Say hello to the RISC ThinkPad that’s not a ThinkPad, the IBM WorkPad z50.
[…]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.
I remember being at CompUSA in Chicago about this time, seeing these and staring at them in pure lust. I remember going home with a box of SuSE Linux of some version with seven or nine cdroms and a large paperback manual for $29.99 instead. I’ve always lusted after some smaller version of a laptop like these and have never quite had enough to afford one and be able to justify it until I got my eeepc 901 with Xandros Linux. (Promptly replaced with an install of Ubuntu Linux which was much more useful, more more up to date and IMHO much much faster.)
I wonder if these or others were the blueprint for the cheap nearly disposable mips based windows laptops I used to see at Menards around the hollidays. They were a measly $50 US, but had almost no on board storage, I’m not sure if they even had USB. I was tempted to buy it as a novelty but figured it was likely a dead end that would never get security updates or even web browsers. Those have to be cheaper on ebay.
Looks like they are. This is what I think they looked like, this one doesn’t specify what cpu it has, But I think its one of them.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265904112326?hash=item3de91ec2c6:g:hS0AAOSwGkNjMRsm&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoEkiHCnHUE0tknNQuwkKTWxV1CiI%2FZ1ruVe8VgGH2iC9GNAZSm%2BHVzUn%2FVj153qayzmxq8KM%2B6OG5zdUeOKTP2IUvJW7QgMX7XMXa0uz0A9068YtSeJ9JH6y6Uk2pmUw3WRpa4Zrcve4f2m7roE2A%2BBr14Nbm2KH4IvEux%2Fx7kWAq00DFSKJlht7CPqopkU%2FV3xcDhDEo4VW0v5wsT3tP2U%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR-T7rvrvYA
Those were cheap and served to dampen enthusiasm for the linux netbooks…
With the linux ones people knew they were getting a device for browsing, they didn’t expect compatibility with windows. With these windows ce ones they *expected* compatibility – ie they thought they were the same as any other windows laptop just cheaper and smaller. I know of several people who bought them and were subsequently disappointed they couldn’t run typical windows apps on them.
Current asking price on eBay for a good example is $350. That’s hardly “batshit insane” for a rare piece of kit that someone had to keep it clean and stored in favourable conditions for you to come and buy it when you eventually realised it exists.
The problem with this laptop is that it can’t do anything.: Windows CE was barely alive as an app ecosystem even when it was in active development, and the bundled Microsoft apps in Windows CE are pretty meh too (Microsoft’s Windows CE apps look like some fly-by-night company tried to copycat the real Office, IE, and WMP in the space a month). As a result, you’ll get buyer’s remorse immediately after buying it (and playing with it for 10 mins tops), because there is nothing interesting to keep you there.
I prefer to buy rare kit that has some interesting gimmick to offer or opens the doors to some decent app ecosystem. For example, I bought 3D laptops and some 3D-camera phones, just for the gimmick. And that weird Xperia Play phone with the bundled PS1 emulator and the slide-out keyboard. And if I ever sell them (after keeping them stored in a small appartment and spending time to charge their batteries), I will not price them to impulse-purchase price just because some people on the internet think they are entitled to something like that just because.
BTW I am surprised such piece of kit even exists on eBay. From my experience, when looking for such “legendary” hardware (my personal experience involves the special-edition LG Optimus 3D (P720) or the Kepler-based Alienware 3D laptops made at the tail-end of the 3D era), I had to set a saved eBay search and wait to even have the chance to buy. And when they finally became available , I didn’t demand that the seller parts with them for pocket change. Credit to the sellers, the price was right for what the kit was. And so is the price for this IBM WorkPad laptop. Problem is the kit itself is not very interesting.