The MacBook Air got a lot of press by being thin. In the mid-1990's, IBM surprised the computing world by debuting a small laptop with a full size keyboard. The ThinkPad 701C came complete with a butterfly keyboard which expanded and collapsed inside of a small form factor case.
We got a hold of one and cracked it open in Classics Rock:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/classic-tech/?p=177
We couldn't get it all the way open without destroying it, but we wanted to highlight the butterfly mechanism in any case.
Did you have a 701C or its big brother the ThinkPad 701CS? What do you think of ThinkPads in general?
Discussion on:
View:
Show:
Was the one of the few systems that IBM ever built that was rugged, worked well and I actually enjoyed owning.
I still have one in a downstairs closet somewhere that I let nieces and nephews tinker on when they decide they want to be computer engineers like Unkey Jerr.
IBM should find the design team responsible for that system and give them all a HUGE thank you.
I still have one in a downstairs closet somewhere that I let nieces and nephews tinker on when they decide they want to be computer engineers like Unkey Jerr.
IBM should find the design team responsible for that system and give them all a HUGE thank you.
If Lenovo would beef up its IdeaPad-S10 to ThinkPad quality standard, and include an updated version of the 701C's Butterfly keyboard, they'd have a killer machine on their hands (and under many of ours!)
I have one too - 701c, loaded 
with 24mb of memory. I used to use it with Extranet Access & VPN, but now I can't get a stupid old 3com lan card to work. Probably it's the dongle, or the idea.
Has anyone run W2kpro on these? Is it possible?
Thank you.
with 24mb of memory. I used to use it with Extranet Access & VPN, but now I can't get a stupid old 3com lan card to work. Probably it's the dongle, or the idea. Has anyone run W2kpro on these? Is it possible?
Thank you.
W2KPro would never be able to work on a Thinkpad 701C. 2000 takes way more memory than the machine can handle.Windows 98 SE would be a stretch for that machine. You're firmly stuck in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95b I think.
I owned a 701c (or cs... can't remember)
I got it around 1999-2000 and it was an amazing laptop I found that it had the odd keybord problem like keys constantly being on, but running the vacume cleaner over the keybord every now and again kept the issue at bay.
I believe mine was a 100Mhz 486DX4 with either 24 or 32Mb RAM and something along the lines of a 300 to 500Mb hard drive.
Installing Windows 95 on it at the time was a lot of fun as I didn't have a CD drive and only had Win95 on a CD, so had to install dos on it and use the dos version of winzip to zip all the cab files one by one (from another pc) so they would fit on a floppy disk then extract them all on the laptops hdd to install it... Took a good few hours to sort out, but worked like a dream when it was finished.
I loved it so much I am now on the search to get another one for nostalgic reasons.
I got it around 1999-2000 and it was an amazing laptop I found that it had the odd keybord problem like keys constantly being on, but running the vacume cleaner over the keybord every now and again kept the issue at bay.
I believe mine was a 100Mhz 486DX4 with either 24 or 32Mb RAM and something along the lines of a 300 to 500Mb hard drive.
Installing Windows 95 on it at the time was a lot of fun as I didn't have a CD drive and only had Win95 on a CD, so had to install dos on it and use the dos version of winzip to zip all the cab files one by one (from another pc) so they would fit on a floppy disk then extract them all on the laptops hdd to install it... Took a good few hours to sort out, but worked like a dream when it was finished.
I loved it so much I am now on the search to get another one for nostalgic reasons.
Loved that laptop...owned three, all the 701C . I believe the CS version was somehow inferior but I couldn't swear to it. I think it was the screen. They would run Win 95 as I recall.
My last one had been upgraded from the 486 to a faster processor by an upgrade company but the upgrade did not result in observable improved performance. It was the only one I ever heard of having the upgraded chip, a 586 I believe..
All three of the computers lasted until the hinge cam that opened the keyboard failed
Until the day the last one died it would just WoW! them in Starbucks when the keyboard popped out.
It was the first computer to be part of the permanent collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art.
It truly was a piece of art.
My last one had been upgraded from the 486 to a faster processor by an upgrade company but the upgrade did not result in observable improved performance. It was the only one I ever heard of having the upgraded chip, a 586 I believe..
All three of the computers lasted until the hinge cam that opened the keyboard failed
Until the day the last one died it would just WoW! them in Starbucks when the keyboard popped out.
It was the first computer to be part of the permanent collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art.
It truly was a piece of art.
- Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Prev
- Next
- Toggle
