"Time travel tools" The 2001 IBM ThinkPad T22

[2000sfanman]

So this is going to be a mini review on a T-series ThinkPad from 2001 as done by an individual born of that same year. So I purchased a T22 because it was as old as I was willing to go. I roughly paid about $108USD for the whole thing from eBay, I purchased 2 units and merged it into this fully working machine. So far this computer has served me extremely well. it's been taken on a vacation as a only computer, and been used as my main go to for a 2001 time travel machine. this computer comes from a time when keyboards were just so comfortable to use, and still basically the best keyboard I have ever used on any Laptop. This T22 eats anything I toss at it, anything from full frame rate DVD's to surfing the web as it was back in 2001 via WebArchive's WayBackMachine. The original specs have been modified to fit my needs better and these are the specs as follows:

* IBM ThinkPad T22 Type 2647-7EU
* 1.0Ghz Coppermine Mobile-Pentium III
* 256MB PC-100 RAM
* 20GB HDD
* 14.1" TFT display 1024x768
* DVD-ROM Drive
* S3 Savage IX8+ 8MB Graphics
* Intel AC'97 Audio
* Windows 2000 PRO SP2
* Manufactured: JULY 2001

These are wickedly versatile machines! Because this computer looked like somebody stomped on it, the lid was crushed, and the screen was broken, and the bottom base was cracked, but it still powered on! T22's are reliable machines inside and out, and anybody out there looking for a good mid-sized notebook to run Windows 95-Windows 2000 this is the computer for you.

IBM ThinkPad T22


T22 Specs


T22 Back Ports Lid Closed

T22 Left Side Lid Closed

T22 Right Side Lid Closed


T22 Front View

T22 Lid

T22 Bottom View

Courage the Cowardly Dog CN Page Circa 2001

A Classic From 2001: "Courage the Cowardly Dog"

T22 Top View

T22 VS T30

T22 ThinkLight ON

T22 ThinkLight OFF

Want more photos? You can access my complete tour here: https://flic.kr/s/aHskDxhtsy

So in summery any T2X series Notebooks are your best bet when it comes to a time machine you can shove in your briefcase. If you need a Windows XP Platform I'd say a T30 is a good bet for 2002 era applications, but I'd opt for any T4X Notebook to run XP. But the T22 has a lot to offer like awesome DVD playback, and desktop like stereo speakers that would make any modern laptop envy, and a virtually borderless display that would make the XPS 13 cry its self to sleep every night.

[TPFanatic]

That's a really smart place to put the LED indicators since you can see them with the lid open or closed.

[dr_st]

Very nice oldie and looks to be in great shape too!

Don't be surprised if the battery starts losing capacity fast. It's what usually happens to these really old, but seldom used Sanyo batteries - they start showing good capacity, but quickly deteriorate.

[kfzhu1229]

Yes I've had that experience with mine before, though I feel like it depreciates much much faster if you keep draining it below 10% or so. I've done that on my Ultrabay battery, thanks to IBM's logic of draining it to 0% before switching to the main battery, and those batteries now only hold around 10 minutes of charge.

[dr_st]

Yes I've had that experience with mine before, though I feel like it depreciates much much faster if you keep draining it below 10% or so.

I'm not sure if it actually depreciates faster, or if draining it below 10% just forces it to recalibrate the gauge . If you don't ever drain your battery under a certain %, the gauge may still reflect the old value, and you will think that you have almost full capacity, until the first time it surprises you by dropping from 50% to 0% in one instant.

[RealBlackStuff]

@2000sfanman

....If these are way too many photos....

A PM has been waiting for you since last week Monday!
Please click on Private messages at the top of this looooooooong page.

[2000sfanman]

A PM has been waiting for you since last week Monday!
Please click on Private messages at the top of this looooooooong page.

I've been scrolling since then just to get to it. There I shorted it, I guess you guys don't like loooooooooong pages. This forum is way stricter than I originally bargained for. Sorry for the inconvenience, and wear and tare on your scroll wheel.

[TonyJZX]

This was an interesting time to be alive... the post 9/11 world. This line would be relevant up until say 2006 when the dual cores and widescreens took over.

I used to work for a place that had T40-T43 across the board. We all ran XP Office 2003 and the usual multinational type apps inc. SAP Oracle and all the BI type stuff.

On 512mb single cores. But even back then, 1,024 x 768 was rubbish. Everyone was using VGA out to a 19-21" monitor and ext. kbd mouse. We didnt use docks for some reason (cost?). We didnt have enough laptops to go around so I gave up mine to go back to a T23 w/ 512mb which was abolutely fine doing office productivity. The single or dual USB was a pain though. The staff got used to hooking up a vga maybe a usb and an rj45 every day.

Then the revolution happened and that was the T61 widescreen and it consigned these single core 4:3 units to the scrapheap.

4Gb dual core 1,200 x 800 was a big step up... and the move to 11g wireless.

I still have a small box in the garage full of the old style PIN Lenovo power supplies. The big barrel psu took over too.

Also if you were in IT and a system admin slash network engineer like me it was the easiest time to get a job.

[kfzhu1229]

On 512mb single cores. But even back then, 1,024 x 768 was rubbish.

If you are saying back then as of when the T22 was around, then no 1024 x 768 wasn't all that garbage, considering it was only around for around 4 years on laptops.
If you are saying back then as of when T4x was around, then 1024 x 768 was complete garbage, especially since the T4x XGA panels have lower quality build in mind, compared to the first XGA panels found in 770 and 600. That is pretty much equivalent to 1366 x 768 resolution today (Come on, we have the same number of rows of pixels for literally 2 decades)

[TonyJZX]

I'm saying that even back in those days, we had staff who complained that 1,024 x 768 wasnt enough to run their every day tasks.

Sure it was fine at a pinch when mobile but it wasnt enough to have Exchange up which banging on Excel or having your webapps up and transferring info from SAP into Crystal Reports or whatever.

Everyone wanted a 1,280 x 1,024 screen or larger... even for me I had a Dell 2405 24" monitor hooked up to my T23... sure you could only get 1,600 x 1,200 but its workable.

If you could get things done on 1,024 then good for you but I'm saying my experiences is that it was hard even back 10-15yrs ago for the uses I saw.