The Story of the ThinkPad: Building a Global Success

Enhancing value through the ThinkVantage approach

  　

  The ThinkPad is a tool for raising the work productivity and competitiveness of businesspeople. This was true in the past and continues to hold true today. The ThinkPad’s functions, which have evolved and expanded over time, are designed with this single purpose in mind, and have sought to eliminate any self-satisfied complacency that fails to contribute to the creation of customer value among our engineers. ThinkPads, which are intended chiefly for corporate users, have functions that not only raise the productivity of end users at companies, but also that of information technology managers.

  PCs consist of both hardware and software, and the general term we use for such software functions is “ThinkVantage” technologies.

  The important point is to create a user interface that is so intuitive that the PC is “invisible” to the end users’ awareness.

  A typical example is “Access Connections,” which allows users to connect to networks easily and ubiquitously. By using this function, it is possible to achieve high-level security at the operating system level without sophisticated security knowledge, and by creating profiles for various networks, such as the company network, one’s home network, and hotspots, it is possible to use one’s PC safely anywhere. The same goes for security, where the ThinkPad’s aim is to provide a safe computing environment without having to worry about the security environment.

  There are also various ThinkVantage tools for information technology managers. One such tool is Ultra Image Building, which allows automatic installation of only the software that is needed from a master set, by specifying the user’s department or job title.

  By way of closing this chapter, let me also explain about what we call ThinkVantage design.

  The ThinkPad’s TrackPoint, the red pointing device in the center of the keyboard, is famous as it allows users to quickly move the pointer from one end of the screen to the opposite end by slightly varying the pressure of one finger on the stick, without having to move their other fingers from their typing position.

  The TrackPad reproduces on a pad, the multitouch gesture function normally used on a screen. Hand and finger movements can be minimized through the combined use of the TrackPad with the TrackPoint.

  The TrackPoint has become a symbol of the ThinkPad.

  There are actually three types of TrackPoint caps.

  The ThinkPad also has four rubber feet on its bottom panel to absorb shock. The two rubber feet that face the user have a special swollen, heaved shape. The engineers in charge actually took inspiration from the paw pads of cats, which lessen the shock of the impact when cats land from a jump or fall. When users place a PC on a desk or some other surface, they sometimes let go of the front first to avoid getting their fingers pinched, and the two front paw pad shaped rubber feet protect the PC from the resulting impact.

  The ThinkPad is also famous for the tactile feel of its keyboard, which is the result of thorough research on the operational feel of keys, which our engineers call “force curve.” They spent many hours designing keyboards, tuning the tactile feel of the keys to achieve an exquisite click action. A quiet key stroke has been achieved by reducing the typing sound, and the gap between the key caps has also been made narrower to prevent foreign matter from falling to the bottom of the keys.

  Moreover, the ThinkPad has an endoskeleton-like internal frame called the ThinkPad Roll Cage to make it more rugged. This frame made from a magnesium alloy that is both light and strong effectively reduces flexing of the ThinkPad’s body when it is toted around.

  Another feature of the ThinkPad is its rain gutter-like structure. Called the drain system, it is designed to drain away any liquid that is accidentally spilled on the keyboard so as to protect important internal parts from moisture. By using a bathtub-like structure for the keyboard, channels are formed inside the ThinkPad that allow water to drain off without affecting the circuits.

  For the purpose of a quiet and cooling performance, engineers took inspiration from the owl’s feathers. As it’s extremely important for notebook PCs to efficiently discharge internal heat, a cooling fan is constantly running, but the noise emitted by this fan is an issue. Each feather lining the edge of the wings of owls is shaped to create micro-turbulence that breaks down the large turbulence generated by the entire wing, allowing owls to fly silently. This system has been adapted to the blades of the cooling fan to boost cooling performance while solving the problem of noise. Through the addition of a series of such refinements to the design, we were able to achieve and incorporate a large collection of engineering features.