Hello from jb

[Jonathan Berry <jberry@bbs.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca>]

     I've been lurking for a while.  Hello, I have one, lonesome,
701C.
     I recently purchased a second 720 MB hard drive for $265 through
a tip on this list.  As I understand, the normal price on these
little gems is > $1 per MB, so this was a great barg.  And it is an
IBM original part. However, it came without a "caddy", a plastic
thingie attached by (unusual to me) screws around the edge of the
hard drive, and which holds in place a short ribbon connector.  With
the caddy, the hard drive is held in place via the electrical
connectors at the base of its slot.  I can *imagine* that an ordinary
human *could* make a caddy (maybe out of wood ?????), but the
tolerances would (er, wood) be pretty fine.  I'd much rather pay for
one.  Appeals for this item have been made here, but I haven't
noticed any solutions.  If I can't get a caddy, is there a standard
part number for the ribbon cable?
     My current 720 MB hd runs OS/2, Win 3.1, DOS and is almost full.
The new hd would run Windows 95, as the "real world" demands that I
do.  Switching hds involves removing the battery, but I think I could
get it down to about a minute, probably less than the time it takes
for Win95 to boot!  And for longevity of the connectors, I'd have to
tailor my work habits so I wouldn't have to do this more than, say,
twice a week.

     Many have asked why did IBM discontinue the (insert your
favourite thinkpad number here) 701?  Especially when they didn't
have a replacement.
     1.  One semi-official answer was that they couldn't engineer a
Pentium into it with sufficient heat-dissipation capacity.

Here are my guesses:
     2.  This is IBM.  Enough said.
     3.  Based upon early sales figures, some senior exec tailored
their production run so that they would have "just enough" units to
last them until the new lines were available (an analogy to "just in
time" inventory and parts order).  However, some different senior
exec saw that these sales were rather low, and last fall ordered a
sale to meet the market.  So you could buy an IBM at the same price
as a no-name brand.  Sales went through the roof.  In IBM it is
"business as usual" that the left hand knoweth not what the right
hand doeth.
     4.  There is a high and repeat return rate due to a clunky
internal modem.
     5.  To meet the market price on 486 laptops and provide its
normal (high, but see John Kim's recent post here "Opinions urgently
wanted on repair options" ) level of service, IBM would not make any
money.  So it has to concentrate on high-end machines which command a
2x to 3x premium in the market, for whom price is not a major object.
     It's really too bad, because the 701, with some minor fixes,
could have been a "standard" in laptops.  Let's see, fix the modem,
keep the BIOS up to date, fix the keyboard (I'm not talking about the
"butterfly" mechanism--that works wonderfully--you have to bang away
at the keys to be sure they will register; the travel is also not
quite full, despite what they say.  However, I recently tried the
keyboard on the fancy new 760E, and it is even worse!), and you have
an ideal travelling companion which runs the standard app (word
processing) really well, and the "power" apps fast enough,
considering how often they are used.  Really nice features of the 701
include:  screen, setup menu (isn't one on 760 !), power conservation
/ suspend, size, weight, (international) AC adaptor arrangement,
external 3.5 diskette (YMMV), general feeling of being "right sized".

Jonathan Berry