The ThinkPad is 25 years old ... and that's just the beginning!
This is the story of a little box, drawn on the model of Japanese lunchboxes, the famous bento. A small box, born in Japan of American parents who crossed continents and oceans *. A little box that made envious even the presidents of the United States, went to the meeting of the Pharaohs and the conquest of space ... How far will it go?
On October 5, 1992, a comet disrupts the already bubbling world of microcomputing: the output of the ThinkPad 700 microcomputer, from the Yamato laboratory in Japan. The press praises: "IBM arrives with a winning laptop" **, "The ThinkPad impresses users and analysts with an aggressive price, and innovative features" ***. It is its 10.4-inch color screen, a "jewel" according to journalists, which marks the spirits. But also the little plus that, for 25 years, no laptop is similar to ThinkPad: the TrackPoint, this little red button located between the G and H keys on the keyboard and effectively replaces the cumbersome mouse desktops. Hard disk and retractable battery complete the features of this little gem that weighs only 3.4 kg.
---130 million ThinkPads sold---
Quickly, the ThinkPad is exhausted and the happy owners are envious. On December 18, 1992 ****, George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States calls a senior IBM official, begging him to find him a Thinkpad ... he wants to offer for Christmas to his wife Barbara. Fortunately, the gift arrived on time.
This craze could only have been a fire of straw quickly extinguished. But in 25 years, the ThinkPad numbers have consistently confirmed the initial interest: 10 million Thinkpad sold in 2000, 60 million in 2010, 75 million in 2012 ... More than 130 million today!
And it's the quality of its design and the innovation shown by its designers over the last 25 years that the ThinkPad owes its success: the first portable equipped with a CD-ROM drive in 1994, the first to be equipped with a DVD-ROM in 1997, the first to be equipped with a fingerprint reader - to ensure greater data security - from 2004. Result: the ThinkPad has received in its career more than 300 awards for quality , its performance, its design ... Best of all, the ThinkPad X300 was named in 2008 by BusinessWeek magazine "Best Notebook Ever"
---ThinkPad conquers space---
But it is on the ground that the ThinkPad receives its real letters of nobility. In the summer of 1992, even before its official release, IBM provided Thinkpad to a team of archaeologists working on the excavation of the ancient Egyptian city of Léontopolis. Their conclusion leaves no room for doubt: "The ThinkPad is an impressive machine, strong enough to be used without care in the worst conditions that Egypt can offer." And the Thinkpad will go much further than Egypt. In 2003, it was the first laptop to be certified for use in the international space station. What's more normal ? Since December 1993 - on a Hubble telescope repair mission - the Thinkpad has conquered astronauts.
At 25, the ThinkPad is wearing handsome. To celebrate this anniversary Lenovo has designed a special model, the ThinkPad 25, equipped with Windows 10 Professional, which combines aspects of its original aesthetics and features and features that are expected of a notebook today, not would it be less than half the size of its illustrious predecessor (1.58 kg vs. 3.4 kg) or its infra-red camera face recognition system?
I remember the 1st thinkpads . that was a great breakthrough