As part of the drive to improve our use of laptops in the schools I've spent some time today restoring a very old IBM Thinkpad laptop. This particular model was first made in 1997 and is, I think, my all time favourite laptop design. Very early in our work I was given a couple of these laptops by the school I was then working in and for some time they were the mainstays of our admin system. They have since, obviously, been superseded by more powerful machines but I have a great fondness for them. Getting the Thinkpad into a usable condition involved a bit of fishing round on the Internet to find some software to make a memory stick work on it. When it finally managed to find the memory stick I was very pleased - laptop 0 me 1.
As I type the restored Thinkpad is churning its way through tidying up all the files it contains. Over the years the way computers work have been increasingly obscured from view so it makes a change to almost be able to see the computer 'thinking'. For any computer buffs among my readers this computer is running Windows 98 and I'm 15% of the way through defragging the hard disc. Anybody old enough to remember doing this will appreciate the beauty of watching the hard disc being re-arranged on the screen in front of you.
Writing my blog on a very modern laptop with the most recent version of Windows on it with a fifteen year old machine churning away beside it provides a powerful reminder of just how much computers have changed in a very short time. It will be interesting to let our students see the difference. I'm also reminded just how good the old equipment was. The Thinkpad was such a good design that a Chinese company bought it up.
The Thinkpad is going to be used as a basic administration machine in the Primary School initially. Recycling such an old machine is very satisfying. It will be good to see it in use again.
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