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!
