ThinkPad X60 - Still lovable 14 years later?

Just me sharing my love of the ThinkPad X60 and deciding to look in on if it can still keep up in 2020. Hope you enjoy!

[annihilatorg]

"Distraction free" is a good way to put it. I recently picked up a very inexpensive low-spec laptop for exactly this purpose: A small linux box for focused development.

[Avtandil_]

The school I work at just replaced all their computers. I showed up today barely minutes before the crew they'd hired to haul everything away. It turned out they were dumping all the tech they'd had in storage as well. I frantically clawed through it as they were carrying everything out the door and managed to score a working X60s, among a pile of other things.

[IvicaAnteski]

Your love for Windows is admirable :))))
Reason to buy one #4: It can run 100% free (freedom) software... Even Richard Stallman himself uses one.

[Aryeh-o]

43-61 series thinkpads were a peak of sorts, for personal computing.

[OktoPutsch]

I used mine for wandering around, wardriving. Soooo comfortable !

[elerian]

Closest to his laptop but still working with modern software would be X220, last model with old keyboard but featuring i5 CPU and can be upgraded to SSD, runs win 10 fine. You should consider that one.

[maxtornogood]

I've actually got a Core 2 Duo X60 with an X6 Ultrabase & 64-bit Win7! I used to volunteer a bit with 2nd hand computer refurbishment and occasionally I would snag some freebies, this was one of them!

[imagimation]

I love my ThinkPad X61 and it's capable of 64-bit OS

[KRAFTWERKK]

This machine is a statement from a time when Computers were still cool and you could actually DO stuff with them, except just browsing the web. Because let's face it... the things they sell as modern day Laptops are just glorified tablets with a keyboard and that's it. No extra drives anymore, no Input Output ports except USB... no easily swapable & replaceable Batteries... no more socketed CPUs.... even the RAM is often soldered on... no dedicated hotkeys... no indicator LEDs... no switches to enable or disable certain parts of the hardware... no Video outputs.. no fullsize LAN port... What the heck are you even supposed to DO with a modern laptop when it lacks about anything that made older Laptops the amazing machines we love so much? Laptops today have become pure "Shut up and passively consume" devices. When i take a look at a laptop from the late 90s and mid 2000s i see a machine where i could write on, code, play games, make music with, record things via line-input, Burn CDs or DVDs for backups or creating copies or actually selfmade audio CDs and video DVDs or just playing back your movies or music on it from such disc and ripping them, plugging in a printer and print out text or pictures, connecing additional hardware via the PC cardbus expansion, being able to hook up an external Monitor or a Beamer / Projector, letting it run as a server, being able to use it as a diagnostics device thanks to its multiple I/O ports.. plugging in a DV / HDV camcorder via firewire and transfering your videos from tape to the PC or the other way round or using a DV interface Box which converts video from analog to digital and vice versa, in realtime and without intense compression .... All these things that made PCs seem to me like machines i can do anything with and only being limited by my imagination or CPU power and RAM.

You can tell how much of a scam modern day laptops are when a 10 - 16 year old Laptop is still usable. And the only thing modern software does is consuming more RAM and CPU power for things the same software in older versions did with the Hardware provided by such machines like Thinkpads of that time. Is that Progress?

[STK]

Better than crap with atom and celeron

[bramvandenbroeck]

I think as a road companion, it is perfectly useable, i mean, i have a big laptop just for in the home, sitting on the couch of in bed with a big laptop is nice, but bringing it along is a no go for me. I rather have a very small laptop to take along, just to type some text or keep me entertained while i am travelling or visiting friends, most of my friends know i am into tech, and tech will be on the table when i am with them. So if they ask me a question like "can you show me this or that", it's nice to be able to wip out an x series thinkpad and show them how it is done. A x series thinkpad is a nice device like this. The X60 would be perfect for that.

[KaiserTheAdversary]

Some X60 Thinkpads did have 64-bit Core2Duo CPUs. I managed to grab one off EBay a few months back :)

[cobberdig]

Must of been at the very end of the 4:3 screens? I still have a t23 thinkpad I use. I have random uses for it. Spoke calculator, vcds (which is the Volkswagen diagnostic tool that plugs into the car) But mostly just sits above the stereo and stores and plays heaps of music via winamp.

[springer-qbdv]

Nice video, one correction - X60 is product of Lenovo (despite bearing IBM logo). IBM sold thinkpad to Lenovo in May 2005. Thinkpad T43p was the last genuine thinkpad sold that was manufactured by IBM. If you are forced to run on 32 bit anyway, might as well get T43/T43p, the last of the IBM thinkpads.

[elektronkim]

Recently I refurbished an X60 Tablet in various stages over a long stretch. Windows 7 and Zorin works fine for pen drawing/non-touch tasks and I have a pocket computer emulator + QB64 coding as "the use" of it. The pen functionality is important in all of that and why I got it. What doesn't come across in videos is the cute size of those. I plan to get an X61 over time as I bought the wrong battery for the one above. The T60 models are also dear to me (for refurb projects and experiments).

Up-to-date computing is something else and maybe not a part of the retro enthusiasm which some of us have. A likely scenario of watching videos is basically by using another computer eventually and you reveal that in the last part. There is no way that you recorded it with the X60 as well. :)

[NiGhtPiSH]

It's a testament to the great design and construction that it is still barely usable for modern tasks 14 years later. If you love the 4:3 form factor I'd pick the X61 or X61S, but the platform is limited to 4GB of RAM and that's the main thing holding them back these days. If you want an X series for a daily driver at least a X200 is needed with 8 GB of RAM and a SSD. And once you get used to the TrackPoint, man it's efficient.

[xy.z]

I want to thank you for this nice Interview. Very good job. Can you make a similar video with the t440p? I think it is also a very nice ThinkPad

[KRAFTWERKK]

The X200 and X200s were the last X series thinkpads without a touch pad. Really nice machines and thankfully 16:10 displays instead of the useless 16:9 format that doesn't offer enough vertical space.

[findtruth]

This keyboard is the pinnacle of mankind creation.

[RetroLindsay]

I’ve got a x40 for a bargain and it came with a ssd I love Linux on it it’s great and if the x60 is faster I will definitely get one btw I love collecting old thinkpads