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 Portable Workstation

Going back to the beginning, my very first laptop computer that is, I've always had a bit of an obsession with "ultra-portability" and the concept of the portable/mobile workstation. I'll define that here as being a computer and peripherals having the capability of doing jobs that are generally considered to be within the province of full-sized desktop computers. I'll have to say that I was able to get started in good style with the IBM ThinkPad 701c (sometimes known as the butterfly). As machine so small that a full-sized keyboard was too large for, and had to be able to fold and unfold into!

As cool and interesting as that machine was though, it wasn't really the whole story. I took the concept to another level by finding the IBM 5183 Portable Printer along with the Logitech Scanman II to pair with it. This gave me be the capability of pretty much doing anything I wanted, anywhere I wanted, without even an electrical outlet. If you're unfamiliar with the computer, it's really smaller than what the image would indicate. That screen is only 10.4"! So this whole rig pretty much fit in a regular sized computer bag and weighed no more than just a more normal sized laptop by itself. I was hooked!

In the years after that, my portable machines grew as they progressed from legendary 600, then on to the the "T" Series. I was happy with these machines, but often would lament the lack of extreme portability that the "Butterfly" had given me. Then one day the ThinkPad folks dropped the X300 bomb on us! When the price for them finally came back down to earth, I bought a nice used one several years ago. 

 

This became the core of my "next-gen" portable workstation. It paired nicely with Canon LIDE scanner that I had at the time and I even dabbled in the Pentax Portajet thermal printer (the world's smallest printer). The idea received it's most significant use and "proof-of-concept" when tragically my mother-in-law passed away due a car accident during the holidays one year. I had the whole rig with me at the time since we were vacationing with my in-laws and I was scanning some family photos for them. That scanner got quite a workout putting together a memorial from old photographs for the funeral.

Around that time, I added another element to my little bag of tricks by adapting the recently acquired Android ThinkPad Tablet to work as a secondary screen to the laptop (which had been upgraded to the X301). This gave me a portable multi-monitor setup like I was used to at home. 

The 3rd generation of my portable workstation came about when the X3xx machines gave way to the X1. On one hand, I gave up having a built-in optical drive (which I haven't missed at all), but on the other, I gained a much nicer (and larger at 14.1" vs. 13.3") screen (the X3xx machines had notoriously bad panels), but at a resolution (1366 x 768) much kinder to my aging eyes. Although it's a 2nd gen (Ivy Bridge) Core processor, and has other upgrades such as USB 3.0 as well; it's most important function is as the "core" (forgive the pun) to the new version of portable "eco-system" if you will.

Recently, I was to again add the ability to print on the move with the HP OfficeJet H470 printer. I actually gave about $30 (after shipping) for 2, H470s and 1, H460, along with power supplies for all three as well as 2 batteries. One of the H470s has an unresolved issue, but the other one works as does the H460 that I'll probably sell to defray the cost of the whole thing. A Bluetooth wireless module ($10) is on it's way from China to allow me to go fully wireless printing. 

 

 

Of course there are other smaller items such as the Bluetooth travel mouse, the nVidia Shield tablet and the Wacom Bamboo pen digitizer that gives me other capabilites as well.

 

Those things are great, but the biggest change in this generation has to be the ability to bring massive storage to the portable realm. About a year ago, I picked up the Lenovo F800 "Multi-Drive". Essentially an access point, attached to a lithium-iom "power station", combined with a 1Tb hard drive, it gives me the ability to have a wireless NAS wherever I go. As if that wasn't enough, I picked up a Drobo Mini last summer and populated it with 4 laptop sized (2.5") drives (2, 1.5Tb & 2, 1Tb), giving me the capability to carry 5Tb of USB 3.0 attachable storage with me anywhere. This weekend, I put the 600Gb Intel 320 SSD from my wife's old laptop into the other bay of the X1. This combined with the mSATA, 480Gb SSD, gives me a total of around 1Tb of "onboard" storage, and 6Tb of either attached or wireless storage. If you'd have told me that I'd be able to do this affortably even 2 years ago; I'd have said that it was "crazy talk"!

That's a lot of cool portable stuff right!?! ....but there's more! Oh, I don't own any of it, but ..... one day..... What is it? It's the ThinkPad "Stack". What's the pieces in the Stack? One is a lithium-ion power station, another is a Bluetooth speaker, then you a portable access point, and of course, the last (so far) is a portable HDD. Each is about the size of one of those portable drives you can buy anywhere, but the cool thing about this is that they're all the same footprint and can connect to each other without wires or cables! OK; it doesn't do anything that I can't already do, but it does it in a much nicer way! I can be a little OCD.