Lenovo design chief wants to build a retro-styled ThinkPad laptop

Scorpus

Posts: 2,156   +238
Staff member

lenovo thinkpad ibm laptop retro

Lenovo's VP of Design, David Hill, wants to create a new ThinkPad laptop that is heavily inspired by the old-school designs of popular ThinkPad laptops from the IBM era, stretching as far back as 1992.

This new ThinkPad laptop would embody "all the latest technology advances" while strongly embracing the original design details. This includes a classic seven-row keyboard featuring function keys, a blue enter key and dedicated volume controls; a display with an aspect ratio of 16:10; rubberized paint; loads of status LEDs; and the classic multi-colored ThinkPad logo.

lenovo thinkpad ibm laptop retro

Hill's post on the Lenovo blog mostly details the design concepts for the laptop, although he does mention that this retro ThinkPad would be around 18mm thin and include a hinge that allows the display to move a full 180-degrees.

This retro-styled ThinkPad is just a concept at this stage, though Hill would like to gauge the feedback of users and see if there's a potential market for a laptop like this. Naturally Lenovo would require "significant sales volumes to justify the development effort and tooling expense", but if you'd like to see something like this hit stores, head over to the Lenovo blog and leave your feedback.

Permalink to story.

 
I used to use one of those old IBM Thinkpad laptops at around that time and I thought it was the coolest thing ever even if it was terribly slow, weighed almost a ton, had a crappy pixelated display (~2ppi it seemed) and was about a metre thick. I loved it.
 
Lenovo makes good laptops. Problem is they are now Chinese owned so, who knows what is inside for snooping. They have already been caught once, there is a reason the u.s. govt. won't buy from them.
 
The design of Thinkpads hasn't really changed much though has it? They are already retro.
 
Lenovo makes good laptops. Problem is they are now Chinese owned so, who knows what is inside for snooping. They have already been caught once, there is a reason the u.s. govt. won't buy from them.
Lenovo was always Chinese, Thinkpads were from IBM and who knows where they were made before Lenovo started making them for IBM, all Lenovo did was but the Thinkpad division of IBM. IBM is run by *****s, their ROI means more to them than their company's future
 
Easily one of the best designed laptops of all time. X220 was last of such. had a chance to replace it with the newer and sleeker looking dell e7420, or buying an x1 carbon for myself, but didn't do either as the x220 design was just so much more well suited towards my needs -- quality, keyboard layout/keys, docking station,.. it just all makes so much sense!

I'm quite particular about my equipment and I find not many companies get it just right. unfortunately in terms of sales and popularity, I think it's a fading trend. as mentioned earlier, the chance to replace the thinkpad with a dell is because the company of which I work now chose to deal with dell over lenovo. standard issue for us are dells and iphones :( :(
 
If they do make this a reality, There is a strong chance I'd take a hard look at getting one. I had a 390E way back, and then a T43p which was a monster in performance for it's time.
 
Nope, I don't want just a cool looking retro laptop. I want instead, an "Office-in-a-Laptop"... What I'd like to see is additional productivity tech miniaturized and built into a slim but retro looking chassis- give me three things: 1) a built-in led nano projector, 2) a built-in scanner (8.5 x 11 capable), and 3) a built-in second drive (ssd or msata or whatever) to make rapid backups. All three will be super-useful to me. Why? because these things are what make me productive, not the laptop alone. And if you can put it all along with the usual tech like wi-fi ac, 3G/4G capability etc. in a thin but retro-enough chassis that can stay cool (no heating issues) , and make it all extremely reliable (that's the true retro Thinkpad capability I want) and charge about $2k for it, you'll own the computing world.
 
Back