The MIPS ThinkPad, kind of

Say hello to the RISC ThinkPad that’s not a ThinkPad, the IBM WorkPad z50.

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Let’s say you went to CompUSA, or, I dunno, Fry’s, or Circuit City, in mid-1999. Why, you might pick up an Ethernet hub and a BeOS advanced topics book, and marvel at this lithe little laptop IBM was selling for US$999 ($1780 in today’s dollars) MSRP. It had all the ThinkPad design cues and a surprisingly luxurious 95% keyboard, plus that frisson-inducing bright red mouse stick. And you might say, I want this, and I’m going to take it home.

I want one of these so very bad – but like so many things classic computing, eBay prices have gone batshit insane, making it very, very hard to justify.

5 Comments

  1. 2022-09-26 10:05 pm
  2. 2022-09-27 11:51 am
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  3. 2022-09-28 11:20 am
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