9:06 The fact that Lenovo provided DOS drivers for the X100e is amazing for a laptop that new, and it is even more amazing that they are still hosting the drivers for it today!
If you're wondering why the laptop still looks dirty after cleaning it - it's the paper towels. Whenever you wipe something down with paper towels, it leaves a lot of white paper fibers behind and it generally looks bad with a black computer or a black screen. Get yourself a couple of soft automotive microfiber cloths (they're like $5 for a six pack at autozone) and, once the windex has dried lightly brush the surface with a dry cloth to remove all the paper fibers. It's probably not super important to get your electronics "camera ready" for day-to-day use, but boy is it distracting on an all-black Thinkpad.
I use cotton balls and alcohol, and then a milder alcohol + distilled water mix sprayed onto microfiber reusable cloths (the ones that come with eyewear and screen protectors, as they seem to last me for a long time, so they tend to pile up. That does wonders for me.
@@elfedorausado I use furniture polish on the plastic and microfibre cloth. A lot of these laptop are pretty tough. I dunno why people are soo careful with them.
One thing I loved about the Trackpoint (the red eraser-head looking pointing device) on Thinkpads is that a touch typist can keep their fingers on the home keys while moving the on-screen mouse pointer. Very good for writers and command line nerds like me.
Always wanted a ThinkPad because of this trackpoint. My dream is to have a system with the least need of a mouse possible. Only CLI and small touches without taking the hands from the keyboard.
I have an almost identical model (X120e) True story, I coated all the electronics inside with wax and dielectric grease so I could use it in rain and snow. The idea being I could use it when it to look up issues, guides, and parts, when working on cars and trucks broke down in bad weather. But as TDNC said, I found it was mostly good for writing. So now I just write children's stories on it.
Interesting. I flip laptops on the side, and I am thinking on keeping an X61 I got a hold of recently just because of the keyboard, as I need it for word processing, and it is buttery smooth 😂 probably install Zorin in it
@@elfedorausado I have an X60 and the design is identical to X61. I say, always keep it. It's the best designed laptop ever. I love every part of it; the 4:3 screen, the awesome keyboard, lack of camera and touch pad, the solid latch for the lid. I run Void with XFCE with mine, it has 64-bit Core2Duo T7200 processor but still feel slow with a more complex desktop environment.
@@Milena-ix5mq It's pretty slow. Don't expect to do anything heavy with it. Even for web browsing, it's a bit sluggish unless you're mostly using websites like wikipedia. But for text editing and word processing, command line applications, local media viewing and playback, etc, it can be pretty great. So if you're looking for a machine to run lightweight Linux, or older OSs, for lightweight or retro tasks, then this machine is tougher than nails, has a great keyboard, is super compact, and if you can find a good battery, then the battery life is pretty decent too. But if you want a general purpose computer, for watching youtube while browsing social media, or anything like that, then you might want to look for something a little more capable, as this machine will chug quite a bit, if it will take it at all.
I picked one of these up from a computer recycling center in Knoxville and was impressed with how well it handled, if a little hot. Performance on these is uh, a little low, but for basic tasks that make use of its amazing keyboard this ThinkPad offers a blissful experience!
I saw the video thumbnail and immediately knew what was being featured. I was also reminded of the ThinkPad Mini 10, which was a cost-reduced version of the X100e made specifically for schools in NSW in Australia as part of a student laptop programme they had in around 2010 or so (if i recall correctly).
I have some models that still have IBM and Lenovo logos together on system. Don't see those to often. Love the feel of a IBM, definitely something special. If you know you know. 😊 Thx for sharing.
That's because during the IBM to Lenovo transition, Lenovo understood that die hard IBM buyers would want their laptops with IBM badges for the first couple of years. Actually it was in the agreement that IBM struck with Lenovo during the sale. Lenovo had to offer for acouple years IBM badges on their laptops as an option during configuration by customers. I have (2) laptops that have that rare configuration in my collection and i LOVE THEM.
i wish the 64 bit xp was easier to get, i dont think i found a working iso but the last time i did that was 2018 so that may have changed. xp64bit with ahci drivers would be pretty good i'd assume
@@tannisroot yea i was trying to remember what problems i had and i think driver support was non existent, and the only real advantages it provided were pointless when os's like vista and 7 were around
@@nono-oz4gv One doesn't really need XP 64-Bit as with regular 32-bit XP, a CPU with PAE and a PAE-aware patch, one can patch 32-bit XP to use 64GB of RAM, if missing a bit because of the old PCI/AGP/PCIe Memory Hole. I've managed to do that on a system with an i7-3770K, GTX 780 6GB (rare as hen's teeth it seems) and 32GB DDR3-1600 (4x8GB) dual-booting XP and Win10, for playing and recording retro games in XP then editing in Win10.
