Christian: Hello and welcome to episode 21 of the ThinkPad Museum podcast recorded on the 10th of January
Christian: January 2026, the very first episode in the new year. And no, your podcatcher isn't broken. This
Christian: is a very special episode, so we are kicking the year off with a special. This is why this episode
Christian: is recorded in English. As you might have already seen, we are going to talk about the ThinkPad X300,
Christian: a very special machine. And of course, I'm not going to do this all by myself.
Christian: Our special guest today is Thomas, also known from Laptop Retrospective. Hi, Thomas.
Thomas: Hello, Christian.
Thomas: Thank you so much for having me.
Thomas: This is going to be awesome.
Christian: Definitely, I'm so glad that we finally managed to find a date where we both can participate
Christian: in an interesting conversation, because it's not that easy to find time slots between our
Christian: countries.
Thomas: It is a bit of a jump, yep.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: So we're going to talk about this later.
Christian: Maybe we start with some feedback and announcements.
Christian: So like in every other episode, we're going to talk about some news from the museum.
Christian: Because I managed to get two very rare machines that have just been added to the collection.
Christian: And I'm very proud about this.
Christian: So this is why I'm bringing this up here.
Christian: One of those machines is a ThinkPad 360PE.
Christian: That's a very, very special machine that's incredibly hard to get these days.
Christian: For those who don't know, that's a machine manufactured between 1994 and 1996.
Christian: And it's a 9.5-inch convertible tablet.
Christian: and that's pretty crazy for the early 90s I would say. I think it's going to be one of the very first
Christian: tablets at all I think. So the screen can be rotated in the display frame. It has a VGA resolution
Christian: and 256 colors and it also offers a digitizer pen that's very much like the later X tablet model. So
Christian: you can use that old digitizer pen on the new X tablet and vice versa. That's kind of interesting.
Christian: Did you manage to ever saw one of those rare machines from that day?
Thomas: I've never seen one in person.
Thomas: And you're absolutely right.
Thomas: they are rare and very difficult to get. You are the third person that I know that has one.
Thomas: You don't see them come up for sale. And when they do, and I don't know if you also saw it on eBay
Thomas: for years, there was one for like six figures that somebody was trying to sell. And it's like,
Thomas: so I'm, I hope that you didn't pay anywhere near that because they are very cool. But
Thomas: yeah, they fetch some very high prices and people know what they are.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: And I mean, it's hard to guess what the price would be these days.
Christian: We know what the former price was.
Christian: And if we calculate inflation, this is going to be ridiculous.
Christian: And I think the value of it is hard to put in numbers because it's a rare machine.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: It's a very special machine that's hard to get.
Christian: And it's a very historic machine.
Christian: This is why I plan to, after I tried all the things that I want to try on that machine,
Christian: to give it to a real museum where people can go in and have a look at it.
Christian: That's way too special to just have it sitting in my working room.
Christian: So this is what's going to happen maybe later or maybe next year with that machine.
Christian: But speaking of the hardware details, it is equipped with an Intel 486 CPU.
Christian: It has 20 megabytes of memory, a whopping 340 megabytes hard drive, and it comes with
Christian: Windows 3.1 with the Windows for Pen Computer 1.0 extension.
Christian: Did you ever see that one?
Thomas: not running i've seen some old vhs video of that operating system in action that was digitized
Thomas: but no i've never seen it run run in person i acquired a thinkpad t7 or 710 and 730t that were
Thomas: pretty much scrap and you could tell just based on the old style of display that it
Thomas: It wouldn't have looked like anything that we would consider a tablet computer today.
Thomas: It's almost like the dinosaur version.
Christian: Yeah, definitely. So I had some fun. I put one of my X tablets beside that one. I think it was an
Christian: X200T tablet. And yeah, it's very much like that don't talk to me and my son again memes,
Christian: because the 360PE is very bulky, but a lot of things those machines have in common. And speaking
Christian: Speaking of Windows for Pencomputer 1.0, there are also some things that this very early
Christian: operating system has in common with things like the Windows XP tablet PC edition that
Christian: came out I think 2005 or something like that.
Christian: So the input dialogs where you can write letters and then it will be converted into normal text
Christian: that already existed back then in the early 90s and that's kind of mind-blowing I think.
Christian: interesting. I think we will need to cover this on a dedicated episode in more details. And speaking
Christian: of bulky, this machine weighs 3.1kg. So that's not a light catch for your backpack.
Thomas: No.
Christian: Definitely not. So the next machine, also a very rare one, is a 755cdV that also was built between
Christian: May 1995 and October 1996, also mid-90s machine. It has a 10.4-inch display with 64K colors and,
Christian: that's a real interesting detail, it has a removable cover so that the screen can be mounted
Christian: on an overhead projector. And I think nothing says more "hey, I'm from the 90s" like "hey,
Christian: I'm using an overhead projector, right?
Thomas: Oh, yeah.
Christian: So I never saw a machine like that in person by now. I know that some other vendors like Siemens
Christian: also produced machines that are overhead projector focused in the 90s. And I was extremely lucky to
Christian: get also that one. That's a very niche device, I would say, also quite hard to get. The most
Christian: hardware details are unknown to me by this point, because I did manage to get mine running though.
Christian: I think it could be in Pentium One or in 486 machine. I also have the power supply for that
Christian: machine, but I can also turn it on, but I hear fans spinning and the hard drive spinning up, but
Christian: nothing that's shown on the screen, so maybe I need to have a look at it.
Christian: Maybe some battery is just broken or something like that.
Thomas: Yeah.
Thomas: The 755 era is very persnickety.
Thomas: I bought two, yes, of 755s.
Christian: Oh really?
Thomas: One was just a regular one and one I actually thought was a CDV.
Thomas: And I was heartbroken to get it.
Thomas: And the badge was correct, but somebody at some point had swapped out the whole top case.
Christian: Oh.
Thomas: So the top case was from a regular 755 and not in fact the one where the panel comes off the back and you can lay it down.
Thomas: And I was very bummed out that it was not that one because I was like, wow, this is a rare model.
Thomas: I have an overhead projector that I could demo this with.
Thomas: Like I could, I was ready.
Thomas: But yeah, it turned out that at some point it was delivered to an IBM repair center and they didn't replace the top case with a CDV case.
Thomas: It was just a regular case.
Christian: What a bummer.
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: Really hope that you'll find one of those machines at some time.
Thomas: Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
Thomas: That's going to be a hard one.
Christian: Definitely, and I'm really really lucky because I know somebody who also collects retro hardware,
Christian: so greetings to Jan Lukas at that point, and he meets a lot of people that also collect
Christian: hardware or he finds hardware at some very strange places. I don't know exactly how he managed to do so.
Christian: And because he's not collecting IBM stuff, whenever he sees one of those fancy machines,
Christian: he gives me a call. Hey, Christian, I have a 701C right here. Do you want me to pick it up for you?
Christian: And the answer always is yes, please go ahead. Tell me your price. Yeah, so thanks a lot for that,
Christian: because otherwise, I think I wouldn't have the chance to get one of those machines, to be honest.
Christian: Yeah, and I think you also had a conversation with Dr. Ted Salker, because one of those CTV machines, right?
Thomas: yes so when i spoke to him a while ago now he talked to me about how he was one of the people
Thomas: that helped build that thing. And he understood the technology on how the screen was actually
Thomas: built and how IBM was manufacturing these machines. And he was like, you know, all I have to do is just
Thomas: take these back pieces off. And he's such a tinkerer, even to this day, that he bought these
Thomas: 755s and he pulled them apart and he was able to find that transparent piece that he was able to
Thomas: put on an overhead projector and IBM obviously saw that loved it and then produced it for a couple of
Thomas: years and it was probably meeting a need that wasn't quite there but it was still really really cool
Thomas: and that was a time I think in IBM's history where they were still experimenting with weird
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: and
Thomas: that went away in the later years
Thomas: but that's a weird time
Thomas: at IBM
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: Yeah, I also think about the transnode, which was also one of those weird experiments.
Christian: Very, very unique.
Christian: And I mean, they even made a left-handed version for an even more unique audience.
Thomas: mm-hmm
Christian: So tinkering was quite important to IBM back then.
Thomas: yeah the trans note
Thomas: has a whole, whole history,
Thomas: but we'll save that for another day.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: Let's jump to some of the news.
Christian: So, while we are recording this, CES in Las Vegas just took place.
Christian: Have you ever been there?
Thomas: Not in person.
Thomas: I have media credentials to go every year,
Thomas: but getting down to the United States
Thomas: sometimes is a bit tricky,
Thomas: And it's also something that I'd have to take off time from work to do, which isn't impossible.
Thomas: But I would need to go down there for a real good reason.
Thomas: So one day I hope to make it, but I haven't made it in person yet.
Christian: Same for me. So I just follow the news and there were two ThinkPad related news. Also Intel announced their new processors, but I think I will keep that for a future episode because not all the details are available in that level that I would like to discuss it.
Christian: But Lenovo announced that they are going to release a ThinkPad X9 15p Aura edition.
Christian: So it's a new member of the X9 family that was discussed very emotionally last year, I would say, to put it in that way.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: And the new model is going to aim at MacBook Pro users.
Christian: So this is going to be a performance machine, as we can guess from the P and 15p, like for previous performance machines.
Christian: So it's an X9 machine for power users, I would say.
Christian: While the normal X9 variants are aiming at MacBook Air users, this is going to be for the professionals.
Christian: Maybe some hardware details.
Christian: We're going to see a 15.3-inch 2.8K OLED display with whopping 1000 nits HDR peak brightness.
Christian: That's like a lot, I would say.
Thomas: Yeah, that's high.
Christian: That's really, really high.
Christian: I think that's maybe one of the brightest displays we ever see in a ThinkPad.
Christian: I think there was some T15G model with 1200 nits or so, but it's rather the exception
Christian: than the rule, I would say, to have that much brightness.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: Of course, we're going to have a 10 megapixel webcam and up to the Intel Core Ultra X9 Series
Christian: 3 CPU, the new ones that have just been released.
Christian: We have solid memory up to 64 gigabytes DDR5 and a whopping 88 watt-hours battery.
Christian: Also we have Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Thunderbolt, USB-A, HDMI, card reader and audio in and out.
Christian: So I would say normal specs these days.
Christian: But what really caught my attention is that this model is going to have six speakers and two microphones.
Christian: And that's very unusual for ThinkPad, I would say.
Thomas: yeah thinkpads are not held up in high regard for their audio capability like they've gotten a lot
Thomas: better uh when they started making upward firing speakers and thin chassis but that's like the one
Thomas: thing that most enthusiasts will kind of agree on is you don't really buy a thinkpad for its audio
Thomas: system. So we'll see.
Christian: definitely i think that's also quite hard to compete up against apple devices at that point
Christian: because they really have very good speakers and good microphones.
Christian: And I have a very old MacBook Pro from 10 years ago
Christian: that still has better sound than my current daily driver.
Christian: So I think it's a different focus on your audience.
Christian: So it's hard to compare those two devices.
Christian: So any other details?
Christian: We have a fingerprint on the power button.
Christian: We have a webcam shutter for privacy.
Christian: And the weight is just 1.5 kilograms.
Christian: That sounds interesting.
Christian: maybe we can talk a little bit about
Christian: what's your point on the X9
Christian: series that's the latest
Christian: member of the ThinkPad family
Thomas: Well, I think I won't try to remember the person's name, but it came out last year that the reason that they called it the X9 is because it is the furthest away from the X1.
Christian: hmm
Thomas: And it's like, you know what?
Thomas: I think that that is an okay approach to take
Thomas: because you're not trying to say
Thomas: that this is like every other ThinkPad
Christian: hmm
Thomas: because it isn't.
Thomas: There's some huge departures from design language
Thomas: that I think scared a lot of traditional fans
Thomas: because the track point is missing,
Thomas: the colors it was offered in.
Thomas: It didn't look necessarily like a traditional ThinkPad would that, you know, Richard Sapper helped design.
Thomas: It didn't have that sleek, black, mysterious box look.
Thomas: I still wonder a bit why it was called a ThinkPad.
Thomas: Like, to me, it's a very nice ThinkBook.
Christian: Hmm.
Thomas: But I also understand that the ThinkBook kind of fits in a certain price bracket that a premium ThinkPad may not.
Thomas: So we will see how long they produce the X9 for and how well it does because they've produced the Z13 and Z15.
Thomas: I can't remember, but when they revitalized the Z series, that kind of came and went.
Thomas: I'm curious to see if the X9 will stay for the long haul in the lineup.
Thomas: But I don't, I didn't panic as much as some people did at CES last year when that thing came out.
Thomas: And even when they made the white version and people were talking about, oh, you know, Thinkpads are now white.
Thomas: And it's like, well, actually, Thinkpads have been, yeah, they always, they were at the beginning.
Christian: Always have been.
Thomas: And that was a whole problem.
Thomas: And like, I remember, you know, talking to Tom Hardy about that very issue with the DIN
Thomas: standards over in Germany and how that was, you know, controlling the industry of what
Thomas: colors PCs could be.
Thomas: But yeah, you know, experiment, go play.
Thomas: It wouldn't be what I would have called it, but I don't make those decisions.
Thomas: And if it gets more people looking at the ThinkPad line, I guess that's not a bad thing.
Christian: I think so as well. So of course, I would rather choose to have a ThinkPad with the trackpoint.
Christian: But from a business perspective, I mean, have a look at how IT departments work these days or
Thomas: Oh yeah.
Christian: big companies work these days. You have normal corporate workers with their business machines,
Christian: let it be HP, Dell, Lenovo, whatever. And you have a lot of people that are using MacBooks these days
Christian: for developing purposes, for creative stuff.
Christian: And of course, this is an opportunity to make another device
Christian: that would fit in their needs.
Christian: And have a ThinkPad that's more looks like a MacBook
Christian: and is more stylish, has better sound.
Christian: Why not?
Christian: So I can see why they decided to play with that kind of devices.
Christian: And I also like to hear that they still keep up the track point.
Christian: So they say that very loud and very clearly that the track point is going to stay.
Christian: And this is just for the people that maybe just started working after their university
Christian: and they never saw an old ThinkPad because they are 20 years old.
Christian: And when they were born, they weren't able to use old ThinkPads.
Christian: So they do not know these kind of devices.
Christian: And you can approach these customers easily if you have a device that looks like a MacBook.
Christian: So, why not?
Christian: So the second news is about the X1 Carbon Gen 14, the very latest variant of that series,
Christian: with better repairability.
Christian: So maybe let's focus on what the X1 Carbon looked like the last couple of years.
Christian: So beginning, ever since the X1 Carbon Gen 2, the mainboard was mounted directly against
Christian: the keyboard frame.
Christian: So a lot of dismantling was required in order if you wanted to replace the keyboard.
Christian: It was possible, but it was really painful, I would say.
Christian: And now they came up with a new design they named the Space Frame.
Christian: And this means that the keyboard frame is now separated from the main structure frame.
Christian: And this is going to assist you because it's easier and faster to replace.
Christian: So this looks basically interesting, I would say.
Christian: Do you have any opinions on that?
Thomas: I do.
Thomas: It is, to me, a return to form a bit.
Thomas: If you think about when the magnesium roll cage was first added to ThinkPad design,
Thomas: that is very similar to what they're doing here.
Thomas: But what it really reminds me of, and I have it here for demonstration purposes, is a T430U.
Christian: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: Because the T430U was a one-off model that had essentially a screwless entry on the bottom.
Thomas: And if you open that up and take a look at the inside of the device,
Thomas: you can see that there are components that are available on this side.
Thomas: And if you take out the keyboard, there are components available on the other side.
Thomas: So the space frame, I think, is a bit of a return to form rather than a brand new idea.
