Retro Laptop: IBM Thinkpad T23 (2001)

The IBM ThinkPad T20 series was a series of notebook computers introduced in May 2000 by IBM as the successor of the 600 series and the first model of the T-series which exists today under Lenovo ownership. Four models were produced, the T20, T21, T22, and T23; the series was succeeded in May 2002 by the ThinkPad T30, but was produced until July 2003.

ThinkPad T23 was the final model of the T20 series, featuring the new Tualatin Pentium III-M at either 866 MHz, 1.00 GHz, 1.13 GHz, or 1.20 GHz (all with SpeedStep technology) and either a 13.3" XGA TFT, 14.1" XGA TFT, or 14.1" SXGA+ TFT display as standard. This model shipped with 2 USB 1.1 ports rather than only one, a 15GB to 60GB hard drive, a Mini-PCI Modem or Wireless card (on select models), a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW or combo (CD-RW/DVD) drive, and either 128MB or 256MB of RAM standard (upgradeable to 1GB using PC133 SODIMMs).

The unit I managed to snag is a beautiful 14" one, with the 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, a 30GB HDD and a combo drive. It was funny that it has both Windows XP installed and Xubuntu (not sure which version yet, I’ll write a bit about this later in the article).

I won’t talk too much about the software part, as it’s a fairly classical Windows XP machine, but I want to compliment the amazing build quality of the laptop and its fantastic keyboard. I need a bit of practice with it, but the key travel and general feel of it is great, I might turn this computer into an off-line writing machine. Or maybe I’ll start to write my articles on it. It’s THAT good.

The reason why I didn’t yet wipe this was because I needed a machine to install ActiveSync to test a Toshiba Windows CE phone, but it didn’t work as expected (more about that in a different article).

The Xubuntu installed is a 15.10 which works suuuuuuuper slow on this machine (the laptop is released in 2003, the OS in 2015), so it’s definitely going to get wiped and maybe get a fresh install soon.