Hey everyone, it's Colin. How's it goin'?
Most laptop enthusiasts would consider IBM ThinkPads
from the '90s as being strictly for business.
And they'd be mostly right...
except for this model.
[♪ Intro ♪]
This is a ThinkPad i Series 1482, type 2621.
It has a name like that because...
IBM.
It shipped with a five hundred megahertz Intel Celeron CPU,
a 12 gigabyte IDE hard drive,
and 64 megabytes of PC-100 memory.
But, mine was upgrade to 320 megabytes at some point.
The i 1400 series offered a few different display options
and this one has the second largest of them.
It's a 14.1 inch TFT, offering a resolution of 1024x768.
There were also models with 12, 13, and 15 inch panels,
and those smaller ones were lower resolution at 800x600.
Interestingly, those display options are also all a bunch of compromises.
The 12 inch screen has the fastest refresh rate at 50 milliseconds,
but with average contrast and brightness.
The 14 inch is the brightest at 130 nits,
but has average contrast and refresh.
The 15 inch offers a dramatically better contrast ratio,
but at the cost of a little bit of refresh and brightness.
And the dual scan, passive matrix 13 inch panel is best avoided
as it's dramatically worse at everything.
Liquid crystal display technology has come a long way since then.
The system was released on January 5th, 1999
and the back panel features the typical set of ports for the era:
PS/2, 56K modem, serial, parallel,
USB 1.0, plus VGA and S-Video outputs.
The left side added a single CardBus slot, floppy drive, and audio in and out jacks.
It has a typical ThinkPad input arrangement.
The keyboard has 85 keys, plus an additional four colorful buttons
that can be used to configured to launch specific programs.
The keyboard was also illuminated, but not in the way that we see on laptops today.
Instead of backlit keys, it features what's called
the ThinkLight, which is mounted above the screen
and dimly lights the base of the machine and surrounding area.
In the middle of the keyboard is the iconic TrackPoint nub,
but the machine lacks a touchpad.
That wouldn't come to IBM's laptops until 2002 with the ThinkPad T30.
If the flat typing experience wasn't comfortable, the back could be elevated
by flipping out a pair of feet
that cleverly tucked into the corners of the machine.
There was no networking built into the computer, but a common addition was an Ethernet PC card.
Laptops of the time were still primarily used by business people who traveled frequently,
so the built-in modem was much more useful for them
especially since Wi-Fi was still in its infancy at the time.
And since this is a ThinkPad,
it lacks any sort of consumer-friendly features, right?
Well...
not quite.
This model came with a 6x DVD drive
and the graphics are powered by an ATI Rage Mobility chip
with four megabytes of video RAM and connected through the AGP bus.
It certainly wasn't a killer video card at the time,
but it was better than what a lot of other laptops offered.
It was even kinda okay at gaming,
provided you were careful when setting up the video quality options.
Perhaps the most interesting feature was right up front:
a set of music transport controls.
These weren't just hotkeys though.
Slide the small power switch to the right and the display in the middle lights up.
Drop in an audio CD and as you might have guessed,
the buttons will control its playback.
But here's the catch:
this all works with the laptop powered off.
It's a completely independent system.
And not only does it use the machine's headphone jack for output,
it can also play through the built-in stereo speakers,
though they're not exactly amazing in their sound quality.
[♪ Direct Audio Capture ♪]
[♪ ThinkPad Speaker Capture ♪]
The designers even cleverly added a small window to the top of the screen
so you can see the track number display when the laptop's lid was closed.
So, was this addition some sort of
quiet rebellion on the part of bored IBM engineers?
Hardly.
As it turns out, the i 1400 and i 1500 series ThinkPads weren't entirely IBM products.
They were budget models, licensed by IBM and manufactured by Acer.
In late 1996, IBM signed a manufacturing deal
with Acer that was reportedly worth two billion dollars.
It was part of a larger effort at IBM to boost sales by
catering to the small business and consumer markets.
PC prices were plummeting and Big Blue needed a way to cut costs.
So, outsourcing some models to Acer made sense.
They started with desktops, one of which was the Aptiva E16.
It garnered attention with its price tag of less than $1000 US,
which was possible in no small part
due to the machine using common Acer parts
like the V58XA motherboard,
which was also used in some of Acer's Aspire models.
Over time, the partnership between the two grew to include laptops
and IBM touted the multimedia capabilities of the ThinkPad i series,
calling them "mobile entertainment centers"
and stating that they could be used as home DVD players,
which presumably explains the machine's S-Video output jack.
It's certainly not obvious that this machine isn't a purely IBM product.
Design-wise, it fits in with other ThinkPad models,
and shares a number of the same unique features, like the ThinkLight and TrackPoint.
But the use of ATI graphics and the audio jack arrangement
distinguish the machine from other IBM-designed ThinkPads of the time.
My particular machine is in good condition overall but
could still use a little bit of work.
It needs a solid cleaning after sitting in storage for almost 20 years.
And likewise, the clock battery has gone flat.
The main nickel metal hydride battery has worn out too,
but when it was new, it was good for three hours of use.
A respectable number for the time,
with the audio CD player function alone reportedly lasting for six hours.
And the screen on this unit has started to go a bit yellow,
which commonly happens to CCFL backlit displays like this one
as they age.
At the time of its release, this exact model, the 1482, sold for about $2200 US.
That's almost $3400 today.
And while it was primarily aimed at small business users,
for *that* kind of money, well...
I think I'd want to have a laptop be a little bit of fun sometimes too.
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and as always,
thanks for watching.