The Complete History of ThinkPad: From IBM's 1992 700C to Lenovo's 2026 AI Workstations
By
zdw
If you only eat one bagel today, this is the bagel.
Summary
A comprehensive history of the ThinkPad laptop brand, tracing its continuous evolution from IBM's 1992 700C through the 2005 acquisition by Lenovo to the 2026 AI workstations. The article details how the brand maintained visual and engineering continuity across corporate ownership changes, covering iconic features like the TrackPoint, keyboard designs, and the evolution of major series (X, T, P). It highlights that ThinkPad is one of the longest-running commercial laptop families, with Lenovo surpassing 60 million units sold since the brand's inception.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledThinkPad has shipped continuously since October 1992 under two corporate owners (IBM 1992 to 2005, Lenovo 2005 to present), making it among the longest-running commercial laptop families on the market.
The 2005 IBM-to-Lenovo handoff did not rupture the brand the way skeptics expected: IBM's ThinkPad engineering and design carried over largely intact.
Lenovo crossed 60 million ThinkPad units sold by...
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