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A little about myself: I am an aircraft mechanic in-training, and I have a fond love of the ThinkPad line. The machines built by Big Blue have been stuck in my head ever since I went to a friend's house in 8th grade. His father, a professor at my university, at that time had a T60 assigned to him. I walked up to him and observed, "What's that red thing in the middle of the keyboard that looks like a pencil eraser?" That was my introduction into the ThinkPad, and the TrackPoint therein. Fast forward a few years; college. My father told me to find a laptop, one that would be long-lived and last all day in class. I had no doubt what brand I wanted to ask him for. After doing my research, I decided on a T430. Three months in it was taking the abuse from a hangar environment very well, but I started to notice things I was not so happy about. The biggest problem was the screen. Don't get me wrong, the resolution was nice, but I absolutely hate 16:9 ratio screens now. When I would try to find something in a 700 page maintenance manual PDF, the ratio cut off half of the page and zooming out made the text illegible. Another design I did not like was the island-style keyboard. I learned to type on a 2000-ish model Toshiba Satellite and a Packard-Bell desktop. I won't say much about it, because I'm sure many of you know about the keyboard, but the island style is not to my liking, the keys are too far apart, and there are not 7 rows. I also had my first slice-style battery go bad, which Lenovo did kindly replace hassle free.
After a while, I got fed up with (mainly the screen) and started looking for a classic IBM ThinkPad. I managed to stumble across my new T43 on eBay for 45 bucks!
The 4:3 screen ratio is amazing for documents.
The old three-color logo and the browser buttons next to the arrows!
The seventh row. Unless the screen is new or just never removed, it still has the plastic over the LEDs.
Next to the T430. Modem jack and separate mic and headphones jack. S-video: It's been awhile.
How far device interfaces, and USB in general, have progressed. I still intend to use this port for printing.
"Mobile Technology"
I love this machine. When I pulled it out of the box, I had forgotten how solid these machines were built. (No creaky palmrest or keyboard!) I can type without looking at the keys again, and they're clicky and all close together, and the 7th row is there! It's the perfect note-taker and is in excellent condition. I can see an entire page of a manual on the screen. I still need to find a new battery, as this one has aged and only holds about 40 minutes.
It came without an OS, when I took these pictures I was running elemetaryOS. I now run Debian Wheezy with LXDE.
I'm bad at ending long posts, cheers!