Mostly because there's a lot of interest and demand in making Linux work on them, there's plenty other old hardware that work very poorly on anything but Windows still
Linux works fully on the Surface. Linux has better GPU drivers than macOS on the M1 Macs. Linux runs on every phone not made by Apple. What does Linux *not* work on these days?
I recently got a ThinkPad X220 from the carboot for £28 (knocked down from £35) and I absolutely love it, I stripped the entire thing, cleaned it very thoroughly, rebuilt the entire keyboard after scrubbing each key (it took me 6 hours to rebuild the keyboard and clean it), it's basically brand new and I absolutely love it, I go to grab my X220 with Debian KDE on it now instead of my ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2 whenever I go anywhere lol. :)
I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding the x220. Just wanted to share with you that you can upgrade the screen in it to an IPS screen fairly easily if you don't care for the TN ones they came with. It is nowhere near as involved as trying to upgrade to an IPS on the T420s. Its a 1:1 swap - the pin connector on the IPS screen is the same as the one in there now. Cheers!
The only thing holding me back from using my x220 as a primary laptop is its screen. TN 1366x768 just doesn't cut it in 2023. There is still hope as it's possible to use DisplayPort lines from a dock connector to drive a 1080p screen. Look up "x220 nitrocaster mod".
the closest thing these days, and thats a stretch, is the Macbook Air. Bigger than a normal "netbook" but much more capable as well, and still relatively small in its own right.
I personally own an X120e with similar specs, and I'm glad I have an X120e as apposed to an X100e as I heard those have an overheating problem. I'm also a small laptop/netbook enjoyer, so I'm glad to see another video on a tiny laptop. Also, fun fact about mine: when I got it, someone had already put 8GB in it, which was a nice surprise.
the X100 is the black sheep of the Thinkpad X series. If you really want a small, retro laptop, the X60 or X61 are great options. They are light, battery lasts forever, and they have that classic 4x3 aspect ratio on the screen. If you want to move into some retro widescreen, the X200 is a good option. Both have Intel Core2Duo processors so they blow the single core Athlon out of the water. I have an X61, X200, and X201 Tablet, and they are all solid machines, although my X61 is still my favorite.
My main laptop is an X230T with 2x 8Gb 1866Mhz, a motherboard modded with an i7 3615QE (4 cores with HT) and a 2Tb 870EVO. Still doing great, love this little beast
Well shoot I went and got one of these from eBay. Should be a blast for some XP gaming on the go and a nice addition to my small Thinkpad collection. Another awesome video as always Colin! Also big congrats on getting your DayStar working. What an absolute UNIT!
Can confirm it's a perfect windows XP machine. I also went ahead and dual booted Debian with xfce to run some emulators and source ports too. As long as you're not running anything too bloated (like youtube or electron apps), modern Linux is actually pretty snappy on that thing.
I'm currently overhauling my Mini10 (a cheap-ass version of the x100e, made for Australian school students in 2009) to be my university laptop. It's 14 years old and still runs. It now has (or will have once I am finished tinkering) 5 USB2 ports, HDMI, VGA, SD Card, fingerprint scanner, backlit keyboard, external wifi antenna, an internal USB3, 16gb RAM, 500GB mini SATA, a second heatsink system and microfan, a new IPS screen, and upgraded speakers. I have the CPU from the higher-spec x120e in it, so it's a little snappier than the original. The additional heatsink got over the biggest problem, which was always thermal throttling. I modded the case pretty heavily to allow for more airflow, including using shims made from another x100e case to make the bottom half of the shell ever so slightly deeper. I also removed the bezel from where the speakers originally sat and made that area the same thickness as the rest of the case, again, for a little more space. The laptop now rests on some 3d-printed folding legs for airflow. The internals corners and back of the screen have been re-enforced with some aluminium sheet. It's incredible what you can do with old netbooks. The form factor is unbeatable for people like me who are constantly on the move. It will never be a gaming or video-editing beast. That's not the intention. Its purpose is reliability, portability, and usability.