Thomas: They might be doing it for brand new reasons, though.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: I think that would probably be the key difference there.
Christian: That's interesting.
Christian: We're going to put a link to the T430U in the show notes and of course a picture of yours,
Christian: because it looks really interesting.
Christian: I never saw the T430U from the back because I do not have one in my collection.
Christian: And it's considered one of the very first Ultrabooks of the ThinkPad lineup,
Christian: before it was officially named Ultrabook, because this is an Intel trademark as far as I remember.
Thomas: Yeah, it's very much a one-off experimental machine
Thomas: that they didn't really keep any design cues of in later models.
Thomas: However, when we look at that space frame idea,
Thomas: I think that they might have gone back into their records
Thomas: as well as looked around at what other people were doing.
Thomas: A bit of column A, a bit of column B.
Thomas: I wouldn't call it a copy of, say, like a framework or anything.
Thomas: It's still very different, but you can definitely tell
Thomas: that there are a few design cues that they looked around and said,
Thomas: How can, because ultimately they need to make it profitable.
Thomas: And adding something that is repairable usually means you're adding components that drive up
Thomas: the cost of a machine.
Thomas: So how can you reduce cost or increase value in other areas?
Thomas: So when they're talking about how much, how many watts they can get a CPU to push in that
Thomas: thin chassis, that's probably the bigger thing that helped them make that decision, not necessarily
Thomas: the repairability because like well if we can get the airflow in there increase the performance and
Christian: Hmm.
Thomas: say that we can push this chip harder and faster than the other guy we actually have a product that
Thomas: we can claim has more value because it does and then help maybe hide some of that repairability
Thomas: cost because screw posts and screws they take up room they add manufacturing time like it all it
Thomas: all adds up, especially when you're producing, you know, hundreds of thousands of machines.
Christian: Definitely. And thermals is a very good reason to do this kind of refresh, because this is also something that they mentioned specifically, that cooling is now able to cool up to 30 watts of thermal design power. Previously, JOS has been 20 watts.
Christian: And this is required because the G14 also now comes with Intel's latest Panther Lake CPU, so the Core Ultra 300H series, aka Core Ultra X7.
Christian: They are really into finding new fancy names, aren't they? It's so hard to keep up with that.
Thomas: I, you know, speaking of keeping up and fancy names,
Thomas: I do hope that they keep the naming nomenclature
Thomas: for the Gen 14 better than they did the Gen 13.
Thomas: Because the Gen 13 came with so many different CPU configurations.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: It was very, very frustrating.
Thomas: Notebook Check did a great article on it.
Thomas: and even when I was looking to be like
Thomas: do I want to buy a Gen 13
Thomas: it was a minefield of different
Thomas: CPU configurations even though they were
Thomas: all called the same thing
Thomas: very frustrating so hopefully
Thomas: they tidy that up
Christian: It's really hard to get into the details because sometimes you see G13s with very good pricing
Christian: and then you have a look at the hardware specs and then you see, ah, okay, I see, that's
Christian: exactly the CPU generation I do not want to have.
Christian: There are big differences between the two variants that Intel offered.
Thomas: mm-hmm
Christian: So the G14 also brings up to 64 GB of soldered DDR5 memory.
Christian: We have the keyboard that has been slightly updated.
Christian: And speaking of repairability, I think this relates to the fact that the USB-C ports are
Christian: now modular.
Christian: So they have a small daughterboard and that daughterboard can be replaced.
Christian: I think they did that last year on one of the P models and they said that they are going
Christian: to do this for new models as well.
Christian: The G14 X1 Carbon is the very first one in this year that also gets that update.
Christian: So this is quite good.
Christian: The weight is still less than 1kg and that's not very much.
Christian: That's very much like the X1 Nano, which was the slimmest and the lightest ThinkPad
Christian: they made in the last couple of years.
Christian: Very interesting.
Christian: Last detail: We still have a 40-inch display that could be the 2.8K OLED variant or the Full
Christian: HD display with a 10 megapixel web camera. One of those machines appearing to you.
Thomas: I will say it does.
Thomas: So I'm still using my X1 Nano Gen 1
Thomas: even to this very day,
Thomas: although it is starting to slow down
Thomas: with 16 gigabytes of RAM,
Thomas: and of course it's soldered,
Thomas: and that was the max configuration
Thomas: I think you could get for it at the time.
Thomas: So the idea that I could get a X1 Carbon
Thomas: that is the same weight,
Thomas: because let me tell you,
Thomas: the weight on that machine is phenomenal
Thomas: in terms of its usability.
Thomas: There is no place that you couldn't take it, that you couldn't take a sheet of full-scap paper.
Thomas: This is probably the first machine since then that has actually got my interest as a possible replacement.
Christian: Yeah, the X1 Nano is a lovely machine.
Christian: I would love to get one of those as well.
Christian: But it's not that easy to get.
Christian: It's at fair prices in use conditions.
Christian: I mean, it's way too young to be put in a museum, right?
Christian: So.
Thomas: Uh, perhaps not, but they also don't make them anymore, which I can understand why I suppose, because it's like, well, the, the X1 carbon has kind of become the nano. So unless you make a nano nano, like, what are you going to do? So we'll see.
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: Yeah, right.
Christian: And I mean, it's a 13-inch display,
Christian: and the X1 Carbon has a 14-inch display.
Christian: So it's not a huge difference that it would make sense to have two dedicated machines.
Christian: If the XN1 Nano would have been a 10 or 12-inch display, okay, then it would have made sense.
Christian: But nobody uses those tiny machines these days anymore, right?
Christian: So 10 or 12-inch displays are kind of worn out, I would say.
Thomas: No, I would agree with you on that.
Thomas: And the footprint of a old 13, old 14 inch machine can now fit into a old 13 inch machine.
Thomas: Like the amount that they're able to shrink down a device over the decades is impressive.
Thomas: So it's no longer your display is this many inches.
Thomas: Therefore, your machine is going to be this big.
Thomas: Like I had a Gen 12 X1 Carbon that I was quite surprised how close it was in size to my X1 Nano.
Thomas: I was like, oh, it's going to be like a whole inch bigger.
Thomas: And it's like, ah, it actually wasn't.
Christian: Yeah, it's not a big difference.
Christian: So, Thomas, let's talk a bit about yourself.
Christian: So, I'm very, very happy that we managed to do this conversation today.
Christian: But let's assume some of our listeners never heard about you and Laptop Retrospective.
Thomas: Okay.
Christian: Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Christian: What are you known for?
Christian: What's your connection with ThinkPads?
Thomas: okay um so in 2017 i had some free time and like a person with free time uh you usually find ways
Thomas: to keep yourself busy and i wanted to do a couple of things the first thing that i wanted to do is i
Thomas: wanted to start messing around with linux so i read online and this is in 2017 and everybody
Thomas: was saying you need to get an old ThinkPad and to start with Linux like you know spend a modest
Thomas: amount of money go get a ThinkPad and use that as your experiment or your experimentation machine
Thomas: so that's what I did I went to a used computer shop that refurbished stuff and they have this
Thomas: ThinkPad x220 and I was like this thing is like it's so cool it's so small it's sleek it's black
Thomas: It's got all the ports.
Thomas: And full disclosure, for work, I was using a MacBook Retina.
Thomas: And that continued until that machine was no longer of any value to me.
Thomas: And then I switched back to Windows.
Thomas: But that was my first introduction to both Thinkpads and Linux was that X220.
Thomas: And at that time, at least where I am, people didn't know about Linux locally.
Thomas: Like the people I talked to don't know about it.
Thomas: The circles that I ran in weren't really talking about it.
Thomas: And I would show them this machine and it would be faster than their Windows laptop that they had spent like 90% more money than I did.
Thomas: I think I bought that X220 for like $200 Canadian dollars in 2017.
Thomas: And that did a couple things.
Thomas: Either frustrated them, confused them, or had them asking me where do I get one.
Thomas: So that started a bit of a route of documentation because I realized that there wasn't a lot of content out there that was accessible to the casual individual.
Thomas: The content that was being produced at the time, I felt was either like really, really specialized and didn't have a low bar of entry or was, I'm going to use the word overproduced.
Thomas: It was very much a show and it was very commercialized.
Thomas: There was like product placements.
Thomas: There was a lot of stuff.
Thomas: And I'm like, but what if somebody just talked about the machine and that was it?
Thomas: Like, it would not be super entertaining necessarily, but it would be very informative.
Thomas: People would get what they need and they could go about their business.
Thomas: And that's kind of where things would start for the channel and both my journey with ThinkPad.
Thomas: And I would help people that I know acquire these machines.
Thomas: I'd set them up on Linux and they would be very happy with it. And I would produce videos on the
Thomas: machines that I would purchase for people before I gave them to them just to document what I was
Thomas: doing. I'd put it out there. And anytime that I took apart a laptop, now I was putting it underneath
Thomas: a camera and filming it and just putting it online for people to watch. And that seems to have been,
Thomas: I'll say, you know, modestly successful for a person that's not looking to make a career out of this or do it full time or rely on YouTube ad revenue.
Thomas: And to answer your second question, kind of how things really got started with ThinkPad beyond the X220, is it was very clear that people love ThinkPads on the Internet.
Thomas: I know that's a huge shock for your listeners that people like ThinkPads on the Internet.
Thomas: so i started to uh seek out well what are the cool thinkpads because i am coming to the game late
Thomas: ladies and gentlemen so late in terms of like the the history and all of the things that i missed
Thomas: uh in 2017 like that's only 10 that's not even 10 years yet of uh of coverage and i was just
Thomas: consuming huge amounts of information about ThinkPad because like here is a brand that has
Thomas: lasted longer than any other portable computer brand to date like no one has lasted longer
Thomas: and that not only that did the machines fascinate me but the stories behind the people that came up
Thomas: with this idea the fact that this idea was able to persist and go through all of these changes
Thomas: and still look the same and give the same nostalgic experience.
Thomas: So I was filming for a while, maybe about a year and a bit, all these different machines.
Thomas: And I got in touch.
Thomas: Well, I saw this article.
Thomas: It was like the top 10 ThinkPads.
Thomas: And there's loads of articles out there like this.
Thomas: And I went through the list and I'm like looking for things that I might be able to
Thomas: acquire that were not super expensive that I could film. And I'd be like, oh, this would be
Thomas: probably really interesting. Like, I didn't know enough at the time to determine for myself what
Thomas: was interesting. I was kind of relying on all of that community history that came before.
Thomas: And I found out about this X300 machine. And then I found out that there was a book
Thomas: that has essentially been written on its entire development. And I was like, well,
Thomas: this is obviously something I have to talk about. And I posted on Twitter about the book and the work
Thomas: that I was looking into. And by chance, that is where David Hill reached out and said, hey,
Thomas: that's a ThinkPad book, but have you seen these ThinkPad books? And they were his design,
Thomas: spirit, and essence books. And I'm like, no, where do I get them? And he's like, well,
Thomas: you don't because they're not like commercially available and then in a private message like
Thomas: would you like me to send you some and i'm like yes yes i would very much like you to send me them
Christian: Oh, wow.
Thomas: um so yeah it's these two here so the large one was produced for the 20th anniversary when they
Thomas: had the exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. So that's, it's very, very similar to the book that
Thomas: you would see, that you can find online very easily, which is the 25th anniversary edition.
Thomas: And I can leave a link for where your viewers can see it. But this one was only included in the
Thomas: ThinkPad 25th anniversary edition at the T25. And he sent me both of these books, which was
Christian: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: exceptionally kind of him. And we were still talking afterward. And I said, and this is just where you
Thomas: ask the question, like you have, like, I know who I'm talking to. I know how important they are to
Thomas: ThinkPad history, but it's the question you don't ask is the one that's never answered. And I said,
Thomas: hey, would you be willing to talk about the X300
Thomas: and maybe we could like record something?
Thomas: And he was like, yeah, I'd love to.
Thomas: And the rest is history.
Christian: Wow, that's just awesome.
Christian: And I mean, it really speaks for itself that they are so interested in sharing their thoughts.
Christian: So they're interested in the topic and they really like to talk about the topic that drives them.
Christian: And I think people always think I do not need to try to get in contact with that person and try to get arranged an interview because I will be ghosted.
Christian: Quite often, people really love talking about those topics and are up to that kind of conversation.
Christian: But I did know that he reached out to you on Twitter.
Christian: That's a fascinating story.
Thomas: yeah he saw the the steve ham book um this one right here and as you can see it's it's very well
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: read um and we'll probably mention this a little later but if you are a person that either loves
Thomas: Thinkpads or loves computers and you don't have this book, then your collection is incomplete.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: And I tried to get this one for my collection as well.
Christian: I think that's the way how we got more in touch with each other
Christian: because I commented some of your Mastermind posts
Christian: and I was looking for some books
Christian: and I posted one of the ThinkPad books
Christian: that I was able to get
Christian: and then you commented on it,
Christian: hey, you need to get these and that ones as well.
Christian: So that one is still missing in my collection.
Thomas: It's a must have.
Thomas: Like Steve, Steve Hamm interviewed so many people that are no longer with us.
Thomas: And it's, it's a, probably one of the better comprehensive pieces of just notebook and laptop
Thomas: history, not only, you know, IBM and Lenovo history and ThinkPad history.
Thomas: It covers all of those beautifully, but we'll get to that topic later.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: Awesome.
Christian: So this also answers my next question, how you managed to interview all those important people because you spoke to David Hill and to other persons as well.
Christian: So I assume you just wrote them on mail and said, hey, I did an interview with David Hill.
Christian: Why don't we go ahead and also do a recording?
Thomas: David has also been
Thomas: very gracious
Thomas: with his connections
Thomas: to arrange
Thomas: some of those interviews
Thomas: I really do need
Thomas: to give credit
Thomas: where credit is due. He's been exceptionally kind and generous with sharing his connections as well.
Thomas: So I was able to connect with Tom Hardy, who was like one of the first industrial designers
Thomas: working on ThinkPad with Richard Sapper and Tom Takash, the people that were there at the very,
Thomas: very, very beginning. That was a phenomenal conversation. He helped me connect with
Thomas: George Caritas, Dr. John Caritas's brother, and we talked about John's journey, which is still one
Thomas: of my favorite interviews. It was just beautiful. This is the only word I can use for it. Anything
Thomas: else undersells it. And the recent interview that we just did with David Cherbuck is another example
Thomas: of David graciously using his connections to kind of help tell all of these stories that might
Thomas: otherwise be lost. And I think they help inform a much more comprehensive and well-rounded and
Thomas: informed history around a topic that a lot of people love.
Christian: definitely and i think also your your uh listeners i i would say all the people that subscribe your
Christian: YouTube channel are of the same opinion because 30k people watch your content and I also had a
Christian: look at some of your videos because they are just an awesome source for researchers so thanks a lot
Christian: for all the work that you did and all the interviews they are so valuable totally makes
Christian: make sense to have them online so maybe speaking of your collection I I try to find out on your
Christian: website how many machines you have in your collection and
Thomas: oh
Christian: whether you have any favorites, but I couldn't get an answer.
Thomas: so the the number in the collection i have not counted not that i'm afraid to it's not like a
Thomas: it's not an obsessive collection because there are some machines that are i will refer to them
Thomas: is iterative. They're not like tent poles of ThinkPad history. So I would say that it's a
Thomas: collection of probably maybe 25 machines. And yeah, I try to go after the ones that
Thomas: are significant historically, or I find them personally interesting. And of course,
Thomas: the ones that I can literally just afford to acquire and showcase to the world. There are
Thomas: some machines I know I will never get in my collection because the cost is a barrier. You
Thomas: know, I get a small amount of ad revenue from YouTube, and then that goes right back into
Thomas: the acquisition of machines and filming equipment. So it's its own self-contained budget. In terms
Thomas: of favorites like the ones that i like go down into the kind of my my little museum as it were
Thomas: and mess around with let's see if i can narrow it down for you i mean one of the obvious answers
Thomas: we'll talk about later is the x300 that is probably one of the most if not the most important
Thomas: thinkpad that was ever built and that's a very controversial thing to say i know um but if you
Thomas: look at everything that came after, it's quite clear that that was a very key moment. So the X300
Thomas: is important. I do have a 701C and that machine obviously captures the imagination of everybody.
