IBM introduced the first laptop series titled the ThinkPad, in the year 1992 at the Comdex (Consumer Dealers’ Exhibition) expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first model, the ThinkPad 700, was built as a tablet PC using a monochrome or color LCD screen, 40 MB Flash memory, and the GO Penpoint OS. The screen measured 10.4 inches, powered by a 25 MHz 486SLC processor and had 120 MB of hard disk storage space.
Evolving from its predecessor, the IBM ThinkPad 600E was launched in the year 1999 based on either of the Pentium II or the Pentium III processor. The notebook used an Intel Pentium II processor running at 300 MHz. The 12.1 inches SVGA Passive Matrix TFT-LCD flat panel display screen supported a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. The Pentium II processor incorporated an advanced 256 KB Level 2 cache with MMX and MMX 2 instruction sets in the core. The 600E had either of a 4 GB, 6.4 GB or 10 GB hard disk drive, depending on the model, and either 32 or 64 MB of SDRAM. It had built-in 56 kbps modem and a video out port for connecting external display devices such as a monitor or a projector. It was one of the first laptops sporting an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) for delivering high quality graphics at faster speeds. It had a 24x CD-Rom optical drive and weighed in at 5 pounds. The power source was a 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery pack.
A separate variant of the laptop was available with an Intel Pentium II or III processor running at 366 or 400 MHz, and a DVD-ROM drive. It also had a larger 13.3 inches TFT-LCD XGA screen capable of displaying 32-bit high color or True Color at a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. |
