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from the they-might-have-listened-to-the-customers dept.
Lenovo connoisseur David Hill recently blogged about the upcoming release of the much anticipated retro Thinkpad (Retro ThinkPad: It's Alive). Details are scant, but he hints at a "keyboard to die for" which sounds promising, and notes that it definitely won't cost $5000 (whew!).
I'm sure many people have seen the recent leaks related to the Retro ThinkPad initiative I started nearly 2 years ago. There's talk about display aspect ratio, resolution, keyboard, pricing and much more. Adding fuel to the rumor fire, the Lenovo commercial segment executive leader, Christian Teismann, even gave it a brief mention at the recent Lenovo Transform event in New York City. (Read the original blog that got the ball rolling here.) The social media response to the concept was staggering.
[...] At this point, it seems like the cat's out of the bag. There are certain things I can now confirm. Yes, Lenovo will be making a special edition ThinkPad as part of the 25th anniversary celebration. It's aimed at enthusiasts and superfans that were kind enough to share their thoughts about what the laptop might be. As with any new product we develop, there are always technical and cost limitations but I think where we landed is quite impressive. The product will embody many of the things people asked for.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @04:26PM (4 children)
The Retro Thinkpad is actually a *response* to the old die-hard Thinkpad community (those who have used these devices for more than the past 5 years and remember when they were actually excellent machines).
The Thinkpad community has built and produced the X62, which is a modern (Broadwell) drop-in replacement motherboard for the old Core2 Duo X61. This, combined with the IPS SXGA+ screen upgrade, results in a modern Thinkpad at 12.1 inches, which has a proper 4:3 ratio display, and modern internals, up to 32GiB of RAM! These boards have been out for over a year now, and after the first demo batch, have had tremendous success rates with no (known) failures. Pretty good for a community project! If only Neo900 was so successful!
The Thinkpad community is also working on the T70 right now, which would be a drop-in replacement motherboard for the old T60. This would allow a full IPS display with proper 4:3 ratio, up to 32GiB of RAM with a modern Skylake chipset. With a BoeHydis LED display upgrade, one can rock a 1600x1200 UXGA laptop with modern internals, and the best screen ever placed in a laptop (including DreamColor displays in my opinion). As it stands, the Flexview Frankenpad (T61 motherboard in a T60 UXGA IPS chassis) is viewed as the pinnacle of laptop design, and there are hundreds of these machines still in daily use ten years later.
So with these aftermarket motherboards, one can retain the proper display ratio, thin bezels, old keyboard layout, and most importantly, the old trackpoint (trackpoint was re-designed for a buttonless trackpad at the Tx40 iteration 3 years ago, then buttons re-added for the Tx50 iteration, but the motion is still off compared to older trackpoints AND ONLY WINDOWS respects disabling the trackpad, even in the bios) at a fraction of the cost of the new Retro Thinkpad.
So if the Retro Thinkpad is really just a T470 with old style keyboard, as many people assume it will be, you can always order either the X62 (or the T70 in the near future), and with a little bit of work not outside the scope of what a Soylentil would be able to do, you would have a GREAT laptop alternative without feeding the out of control Lenovo beast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:15PM (2 children)
One thing I noted is that 60-series thinkpads are good bit hotter than earlier (say 40-series) thinkpads, especially the area where the memory modules are located - obviously because the latter models memory are driven at good bit higher speed.
So, I wonder if the community version thinkpads may be overheating with faster running components, particularly the memory modules where less attention was paid for their cooling in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @09:28PM (1 child)
Overheating on those models was a function of the discrete GPU. ATI on the T60, nVidia on the T61. The integrated Intel graphics did not overheat like that, which is what the newer boards are using.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @12:30AM
I meant the memory module area, not CPU/GPU area where fans and heatsinks are provisiioned from the original design.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday June 25 2017, @09:08PM
Are there any LED retrofits for the CCFL laps which like to burn out and either leave you with a black (dead) screen or dim reddish hue? I have two older T40's and a newer T410. One of the T40's with the high resolution display has a bad CCFL. IT starts off with a dim reddish hue and after a few minutes cuts out. Sometimes it doesn't come on at all.