Filed under: Hardware, Portables, Hacks, How-tos, Cult of Mac, Mods
Thinkpad MagSafe Hack
I've long been of the opinion that Thinkpads are the PowerBooks of the PC world, and if not for the fact that they don't run OS X, I'd be very tempted to consider one when it came time to buy my next computer. Make points us to an enterprising Thinkpad owner who was having some trouble with a flaky DC-in port on his notebook, and decided to take matters into his own hands when it came to fixing the problem. Instead of simply replacing the connector (which is a total pain to do, I know this from personal experience) he decided to one-up every other PC notebook owner out there by constructing his very own magnetic power connector. While this may not, in the strictest sense of the term, be "Mac news," it shows once again that the innovations Apple introduces into its products are not only handy to those of us who actually use Macs, but stimulate the greater computer market to further innovate and build on the ideas of Apple's design team. Check out the instructable to learn how to make a ThinkSafe adapter of your own.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Elbert Cuenca said 12:22PM on 10-26-2006
I'm a fan of TUAW, but posts just like this one make me think you're running out of stuff to write about.
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Jeff said 12:27PM on 10-26-2006
How hard is it really to replace the connector? I did this a few months ago and it took me 25 minutes:
20 minutes to drive to Radio Shack and buy the correct connector
1 minute to cut the old one off
3 minutes to solder two pairs of wires together
1 minute to wrap some electrical tape around it all
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Scott F said 12:34PM on 10-26-2006
Two things:
1. Thinkpads are the fug-ugliest laptops I've ever seen. Covered with stickers (Do other poeple looking over my shoulder need to know who makes the video card?), awful brick power supply, heavy.
2. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! GET RID OF THE JUMPING IDIOT GM AD!
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Joshua Ochs said 2:25PM on 10-26-2006
Please tell me what about that thing constitutes "safe".
Meanwhile, I will also vouch for recent Thinkpads. They had horrible battery life problems a few years ago, but current models really are very well-built and engineered. However (and I converted one person on the spot with this), comparing a MacBook and a Z61m, the MacBook is cheaper when they're identically configured. Bravo, Apple!
(And Scott, they ARE stickers - remove them. Only logo on my Thinkpad is the IBM one.)
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wicker_man said 1:13PM on 10-26-2006
I think it's actually quite good.
And ThinkPads are definitely the best PC laptops, I owned 3 before I switched to Mac and still have an ancient P133 working perfectly (well except the battery!)
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Scott F said 8:27PM on 10-26-2006
>And Scott, they ARE stickers - remove them. Only logo on my Thinkpad is the IBM one.
Not my Thinkpad, so not my stickers to remove. Just saying they're as pretty as John Hurt's baby.
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Kansei said 4:45PM on 10-26-2006
Hmm.. don't really feel like taking my T42 apart again but this is interesting. The thing is, I never really have had a need for the magsafe connector. I think it's a cool idea, and love playing with them, but they fall out way too easily. When I'm carrying my thinkpad to and from different rooms in the house, I leave the power cable plugged into the back of the ThinkPad... gotta be careful doing that with a magsafe connector, it falls out so easily. If someone were to step on my dangling power cable, it would either unplug itself from the back of the thinkpad or even more likely the other side of the power cable would unplug from the brick.
Oh and whoever said the thinkpads are big, ugly, with big bricks and bad battery life.. what the hell are you stuck in 1998 or something? Sorry if ThinkPads don't have the polished curves of a MacBook, as they are VERY much a function over form device. They are made to be durable, strong, and yet intuitive. Titanium shell for the screen cover, magnesium and titanium frame around the motherboard, etc. The T41 was the first computer with the tilt and shock sensors that you mac guys have come to love playing with in your apple laptops too. That battery life argument is bullcrap. My 6-cell (the standard T42 battery) gets me over 5 hours of battery life (and not with the screen on it's darkest setting), and that's with a radeon 9600 not intel integrated graphics. wifi on for that too. My thinkpad weighs 4.5 pounds, is no more than 1 inch think, is whisper quiet even if I manually hack the bios fan controller to set it at a higher speed, and has been rock-solid reliable for me.
Plus I could never get away from a thinkpad because I can't stand using any pointing device other than a trackpoint (the "eraser" as some like to call it). It's so efficient to never have to move your hand from the keyboard at all.
That being said I do love macs. I really miss my old mac mini and am waiting for apple to release something cool and new (like a computer better than the mac mini but without integrated display, and not starting at 2k like the mac pro) so that I can buy one.
Oh and who said OSX doesn't run on thinkpads? My bluetooth, wifi, graphics card, gigabit ethernet, trackpoint, thinklight, sleep, hibernation.. pretty much everything I can think of runs flawlessly on 10.4.8. I WISH apple would consider selling it to people to use on PCs, but I totally understand why they won't.
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doug said 9:46PM on 10-26-2006
Thinkpads are the counterpart to the mac in pc land? I think that honor would more likely go to Sony Vaio if we are speaking in terms of style. I have never been a fan of Thinkpads. Yuk...
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