Thomas: When people have a list of really cool ThinkPads, that one is always on there. They made the model
Thomas: kit for it on the 10th anniversary. It has that mystique and wonder about it. Practical,
Thomas: practicality is an entirely other matter because it is not very practical and it's a there's a bit
Thomas: of tragedy there but it captures the imagination and it's a lot of fun to to mess about with
Thomas: and obviously there's kind of a personal connection being able to talk to George about his brother and
Thomas: get a better understanding of who John was as a person adds adds a lot to that machine that other
Thomas: people have not had the opportunity to add. And that makes it special to me. There is a machine
Thomas: that I got recently that it's just the pinnacle of weird. And it's that ThinkPad with the bubble
Thomas: jet printer built into it. That was, yeah, yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. Like, why would you do that?
Christian: Oh, awesome.
Thomas: And of course, it's not an operational condition and it needs so much work that it's probably beyond my skill set to do.
Thomas: But it really highlights to me just how far in those early days in the mid to early 90s where anything went in the notebook industry.
Thomas: Like we just hadn't figured it out that no, the notebook needs to be this and for people to actually want to use it.
Thomas: Like, no, we're going to make projector screens.
Thomas: We're going to make printers go inside of it.
Thomas: We're going to make the keyboard expand.
Thomas: We're going to have straps so you can carry it around on your chest.
Thomas: It just represents to me that, you know, that top of the mountain.
Thomas: Let's just, let's just do it.
Thomas: So that to me is pretty fun.
Christian: Lovely.
Christian: it's the 550bbj if i remember correctly so the first one that's ridiculously hard to to get and
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: that's a very interesting machine so congratulations you managed to get one
Christian: really looking forward to your video on that one
Thomas: Yeah, I did a top five video on Thinkpads I haven't properly filmed yet.
Thomas: And I did feature it in that one because it's like, I don't know if I'm ever going to get the chance to feature this.
Thomas: I could keep going, but there's one more just for the sake of time that I'll pull out.
Thomas: And it's not a ThinkPad.
Thomas: It's the Lenovo Skylight.
Christian: Oh, yeah.
Thomas: The story behind the Lenovo Skylight is one of brilliance, fun, little bit of tragedy because it never got built.
Thomas: And that thing is just gorgeous.
Thomas: It's just sleek and red.
Thomas: And it's where we saw what would eventually become the new ThinkPad keyboard.
Thomas: Like that's where that whole design of the scooped chiclet style keys started with.
Thomas: And that was that collaborative effort between Richard Sapper and David Hill and his team.
Thomas: The reason that I hold it out, not only because of that, but because of the provenance of the machine.
Thomas: It's the only machine that I own that was never released.
Thomas: It's got that mystique around it.
Thomas: I've got a really good idea where it came from as well.
Thomas: And I know that there's a pretty direct connection between where it came from and the development team that worked on it.
Thomas: So that's really cool.
Thomas: And yeah, it's just, it's a look into what if or what could have been that wasn't. And for me, that kind of makes it stand out as a, as a very special machine.
Christian: It is definitely.
Christian: I never heard about that one before I saw your video on that, so we're going to link
Christian: that.
Christian: You did a very interesting video about that machine, and it's a real time capsule.
Christian: could have been that that wasn't. That's a nice way to phrase that machine.
Christian: So, speaking of all those fancy machines in your collection, what's your daily
Christian: driver? Do you have any machine that you use on a daily basis?
Thomas: so the daily driver is the lenovo thinkpad x1 nano gen 1 and i i went through so much
Thomas: deliberation. So to give you a very quick, speedy overview of the laptops that I have owned,
Thomas: because I couldn't afford a laptop before I went to university. So it's actually a very short list
Thomas: of laptops that I have used for work and that sort of thing. So I started with a Toshiba 810
Thomas: satellite Pentium 4 laptop that was open box. Everything about that thing was mediocre.
Thomas: And the battery life was atrocious.
Thomas: And then the netbook came on the scene.
Thomas: And then I bought an Acer Aspire 1 A101 or something netbook.
Thomas: And I was just fascinated that, one, this is a real laptop that's running a real version of Windows.
Thomas: And two, this 10-inch machine fits on the lecture desk at my university.
Thomas: And I have this big honking battery that it lasts all day.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: I'm like, this is the future.
Thomas: So like when people, you know, dump on the netbook, like these things were garbage.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: Why did we build them?
Thomas: And it's like, it's okay.
Thomas: It wasn't for you, but I love that thing to death.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Thomas: And it sold me on small machines.
Thomas: And then after that, it was a HP TouchSmart TM2, which didn't stick around for very long because I did buy it new and it had an anemic i3 processor.
Thomas: And then I went to a MacBook Pro Retina because they had time capsule technology.
Thomas: And I had my cat walked across my keyboard one day and I lost a week's worth of work.
Thomas: And yeah, Mac at the time, to my knowledge, had the best backup support system that was built into the OS.
Thomas: And then after that, I went back to Windows with the Surface Book 2, which I still use on the desk.
Thomas: I'm actually on it right now.
Thomas: And that's because it is the best laptop that I have in terms of web camera.
Thomas: It has a very, very good web camera.
Thomas: certainly better than the 720p one that's in the X1 Nano, because webcams weren't important to
Thomas: most people before COVID, and then COVID changed that. So yeah, and then the X1 Nano came out at a
Thomas: time where I was looking to change to a ThinkPad, because the purchase of the Surface Book 2 and the
Thomas: beginning of my journey researching and documenting ThinkPad were kind of happening at the same time.
Thomas: And it's like, well, my next computer is going to be a ThinkPad, but which one? So I went through
Thomas: looking at like the T14 at the time, or the X13 at the time, or the T14S. And I researched those
Thomas: into the ground because the differences were you know very nuanced and then they released the x1
Thomas: nano gen 1 and it's like here's a a laptop that has a you know 2 2.8 k color 100 color accurate
Thomas: screen which i wanted it was small and the thing was less than a kilogram and the only detractor
Thomas: that I had at the time was like, oh, it's only got two USB C ports and a headphone jack.
Thomas: Golly, that's going to be hard.
Thomas: And then it wasn't.
Thomas: It just wasn't.
Thomas: The whole issue of dongle life has never been a barrier.
Thomas: And we've gotten better at building dongles.
Thomas: So that issue just went away entirely.
Thomas: And it wasn't until last year that I've even started looking at a replacement for it.
Christian: Very good, very good.
Christian: I can see myself in some of the things that you just said, because I was also a big fan
Christian: of the netbook devices that were out there.
Christian: I bought one of the very first ones, the Asus EPC-701G.
Christian: That's just a 7-inch display machine, and I also, because of this machine,
Christian: I also fell in love with small machines.
Christian: I bought myself a Toshiba Libretto 100 CT
Christian: that I still have in my collection.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: And yeah, those tiny machines
Christian: have a very special place in my heart.
Christian: So I can relate to that one.
Christian: So maybe just five short questions
Christian: to get to know you even better.
Christian: So for our listeners,
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: they are not part of the shared document
Christian: that Thomas and I are having a look at it.
Christian: So he's not prepared about the things that I'm going to ask right now.
Thomas: Yep, I have not seen these questions.
Thomas: Let's go.
Christian: Start with the easy one.
Christian: Would you prefer IBM or Lenovo Thinkpads?
Christian: What's your cup of tea?
Thomas: oh you said you're starting with the easy one okay i have an answer for this and it might shock a
Thomas: couple people i do prefer lenovo and the reason i say that is a simple one ibm had like ibm built
Christian: Okay.
Thomas: that brand there is no denying that IBM built that brand they were not the best stewards of that
Thomas: brand and what I am like this is just what I have gathered from talking to people and looking at
Thomas: probably over a hundred thinkpads and it is toward the end like I would say after the year 2000
Thomas: when they're starting to murmur internally about selling the PC business,
Thomas: innovation died.
Thomas: The quality started to drop.
Thomas: There were heavy cost-cutting restrictions.
Thomas: And many people that I've talked to simply were talking about
Thomas: IBM turning off the hot water in the shower.
Thomas: Like the, and I know that that's a very unpopular thing to say for a lot of diehard IBM enthusiasts.
Thomas: But if you look at some of the machines that were being built, especially toward the end of IBM's tenure with the brand, they had a lot of quality control issues.
Thomas: They were, they weren't even building their own machines at that point.
Thomas: They were outsourcing to different companies like Acer.
Thomas: Lenovo was already a manufacturer.
Thomas: LG was building machines.
Thomas: the brand was there, but I think the quality that a lot of people associate with
Thomas: some of the original machines was starting to go away. So if you were to say to me, I could have
Thomas: a modern IBM ThinkPad and a Lenovo ThinkPad, again, even though Lenovo has done a lot of
Thomas: things that the enthusiast community has struggled with, I think overall that they would
Thomas: they were the better stewards of the brand.
Christian: That's a good answer.
Thomas: Yeah, and it's one that I have to usually explain to people
Thomas: because they have in their mind the nostalgia of IBM
Thomas: being the original company that built that brand,
Thomas: and that is absolutely true.
Thomas: They did so much cool stuff.
Thomas: They laid the groundwork.
Thomas: They made the design.
Thomas: But all of those people, like the majority of them,
Thomas: were still there when Lenovo picked it up
Thomas: and they gave them a budget.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: They gave them the opportunity to continue to innovate
Thomas: rather than be like, oh, this is just good enough.
Thomas: Oh, we can save some money cutting the costs here.
Thomas: We can make these plastics cheaper.
Thomas: We can make the ThinkLight amber because it's cheaper.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: Like the fact that those conversations are happening
Thomas: is not healthy.
Thomas: And the fact that they were about to give it,
Thomas: Like it was a toss up, a two way toss up between Lenovo buying it and this finance group in the United States buying the brand.
Thomas: Like that's how close we were to probably losing ThinkPad.
Thomas: And it's all in Steve Hamm's book.
Thomas: It's a must read.
Thomas: If my answer to that question makes you upset, you need to go read Steve Hamm's book.
Christian: read the book
Christian: yeah definitely and i i mean i also have this kind of conversation with other people
Christian: and some people also say ibm has been the better vendor and then when you go into the details then
Christian: it quickly comes out that those people that say these things mostly relate to IBM in terms of
Christian: Thinkpads because of machines like the 760 series about the 701 series but they do not think about
Christian: that for example we had the X20 series that had serious problems with main boards just dying
Christian: or maybe the T20 that had a lot of internal problems in the beginning and later revisions
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: fix that. That's something that not everybody is talking about or maybe just forgot about
Christian: in all those years. So I think your answer totally makes sense. So maybe now an easier one. What's
Christian: your pick for the operating system on your ThinkPads, Windows or Linux? Because you mentioned you
Christian: are also trying to start using Linux in 2017.
Thomas: so because of like and i don't know if this is true for everybody else so if if you're listening
Thomas: to this podcast or you're watching this on youtube i would love to hear your your rationale
Thomas: and the comments for this um i run both on a variety of different devices the generally speaking
Thomas: if it's eighth generation intel or older i'm throwing linux on it in terms of performance
Thomas: security, all of those good reasons and compatibility, because I want a modern operating
Thomas: system that's safe to take online that I can still do work on. If it's newer than eighth
Thomas: generation Intel, and if it has more than 16 gigabytes of RAM, that is another criteria I have.
Thomas: Generally, my machines are running Windows, and that is a limitation of the environments that I
Thomas: have to interact with. So I interact with networks and other people where I need access to either
Thomas: Windows network security protocols, or I need access to specific pieces of software that yes,
Thomas: I can emulate on Linux, but I just don't have the time to have those systems like I won't snap
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: that's a terrible thing to do on a on a podcast but like like that like i just want things to run
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: uh immediately out of the box without the the need to tweak and i get the sense that those people that
Thomas: are that are running linux on really modern hardware they're either in an ecosystem that
Thomas: allows it or they're really running their own ecosystem where they don't really need to worry
Thomas: about the others that they're interacting with.
Thomas: But like I love MX Linux for like older hardware,
Thomas: the XFCE edition.
Thomas: I love Mint for that in-between
Thomas: where you've got enough RAM to run that Cinnamon
Thomas: desktop or operating system.
Thomas: I know that Windows 11 gets a lot of flack
Thomas: for the bloatware and there are ways
Thomas: that you can reduce that down.
Thomas: But I think we'll also recognize that
Thomas: because of the ubiquity of windows that it becomes a necessary evil so it still runs on my
Thomas: x1 nano and it will probably run on the next machine i buy
Christian: relate to that. It always depends on the kind of applications you need to use for your job and for
Christian: the things that you need to do, which makes me really grateful that I can choose the utilities
Christian: I want to use in my workplace, but that's rather an exception than a rule. So it's kind of personal
Christian: freedom that I'm very grateful for.
Thomas: yeah and i think the other thing too just to to finish that and i've gotten much better at doing
Thomas: this is I try to choose software that is platform agnostic.
Thomas: I try to avoid applications that will only run on Windows.
Thomas: If you have a Linux executable, even a Mac, even though I don't run Mac, if you have an
Thomas: executable that you service the big three, Windows, Linux, and Mac, I will pick your software
Thomas: over the one that is exclusive to any other platform.
Christian: Very good idea.
Christian: If you had to choose, would you rather not use Thinkpads at all or just ones without a trackpoint?
Christian: If those are the only two options you would have.
Thomas: whoa
Thomas: so not use thinkpads
Thomas: at all
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: or
Thomas: what was the track point condition again
Christian: So you need to pick up a new machine so it can be a used one and it could rather be Thinkpad without a trackpoint.
Thomas: yep
Christian: because in the near future, we only have ThinkPads without TrackPoint to set a horror scenario,
Christian: or you would need to use a notebook that's not a ThinkPad.
Thomas: yeah actually you know what this question is actually not that difficult because
Thomas: i like there are there are people that fall in love with thinkpad that fell in love with
Thomas: different things. They fell in love with the modularity and the repairability, and many of
Thomas: those users have migrated to other platforms in recent years. The framework is the classic example.
Thomas: The framework has never attracted me because it doesn't have a track point.
Christian: Same for me.
Thomas: And track point technology, that's a whole other conversation on the patents and the
Thomas: the history and the stories behind that.
Thomas: Cause like when I talked to Dr. Selker,
Thomas: he really gave me the history of that.
Thomas: And it is fascinating how every other company
Thomas: has handled track point technology
Thomas: and how IBM and Lenovo handled it.
Thomas: But yeah, I would,
Thomas: the track point has to be on the next computer I buy.
Thomas: Once you have learned to use it,
Thomas: swiping up and down with your fingers
Thomas: multiple times to scroll a page just feels stupid.
Thomas: the idea that I can put in the bare minimum amount of like muscle and movement and get everything
Thomas: that I need and I don't have to leave the home row and I like even the the new track pads that
Thomas: don't have the physical buttons but they have the haptic ones that Sensil's technology is built
Thomas: those are actually quite good that the haptic feedback is is not by perfect replacement for
Thomas: a button but i would still take that over a machine without a track point so yeah that's
Thomas: an easy question track point or bust
Christian: yeah very good one so as you have have been speaking to a lot of very interesting and
Christian: influential people on the ThinkPad brand, if you could have interviewed Richard Zepper
Christian: at his lifetime, what would you have asked him?
