Lenovo is planning to launch a 25th-anniversary ThinkPad laptop soon, and signs point to it being a notebook with classic ThinkPad design elements and modern specs. In fact, it may even be part of the company’s current ThinkPad T470 family.

But as for the design? We already knew it’d probably have a retro-style colorful ThinkPad logo and a classic keyboard. Now we have a better idea of what that looks like, thanks to an image posted to the LenovoPartner website.

Spotted by redditor Liskni_si, the picture shows a laptop with a a raised-key keyboard featuring 7 rows of keys, a blue enter key, dedicated buttons for volume and other functions, and a Lenovo TrackPoint button as well as a touchpad, giving you two different ways to navigate.

The laptop also seems to have multiple camera lenses above the display, suggesting that the notebook may have an IR camera with support for Windows Hello. There’s also a fingerprint sensor to the right of the keyboard.

Oh, and the words “Anniversary Edition” are written above the keyboard.

There’s no word on the exact price, specs, or release date, but the Lenovo ThinkPad 25 is expected to launch by the end of 2017 and sell a lot less than $5,000 (despite some earlier rumors that it’d be super pricey).

With 25 years of history to draw from, it looks like Lenovo decided to balance some popular features from years past with items that modern users expect. But there’s one thing that’s likely to disappoint folks who were hoping for a ThinkPad with truly classic design — the display looks like it has a 16:9 aspect ratio rather than 4:3.

Then again, the first ThinkPad I ever owned had a grayscale display because I bought it at a time when color laptop displays were expensive and uncommon. I doubt there are too many folks clamoring for that particular classic design style from Lenovo’s new anniversary edition laptop.

via NotebookCheck

 

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17 replies on “Is this the Lenovo ThinkPad 25th anniversary edition?”

  1. The first thinkpad was released on the 5th of October, so I’m guessing that’s when the retro 25 model will be released.

  2. I think that is really neat. I like the ‘eraser head’ track point. I think it is better than the touchpad.

  3. So far so good. I’d prefer an X series but beggars can’t always be choosers. What we see looks OK though. Would prefer 16:10 for the display and we can’t see from that photo if it is anti-glare or not. If it really is T series it should have a suitable dock available. A Thinklight would have been really nice as a bonus on the “retro” angle, love em.

    We just have to see if they screw something up that is fatal. A locked bootloader would be one example of fatal, but this isn’t a tablet and Lenovo certainly knows Penguins and Thinkpads have been lifelong allies so I wouldn’t expect such a plot twist now.

  4. No adequate reasons to buy ThinkPads anymore. Probably comes with spyware in the firmware that Lenovo hasn’t been caught installing yet.

  5. Wow! I have to admit I am sort of amazed. Why would any of you guys even consider spending 5000 on a laptop? Color me curious, but it seems like there are a lot of machines out there with exceptional engineering for a lot less.

    1. If I had to guess, I’d say it’ll probably be in the $1000 – $1500 range. There had been rumors that it would cost as much as $5000, but Lenovo’s former VP of design shot them down, saying pricing hadn’t been announced yet, but those rumors were false.

      1. If I can get the specs I want for under $1500 then I’m sold already. Can’t wait to buy one.

  6. No ThinkLight, no uni-directional parallel port, no serial port, no combined PS/2 port, no 4x CD-ROM, no floppy drive, no 4:3 800×600 DSTN LCD, no PCMCIA slots, no RJ-11 phone jack. They just lost my $20000, yes I’m planning to buy 0.

  7. I think people were hoping for older 16:10 instead of 16:9.
    No need for the “thinklight” with a back-lit keyboard.

  8. I copied the image into the Gimp (photo editing software) and measured the screen aspect ratio: 16×9. I hope this is a fake, because otherwise Lenovo just lost my $5000 with this one. (Yes, I was planning to buy two if the aspect ration were 16×10 or better.)

  9. So the only retro feature is… the keyboard? I’m not sure what I expected but a thinklight would have been nice and a 3:2 screen wouldn’t have been too far off 4:3 while still being available these days.

    Oh well, if the keyboard’s anything like the old T60 and it has thunderbolt 3 I’ll probably pick one up. Bonus points if it can be fitted with an OLED display.

    1. Yeh, as much as I really want a 4:3 laptop, I suppose the panels aren’t in the best supply these days.

      I think it would be pretty cool if they made a 9.7″ or 7.9″ 4:3 laptop using the iPad or iPad Mini screens, and style it as a retro Thinkpad netbook

      1. Use one of those 12.something inch 3:2 displays and make an X series device out of it. 3:2 is a pretty nice midpoint between 16:9 and 4:3. Those panels are even pretty high-res.

        1. Now you’re talking. I really wanted to buy one of those custom X62 ThinkPad from China, but I just can’t pay $700 for something with no warranty

  10. I wonder if this makes for an especially deep notebook, with 2 extra rows (albeit reduced size) on the keyboard and a larger trackpad than existed on the X220, for example. Might make working from an airplane tray table complicated.

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