 series because Lenovo saw fit to delete the Trackpoint mouse buttons, but they were restored on the x50 series.
• The x40/x50 series had the "bridge battery" design allowing the user to exchange the externally accessible battery which came in 3 different capacities some of which can push these machines into the double digit hours when combined with the use of the Intel "U" series processors in this series. Yes, I know, they are lowered powered and aren't socketed so can't be upgraded, but that's a none issue for my use-case.
• It's thinner and lighter than the x30 series.
•  Starting with the Tx60 series, Levovo went to internal (read not user accessible) batteries.

So all these items combined with the fact that I'm currently in the process of chasing down 2 client machines of this type has given me a lot of research time looking at these machines. The combination of opportunity/circumstances and the an 8-year old computer gave rise to the "new" machine. 

The "Cascade"

 

When I use the term cascade, I'm sure most people envision something like this, or at most a high waterfall. Generally something peaceful and beautiful. Actually, what I meant by the word is nothing of the sort. I'm sure others in managing IT have used the concept, if not the word, but in my application; I invented it for my own use...."back in the day." The Y2K days, when I was working my first real IT job at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I was a departmental IT guy, but I was the guy. There was no one else. I had a boss, but she mostly worked on the application end of the software that ran our departmental functions. For hardware, or software support, I was it. We had roughly 60-70 computers that I was responsible for in our area. They ranged from regular desktops, to laptops, to servers. Since I was it (my job title was Area Coordinator for IT), I also handled digital cameras, PDAs, Printers, setup and maintenance. I had 1 student who worked for me. My one minion was a long-haired Mac lover. We had no Macs! Since we were a lone department at a public university, we didn't have a ton of money, we had some, just not a lot. Every year, I could buy anywhere from 10 to 20 machines, which basically calculates to me being able to replace them all on a 3 to 4 year cycle.

Although we weren't exactly a cube-farm, everybody used computers. From the department head who was a university Vice President, to front desk workers of the various building who were students. Some like my buddy Scott was the graphics professional who needed LOTS of power, others, like the aforementioned "desks" just needed to access records. Some like, the big boss (who was a New Yawker), needed to look good while he sat behind his big desk, in his big chair. After sitting down and looking at what I needed to do (machine-wise), and comparing that with what I could do budget-wise, I realized the corporate way of doing things where I put everybody on a cycle and got a new machine every so many years isn't going to work very well. We just didn't have the resources to do that.....eg. buy dozens/hundred of computers every year. So I came up with "the Cascade".

What I had to do was to go around and figure out what everybody does on a computer. How they use it, where they use it, what software they run, yada, yada, yada. Then, I had to figure out how much computer they needed and if there were any other considerations. For instance, my immediate boss needed lots of computer. She got into our databases, and the server software that the department ran on, on a daily basis. The graphics guy needed lots of computing power as well for obvious reasons. The other "executive" type people ranging from the "Big Boss", needed to do the routine office type stuff and didn't need the latest greatest, and so on down to the folks that just needed to access the "front-end" of one of the applications. Once I got that handled (it took a while), I had to break everyone down into groups that fit generalized categories of PCs relative to their capabilities in easily configurable buying specs, and make sure there weren't too many different models to support well. I didn't want to make the mistake of my predessor who had 5 different brands of computers, which God only knows how many different models!

 

I bought 2 brands: Dell for the desktops, IBM for notebooks. Within those 2 brands, I had maybe 2, sometimes 3 models during any given buying cycle. There were sometimes small variations within the specific models such as a bigger screen for some particular worker who was looking at giant spreadsheets all the time, or more powerful/dual processors for the graphics guy, who also got extra/giant hard drives. Actually, his stuff was almost always special because of what he did. I can't even begin to tell you how much of a difference this made in everything from setup to support, by my second year. Of course, I only spent a little over 2 years there, but this was the testing ground for my IT ideas.

.....But what about the others? Oh yeah, them, the proletariat. I almost forgot.... It's actually they who allowed me to conceived of the cascade. I realized pretty quickly that by virtue of what they did on their PCs, there were some folks who didn't need to have a new $2000 machine every 2, 3 years, or actually.....ever. Some like a the cadre of administrative assistants, only ever looked up certain data, and wrote memos. Their computers were glorified word processors. Then there were even some workers who only occasionally did things on their machines. Maybe an hour or two a day at most, but they needed a machine to complete those tasks. Therein lies the function of the cascade. If I could eliminate them from the new machine "cycle", then I could use my finite pot of budgetary funds each year, to speed up the cycle so that my high-end users got new machines! I would just take their old ones, and push them down to the next level, or whichever level that the specification of machine was appropriate for their job. In the end, they didn't really care, because they still got "new" machines every 2 or 3 years and that kept them for having to use the antiquated 486s that didn't pass the Y2K utilities!

What did that do for me? It caused me to do more work! If you think about it a little bit. This meant that not only did I have to set up just the number I bought that year; I had to reload all the ones that they displaced for someone else, and maybe do the same to the machines at the next level as well! Holy Cats!!! It's financially efficient, but it almost tripled my workload! At UIC, that wasn't so bad, but when I moved on to the Texas Tech University Libraries with the 700+ PC (and Macs) that were my responsibility, it was daunting. However, I did it. Every spring when the orders would arrive, and through the summers when we did the bulk of our update work, I was stressed. Over a period of several weeks, I'd have to refer to my cascade spreadsheet to make sure we got the correct PCs to the correct workers.

What does all that have to do with a home propellerhead like me? Well; when I pulled the old guts out of the "old" Blackbird, I started a cascade! You see, in our house, my desktop workstation is at the top of the food chain. It has the most powerful, the biggest, and the fastest of everything. It's parts are more advanced than every other computer in the house. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Over the course of the next several weeks, the various parts taken from the Blackbird are going to replace parts in maybe 3 other machines! So stay tuned; we've only scratched the surface!