IBM Thinkpad - the best keyboard ever?

randomguy

I have been using a Thinkpad T42 since from before they became Lenovo, from 2003/2004 I think, when I was working abroad. Originally it was a work computer but I got to keep it a few years ago. Any other laptop I used never felt quite right, and I have tried a fair few. And I think it is all in the keyboard - the feel of the IBM one is solid feeling and clicky and just the right bounce. The height of the keys is different too. I even prefer it over normal keyboards.

I vaguely remember reading something somewhere that Thinkpad keyboards are actually based on different principles to all the others - something along the lines of the metal base or something. Has anyone come across this? Or is it just that I am really used to this - i don't think it is, because I used the Dell laptop all day every day for a while, but had to just give up and attach a keyboard.

This might seem like a weird thing, but I really notice it (i have a work laptop that is only a year old, one of the better Dells, officially a better computer, which I now spend most of the time on, but it just feels cheap and plasticky compared to my IBM). So instead of upgrading last year I just bought an external Hard Drive and some RAM, which i figured out how to stick in.

But I am going to upgrade for real soon (even though I can't speak highly enough of the T42, which I used on the road when I worked abroad, used as a work desktop replacement in a few countries, and which has never had even a momentary glitch in 4 years or so, despite the treatment it has been given, even when i was using a semi-split power-chord in a 3rd world country that regularly sparked when it moved).

To cut a long story short (and to get over that this seems to have turned into an homage rather than a question due to my supressed emotional attachment to this thing), has anyone out there got a newer version of a thinkpad? Have lenovo managed to keep up the general quality? Is the keyboard the same? Do any other makes of laptop feel like them? I can't keep going with just 24GB due to itunes and photography. And it will eventually just give up. I have never actually seen another IBM Thinkpad in Ireland.

I have just ordered an Asus eee, so maybe I will try to get used to that before I decide.

Maybe the title should really be: "how do you know when the relationship with your laptop is over? How do you move on? And are all laptop keyboards equal, but just different?"

majiktripp

T42's are built like brick sh!thouses, very reliable. If I were you, I'd buy a large 250gb 2.5" IDE drive, image your old hard drive to the new one, pop it back into the laptop and away you go. Space galore! Maybe buy a new Ac adaptor too while your at it...(if its still sparking )
Theres still life left in that laptop yet.

randomguy

majiktripp wrote: »

T42's are built like brick sh!thouses, very reliable. If I were you, I'd buy a large 250gb 2.5" IDE drive, image your old hard drive to the new one, pop it back into the laptop and away you go. Space galore! Maybe buy a new Ac adaptor too while your at it...(if its still sparking )
Theres still life left in that laptop yet.

Bought a Kensington Universal adapter after someone saw the sparks and said it was a miracle that I hadn't burnt out the motherboard!

Re Hard Drive, Thanks for advice - I don't know much about computers, but was able to figure out how to install the RAM, and seem to have a knack for messing around with computers generally, so I might just try that route you suggested. It seems like a waste to be pouring money into an old computer, so I was also just checking that I wasn't been emotionally attached rather than realising that it is time to move on.

Is this the hard drive you mean???
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=338764

Is installing it really technical, or could I figure it out from videojug, googling etc like I did with the ram, like cleaning out the fan etc?

Thanks again for the advice - if that Hard Drive from Komplett is what you mean, it would be a really cheap solution.

jd83

my brother has a old thinkpad too for his home computer, dont think its been turned off in a few years works perfectly and probably will for a further ten years. I bought one from lenova and the same pretty strong and built (as someone else said) like a ****house.

majiktripp

That HDD you linked to is indeed the one I was on about. There not too hard to install physically , its the reinstallation of windows and the data transfer that might catch you out. Still though that machine is very much usable and upgradable and if yer binning it throw it this way!!!!!

Dartz

Had an oul budget Toshiba that was built like that. It put up with me for three years until I sold it off. I miss it...

It felt nice to use too.. even if it wasn't built out of metal like the IBM... It was still whacked together with enough flexibility to absorb bumps and shocks.

It was underpowered and generally a bit ****, but kept going forever. And is still going... more or less