Thomas: sorry who
Christian: Richard Zepper.
Thomas: Oh, Richard Sapper. Man. It's actually a question that I have thought about because David Hill and I have had quite a few conversations about Richard Sapper and he's shared a lot of stories about the time that they were able to spend together.
Thomas: If I were to ask him a question, and I've read some of his biographies, so I would avoid some of the questions that I've seen how precisely he would answer.
Thomas: I would probably just ask him, what are you working on now?
Thomas: And I know that might seem like a really simple answer, but I think that would probably be what I would want to know.
Thomas: Like, what are you working on right now in this moment that you think deserves your attention?
Thomas: Because here's a person, yes, he's got this background of being known for, you know, doing a lot of design work on ThinkPad.
Thomas: But there are very few things that that man did not design.
Thomas: And I also got the impression that he wouldn't have worked on something that he didn't feel that he could make a contribution to.
Thomas: And I think just even for a moment to see the world through his lens in that point in time that I would be speaking to him through that question, like what, what is getting your attention right now? Like, what are you excited about? That's what I'd want to know.
Christian: that's a very good one yeah i focused a lot on on the things that he did in the in the past so i
Christian: recorded an episode just about his early works and how he ended up with ibm and he did a lot of
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: great things so he he did um um a kettle and he did a coffee maker of of course he he designed
Christian: the the tco lamp i also have one in my collection and really which one the black one or the silver
Thomas: I have one
Thomas: Yes
Thomas: Yep
Thomas: No I have the black one
Christian: that's a lovely one i i was very very lucky that uh from my my friends um gave this tco lamp to me
Christian: at my birthday, and it was just awesome. So it's a very lovely lamp.
Thomas: Oh, that, that lamp is fun to show people.
Thomas: Cause it's like, they just move the lamp, just get them to touch it.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: And then they understand why all the weights work the way they do.
Thomas: And like, you can position that lamp in any place and it'll stay there.
Christian: Yeah. And it's so lovely. It's just black. It's classic. It's timeless, like the ThinkPad design.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: And you have the red accents that we also see on the ThinkPad design language.
Christian: And I would be really interested in here what he would have been up to these days.
Christian: So I just found out that he died 10 years ago on the 31st of December 2015.
Christian: So that was just 10 years ago.
Christian: And in his book, he mentioned that designing products is more like crafting sculptures to him.
Christian: And I think that's a very important sentence that gives an impression about how he was thinking about designing and his work.
Thomas: yeah there are there are two um good books there's the the one larger one that's black
Thomas: and i the author escapes me and then there was a newer one released i think one and a half years
Thomas: ago by Kaz, which is also very, very good. And there's lots of stories in the back pages as well.
Thomas: So if you're, if you're listening and you're a Richard Sapper fan, those are, those are two
Thomas: really good books to have in your collection, especially if you're a ThinkPad fan, lots of
Thomas: good pictures and info on there too.
Christian: Definitely. And you will end up in a very, very deep rabbit hole that is called industrial product
Christian: design. Because after reading the book, I have a lot of very special lamps and pens and so on,
Thomas: Yes.
Christian: designed by Richard Sepper on my wish list.
Christian: So maybe speaking of designing a ThinkPad,
Thomas: Yes.
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: let's assume you could design a ThinkPad on your own.
Christian: You have a team that would implement all the crazy ideas that you have.
Thomas: Oh.
Christian: Which discarded feature from past ThinkPads would you bring back?
Christian: So things that aren't part of modern ThinkPads anymore,
Christian: but that you would like to bring back in a new machine.
Christian: What would it be?
Thomas: The first thing right off the top of my head without even thinking is the Fink Lite.
Christian: Yeah, same for me.
Thomas: I was like, discarded feature.
Thomas: So something that's already been there that's gone.
Thomas: Yeah, it would, without, like, that's the honest, not thinking about it, carefully answer would be the ThinkLight.
Thomas: And I understand why keyboard lighting was kind of the quote-unquote winner, but the ThinkLight had so much additional utility beyond just lighting up the keyboard.
Thomas: And when everybody that I've spoken to that we talk about the ThinkLight, whether that's David Hill or David Cherbuck, it becomes really clear that that feature was, I'm going to use the word poorly marketed.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: A lot, like it was, if you look for promotional material specific to the ThinkLight, you're going to come up empty handed.
Thomas: It just, it was not talked about enough.
Thomas: And I think that's one of the reasons
Thomas: that it struggled to find success
Thomas: because generally in the structure,
Thomas: from what I understand,
Thomas: during the time that the ThinkLight was around,
Thomas: your design team would come up with these ideas,
Thomas: but then your marketing team had some influence
Thomas: on what would be,
Thomas: what would kind of go to the next level
Thomas: and actually start making it into production.
Thomas: And I think that there may have been some skepticism over the utility of a Thinklight.
Thomas: Well, why is no one else making this?
Thomas: Why are they all going with backlit keyboards?
Thomas: Maybe we need to do that too.
Thomas: And to me, like the really cool machines were like the T430 and X230.
Thomas: You had both where you had the backlit keyboard and the Thinklight.
Christian: Yes.
Thomas: It's the reason that my X220, I still use it around the house because I was like, oh, I need some light just not for where my keys are.
Thomas: Like I'm a touch typist.
Thomas: I can type in the dark.
Thomas: That's not a problem.
Thomas: But if I have like a document or something, and if you've never sat in a dark room and turned on a think light, there's an emotion.
Christian: Yeah, it is.
Thomas: There's just the calm, soft white light that it's like, I'm kind of isolated.
Thomas: I'm in this little bubble of dark.
Thomas: I've just got my ThinkPad. I've got the light that I need. I can put papers on my keyboard and read everything. It's like low light to vibe to, you know? So yeah, the, the think without thinking, uh, it would absolutely have to be the ThinkLight.
Thomas: I know that they tried multiple times to bring back the butterfly keyboard, but aspect ratios, it just didn't become necessary.
Thomas: And it's way too complicated in terms of manufacturing to do it, even though that they have patented about four years ago now, a new butterfly keyboard.
Thomas: It hasn't been released on a commercial product.
Thomas: So, yeah, that would be the answer.
Thomas: And I don't want them to give up on foldables.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: i don't want them to give up on foldables i know that the the x1 fold they like they were still
Thomas: trying to figure that out but they they seem to have shelved that product line for now um having
Thomas: the opportunity to test the x1 fold 16 a pre-production sample of it um that was cool
Christian: Oh, great.
Thomas: and i know it was pretty clear why there were some barriers there as to why it didn't do well
Thomas: and maybe get a Gen 2.
Thomas: But I really, really hope
Thomas: that they don't stop
Thomas: looking at a foldable PC
Thomas: because I think that
Thomas: they're the company to do it.
Thomas: So yeah, it's kind of
Thomas: my one and a half answers for you.
Christian: I think so too, because we see that other vendors are doing it as well right now.
Christian: I think at CES there were also foldable screens.
Christian: I mean, even Lenovo presented a consumer-facing foldable screen.
Christian: So I think as well that there could be a market for that.
Christian: And I would also go for the ThinkLight because it's more than just see where you type.
Christian: It's just you have some very spare light on your table,
Christian: sitting on your desk in the middle of the night doing some nerdy things.
Christian: I really miss that one.
Christian: and I mean it's no hanging fruit. I mean it's just one or two LEDs that need to be put in the
Christian: in the display case so that shouldn't be too expensive and too complicated to produce these
Thomas: yeah
Christian: days.
Thomas: i think now it would be easier than what it was four years ago and the reason i say that is because
Thomas: Rightly or wrongly, they have added that communications bar to the top of most ThinkPads, and that's where they're putting in these bigger sensors for higher resolution video cameras.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: So you got the space up there.
Thomas: As you correctly state, we're talking about an LED.
Thomas: You could probably put it on the same board as the camera up there with a piece of software.
Thomas: I think where things might get a little tricky is how flat, because there's no like hook that kind of hangs over anymore, where the lid closes for the light to kind of come down.
Thomas: So they'd have to get fancy, I think, with some prisms. And I don't know enough about light to be to say that that would work, but it would definitely require a great deal of experimentation.
Thomas: And I fear that the experimentation is for something that unless you've used it, you don't know that you're missing it.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: And because it perhaps wasn't previously marketed very well, unless you use a ThinkPad that is older than an X230 or older, the history and the knowledge of that experience is going to dwindle to the point where people will no longer ask for it.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: And I mean, I can remember when I started working in IT, I had an HP Elite book that
Christian: was also kind of thin and there was no a place to have the old style think light but hp also had
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: something like the think light and there was a was a square button on the display case next to the
Christian: webcam and when you pushed it then yeah it it flipped out on maybe 30 40 degrees and then the
Christian: led was shining on your keyboard so maybe that's something that could be most of the time be within
Christian: inside the display case, and if you push a button, then it will flip out.
Christian: That could be a way to implement it.
Thomas: yeah you're you might be right on that i don't know if hp ever patented that design
Thomas: that would probably be the only barrier
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: Very interesting.
Christian: So thanks a lot for participating in this game.
Thomas: no i loved it you fantastic questions
Christian: So maybe we can focus on the topic of that episode, which would be the X300.
Thomas: you
Christian: So, as we mentioned more than an hour ago, the X300 is one of the most important Thinkpads
Christian: Lenovo ever built.
Christian: It is considered the very first ultra-portable and power-saving notebook that later became
Christian: Ultrabooks, and very importantly about that variant, it still had an optical drive, which
Christian: isn't very common these days, and which was really special these days that it still had
Christian: an optical disk drive.
Christian: while still having a very low footprint notebook.
Christian: It was built from February 2008 to something around,
Christian: if I found out correctly, May 2009.
Christian: And you have a X300 in your collection.
Christian: Tell us about it.
Christian: Which configuration does it have?
Christian: What condition is it in?
Thomas: Okay.
Thomas: Okay. So I have both an X300 and a 301 in the collection here. I would say that they're in
Thomas: fair condition. Like these were used machines, but in terms of like all their bits are still
Thomas: in place, light scratches and fingerprints on the lid, that sort of thing. No cracks in the body or
Thomas: the plastics. I have one of them configured with the optical drive. And thanks to a colleague of
Thomas: mine in Ontario, Mike, years ago, he helped me get an X300 Bay battery, which is really, really cool.
Christian: Oh.
Thomas: So one of my X300s runs with two batteries. Those are pretty hard to come by accessories. The
Thomas: other accessory that goes on that ultra bay of course is the second um ssd um which i have never
Thomas: found um but you could get it so yeah i have two of them uh they're both in in pretty modest
Thomas: condition they're both uh have a couple videos on the channel of mods that i've done to them
Thomas: obviously the interviews with david hill as well um but yeah they are they're still really cool
Thomas: machines. It's like one of the ones I go down
Thomas: and look at.
Christian: Same for me.
Christian: So I also have an X301 in my collection.
Christian: It's kind of sticky.
Christian: I think it was used in a repair center or something like that.
Christian: But besides that, it works pretty good.
Christian: And it's a lovely machine.
Christian: So it's very, very thin.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: And I remember back then when this machine was new, I went to school and one of my colleagues
Christian: from school had one of those machines.
Christian: and we were so jealous when we saw him every day opening up his X300
Christian: because it's such a lovely designed machine
Christian: and we all had very kind of cheap devices from our workplaces
Christian: and he had a very good looking ThinkPad.
Thomas: Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah. And to illustrate how thin it is, like if you look on the very back of the one that you've
Thomas: got there, you'll notice that the power port is not perfectly round because they had to shave the
Thomas: top and the bottom to get it to fit. And they didn't have the plastics on the top and the bottom
Christian: yes
Thomas: of the VGA connector. So it's like they're making this thing as thin as physically possible for the
Thomas: year it's being produced and the I.O. that people are expecting to have.
Christian: definitely so maybe speaking about how thin it is let's let's talk a little bit about the hardware
Christian: fact so the dimensions it's 380 by 231 by 23.4 millimeters so the thickest part is roughly about
Christian: two centimeters thick that's like not very much and the weight starts with a three cell battery
Christian: variant at 1.43kg. That's a very lightweight machine for mid-end 2000, I would say.
Christian: Also, it has a 13.3-inch display with LED backlight and a resolution of 1440x900 pixels.
Christian: It has a soldered Intel Core 2 Duo low-voltage CPU. That's a 1.2GHz dual-core without hyper-threading,
Christian: So it's just two threads and four megabytes of cache, but at least it's a 64-bit capable
Christian: CPU.
Christian: So that's OKish.
Christian: And using this machine these days, I would say now we reach the point where even lightweight
Christian: Linux distributions show you that's a very early ultra-low-voltage CPU, right?
Thomas: yeah i it's not something that i would want to daily drive regrettably because
Thomas: like everything else about it you absolutely could um like the the ports uh the port selection
Thomas: is still quite good.
Thomas: Yeah, it's so, so cool.
Thomas: Yeah, I could just keep going.
Thomas: But yeah, the CPU really lets it down
Thomas: in terms of even the most lightweight
Thomas: of Linux distros running on it, unfortunately.
Christian: Yeah, I also have Linux running on one of my machines and you can feel that the CPU isn't
Christian: that powerful but i mean it's an ultra slim machine and speaking of how thin it is i think
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: we really need to double point this out it's so thin but it still has a modular ultra slim bay
Christian: with a height of seven millimeters you mentioned that you have the battery add-on for it that's
Christian: quite rare by default this machine comes with an integrated dvd burner and that's the only machine
Christian: in ThinkPad history, and as far as I'm concerned, of other vendors as well, that have an optical
Christian: drive that's that thin. So the manufacturer of the optical disk drive said after that,
Christian: okay, that's the one and only drive that we made that thin, that's way too complex,
Christian: we're not going to create further DVD burners for that size form factor.
Thomas: yeah no one else was was crazy enough to try it like if you i have a picture of it somewhere and
Thomas: if i can find it i'll share it with you but it's a a side shot of the drive and then a dvd
Thomas: And just in terms of thickness, like we're talking about something that's like three or four DVDs thick.
Thomas: Like it is mind blowing that it is that thin.
Thomas: And
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: Yeah, so it's crazy to create a device that's that thin.
Christian: And they even offered a 7mm HDD adapter, so you could put another SSD or hard drive into the machine.
Christian: That's also quite interesting.
Christian: So, interestingly, I hope that I did my research right.
Christian: I found out that the X300 comes with DDR2 memory.
Christian: 2 to 8 gigabytes where possible.
Christian: and that's kind of interesting because at that time when this machine was released, DDR3 was
Christian: already out there, for example in the R500. But I think we will cover this later. The X300 work
Christian: started earlier, so maybe one or two years earlier, and back then DDR2 was the standard to go, right?
Thomas: Yeah, it kind of had in that way a small issue like the 701C did.
Thomas: It was in development long enough that the technology moved forward, but you don't have
Thomas: the time to retool everything, especially when you're fighting tenths of millimeters
Thomas: of thickness.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: And speaking of crazy form factors, now we reach the point where we need to talk about
Christian: the 1.8 inch microsata SSDs.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: That's a not very common half-length disk format, I would describe it to our listeners,
Christian: because back then, mSATA and NVMe adapters weren't there yet.
Christian: They are available these days, so you could get an adapter to get an mSATA SSD into that
Christian: machine.
Christian: You covered this also in your video about the machine.
Christian: But back then, that was the crazy standard to go.
Thomas: Yeah, it was definitely something that drove up the cost of the machine, I think,
Thomas: going with a non-standard drive.
Thomas: But I think for the customer,
Thomas: it wasn't a huge selling point
Thomas: one way or the other.
