IBM Thinkpads now in Titanium

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IBM Thinkpads now in Titanium

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @12:14AM from the good-enough-for-jets dept.

Darksoftnet writes "Lenovo (who now owns IBM's PC business), has introduced a new shade to the Thinkpad range with the launch of a Z-Series laptop that comes both in a "classic black" case or a "special-edition" brushed titanium cover."

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Re:Way to look like a powerbook, thinkpad by BWJones · 2005-09-21 00:28 · Score: 4, Informative

Yeah, so Lenovo has a titanium top cover on their laptop, while the Powerbook had a complete casing made of titanium. (The chassis was magnesium). Of course Titanium was expensive, and had problems with holding paint and could not be effectively anodized, leading to the new aluminum Powerbooks, but hey....They were sooo cool, and even though they have not been around for a couple of years, still look better than most of the current laptop offerings from other companies.

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Ti + WiFi by c4seyj0nes · 2005-09-21 00:29 · Score: 4, Informative

Didn't Apple move to aluminum because the titanium interfered with WiFi reception?

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1. Re:Ti + WiFi by dr.badass · 2005-09-21 03:10 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Didn't Apple move to aluminum because the titanium interfered with WiFi reception?
  
  That might have been one of the minor reasons. Some others include: Titanium is more expensive, the titanium shell didn't really make it more durable, they had to paint it to make it look like people expected titanium to look, the paint often started bubbling and chipping off after a few months, the aluminum designs could be produced with fewer parts, and the new anodization process looked pretty fucking hot.
  
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2. Re:Ti + WiFi by RevRigel · 2005-09-21 03:57 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Additionally, they were using commercially pure (CP) titanium; that is to say, unalloyed. This made it possible to form it into the shapes required, but it's extraordinarily weak, normally only used for decoration or for applications that need a corrosion resistant material (racks for aluminum anodization are made of CP titanium). Alloyed aluminum of pretty much any type is going to be cheaper, easier to form/machine, and much stronger. And with a decent anodization, it will be far more scratch resistant.
Re:Special punishment by MythMoth · 2005-09-21 00:31 · Score: 4, Informative

Quite. Here's the best picture I could find:
http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/

That's probably a fairly ephemeral link; this might hang around longer, but it's only a thumbnail:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/images/rt_titani umback_78.jpg

From this page:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/zseries/index.ht ml

I'm sure someone can do better than that.

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Pictures! by Viceice · 2005-09-21 00:32 · Score: 5, Informative

Pictures in stories here and here. Enjoy!

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Re:Special punishment by tpgp · 2005-09-21 00:41 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's a nice big pic
Taken from Notebook reviews

Looks quite nice

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Re:ibook vs thinkpad by funkyjunkman · 2005-09-21 01:47 · Score: 4, Informative

Check out this link on Apple's support site. I work with dozens of PowerBooks and iBooks and have never experienced the problem you describe unless there was a problem with the antenna.