Very controversial laptop among the ThinkPad crowd when it was released: AMD cpu, chiclet keys, no soft touch (even came in red or white), no thinklight, no rollcage, crap battery life. If they had named it the ThinkPad Edge 11, it would have been okay. But giving it the "X-series" honors ruffled some feathers. Bought mine new in May2010 - dual core Neo X2. Still use it for some retro gaming in Win7. My dual core L625 benchmarks about the same as my old TP X60s (1.66GHz Core Duo), but runs a lot hotter and a lot less battery life. Dual core was a cheap BTO option at the time, but the "e" was for education and most of these went to schools with the lowly MV-40.
I love that you did this video as I've got a Thinkpad L520 (15.6" 1366x768, 720p camera, Core i5 2520M, 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1333MT/s) that I've upgraded from the original HDD to a 2TB Crucial BX500 and soon will boost to 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600MT/s ($41 AUD, it's cheaper than finding a 16GB kit of DDR3-1333MT/s) that I bought new back in 2011. It is currently dual-booting Win7 Ultimate x64 and Zorin-OS 16.3, and is still fairly snappy if only limited by the 8GB of RAM (hence the upgrade to 16GB) with about half of it going to my Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 modpack (Mango Pack) install and that causing Zorin-OS to use the Swap file a lot.
It will not stress the hinges so much on your laptops if you open the lid from the middle of the screen instead of the edges. Only a tip for those older laptops with fragile hinges and it will make newer hinges last longer too. ☺
ram and CPU always hold these retro builds back. Even with 8 gigs of ram, half of that will be used by the browser nowadays. You're either browsing the web, or doing something else, never both. And you can forget watching video while doing other stuff. Also for systems like this i think a light Linux distro such as Lubuntu or Puppy Linux would be better. Linux Mint is heavy for something this old.
I recently picked up a Thinkpad T20. I replaced the HDD with an SSD I got off of eBay since I don't trust the old HDD. It has a PS/2 mouse connector and Soundblaster support for which I found the DOS drivers. It's makes a great pure DOS machine as well as a Windows 98 machine. I can even use the parallel port with something like SNESKey so I can use console controllers - just had to make an adapter.
Thank you this video! It's very similar to my Lenovo IdeaPad s12 which is used a lot in 2010. Back in a days it used to be pretty reasonable machine, considering it's size and weight. but mine has Intel Atom with Intel GMA 950 graphics and Windows 7. it was enough for minor Photoshop work and 720p video playback via player, but it really struggled with even 480p videos on UA-cam. Overall it was really cool to have small, lightweight machine for that time.
I've just refurbished an IdeaPad S210. Doubled the RAM, dropped in an SSD, and replaced Win 8 with Win 10. It activated with the Win 8 key with no issues. Found a new battery online. They still make batteries for these things and only about £27. The person that asked me to do it was really happy with it. It's only a Celeron, but you wouldn't know it.
I had a MSI netbook with a AMD e-350 dual core APU and it was great, olso powerful graphics performance. It could run GTA SA and more old 2005 games fine. Although with windows 7.
A couple of other choices on these older laptops and PC's is Raspberry pie for PC, or Android-x86 for PC. Both will work on very low resource PC's, and are up to date for browsing the internet, UA-cam, & emails and such.
I have one of these that I picked up a few years ago. I really like the machine and it runs well with Haiku os. I like the form factor, if they made this same model with new hardware, I would buy it.
Yay, Haiku! I found it just about a week ago and getting into it. Got it running in a VM but aiming at getting a Thinkpad. Edit: How do you get on with the rather low resolution compared to today’s standard of mostly 1920x1080 or more?
I had the X120e version, which had the dual core. I remember wanting the X100e, but seeing it was only a single core it was a no go. So when they announced the X120e, I picked it up, I also upgraded the ram and the SSD back then. Sadly it was still quite slow, while I loved the form factor, i sold it after 6 months and bought a Thinkpad X220 - a laptop I still have to this day, while not my daily driver (X260 is), it was a proper laptop with a proper cpu.