Thomas: They just saw,
Thomas: I can get all of this in this package,
Thomas: sign me up,
Thomas: or I don't need it.
Christian: I mean, there have been other X-series machines in the ThinkPad lineup that also had that crazy
Christian: form factor. I remember the X40 series also has a 1.8-inch hard drive. I mean, it's IDE,
Thomas: Yes.
Christian: Not microsata, but those drives were ridiculously slow and hard to get.
Christian: And a lot of people wanted to have adapters.
Christian: And I mean, at least they went for an SSD instead of a spinning Rust drive, because this would have made the machine even slower, I would say.
Thomas: yes
Thomas: no it could use
Thomas: all the help it could get
Thomas: to be the
Thomas: ultralight
Thomas: low voltage
Thomas: portable that it was
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: Beside that, we have USB 2.0, audio in and out.
Christian: We have Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, wireless LAN, and optionally also Wii.
Christian: WiiWan card if you want to.
Christian: We have a webcam.
Christian: We have the UltraNav, the trackpoint, and of course also the optional fingerprint sensor.
Christian: So all the good stuff packed into a very small footprint.
Christian: And of course, we have a white ThinkLight.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: And as you mentioned in your interview, David Hill said that a lot of people dislike the orange ones.
Christian: So a very good idea that they went for the white ones for the X300, I would say.
Thomas: I think that was also a very important moment that showcased that the X300 was not a compromise
Thomas: machine. And like, this was going to come up, I think at any point in our conversation about this,
Thomas: that the X300 was the very first ThinkPad that Lenovo was in charge of designing and producing.
Thomas: Like they had built other machines, but they were running off of IBM oversaw designs.
Thomas: And the X300 was their first time out to be like, OK, you are building this thing, Pat.
Thomas: IBM is long gone.
Thomas: What are you going to do?
Thomas: Everybody is watching.
Thomas: Investors are watching.
Thomas: The marketing companies that work with Lenovo and used to work with IBM are watching very carefully.
Thomas: And you've also got essentially an old team, but it's also brand new in the sense that they have a new set of corporate structure sitting over top of them.
Thomas: And that, you know, from the people I spoke to, that was a very significant shift.
Thomas: So the fact that a amber light wasn't even considered is one of those really small, you know, you could argue insignificant moments,
Thomas: But it's actually very significant that Lenovo wasn't like, oh, we want the low cost one, too.
Thomas: Like that conversation didn't happen.
Thomas: Like they were working on ultraviolet prototypes and that they couldn't get them working.
Thomas: But they were going in the opposite direction.
Thomas: We're not looking at how do we cut costs.
Thomas: We're looking at how can we build the best, smallest computer that people have ever seen.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: And I mean, we have a lot of highlights on that machine.
Christian: So as we mentioned several times, it's a very thin machine that still has an optical drive.
Christian: That's a highlight because no other machine after that and the X300 One had an optical drive in that size.
Christian: It's the first ThinkPad with an SSD as far as I'm concerned.
Christian: And it's also the first ThinkPad with an LED backlit screen.
Christian: So a lot of highlights.
Christian: And as you mentioned, the X300 was going to be a non-compromised ThinkPad.
Christian: Go big or go home was the motto, I would say, when they designed that one.
Christian: And they did so with an internal project that started with the name Project Kodashi.
Christian: So I think you have a lot of experience to share about that one.
Christian: That was the internal code name and the project that started that ended up with the X300.
Christian: And I think they changed the name several times, right?
Thomas: They first started out with the name Razer, oddly enough.
Thomas: I think they were, and this was an internal name.
Thomas: This wasn't something that was going to be shared as a product.
Thomas: But they hadn't acquired Motorola at this time.
Thomas: But the Razer phone was, I believe, floating around the market at that point.
Thomas: And I think they saw it.
Thomas: And they're like, well, that's kind of what we want to go for.
Thomas: Because the Razer was thin, but it was still a phone that did everything that a phone had to do.
Thomas: But they didn't like the idea of using an internal code name that was a product at another company.
Thomas: So they scrapped it.
Thomas: And then they went with Katana and they were like, oh, we got the same problem.
Thomas: I think Suzuki made a motorbike called the Katana.
Thomas: So they didn't want to do that either.
Thomas: And they settled on Kadachi, which is the shorter sword in Japanese culture.
Thomas: So the Katana is a little longer.
Thomas: Kadachi is a little shorter.
Thomas: And they're like, well, that works because it's going to be thin, but it's going to be probably smaller.
Thomas: So that is kind of how they settled on the name.
Thomas: And again, a lot of that is detailed in Steve Hamm's book.
Thomas: So it's one of the many reasons why you should go read it.
Christian: I was just wondering, because I know you're also into mechanical keyboards, because you
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: have some of those videos about keyboards on your YouTube channel. And there's this company called
Christian: Tex, and they also create mechanical keyboards that have a lot of ThinkPad DNA in their design.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: So I'm also proud owner of one of those keyboards, which is the Tex Shura. That's a 60% keyboard with
Thomas: Yep.
Thomas: Oh, yes.
Christian: a track point. And funny enough, they also have a Tex Kodashi keyboard. And I was just wondering
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: whether this is related to the X300 and they picked it up in their naming maybe.
Thomas: you'd have to ask them um but i i suspect that i don't know you'd have to look at the year it
Thomas: was produced i suspect that they're probably aware of that story or somebody over there is
Thomas: aware of that story um because they could have called it the katana but they didn't um they they
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: specifically went after that name so but i also think that it's we're talking about a very niche
Thomas: group of people that would know kodachi as well um so i suspect that there there is not a coincidence
Thomas: um there that there's probably a connection i've seen those keyboards over the years the one thing
Thomas: i've always wondered and since you own one i'm going to ask you a question how do you find the
Thomas: regular switches for your mouse buttons for the track point.
Thomas: Does that work out okay?
Christian: That's a good question because I ordered the DIY variant.
Christian: So mechanical keyboards can be a very daunting hobby if you are living in Germany and you would
Christian: want to use the German keyboard layout.
Thomas: Yes.
Christian: So the most keyboard enthusiasts simply go for the ANSI layout or the QWERTY layout.
Christian: And I would say very special in that regard that I want to have a German layout on all of
Christian: So I have something around 10 to 15 keyboards, I would say, and every keyboard has the German
Christian: layout.
Christian: And speaking of the text keyboards, you can either get the German layout with soldered switches,
Christian: which I do not want to have because I like to tinker around with various switches.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: So you would need to get the DIY variant where you can simply click on the switches that you
Christian: want to have, but you can't get that one with the German keyboard layout.
Thomas: Oh.
Christian: and this drove me nuts for several years and then someone told me what's your problem Christian just
Christian: go ahead and write an email and ask whether they can make a special offer to you and I was like okay
Christian: maybe I can try that and I sent an email and funny enough maybe 24 hours later I got an answer yeah
Christian: sure that's no question that's no problem just drop an order and give me your order number and then I
Christian: I will give you the German layout keycaps with your DIY variant.
Christian: And then I ordered it.
Christian: So, very good experience with that job.
Thomas: Awesome.
Christian: So, the standard switches of those machines,
Christian: I think you can select between the normal ones,
Christian: so black, blue, brown, and red.
Christian: It depends on what kind of typist you are.
Christian: Are you more focusing on typing only,
Christian: or do you also game from time to time?
Thomas: yeah i do both um but i was just wondering because like you and i are probably so used to
Thomas: a certain amount of travel uh as well with uh track point buttons and i was wondering if that
Christian: yeah
Thomas: was like a barrier that the fact that this is essentially well it is a keyboard switch
Christian: yeah
Thomas: and i know you can customize them but like is it something that you're like ah it's not quite
Thomas: right or have you gotten used to it
Christian: so the normal switches that tax offers are sherry switches
Christian: Sherry switches are pretty good switches if you start the hobby, I would say, very politely.
Christian: Of course, this is always a question of your own taste.
Christian: So I know a lot of keyboard enthusiasts that still use keyboards with Sherry switches, and that's totally fine.
Christian: I really like to have a very, very hard tactile bump.
Christian: I think if I would have been born 30 years earlier, I would have been a very big user of typewriters.
Christian: Because it's a feeling from a typewriter that I would like to have on my keyboard.
Christian: So the Noble Cherry switches have an actuation force of something around 40 to 60 grams.
Christian: And I have switches with nearly 70 grams of actuation force.
Thomas: Okay, those are pretty heavy.
Christian: Pretty, pretty heavy, but I really like that one.
Christian: And I just ordered during Christmas, I ordered a modern remake of an Albia Model F keyboard,
Christian: if you know that one.
Thomas: Yes.
Thomas: Yep.
Christian: So that's a modern variant that looks like Model M.
Christian: So it has a modern layout with function keys and the Windows button, but it has the good
Christian: old buckling springs from Model F, and it has a solenoid from typewriters.
Thomas: Yes.
Thomas: Okay.
Thomas: Yeah, so you get that massive clack sound.
Christian: Yes, so it's a keyboard that has a weight of three kilograms, has a very heavy metal case, and it also makes noises like a typewriter from the 60s.
Thomas: Yeah.
Thomas: Wow.
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: So, how did we get there?
Thomas: I derailed you when we were talking about the history of the name of the X300.
Christian: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's totally fine.
Christian: I like being derailed to talk about mechanical keyboards.
Christian: That's another rabbit hole I went down a couple of years ago.
Christian: So yeah, we do not know whether the text Kodashi keyboard is related to that one.
Christian: Maybe that's something I could ask the owner of the shop at some time.
Christian: But you already mentioned that that's one of the most important Thinkpads ever made by Lenovo.
Christian: Because, as you said, it's considered one of the first big achievements since Lenovo bought the ThinkPad line by IBM in 2005.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: And I think the idea of that project was to show the world what Lenovo was capable of doing, right?
Thomas: that's a huge part of it i think because let's be real if the x300 came out and it failed
Thomas: would would there have been any more thinkpads like that's the real question that i have
Thomas: And it's one of those key moments where it's like, geez, I don't know.
Thomas: I think that might have scared people away from the new owner of this product or this
Thomas: brand.
Thomas: And, you know, it wasn't a laptop that they designed to sell loads of units.
Thomas: It was very much a halo product in the sense that, like, we are going to show you what we
Thomas: can do.
Thomas: And I think a huge part of that was Lenovo had a very different attitude than IBM did toward
Thomas: end of their ownership, where they're already thinking every time we do something, this is just
Thomas: costing us more money and making this more difficult to sell to somebody else. And that's
Thomas: an understandable posture from a business perspective. It's not a very great posture to be a
Thomas: customer. So they really, really had to get it right. And the amount of design and focus
Thomas: that came from that machine.
Thomas: If you look at all the product lines
Thomas: after the X300,
Christian: So,
Thomas: I would argue that a good majority of them
Thomas: have X300 DNA in them somewhere.
Thomas: Some of it is very obvious.
Thomas: Others is a lot more subtle.
Christian: So it was really a no compromise machine, I would say.
Christian: I just had a look at one of the test reviews from that time.
Christian: So we will cover that later because we collected some of the voices about that.
Christian: But we can see in the pricing.
Christian: So back then in 2008, this machine costed about 300, 600 US dollars.
Christian: So in terms of inflation, that would be $5,400 US dollars these days, or for our German listeners, nearly €4,700.
Christian: That's like a lot. I mean, for that price, I don't know whether I can bump up my ThinkPad configuration to go that high.
Christian: Maybe if I pick a PSeries and I put in 128 gigs of RAM or something like that.
Christian: But that was not a cheap machine back then, I would say.
Thomas: No.
Thomas: And Lenovo pricing has always been a bit fluid.
Thomas: So that might be the highest price that it ever sold for.
Thomas: But we can probably say with a great deal of confidence that they were selling machines for under that before too long.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: I mean, those are where prices when the machine was released, and if you wait a couple of months,
Christian: then usually those prices go down, and Lenovo also has some special offers from time to time.
Christian: So my daily driver at home is a P14G3 AMD.
Christian: And I think I bought that three years ago before Christmas
Christian: and I had a 800 euro discount code available on the Lenovo website.
Christian: So I think usually those prices aren't that high anymore.
Christian: So maybe let's focus on when Project Kodashi started.
Christian: And as far as I'm concerned, they started less than two years earlier, right?
Christian: So the time to market wasn't that high like for the butterfly ThinkPad, but it was nearly
Christian: two years.
Thomas: Yeah, it was quite the development cycle from what I understand.
Thomas: And like any product and design team, you're designing like several products all concurrently.
Thomas: You're not just being like, I'm only working on building this one machine for two solid years.
Thomas: You have to build multiple product lines.
Thomas: But that isn't to say that the X300 wasn't a very special and important machine, because
Thomas: it's not like they were going to completely reinvent the wheel with like the T-Series,
Thomas: the X-Series, etc.
Thomas: But there were a couple of machines where it's like, no, no, no, we have to focus on this because it's either a brand new kind of machine or we're starting a new product category like the W series, for example, which is kind of replacing the A and the G series, those larger workstation behemoths with another workstation behemoth.
Thomas: But yeah, it was obviously quite clear that this was something that they had in the work for a while. And I think even on the final product, you can see some of the stuff that survived early versions. Like, to my knowledge, and I'm shooting from the hip here, it's the only ThinkPad outside of the S30, and I don't even think the S30 had it, that has piano black hinges and a piano black bezel around the display.
Thomas: And I think those are actually leftovers that because at some point they were looking at having a piano plaque or a Mirage black lid and they got rid of it because it was going to be too difficult to manufacture.
Thomas: But the bezels on some of these machines and the hinges are piano or Mirage black.
Thomas: And I think that they probably already had them built.
Thomas: And they're like, well, we're not going to retool the hinges and the display bezel because that's just going to cost money.
Thomas: So they're they're still aware of that.
Thomas: But they're like, it also doesn't look bad either to have these like really shiny piano black hinges.
Thomas: But it is one of those things that you can kind of see how long this took.
Thomas: If it was designed over a short period of time, I think that we wouldn't have these little, you know, pieces of history that still made it on the launch machines.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: I really like that those display hinges are piano black because they give this device an even more special look.
Christian: So it looks very interesting.
Christian: I would say very, very mystic.
Christian: We don't know what we will see if we open up the display lid and then we see this piano black Lenovo logo.
Christian: So it's not too much because I'm not a big fan of glossy piano black, to be honest.
Christian: And the S30 also was available for a short time in Piano Black.
Thomas: Oh, it's terrible.
Christian: And I also have the SSL series devices in my collection.
Christian: So the SL300, 400 and 500.
Christian: And boy, they are so glossy that you see every fingerprint.
Christian: It's really, really hard to keep those devices good looking.
Christian: So that's just the right amount of Piano Black, I would say, on the X300.
Thomas: Yes, I'm very glad
Thomas: that even a special edition
Thomas: was not made
Thomas: with a piano black top.
Thomas: because we still haven't quite figured out
Thomas: the absolute perfect way to make a scratch-resistant piano black
Thomas: just because of how reflective or refractive that material is,
Thomas: the acrylic.
Thomas: So, yeah.
Christian: So, when the X300 was designed, David worked together with, and I hope that I pronounced
Christian: it correctly tomoyuki takahashi i would say that's one of the designers at lenovo and i think they
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: really did a great job so the design is very very special and the former plan was to sell 130 000
Christian: units in 12 months but they only could sell 60 000 units in accordance with the research that
Christian: somebody did because it's a kind of a niche product.
Christian: I don't know.
Christian: Do we have any numbers?
Christian: How many machines were actually sold during the whole lifetime of the X300 series?
Christian: It's hard to get those information these days, I'm afraid.
