Propellerhead Gear: Suits Me To A "T"

The IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad "T" and I go back a loooong way. Actually, back to the beginning......Y2K. Remember that? Anyway, it was my first real full-time IT job and the responsibility of making sure that my department's technology, at the University of Illinois-Chicago was Y2K compliant. It was a poke in the eye, but hey, I got to make the call on, and order up my very first laptops. I replaced the aging ThinkPad 380ED with brand new T20 for our mobile workers. Let me tell ya; I was the IT guru/hero immediately! I learned to love that machine and almost every "T" thereafter. By that point in my mobile computing life, the ThinkPad roots already ran deep. I had bought a legendary 701c a few years earlier, which was followed by the phenominal 600. When the "T" (for titanium) came out in 2000, I understood that in order to get under the $4000 price-point, IBM had to do away with some of the little refinements that had always been there, like covering the ports, and many of the rubberized surfaces, etc. Remember the old days when every ThinkPad came with a form that the owner filled out and mailed in so they would send you an engraved little plaque with your name on it? Be that as it may, the new "T" was an amazing performer and extremely well put together. And in IBM tradition, it was filled with innovations ranging from the titanium infused casing (hence the T), to the "Thinklight" to give you just a little bit of illumination when typing in the dark. At right around 5 pounds complete with optical drive, this computer defined the "Thin and Light" category of mobile computing. I was able to use the T20 at work for my 2 years at UIC, but later would personally own every model of that series, T21, T22 and finally the excellent T23. The later machines introduced me to the world of "high resolution" at 1400 x 1040 (SXGA+) in a 14.1" screen and I've been addicted every since.

Then came the T30 of 2002. I owned it, I used it, but unlike my other "T" ThinkPads; I did NOT love it. Let's just say that the smoking hot P4 was just not a good fit for the "T" Series philosophy.......as witness by the "big butt" on this machine as compared to the T23 which came before and the T40 that came after! This model is probably responsible for me diverging and getting involved with the "X" machines.... but that's a different post.

I think IBM recognized it's mistake and replaced the T30 the following year with the T40. With it, the design went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Kinda like the supermodel in the little black dress. Don't get me wrong; it looked great, and I loved carrying it, but they made it so thin that the chassis flex, combined with the hotter GPU begat the infamous ATI, BGA failure issue. I never had it happen to me, since I was ultra-careful not to stress the bottom of my T40, T41, T42p, or T43, but it was a common failure and gave IBM a substantial "black-eye", although pretty much every manufacturer in the industry suffered similar failures. At this point, I'll have to admit that I personally jumped ship and went with the X300 for my next personal laptop (which I've already written about).

Although, I had already personally moved on, the T60 and T61 of 2006 and 2007 were important machines in several ways. Sadly, 2005 brought the sale of the ThinkPad brand by IBM to Lenovo. Although, many of us loved our ThinkPads, IBM was basically loosing money on every computer it sold, so the hand-writing had been on the wall for some time.

Business aside; what about the machines? Those of you who are sharp-eyed, might have already noticed that I put the images in reverse order. Why? We bought them that way! Before I had gone over to the X300, my wife had been using ThinkPads out of the lower-end of the corporate line; the "A" Series, the "R" Series and the "Z" Series. So instead of the T60, she was using the Z61m which was essentially a widescreen version of the same machine. So a couple of years ago, I picked up a T61 for her, installed a big (in those days) 240Gb SSD and she was set.

I really like this series of machines (T60/61). While not as thin and light as the T4x, neither did they suffer from the same chassis flex and heat issues of the T4x. Lenovo went to a rigid internal "roll-cage" design which made these some of the most rugged laptops ever designed. The only real "black mark" were the high-end models' use of the nVidia GPU which often failed leaving a completely dead machine. Of course, this was an industry-wide issue and that video chip manufacturer would end up paying settlements in the billions over it! Up until recently, we had 3 (2 with the nVidia GPU), outfitted with SSDs and 4Gb of RAM. They've been excellent machines for us. Last year, we finally got into the T60 game when my brother sent me some of his old machines for use in my wife's classroom. Yup; they are older and somewhat slower, but they are just as rugged and serviceable on a day-to-day basis.

2014 dawned a new age in our house, when the T500 came to replace my wife's T61. If I hadn't told her about the switch, she probably wouldn't have noticed the difference! The machines are almost identical in looks and performance..... at least for what she does with it. The screen resolution is the same, although I think the newer panel is a little bit better than the old one, but the new keyboard isn't quite the equal of the old one, so it's a "wash". I do like that the newer chipset uses the current standard DDR3 RAM which makes upgrades cheaper. So now, both she (T500) and I (X301) both use the same spec of memory, which I prefer. I have a single 4Gb module in her machine which will allow me to easily get to up to 6 or 8Gb in the future.

For the better part of 15 years, between myself and my family, we've used/owned all 12 models of the "T" series from the original T20 to the T500. I'm certain that we'll get around to the newer T510/520/530 as well, when the time comes!

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"!