The book - All About ThinkPad 1991 - 1998 (oh and other vintage thinkpads rant)

[Saucey]

This post pertains to ThinkPad history.

So I've been writing on my website and trying to dig to the bottom of the ThinkPad's history.
Arrogantly I did my research without reading the ThinkPad book, so I've been going off magazine and website posts.

But I have come across another book that is out of print. I am unsure of the date, but it looks like it predates the ThinkPad Book. The reason why I find this interesting is because of the relationship of the PS/55 Note laptops and the ThinkPad. From my research, some of these laptops were released as the PS/2 Note before officially becoming branded as ThinkPads. Even then we had a few models that were PS/2 Note, particularly, the PS/2 Note 425 which was a rebrand of the ThinkPad 350... to which in an odd state of events I've obtained the 350 but have lost my 425 while moving.

Anyways, I am curious if anyone has came across the Japanese book or the english one. I am writing information about the 2521 and other laptops released at this time. I found out there was a successor to the 730TE.

Anyways, I find this information fascinating, ThinkWiki only outputs so much information and so does the german wiki. I'm in the process of creating a spreadsheet of old ThinkPad models, so that I (or whoever) could make a ThinkPad graph, but this time to focus on the old ones, while connecting the PS/55 and PS/2 variants.

I saw that the japanese book is available for $60 or so USD, I am considering buying it and just using my phone to translate it. I found the fold out poster that is available in PDF format.

Oh yeah, I also have to add, that the PowerLaptop EWS looks to be a prototype design. I don't think it was ever made, but I was happy to find out about the RS/6000 N40, which IBM made for Tadpole computer, which I believe is the true precursor to the ThinkPad 800 series.
Oh and to add to that, Tadpole used that design on many other laptops, so perhaps it was theirs the whole time, but its strange to see a 3 button trackpoint in 1994 but not utilized in other ThinkPads.

[RealBlackStuff]

Here's the translation for that out of print link:
https://translate.google.com/translate? ... w%2F115305

Here's the translation for that successor to the 730TE link:
https://translate.google.com/translate? ... 2Ftp19.htm

And here is some additional info about the cost of computers in the past, and what they are worth today.

[Saucey]

Thanks RBS, Google translate has been super helpful. I have the app on my phone and it can use the camera to scan text, so I've used it on images.