I had a rare X100 in bright red with an AMD Neo CPU. It ran hot but did a great job as an internet and photo offloading tool overseas. I wish they did this form factor again.
got the successor x120e with the AMD Fusion E-350 years ago. basically the same cpu but with 2 cores. Yeah, still agonizingly slow so I got rid of it. but I ran it with 16 gb ram yay. it even got HDMI! the next successors x130e and x140e have nice fast cpu options up to a quadcore and usb 3.0! but I don't like them for being way heavier and bulkier than the X100e/x120e. In the end I keep using my X201, x201T and X61 instead.
I owned that thing, got me through a year of college. Very portable, and as long as you didn't use it for HD media or large websites, it didn't overheat and shut off! it was hell. I still loved it though.
forgot to mention that in my case the biggest bottleneck was the GPU, not the CPU (I own the dual core version). Today I still use it for torrenting, After many, many experiments I landed on Windows 7 32 bit. As long as you disable GPU acceleration on literally everything but the web browser, you get an acceptable experience.
I've got a few older thinkpads this year, aT40 and an x40 used but very slightly, and then an a22m and a t42 brand new in plastic. Have been doing some Tiberian Sun and quake iii LANs with them. Fun old systems.
I have this model well the i3 model. Under Windows 10 and mint Linux. I was able to install 16gb ddr3. Ive run a lot of Linux distros on it. Its worth it to get 250gb and up ssd tho. It really pops with more ssd but its still kinda dinky, but it can be a good one for Batocera
Got hold of a Sony Vaio 2011 All-in-one. Turns out it’s the fully specced four core 8 thread i7 model with hdmi in and out. A clean out, fresh paste, SSD, upgraded RAM to 16gb and a new wifi-card (to get wireless ac & bluetooth 4.0) and it’s a fantastic 24 inch monitor that also includes a whole pc. Great for old games and work. The person who gave it to me said the reason was “it wasn’t Windows 11 compliant”…. Her loss.
I've got a thinkpad I set up to use for writing ONLY with a tiling window manager but I think the setup is maybe a bit too bare bones and I don't use it frequently enough for arch to be a good choice. Might go back to the drawing board and start with a different Linux
That Thinkpad netbook was mostly used for business or educational purposes, there’s no way you could use it for big retro FPS games, only retro games with low settings!
You'd be surprised. I got Unreal Tournament 99 running on max settings with a super smooth framerate, same for quake iii arena. Even Need for Speed Underground, from 2003, runs great on high settings at 800x600 res. On Win XP of course. Also tested Flight Simulator 2004, The Sims 2, Warcraft 3, those all worked great too. The CPU is comparable to like a Celeron from the Win XP era and the GPU is actually pretty acceptable for games from between 1998 and 2004. Much better than the intel GMA igpus.
@@ElShogoso but these netbooks have bottlenecks from their limited motherboards, even if you can get a CPU and GPU that’s comparable in performance for retro gaming. It would still have issues.
@@Markimark151 Well I use it for that exact purpose and haven't had any issues playign the games I mentioned. In fact it's leagues better than the PC I used to have in the windows XP era. I remember the struggle of playing gta san andreas on a dell inspiron 2400 hah. Of course, it's not gonna do well with beefier games like far cry or doom 3 (and I don't see any reason to try anyway, those games work fine on modern systems), but anything from the 90's and up to 2003 or so runs pretty remarkably, so you still have a library with bangers like Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Zoo Tycoon, The Sims, Halo 1... Heck I even ran some more modern stuff like Minecraft Alpha on Linux and got it playable above 30fps. Emulation works great too.
@@Markimark151 dunno what a retro enthusiast's standards are, but people sure seem to love making excuses to not have fun with what they have. I just wanna play my childhood's games in a smol laptop I can take anywhere. I'm sure a lot of people could also give life back to these old netbooks with linux based emulation distros like Batocera. Anything up to the PS1 emulates great. And it's x86_64 too so any linux distro will run. In fact, the fact the snobbier collector folks have zero interest in that machine is exactly what makes it a good alternative for people who just want a cheap box to play old games - they're cheap. I got mine for 15 bucks.