Thomas: yes to my knowledge those numbers are not published um i i don't know how accurate
Thomas: those numbers would be i don't know the source um usually things like that sometimes will leak out
Thomas: and it has a monochrome of accuracy we know again that it wasn't a product that they expected to sell
Thomas: in large volume like 130 000 units is not a large amount even for lenovo at the very beginning and
Thomas: in 2000 um and and eight when it was released so to to move that many units is still not bad
Thomas: and it's it's not about who owned one it's about the fact that it was out there in the press
Thomas: that that machine got was mission critical, I think,
Thomas: for Lenovo and the future of the ThinkPad brand.
Thomas: That it's like, okay, you know what?
Thomas: I don't need that machine.
Thomas: I don't want it.
Thomas: But the fact that you built it
Thomas: and it doesn't fall apart immediately,
Thomas: which the real enthusiasts are worried about,
Thomas: they were getting information about the screws
Thomas: and where the paint was being manufactured.
Thomas: Like everything was being so heavily scrutinized by those devices that, yeah, it doesn't matter if a whole lot of people bought it.
Thomas: What matters is that they made it and they didn't screw it up.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: Yeah. Is there any part of the design that you appreciate the most?
Thomas: Well, let's see.
Christian: I'm also having a look at mine right now.
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: I really like the keyboard, to be honest, because it has a very, very nice touch and it has a very good amount of key travel that's decreased over the last years, I would say, for the most of the Thinkpads.
Thomas: Uh...
Christian: I don't know whether this machine still has 1.7 or 1.8 millimeters of key travel, but it feels very high quality and it's fun typing on it.
Thomas: yes the um the kind of paint that they used is it felt more premium than everything else
Thomas: that Lenovo and IBM was using at the time.
Thomas: I would say one of the small features that stands out to me
Thomas: is actually the lid and hinge mechanism
Thomas: because I think this was one of the first thinner ThinkPads.
Thomas: I don't know if it was the very, very first ThinkPad
Thomas: that you could open with one hand.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: So when it's sitting on the desk,
Thomas: you can disengage the latch, lift the lid,
Thomas: and the computer itself will stay in place and not lift up off the desk.
Thomas: And it just closes with a very premium click.
Thomas: And for our ASMR friends, I'm just going to put this up to my microphone.
Christian: That's lovely.
Thomas: Like, what a sound.
Christian: Yeah, totally.
Christian: And I mean, they managed to have this kind of closing mechanism for a device that's that
Christian: thin, because later models didn't have this mechanism anymore.
Christian: And that's also one of the features that I would like to bring back to newer Thinkpads,
Christian: because we covered it in one of the questions.
Christian: And yeah, I can totally relate.
Christian: That's very satisfying to hear.
Christian: Very nice.
Christian: Yeah, I really like the machine.
Christian: Also, I like that they put the privacy button on the back of the machine for the wireless networking.
Thomas: yes
Christian: And I like the very small detail that you also shared that the power port needed to be trimmed down,
Christian: that it fits the lower footprint of the machine.
Christian: That's a very, very, very tiny detail.
Christian: That's very lovely.
Thomas: yeah but again it shows an attention to detail because we're talking about a part that is universal
Thomas: on a ThinkPad is the power port.
Christian: Yes.
Thomas: But they felt it was important enough
Thomas: to the design of the machine
Thomas: to shave the top and the bottom
Thomas: and produce a custom part
Thomas: where they didn't really have to,
Thomas: but somebody cared enough to do it.
Thomas: So I don't know.
Thomas: It might seem silly,
Thomas: but I can imagine five or six people
Thomas: around the table,
Thomas: designers, material engineers,
Thomas: product engineers,
Thomas: and they're like, okay, we got two options here.
Thomas: We can make the chassis thinner
Thomas: and go with a full circular port
Thomas: and it's going to do all of this.
Thomas: Or we take the existing part,
Thomas: we do a cast of the mold
Thomas: and we produce a specific power plug for the X300.
Thomas: It's going to cost this much money,
Thomas: but it's going to do this
Thomas: and it's going to do this
Thomas: and it's going to do this.
Thomas: And then rather than being like,
Thomas: we're going to go with the cheaper option,
Thomas: somebody said, no, this is important.
Thomas: We're going to do this.
Christian: Yeah, definitely. I highly appreciate that kind of enthusiasm and going big and make this
Christian: ThinkPad really outstanding. I also like that if we have it closed in front of ourselves,
Christian: then we see that the status icons are on the left. So usually they can't be seen at all and they are
Thomas: Yes.
Christian: part on the left side of the screen. And you can see there whether the machine is in standby,
Christian: whether the power supply has been added or the battery is running low. That's a very nice detail.
Thomas: yep and then you also had like on the top case it would say like what ports were on the side
Thomas: so you didn't have to look to see where your usb ports was there was a little indicator
Christian: Yes. You're right. Yeah, yeah. Totally forget about that. That's also pretty good. Yeah.
Thomas: that tells you right on the the top bezel where to plug stuff in
Christian: Yeah, so maybe speaking of how other people like that machine, I think the voices out there had the same opinion like we two guys have.
Christian: The design was considered to be a revolution at its time.
Christian: And you cover this in one of your videos.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: So Richard Zapper once said in an interview, if the design doesn't respect the function, then it's a mistake.
Christian: But if a product only has this function of being functional and it doesn't have some formal impression that wakes your interest, if you look at it, that helps create a human relation between you and the product, it's not a good design.
Christian: And I think they did a very good job for the X300 because I can look at this machine for five minutes and I still like looking at it because there are so many details that are just lovely put in the right place.
Thomas: Yeah, like people will not look at a T-60
Thomas: and have that same conversation.
Christian: No, not really.
Christian: And yeah, I can totally see why they want to go big with that machine, because it's
Christian: the first ThinkPad that had to be a success after Lenovo bought out the PC computing line,
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: because otherwise people wouldn't have trusted that Lenovo can make awesome ThinkPads as well.
Thomas: Yep.
Thomas: Huge.
Christian: Did you have a chance to have a look at the S70 prototype that exists of the X300?
Thomas: Yeah, we've actually over the years exchanged a couple of emails because when I was looking at the X300, I was made aware that he had one of the S70 prototypes. So we've talked maybe once or twice over the years. Really, really kind, kind person.
Christian: Mhm.
Christian: Oh!
Thomas: And he actually sent me a couple of extra photographs and things for my use of his S-70 model.
Thomas: And it's on his S-70 model.
Thomas: You can see a lot of the stuff that they wanted to do.
Thomas: They almost got to do, but then they either dropped or had to phase out.
Thomas: Like some of the port covers, I think on the S-70 prototype you see didn't make it.
Thomas: Although they would come back on the X1.
Thomas: The X1, I think, has pretty much all of its ports covered behind little doors and flaps.
Thomas: And that was very much something that Sapper was pushing for.
Thomas: He didn't want the X300 to look like a computer when it was closed.
Thomas: That was one of the things that he wanted to make this object rather timeless by doing that.
Thomas: So yeah, there were a couple of things on that S70 prototype that were different, but it was also pretty far along because it's functional.
Thomas: Like you'll have models and prototypes that are not functional that would look much more different than the finished product.
Thomas: But once you have a prototype or a pre-production model that has a board in it that turns on,
Thomas: you're not really going to be changing the board and kind of a lot of the case parts at that point.
Thomas: It is interesting, though, that they called it the S70,
Thomas: because it really tells you how late they were in deciding that this is going to be part of the X line
Thomas: and it's going to be a 300 series machine and how all those decisions kind of came toward the end.
Thomas: And I do wonder, I don't know, but I do wonder if they called it an S because it originally was going to have those piano black parts.
Christian: Hmm.
Thomas: And the last machine to have all the piano black parts was the S30 and then the SL line.
Thomas: And well, the SL line was kind of made concurrently for the most part.
Thomas: But I think it might have been a callback to that where they were still using two digit numbers.
Thomas: But then, of course, when that series of machines came out, they were all three digit numbers.
Thomas: And I think they also did that to help differentiate between this is a Lenovo machine that's been Lenovo developed versus the IBM era, which is all two digit.
Thomas: Again, I can't confirm that, but it seems to make sense.
Christian: It definitely makes sense, because as you mentioned, the S30 with the glossy piano black design and
Christian: maybe an idea of having the whole machine in piano black that totally would make sense,
Christian: that it would be part of the S-series. And I mean, revitalizing or feigned model series is something
Christian: the ThinkPad brand is known for. As you mentioned the S-series, for example. But did you have the
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: chance to have your hands on one of those prototype machines because they are pretty rare.
Thomas: The only one that I know of is the one that Exos has.
Thomas: I've never seen another one, not photographed online.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: And understanding what often happens to pre-production and prototype devices,
Thomas: one of two things happens to them.
Thomas: They're either scrapped or they used to.
Thomas: It probably happens a lot less now.
Thomas: They were, and this is true of some machines,
Thomas: definitely in the early days,
Thomas: they would be put out on tables for people to take home.
Christian: Wow, okay.
Thomas: at least that's the rumor that I've heard that these machines would be like yeah just take them
Christian: Okay.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: keep them don't try and sell them like there there would be some like stipulations but it was
Thomas: they uh they went out into the wild and I'm pretty sure that's cracked they've cracked down on that
Thomas: significantly since then but there was a time I think where um they were just taken home because
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: they were going to be scrapped anyway. And there might have been even a few that like, well, once
Thomas: it's in the scrap bin, no one's going to check. They're just heaving these things into a crusher.
Christian: yeah
Thomas: They're not going to count every single machine that goes into a crusher and be like, oh,
Thomas: this serial number is missing. We better go look. No, they don't care.
Thomas: So, yeah, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if Exos's example is the only one
Thomas: that's still out there.
Christian: interesting because during the research for this episode i found a video on youtube of a
Christian: young person that gives also an overview about the s70 prototype and has one in his hands
Christian: and i was like wow those machines still exist so maybe that machine was given to that person by a
Christian: family member that worked at lenovo or something like that it's hard to to find out where the machine
Christian: come from. But I think those machines are pretty hard to get because only 425 were assembled and
Christian: distributed within the company, as you mentioned. And they did some testing. So I heard this in your
Christian: video about the machine, that it was possible to assemble this machine in 25 steps just in 10 minutes.
Christian: So you have all the parts on your desk and in 10 minutes you have a working machine.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: That's quite interesting for such a complex device.
Thomas: It is.
Thomas: I think they actually did that as part of a demo at CES when they announced it.
Thomas: I want to say that I remember one of their demo guys might have done that.
Thomas: And I think they blogged about it.
Thomas: I think that was something that actually did happen.
Thomas: And it was something that they featured in some of the promotional material, like the
Thomas: cover story of Businessweek that featured the X300 featured it disassembled, which it was
Thomas: an interesting choice because you wouldn't necessarily immediately recognize it for what it is.
Thomas: But that was the cover picture that they went with was the machine disassembled.
Thomas: So they were pretty proud of that too.
Thomas: They could throw pretty much the whole chassis together so quickly.
Christian: There are some other differences between the prototype and the file product.
Christian: Are there some things that you can share with our listeners that might be interesting?
Thomas: Yeah, a lot of stuff that they wanted to do on the X300 we saw later.
Thomas: There were some things that didn't make it.
Thomas: I mentioned earlier when we were talking about the ThinkLight that they were going to use a luminescent paint on the keycaps.
Thomas: So when the ThinkLight turned on, it would actually light up the keys on the keyboard.
Thomas: They didn't go with it, probably because either they couldn't get it to work right or they couldn't get it to work well enough for it to be a viable solution.
Thomas: Or the cost of the special super awesome paint would have been poor, or maybe the durability of the paint was going to be problematic because if it's like you have to seal the key cap with the paint underneath.
Thomas: But as soon as you do that, the light's not going to get through.
Thomas: Who knows?
Thomas: So they had things like that.
Thomas: We talked about all the piano black components that they were going to have, how the ports were going to be like concealed and covered.
Thomas: And they would kind of do that on the X1.
Thomas: They were originally going to have the red LED light on the eye of ThinkPad light up on the X300.
Thomas: But that got pushed down the roadmap.
Thomas: But it was originally slated for the X300.
Christian: Interesting, because they did it for the SL series.
Christian: That's where I saw it the very first time.
Christian: I mean, nowadays all the Thinkpads have that feature, but the first one was the SL series.
Thomas: Yep.
Christian: Because right at the time in school where one of my colleagues had the X300, another
Christian: colleague had the SL300, which is all piano black, but it had that blinking eye on the
Christian: ThinkPad logo.
Thomas: yeah and i think they had more room to do it in that machine it wasn't a non-ish it was a non-issue
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: right whereas in this thing it's like where do we put it is a part of the actual problem whereas
Christian: Yes.
Thomas: cell series you've got room um and yeah that whole think pad light that pulsing breathing led
Thomas: is uh it's a very persistent design choice that is very iconic and i know david is quite proud of it
Thomas: as he should be um so we had uh that which was pushed to other models until they found a way to
Thomas: build it slim enough and i think it also became part of the brand identity so it's like well if
Thomas: you're gonna have a think pad the expectation is that the that light lights up and it also tells you
Thomas: the status of the computer in a very humanistic way it's not an indicator with the moon anymore
Thomas: like it used to be on the old models it's this oh it's breathing like it's like quietly sleeping
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: like you understand it without being told um and if it's blinking it's like shutting down and if it's
Thomas: off then it's off and if it's on then you know it's on um so yeah i'm sure that there was probably a
Thomas: lot of research that went into that but it just didn't make it onto the x300 probably due to space
Thomas: and the time because if it came if they came up with the idea when they've already tooled up the
Thomas: case it's too late right and that's just an issue with product design in general you can come up with
Thomas: the best idea but you came up with it too late so it's gotta wait until the next product um so yeah
Thomas: had the rubber port covers things like that um there was a product at the time being developed
Thomas: that i don't think was this machine but they were they were trying to find a way to at that time
Thomas: bring back the track right keyboard that dr john kareidis uh invented but again too complicated
Thomas: it's not meeting that need of how do i get a keyboard which is this aspect ratio into a display
Thomas: that's a four by three. Like we don't have to solve that problem anymore. So why are we spending a lot
Thomas: of money solving a problem that doesn't exist? So even though it's beautiful and it captures
Thomas: everybody's attention and there was a lot of excitement about when the patent for the new one
Thomas: came out, outside of a specific instance, I couldn't imagine where that would be applicable.
Thomas: I thought it would be on a foldable actually, because of the aspect ratio issues there.
Thomas: have a full-size keyboard on a foldable like the x1 fold um but again didn't didn't make it to
Thomas: production and then i know that in the original they were only going to have one speaker and they're
Thomas: like no no we gotta have two speakers because speakers were becoming a more important part of
Thomas: the design and this is a small thing um but i'll illustrate it by pulling out my example here
Thomas: they had to strategically place the speakers here because they didn't want to repeat a mistake they
Thomas: made i think it was with the either thinkpad 570 or 600 where the speaker was right where you put
Thomas: your palm so it's like well how do how do we balance that and if you put place your hands
Christian: Definitely.
Thomas: on the keyboard deck on this,
Thomas: with the intent of using the track point,
Thomas: especially your hands are free
Thomas: and away from the speakers.
Thomas: So thankfully that is a change.
Christian: Definitely.
Thomas: They were able to slip in there.
Thomas: But yeah, I think those are the big highlights.
Christian: I mean, it's just fascinating how many hardware they put in that very small footprint and even
Christian: have stereo speakers, because I think it would have been the wrong decision only to go for
Christian: mono speakers.
Christian: And those speakers are really, really small.
Christian: So you only see them if you have a very detailed look at the palm rest, and they are not very
Thomas: Yes.
Christian: in terms of that you will see them in the first place.
Christian: So they are black and they are just looking like they are part of the design.
