A look at IBM's short-lived "butterfly" ThinkPad 701 of 1995
fastcompany.com

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57 points

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vontzy

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3 days ago

12 comments

ilamont ・ 2 hours ago

I had one! I bought a used IBM ThinkPad 701 in a Hong Kong computer market in 1996 while backpacking through China and Southeast Asia. I think it was $800 or $900.

Although primitive by today's standards, it was a solid little laptop that served me well for the tasks I was engaged in at the time … writing, Web surfing (on a very slow modem), learning HTML, and playing Doom.

It had a color screen, a big improvement over the greyscale screen I had on my previous laptop (no name Taiwanese brand that cost $2000 new!)

The 701 also easily fit in a book bag, although it was a bit thick and heavy.

There are some more photos and historical information about the 701 here:

http://renaissancechambara.jp/2012/04/26/ibm-thinkpad-701/

kbelder ・ 42 minutes ago

At this point, my rule of thumb for laptops, phones, and tablets is the thicker the better. I avoid anything that is specifically being marketed as 'thin'. What an anti-feature.

mrexroad ・ 3 hours ago

Never realized they were that short lived. I loved playing with those at CompUSA. Always wanted one.

tcper ・ 5 hours ago

Obviously, based on its price, it was a commercially unsuccessful product. Really want to buy one, when I was a student.

  • kgwgk ・ 4 hours ago

    > it was a commercially unsuccessful product.

    Was it?

    According to the article "A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995’s best-selling PC laptop." As the article says, $3,799–$5,649 was "not cheap, but not absurd at the time."

    For reference the PowerBook 500 series sold "almost 600,000" units in 1994-1996 according to Wikipedia and the color screen models were $2,900-$4,840.

  • numpad0 ・ 4 hours ago

    I doubt its discontinuation had that much to do with the price. A lot of Japanese market electronics until ~2010 were intended to capture that season's bonus pay in one big batch and then go out flush by the next one, more like movies than cars, or iPhones today. All all-new and groundbreaking every halves of years.

    Moore's Law was in full effect too, everything was going obsolete as quick as time itself. Specifications values inflated in orders of 10^2 units per week, whether it was megahertz or megapixel or megabytes or grams. Making last year's new product, even with parts upgrades, was waste of time.

    • WillAdams ・ 4 hours ago

      The big thing is screen sizes obsoleted the need for the expanding keyboard when they became cost-effective for "normal" keyboards and the device itself could be lightweight by being thin rather than small.

  • trhway ・ 4 hours ago

    I'd say the foldable screen-not-broken-by-hinge large tablets ASUS ZenBook 17 and Huawei MateBook are in the same spirit - innovative and expensive. One can live without, though would be nice to have.

SoftTalker ・ 4 hours ago

Ad took over the screen and I couldn’t get out. Had to kill the browser. Not reading sites that are that inconsiderate.

  • ulfw ・ 4 hours ago

    God invented ad blockers for a reason. I have had no idea what you were even talking about.

weare138 ・ 4 hours ago

I got ahold of one long after it was obsolete and that keyboard was awesome. Someone needs to bring back the design.