After watching this video i went on a hunt to find one of these machines. According to your data and in the Factory service manual, those two other models with the dual-core processors were offered but are EXTREMELY rare. The CPU's are soldered onto the motherboard so the only way to upgrade a single core model is to find a used motherboard that has either the Athlon Neo X2 or the holy grail motherboard with the Turon Neo X2. Every single one listed on ALL the major sites had the Athlon Neo MV single core processor. I'm still going to keep looking though.
I used to have that Thinkpad netbook, thing was slow as molasses. It also was always underclocking itself due to thermal regulating, I even reseated the heatsink and replaced the thermal paste early on but the thing always ran super hot.
I had this MV-40 configuration in an MSI Wind U230, that also had a spare mPCI-e slot which had all the lanes present instead of just USB as it could be specced from factory with an Avermedia TV card. I used to play Fallout 3 on it with some heavy graphical concessions, it also ran Far Cry 2 pretty well, I also overclocked it and yes it did get pretty hot! I actually added the TV card (and aerial cable which had a cutout on the shell) later, then a Broadcom Crystal HD decoder, then a dual Micro SD adapter and finally a USB adapter card to that spare mPCI-e slot.
Ahh back in the day when even a low(ish) end, highly portable machine like this gave you two RAM slots for upgrading! Single thread performance issues are really interesting. Like... I remember getting along just fine with a single thread for so many years, I appreciate that the OS & software demands are much higher now but it's still surprising just how demanding even a web browser can be nowadays given we did all of this and more back when single threaded CPU's were the norm.
it's bloat and telemetry. fundamentally nothing different with windows xp and windows 10, excluding third party apps it all navigates and works the exact same except maybe windows 10 has a desktop switcher system and notification panel but what the hell else makes a single core grind to a 100% usage halt even in the desktop.
>8:03 >HD3200 with 32bits Bus Width I had a ThinkPad Edge 13 back in the day. It came with a AMD Turion Neo X2 L625 Dual-Core and it's had the same gpu. The gpu was horrible thanks the cut bus speed...
One thing you can do to get XP to use that extra RAM is dig up a copy of the PAE patch somebody made for XP (a project called One-Core-API seems to be one such patch, plus a whole bunch of other enhancements, kind of like KernelEx was for Win 98). See, the XP kernel CAN handle more than 4GB of RAM (sort of like high memory on DOS, PAE does something kind of like that on newer Intel CPUs). It's just that, being 32 bit processes, any individual process can only handle 4GB and MS made the decision to limit the consumer OSes to 4GB. The initial release of XP actually had PAE enabled, but that got killed off by SP1, if I remember correctly. Server 2003, based on the XP kernel, had it turned on still, but of course you don't want to run the server OS. But all the code is there in XP and it works, it just needs to be patched to be enabled. There's also the very odd Windows XP Professional x64 Edition that isn't quite sure if it's Server 2003 or XP.
It is also possible to install 64-bit version of Windows XP 🙂But it wasn't very supported at this very early stage, so there might be issues, especially since we would like to use it for retro gaming so compatibility would be quite important 🤔
@@kkolakowski Yes, that's Windows XP Professional x64 edition (not to be confused with Windows XP 64 bit edition - that's for Itanium). I had it for my work computer for awhile. It's weird. It's really Server 2003 dressed up like XP Professional. So alot of drivers are hard to get - it wasn't that common so alot of people didn't bother with drivers and normal XP drivers don't work and Server 2003 drivers sometimes work, but those aren't all that common. Application compatibility seemed OK, in general , though.
I would have expected a bit more testing on MS-DOS compatibility. You mention win 9x family (ME included), so dos games are a thing. Does commander keen have issues with graphics? How's the SB compatibility in dos? Does bios allow using USB mice/keyboards under dos?
I have X140e which have A4-5000 APU. It was a good lugged-ish mini-laptop that was good enough for office work, web surfing, and can run app players to run android mobile games. The successor to it, Thinkpad 11e, lacked the trackpoint so it may not be called thinkpad anymore and now the line is discontinued. And the 'e' stands for 'education', 'cause this line was for K12 students.