Thomas: yeah very very intentional they're not part that's supposed to stand out you just expect it to be there
Christian: Yeah, exactly.
Christian: And they had some problems with the SSD during the product design phase, right?
Thomas: i believe they did um they had a lot of reliability issues with that there was some issues with the
Thomas: centrino modem yes like and again i'm gonna point back to ham's book because he goes into great
Thomas: detail on all of the little bumps that they ran into on the x300 but yes there were there were
Thomas: quite a few issues with several uh hard hardware manufacturers at the time uh to get that thing
Thomas: running reliably and that's to be expected like you are you are pulling off the shelf these
Thomas: really thin cutting edge components like these aren't components that have been around for a long
Thomas: time these are things that are being developed and in niche batches like we should be probably
Thomas: surprised that there isn't issues with the super slim dvd drive because if you think about the r&d
Thomas: that went into it and the amount that the company produced i want to say it was hattachi that built
Thomas: the drive, that's not a large volume of drives to test for reliability. So when you're building
Thomas: all these customized parts, or when you're using these parts from vendors that are not
Thomas: often used, you're introducing a bit of risk, especially when it's outside of your supply chain.
Christian: So let's focus on how the machine was recepted out there.
Christian: And let's start with the phrase that Richard Zappa said during an interview.
Christian: He said, it is so thin, it shocks you.
Christian: And I would definitely agree on that.
Thomas: I have.
Christian: That's like the thinnest ThinkPad I saw back then.
Christian: And he also said, it has a striking appearance.
Christian: It's a classical box design in a very thin footprint.
Christian: And I would say that they really did a great job on that.
Christian: And in January 2008, that's one month before the X300 was released,
Christian: a leak was published on gizmodo and yes you can hear that we are on a retro computing podcast
Christian: because we're talking about gizmodo nobody talks about gizmodo these days anymore yeah
Christian: that was a very popular blog back then who focused on on technical information so somehow
Christian: a leak was published on that website and the reactions on the internet were very strong
Christian: and the exposure of the x300 was excellent i would say so maybe we can start with some
Christian: opinions that some magazines had. And I will start with Notebook Review. They wrote,
Christian: the X300 is much more practical than the pretty but port-challenged MacBook Air. We'll focus on that
Christian: soon. But what did Digital Trends and PC World Australia say about the machine?
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: So, Digital Trends said, while Apple had to make a number of compromises on the Air to get it down
Christian: to its remarkable size, Lenovo took the opposite approach and have crammed as many features
Christian: as possible, including an optical disk drive, into the X300.
Christian: And that's a very good sentence about how they designed the X300, because they really
Christian: did the opposite.
Christian: They didn't want to slim down, they want to go big and have everything that's needed in
Christian: that machine.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: Lastly, PCWorld Australia.
Christian: I will quote them: "The X300 is not a cheap notebook, but it only costs the sum of the
Christian: the components it offers, so you're getting what you pay for. And I think that's also good to point
Christian: that out. And maybe we forgot that earlier, that when the X300 was released, and Arimasa Naito said
Christian: this once during an interview, that the machine offered cutting-edge technology, and it was still
Christian: too expensive because it was released during a financial crisis and recession. So that's also
Christian: maybe one of the reasons why the machine was not a commercial winner in that regard.
Thomas: released during a recession, would the numbers have been higher? Thankfully, I think the impact
Thomas: remained unchanged because we still had people talking about this machine a lot. If it was released
Thomas: earlier and maybe the internet wasn't as developed and people couldn't exchange information as freely
Thomas: as they could even back then, I think that would have been a much bigger problem.
Christian: charts.
Christian: And you already mentioned the Business Week February release 2008 had a cover story about the X300 by Steve Hamm.
Christian: And he later dedicated a whole book on that machine.
Christian: So I think he has a lot about the machine to say.
Christian: And we're happy that he covered all the stuff in a book.
Thomas: yeah Steve Hamm is a phenomenal guy I was really thankful I actually got to sit down and talk to
Thomas: him, not only about that book, but a couple of other books that he's written. And yeah, kind of
Thomas: informed me about a few things that were just important about like journalistic style that I've
Thomas: tried to take away from. So very, very appreciative of his time all those years ago to talk to me to
Thomas: like what it was like to have that opportunity because he had all these NDAs signed. So he was
Thomas: talking to everybody about anything that he wanted to and i can't think of a book like it since
Christian: I really need to get that one from my collection.
Thomas: yes you do yeah tell them in the comments everybody go get the book
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: It's available from time to time on the usual places in the internet, but I think there are
Christian: no reprints available. So you need to get old copies of it by these days.
Thomas: Yeah, I think you can get it digitally too, but there is something nice about a paper copy.
Christian: Same for me. So I really like to have the books in in paper form and sitting on my couch,
Christian: while having the TCLM over me and reading the book. Yeah, so I think we can summarize the
Thomas: Ha ha ha, yes.
Christian: x300 got the feedback the team has hoped for. And they really did a good job.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: Anyhow, when we have a look at the media back then, then a lot of misconceptions were that
Christian: the X300 was considered a MacBook Air killer.
Christian: But that's not true, right?
Thomas: No, not at all.
Thomas: It was a very easy thing for journalists to say at the time
Thomas: because of the release of both of these machines.
Thomas: And both of them were thin and light,
Thomas: what would become Ultrabook computers.
Thomas: So the comparison was inevitable.
Thomas: And it was so important that it's actually how Steve Hamm opens the book with them talking about what it was like to be in the Lenovo office when they're seeing this keynote by Steve Jobs dropping the MacBook Air.
Thomas: And their first thought was, does ours fit in an inter-office envelope?
Thomas: And it did.
Thomas: And I actually have a picture from David's collection of the envelope that they stuffed it in as a point.
Thomas: And even where I display this on a shelf, I have an inter-office envelope right next to it.
Thomas: And people will say, why is there an envelope next to that computer?
Thomas: And it's like, well, let me tell you.
Christian: Let that you ask.
Christian: Let me tell you in the next 40 minutes
Christian: the story behind it.
Thomas: Yeah.
Thomas: But what a story.
Thomas: But yeah, the MacBook Air is a technical achievement.
Thomas: I will not rob Apple of that pinnacle moment of their history.
Thomas: That brought back the idea that laptops don't have to be, you know, constantly plugged in, that they do have mobility and they have function and purpose and all that good stuff.
Thomas: But yeah, it was a very interesting time.
Thomas: The media, I think, elevated the X300 because it was the only machine, really, to combat the MacBook Air. Like, there wasn't anything else that anybody else compares the original MacBook Air to. It is always the X300. And it's for good reason.
Christian: Yeah, but I mean, it totally makes no sense that one month after Apple released the very
Christian: first macbook air lenovo comes up with a macbook air clone in in form of the x300 because how would
Christian: they design a machine in that short time or maybe when they started six months earlier they wouldn't
Christian: have made a machine that's that awesome so that was a very low-hanging fruit for journalists to
Christian: pick on that and it's a common misconception as you just pointed out
Thomas: Yes, one that over the almost 10 years that I've been running the YouTube channel, I have
Thomas: to constantly remind people.
Thomas: And it's like, no,
Thomas: this machine was long in development
Thomas: before we knew about the MacBook Air.
Thomas: Now, were both of these machines
Thomas: probably started designed
Thomas: around the same time period?
Thomas: That I can certainly believe.
Thomas: But yeah, Lenovo was still brand new
Thomas: to PC manufacturing.
Thomas: Let's say for sake of argument
Thomas: that this rumor was actually true
Thomas: and they were able to produce
Thomas: the X300 in that short amount of time, which they did not.
Thomas: But let's say that they did.
Thomas: That still says more about Lenovo's ability to produce a computer than it does Apple, because
Thomas: that means that they had the answer to Apple's question in a matter of months, which they
Thomas: didn't.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: But even if they did, we can't stop and be like, oh, well, it's not impressive because
Thomas: if that were even true, it's like, no, if that were true, it would almost be more impressive
Christian: Definitely.
Thomas: if you stop and think about it.
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: So maybe just to summarize what the first MacBook Air looked like in comparison with the X300.
Christian: As you mentioned, it was announced by Steve Jobs as the thinnest notebook in the world.
Christian: It also had the 13.3-inch display, but with a lower resolution of 1280x800, we had soldered
Christian: memory, 2GB of DDR2 memory, so the X300 had the better memory option by going up to 8GB.
Christian: The CPU was more powerful, because it was a Pendron-style Intel Core 2 Duo non-Ulv CPU.
Christian: But it also had the 1.8-inch hard disk drive or SSD, so you could also get that one with
Christian: spinning rust these days.
Thomas: Yep.
Christian: We had Wifi Bluetooth, Micro DVI.
Christian: That's a port I do not miss these days.
Christian: Very, very special form factor.
Thomas: No.
Thomas: Yep.
Christian: We had Audio Out, but only one USB port.
Christian: It was 70 grams lighter and something around 4 millimeters thinner.
Christian: But I think it was designed for a different audience.
Christian: So if you just want to have a sleek device that you can put on your backpack and go wherever
Christian: wherever you want to carry your PC with.
Christian: That's a fine machine, but for the professional user,
Christian: you have very different requirements.
Christian: So you want to have a variety of ports and standards
Christian: that you would see in corporate setups and so on,
Christian: which leads into that Lenovo did several advertisements
Christian: about the machine.
Christian: I think the most prominent one is a parody
Christian: of the Apple MacBook Air announcement.
Christian: We will link that in the show notes for our listeners,
Christian: but during the announcement of the MacBook Air,
Christian: I think it was also shown right after Steve Jobs showed the device,
Christian: then you could see that envelope that you just mentioned
Christian: and somebody is putting out the MacBook Air
Christian: and opening it with one hand and it's a very thin device,
Christian: but it lacks all the ports that business users like.
Christian: So Lenovo did a parody and I really like that the music
Christian: is nearly the same of the Apple clip.
Christian: yeah yeah it's it's really really very much the same i would say and of course they're opening an
Thomas: It definitely has the same feel, doesn't it?
Christian: envelope with the macbook air and then they put in usb hub with a lot of devices and usb stick
Christian: optical drive and so on and then the person tries to put all that stuff back in the envelope so the
Christian: notebook and the adapter and the hub and of course he completely destroys it by that and then they have
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Christian: second big envelope on the desk and they pull out an X300 and they have all the ports and optical
Christian: drive and they have a text mark that no compromise ultra portable we don't add stuff on and I think
Christian: that's kind of active aggressive rather than passive aggressive I would say
Thomas: Yes. Yeah, I think they understood what they had. And I think they understood their customer. And the other part that I wonder, at that time, and again, like, neither one of these machines would have been in my price bracket at the time they were being released.
Christian: yeah
Thomas: But I also wondered that when like journalism is making this comparison, but are consumers actually making that comparison? Because I feel like if you're going to buy a MacBook, you're going to buy a MacBook. And if you're going to buy a Windows laptop, then you're going to buy anything over here.
Thomas: So I feel a lot of that comparison was manufactured by media. I don't know how many people were actually being like, oh, do I buy a MacBook Air or do I buy the X300? I think that was certainly played up.
Thomas: But yeah, you're absolutely right that they did a very good job of showcasing all the stuff that Apple chose to leave out for the market they were targeting.
Thomas: That Lenovo was like, no, we're going to we're actually going to work, you know, in their mind, they're working harder to leave it in.
Christian: Yeah, it's one of my favorite clips, to be honest.
Christian: So one older clip that I really always have in mind is not an advertisement.
Christian: It's a recording that shows a Lenovo salesperson.
Christian: I think it's part of a meeting at a big customer site.
Christian: So he has a T61P with an aluminum case behind the display.
Christian: And he has this 500 grams metal bull ball that you would use to play the bull game.
Christian: and then he just lists down the specs of the t61p and the display cage and why it's so awesome
Christian: and then he simply puts the machine on the floor and takes his 500 gram uh bull ball let it crash on
Christian: the on the floor and it's very loud of course because it's a heavy heavy ball and then he does
Christian: the same on the display and nothing happens and then the video ends with when you go to buy your
Christian: next computer don't forget the
Christian: bull ball
Christian: yeah of course I'm going to a retail
Christian: market with the bull ball and let it crush
Thomas: yeah
Christian: on all the notebooks
Christian: yeah
Thomas: that reminds me there this this did happen but there's no clip of it on the internet but it has
Thomas: to do with the x300 there was and i know about this from david churbuck um there was a broadcast
Christian: yeah
Thomas: on an American news network
Thomas: where the CEO of Lenovo
Christian: yeah
Thomas: had the X300
Thomas: and he was talking about
Thomas: the spill-proof keyboard.
Thomas: And the host of this interview segment
Thomas: was like, can we try it?
Thomas: And what he did is he took his water bottle,
Thomas: which was, I think, two-thirds full,
Thomas: and he, like, dumped the whole thing
Christian: Wow.
Thomas: not just like a little bit like he dumped the whole thing on on the keyboard and i guess the
Thomas: ceo was like you know i thought you're just going to spill some water on it not uh not give it a drink
Thomas: um and it still worked and unfortunately that clip no longer exists um because i actually reached out
Thomas: to the outlet that did the interview and i said that they no longer had the tape um whether or not
Thomas: They were just telling that to me, but it's no longer accessible at the very least.
Thomas: But it is a fun kind of media piece that has been mostly lost, except for the story.
Christian: Yeah, we really need to create backups of those awesome advertisements, because there
Christian: were many IBM and Lenovo advertisements back then that were just very, very funny.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: So in summary, I think we pointed that out in the last two hours that the X300 is a lovely
Christian: device, it has a very slim form factor, and the quality is also pretty good.
Christian: Even though I read that some models have problems with the base cover though, so if the display
Christian: hinges are too hardly screwed during the manufacturing process, then the parts around
Christian: the display hinges could break.
Christian: Did this happen with one of your devices?
Christian: I only heard about it on the internet that some of those machines have problems with it.
Thomas: Yes, you and I have probably heard it in the same place.
Thomas: And I have not experienced the issue, but I can certainly understand why people would experience the issue.
Thomas: And the issue is primarily on the right-hand side of the machine where the Kensington lock slot is.
Christian: Ah.
Thomas: And you can see that when that hinge opens, if the hinge is too stiff, or if the hinge is not doing exactly what it needs to, that there's nothing to stop that piece from flexing because of where the bezel sits.
Thomas: The bezel's not connected to the bottom cover, and that can cause the machine to flex.
Christian: Hmm.
Thomas: And I have seen the flex, but I've never seen the break, but I can understand where that might occur.
Thomas: looking at the x300 and 301 side by side i don't well actually i'm going to take that back i think
Thomas: there is a very small tooling difference between the 300 and 301 where they might have reinforced
Thomas: the case just a little bit differently it's so hard to tell because these aren't new machines
Thomas: you don't know if those parts have worn down differently but no thankfully i have not had
Thomas: breakages on either one.
Christian: yeah i mean that's something that also can happen to other older thinkpads that you might
Christian: have repaired on your own. So if you're after 20 years you think now is the right time to fix the
Christian: display hinges because they are kind of worn out that's okay but you really need to double check that
Christian: you do not add too much force to the screws when fixing those. That's one of my personal nightmares
Christian: that I crash one of my machines by tightening the screws too much.
Thomas: Yes, I'm not, uh, I don't have all the talent that polymat does.
Thomas: So if I take apart something and break it, I'm in real trouble.
Christian: oh yeah I just saw that you happened to interview Polymed
Christian: who is known for the 701c.org website
Christian: very interesting I need to watch that interview
Thomas: No, he's a phenomenal guy.
Thomas: I love talking to him and I'm very appreciative, uh, of everything that he does.
