30 YEARS OF THINKPAD

The most powerful commercial PC brand's legacy continues

IBM unveiled its most well-known PC brand, the ThinkPad, exactly thirty years ago at the now-defunct COMDEX (Computer Dealer Exhibition). The ThinkPad 700C was the first ThinkPad notebook, with a very big colour TFT - at least by 1992 standards - an unusual black design when laptops tended to be beige, and the red TrackPoint in the centre of the keyboard, which had never been used on a laptop before.

ThinkPads have been the standard against which other companies have compared themselves, thanks to their superb keyboards, easily recognisable industrial style, and unusual features that consumers were unaware of the famed keyboard light

A storied past

The first IBM PC firm, a unique IBM construct that was essentially a company within a corporation, was developed to combat small, fast-moving new competitors like Compaq and Dell, which IBM proper had found difficult to compete with. This group was responsible for most of the early innovation in laptop and all-in-one desktop PCs. One of the more intriguing projects that was abandoned was the butterfly keyboard, which mechanically expanded when the notebook was opened to give a big keyboard in a small form factor.

A few years later, the IBM PC corporation not only pioneered all-in-one desktop form factors, but it was also one of the first to consider the need to upgrade the PC component of the solution without replacing the entire machine. The initial version, which was not upgradeable, was noted for its award-winning design, which was both elegant and creative for its time.

The PC Company developed a modular design that may have both reinvented mobile computers and set the tone for the smartphones that followed, but then IBM CEO Louis Gerstner slashed the unit's funding and, a few years later, Sam Palmisano sold the company to Lenovo.

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