Christian: and I think he's also from Germany right
Christian: I read that somewhere that he might be living in Germany
Thomas: I don't know
Thomas: maybe he is
Thomas: maybe he isn't
Thomas: I'm not sure
Christian: so let's focus on the legacy i think we pointed out that this machine is pretty outstanding and
Christian: one of the quotes from the laptop magazine 2017 is the first laptop that was developed
Christian: exclusively after lenovo bought the brand 2008's thinkpad x300 is one of the best laptops ever made
Christian: by any brand i think that's a really really good statement about the brand and the x300
Christian: itself.
Christian: So what came after the X300?
Christian: You just mentioned we have the X301.
Christian: That's the second and the last model of the X300 series that was released in August 2008.
Christian: Manufactured until May of 2010.
Christian: It had new CPUs, so still ultra-low voltage CPUs, but at least we have now the Core2Do
Christian: SU 9000 series. We have 1.2 up to 1.6 gigahertz, up to 8 gigabyte of DDR3 memory. And, and I think
Christian: that's a real game changer, when I have a look at my X301, it has a display port, which is lacking
Christian: on the X300, right? Yeah. Yeah, very good, because otherwise this machine only has VGA,
Thomas: uh yes so what they did is they moved the usb port on the back and they added
Thomas: uh the display port so you can see on the top that's the 301 with the
Thomas: or with the um display port here and then they shoved the usb port over here
Christian: And VGA can be quite daunting if you want to go higher than 1080p.
Christian: I think it's not possible to have a higher resolution than 1080p,
Christian: or at least not if you want to have proper display quality.
Thomas: No, and forward thinking to go with DisplayPort full size, not mini DisplayPort, looking at
Christian: Yes.
Thomas: you Apple and
Thomas: HDMI was not
Thomas: like fully spread
Thomas: as the standard
Thomas: at that point
Thomas: especially on like
Thomas: projectors and
Thomas: other high-end
Thomas: displays that you'd
Thomas: see in workplaces
Christian: I mean, it's still up these days.
Christian: So a lot of notebooks have HDMI right now, but back then, DisplayPort was more widespread.
Thomas: yeah
Christian: Did you know that DisplayPort does not require a license fee while HDMI does?
Christian: That's the reason why a lot of special interest hardware such as single-board computers tend
Thomas: mm-hmm
Christian: to have sometimes only one HDMI port and also try to have other ports like DisplayPort.
Thomas: yeah and it's just a i don't i don't have the science to back it up but i feel like it's a
Thomas: more reliable port and that's probably why on the back of your gpu you always have more display
Christian: Yes.
Thomas: port than you do HDMI.
Christian: So after the X301 we had the X1, not to be confused with the X1 Carbon, so that also came later.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Christian: But the X1 was released in 2011 that offered new CPUs, new chipsets, but we had the 16:9 display ratio instead of 16:10.
Christian: And I'm happy that we do not have those 16:9 displays anymore.
Christian: Do you have some personal notes on the display form factor?
Thomas: I use so many display form factors.
Thomas: Like I've used 3x2, 4x3.
Thomas: 16x10 I think is a good compromise.
Thomas: But I do like a good 3x2 or 4x3 still.
Thomas: Just because of the content that I'm working on,
Thomas: I do like that verticality.
Thomas: We all know why 16x9 won,
Thomas: and it had to do with DVD formats and stuff like that
Thomas: being a huge push.
Thomas: But yeah, I am not sad to see 16x9 go.
Christian: Yeah, another thing the X1 had was Gorilla Glass and unfortunately, depends on your personal
Christian: opinion, but we do not have clamshell design anymore.
Christian: So that's a break in terms of the ThinkPad design language, I would say.
Christian: Also we do not have ThinkLight anymore and we have a built-in battery.
Christian: So what do you think about the X1?
Christian: Did you have your hands on one of those machines?
Thomas: yes very early in the channel's lifespan and i actually would love to get one again and review
Thomas: it again because i just know so much more about thinkpads and their history that i look back at
Thomas: my own video on it and i was like oh my gosh there is so much that i did not know and i have
Thomas: missed or i have learned since then and i actually have a i have a really big soft spot for the x1
Thomas: because what they were trying to do is like,
Thomas: well, we need to,
Thomas: we want to keep up the same level of innovation
Thomas: that we did with the X300,
Thomas: but we don't want it to be as expensive.
Thomas: And the X1 was one of two avenues
Thomas: that things went in terms of trying to solve that problem.
Thomas: The S Suffix series,
Thomas: which we'll talk about in a bit,
Thomas: is one of them.
Thomas: But yeah, the X1 in a lot of ways
Thomas: had a lot of the stuff that was left out of the X300.
Thomas: It had the port covers and all of the other details.
Thomas: So I look back at that and I want to get one in my shop again to look at because the carbons
Thomas: that came after it don't look like it.
Thomas: And it doesn't look like an X300.
Thomas: It is a very, very unique machine.
Thomas: And unfortunately, because of how it is named, it is so hard to look up information because
Thomas: of how modern internet search engines work. You pretty much always have to search that machine
Thomas: with the date that it came out, or you get X1 carbon something else. Like, no, I just want the X1.
Thomas: Well, what do you mean? And it's like, no, no, no, there was this thing called the X1,
Thomas: Google. I'm telling you, you got to believe me. Show me the pages.
Christian: yeah it's it also hard to find those machines online first of all because it's an old machine
Christian: by these days and as you mentioned even search engines on ebay and all those other sources where
Christian: you get your used hardware do not understand that you want to get an x1 without a carbon in the name
Christian: so what i did is that i looked up the type that's written on the back and i created a search interest
Thomas: Yep
Thomas: Yes
Christian: on various websites where you can find old hardware because sometimes people find old thinkpads in the
Christian: basement of a family member that that died or something like that and they do not know about the
Christian: machines and they just turn it over and see aha Lenovo type okay I'm going to put this in the
Thomas: Yes.
Christian: auction title and by that I managed to get an X1 without the carbon but I think it took me several
Christian: years to get one in a in a decent shape and at a fair price so yeah been there done done that
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: fingers crossed that you will get a good looking X1 in your collection. So after the X1 we reached
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: the level of X1 Carbon series and the Novo called that one the grandfather, the X300 was the
Christian: grandfather of the X1 Carbon series. So it's the 14-inch successor of the X1 and it was announced
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: as an Ultrabook in 2012. So just one year after the X1 was released and they are still produced
Christian: these days. So as we heard, the 14th generation is the very latest addition to that family
Christian: and it looks very different from the X300 as you mentioned, but some of the ThinkPet's DNA can still
Christian: be seen. So the clear design language, the black looking device and so on, that's still part of the
Christian: design, but it's a way more modern design approach, I would say. And then you have a lot of other
Christian: machines as you just mentioned. Which ones would that be?
Thomas: so the the the family of machines that if you want to talk about like i don't know
Thomas: direct successor of the x300 it's like the t400s the t410s t420s that sort of thing
Thomas: And the reason that I say that, and I've got a T410 here, and I'm going to put them on top of one another.
Thomas: Let me do it the right way around.
Thomas: Is if you look visually at the back of these machines, the port layout is almost the same.
Christian: Wow, yeah, you're totally right.
Christian: Right.
Thomas: And then if you look at the optical bay situation on one side, with the exception of the thickness, it is the same.
Christian: Yeah.
Thomas: and the other piece is that if you look at the bottom of the machines
Thomas: the battery and ram placement i'll back up is identical so if you want to talk about what like
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: you
Thomas: they didn't just drop i don't think the x300 design what they did is they said okay well
Thomas: what if it doesn't have to be that like that thin um what can we do with it and i truly believe that's
Thomas: the the s line uh for the time that they ran it and i think they ran it because they still wanted
Thomas: the x1 and the x1 carbon to be the super duper thin and light you know cutting edge machine
Thomas: but i think they also understood that there is this in between customer that doesn't want to spend
Thomas: that kind of money um for the you know bleeding edge tech and bleeding edge tech especially then
Thomas: I don't know if it's necessarily the case now. Like people did not want to be early adopters because they got the sense that I am, I am part of your testing cycle and I do not like this. I want to buy a product that is reliable, that has been tested, that's got components in it that are well understood by manufacturers and assemblers, that sort of thing.
Thomas: And it did create this intermediary market where it's like, well, I don't want a full-sized T-series, but I also don't have enough money to buy an X1 Carbon.
Thomas: So, like, it's like, oh, well, I don't have enough money to buy a Rolls-Royce Phantom, but I do have enough money to buy a Rolls-Royce Ghost.
Thomas: Yeah.
Christian: Yeah, that's a good point.
Christian: Yeah, I also have a T400 and T400S and T410 in my collection.
Christian: And those are really lovely machines.
Christian: And they're completely different from each other.
Christian: Because if you don't know and you hear, okay, there's a T400 and a T400S,
Christian: you would just think, okay, it's a slightly slimmer variant.
Christian: But no, it's a completely different design.
Christian: The mainboard layout looks completely different.
Christian: The spare parts aren't compatible with each other.
Christian: So it's a completely different design and therefore we can see a lot of the X300 series DNA in it.
Christian: I never had the idea of comparing those two machines.
Christian: That's kind of mind-blowing that they are so comparable to each other.
Thomas: yeah it's it's the uh the benefit of what i do is i've got to look at like hundreds of laptops
Thomas: and so you start to be like oh this kind of looks like this and this kind of looks like that
Thomas: and when you're dealing with manufacturers that are the same and it's like you know
Thomas: So this isn't an accident.
Thomas: Like there's probably some, a story here.
Thomas: And sometimes I can talk to the people that were there to tell me, yes, what you see is
Thomas: true, or let me tell you about the trouble we got in or something like that.
Thomas: And, you know, sometimes you don't get the opportunity to confirm that.
Thomas: But at the same time, the evidence can be very, very strong.
Thomas: And I think it is for the T400S that if you really wanted a successor to the X300, that's
Thomas: what it is.
Thomas: the the x1 and x1 carbon was continuing the journey of making the craziest and coolest
Thomas: and thinnest and whitest machine that we possibly can that's going to resonate with
Thomas: what people expect the best ultra portable to be and i think that's the best way to look at the x1
Thomas: series is that it's the best that an ultra portable can be at that time and that's a really
Thomas: difficult thing for some to look back at and be like uh they were so much better back then
Thomas: and it's like well it's not that simple but okay enjoy your nostalgia
Christian: Yeah, definitely.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: I was just thinking about what the differences between the T14 and the T14S series might be these days.
Christian: I have a T14 G3 and a T14S G3 that are nearly the same.
Christian: I would say that most of the parts are changeable between those two machines.
Christian: But I think the difference between T14 and T14S isn't that huge anymore like it was for the T400 and T400S, right?
Thomas: Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah, so what I can tell you about that, because those were machines I was looking at when I was when I bought the X1 Nano, is the T14S is an X13 motherboard.
Christian: Ah, okay.
Thomas: Like it's like the parts are I don't think they're quite interchangeable, but it's practically the same.
Thomas: Like that's what they did.
Christian: Okay.
Thomas: And I was like, okay, so what I'm really doing is I'm making a decision there between, do I want my X13 to have a 14-inch display?
Christian: Okay.
Thomas: And I think the only way that they were able to allow that category to persist in terms of it not costing more is because it's, yeah, it's the same system board in both machines.
Thomas: And I believe at the time, I don't know if they've differentiated it now, the maintenance
Thomas: manual was the same.
Thomas: So you'll know how they combine maintenance manual products with similar products where
Thomas: like, you know, the certain P series had the same maintenance manual as the T series, because
Thomas: it was the same, just the system board was different.
Thomas: So they would combine it and it would say like T blah, blah, blah, comma P series service
Thomas: manual.
Thomas: And it was the same for the T and the X or the TS series and the X series at one point.
Christian: So
Christian: having a look at it, because in the hardware maintenance manual we see all those details.
Christian: And yeah, it also would totally make sense, because I can remember that the T14S variants
Christian: at some time had used before, while the normal T14s still had no use before for the AMD variants.
Christian: So it totally would make sense, because the X13 had a different update cycle.
Christian: Very interesting.
Thomas: yeah it's it's kind of weird what you read in there and it's like all of a sudden this stuff
Thomas: makes sense like it was a maintenance manual where i discovered that the lg ibm thing in corio
Thomas: was something
Christian: Oh yeah, that's a very interesting rabbit hole.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: I saw this on your website.
Christian: I didn't know that before I had it in my eyes on your website.
Thomas: yep there's a whole other story there for another time
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: Do we have any closing thoughts about the X300?
Thomas: I mean I think at the beginning we we started off by saying it was probably one of the most
Thomas: important ThinkPads that they ever made but I think at the end of the conversation I've certainly
Thomas: convinced myself I don't know about you that it was I think I can double down on that with a lot
Thomas: more confidence after talking to you about it that if we look at all of the things that that did
Thomas: not only just for the company, but all these product lines that we still have with us today
Thomas: and all of the things that were either planned for the X300 or that were on the X300 that are still
Thomas: here. I think it's really hard to point at a machine older that is still as significant
Thomas: in terms of longevity. Like, yes, the 700C was the first black thinkpad with the track point.
Thomas: You're never going to take that away from the 700C.
Thomas: But beyond that one feature and the color, not anything else really persists.
Thomas: And that's not to say that those are not very iconic and very important things.
Thomas: You always know where the ThinkPad in the room is.
Thomas: But when you talk about like the design language and some of the features and how these things are built like that,
Thomas: I think the farthest you can go back
Thomas: definitively is the X300 today.
Christian: Definitely.
Christian: I learned very much about the X300.
Christian: I hadn't looked that deep at the machine by now,
Christian: maybe because I have way too much ThinkPads in my collection
Christian: and it's impossible to have that in-depth view
Thomas: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Christian: at all the machines like you had for the X300.
Christian: So thanks a lot.
Christian: I really learned a lot about those machines
Christian: and about all the things that weren't part of the X300
Christian: but that were parts of later notebooks.
Christian: as we just mentioned. So I totally agree on that, that this is a very significant machine,
Christian: and it had to be a success. Otherwise, I think the ThinkPad history for Lenovo would have gone
Christian: in a completely different direction. And I'm so glad that it went that road, and that we have a
Christian: very awesome X300 and a lot of awesome slim notebooks that came after that machine.
Christian: So Thomas, thanks a lot for sharing all the nifty details about the machine.
Christian: It was very interesting and I was really glad that we finally managed to set up a conversation
Christian: and talking to you in person and not just watching your videos.
Thomas: No, absolutely, Christian.
Thomas: This was a long time coming.
Thomas: I'm really glad that we did it, and I hope we can have the opportunity to do it again in the future.
Christian: Definitely, I would highly do this once again.
Christian: Definitely had a lot of fun with it.
Christian: So, dear listener, if we didn't lose you in one of the last two hours and you made it that far in the podcast episode, thanks a lot for listening. That's awesome that you listened to all the details that we just had looked at. Check out the show notes. Definitely make your way there because we have a lot of interesting links to share.
Christian: of course we have Thomas website in his YouTube channel we have all the interviews about the x300
Christian: we have all the hardware information and the advertisements and so on and the successors so
Christian: if you really want to go deep that role and want to see all the devices that came afterwards just
Christian: have a look there you will find anything you didn't know that you would need it if you have
Christian: constructive criticism or feedback feel free to drop me a mail at podcast at thinkpad-museum.de
Christian: I also like to see ratings via the podcatcher of your choice.
Christian: And if you're in the Ferryverse, then feel free to follow me on Mastodon.
Christian: You can find this on thinkpadmuseum at podcasts.social.
Christian: So thanks again, Thomas.
Christian: It was a pleasure.
Christian: And I hope that we can continue this at some time.
Christian: And dear listener, thanks a lot for listening.
Christian: See you next time.