I've been planning on getting an older Thinkpad and putting something like XFCE or MATE on it just because I like old tech and I like using it, like properly using it everyday.
About the “being a 32-bit OS I wasn't able to make effective use of that 8GB RAM upgrade”: you can solve it either running Windows XP 64-bit or XP 32-bit modified with PAE support
I had this laptop in university, tried Win XP on it, Win 7, Ubuntu 10 something and Arch Linux. Arch was the most snappy, especially with installed tile window manager (I used Awesome WM). But the slow CPU was an issue even back then, it had troubles playing some YT videos with quality more than 480p, and it's around 2013.
The successor X120e with the dual core AMD E-350 was pretty zippy for its time. I could run WoW at 1024x600, medium settings, and pull around 30 fps. And it was a more than serviceable student laptop w/ an SSD upgrade. Probably the best $400 laptop I've ever owned.
I had a Thinkpad T430s from 2020 through august 2023 I loved the track pad especially but sadly it broke and the power also eventually died so i had to upgrade to a ideapad gaming 3 but i must say i really miss the trackpad
Until a couple years ago I owned a x120e! I genuinely wish I kept it. It's kind of sad because these could have been great little machines, if the CPU wasn't a limiting factor in what you can do with them.
I have an x120e too, I ran the most cutdown version of Arch Linux with i3wm on it, but somehow Haiku was running smoother on it than Linux. Compiling a basic C program was slow and I am wondering how I got through my first semester in CS with that thing. Learning vim on a thinkpad is one of the best thing you can do with that keyboard
I still have an X120e, and the other issue besides the sluggish dual core APU in the machine is the whitelisted WiFi card that can't be upgraded unless you hack the BIOS, but it runs Solus Budgie well enough for a very basic daily computer, so I keep it around as a backup machine. I've never tried any retro gaming on it though. If you want something cheap and cheerful from this era that's still usable as a daily driver, and is kind of rugged originally being made for the educational market and if you don't mind an 11.6 in 720p screen look at a Thinkpad X140e with a quad core AMD A4 APU that will take 8GB of DDR3L RAM, and runs Solus Budgie Linux, or Manjaro GNOME w/Traditional layout with ease, and runs cool as can be. I've had one for years, and while I have newer faster desktops, laptops, and even tablets, every so often I just keep going back to that little X140e, and enjoy typing on it so dang much(trackpad is another issues, but thank GOD for the Trackpoint LOL!). Having said that the real killer of almost any Thinkpad from this era now are finding new batteries, and if you do getting them from a decent 3 party seller that does not charge you an arm, and a leg.
@@harrytsang1501 I have an X120e, and never have been able to get Haiku to boot from USB no matter if it's the 32bit, or 64bit version, maybe it comes down to revision numbers with different chipsets on the mainboard? 🤷♂
@@CommodoreFan64 maybe it's a different configuration/revision Mine had the lowest end single core AMD netbook processor that measures below the raspberry pi 3. Besides programming assignments, I mainly used that to SSH into other Linux machines
i loved Thinkpads - they were built like tanks! I had a T20 for enterprise sales & it was a beast! when it came time to buy my own computer in 2001, i think (ahem) i got a refurb T21 or T22 & I remember the day i got MAME and Metal Slug working - made me so happy - it became my new demo! 👾
I don’t know about this particular laptop, but on many thinkpads with an empty cell modem spot, you can install a second nvme drive. It gives nice expanability
Interesting that you mentioned the usecase for writing. I recently was looking for a compact device of this caliber for around this exact price point with this usecase in mind. I have settled for now on a slightly outdated 2n1 dell chromebook, but I can't deny that the keyboard on this model would've proved for a far superior typing experience. It's a bit of a shame that the CPU on this was so underpowered even for the time I'd say being single core. Otherwise it would have aged perfectly well. I do kind of like the idea that it makes things distraction free, but that also proves problematic if you have to do a lot of researching on your projects. Really awesome video!
I recently picked up a ThinkPad 11e (1st gen) which was apparently a rugged small laptop for students. 8G RAM and Debian and it's a fantastic netbook. One of the best keyboards I've used on such a small machine, I love typing on it. Screen viewing angles are a bit crap tho.
I have core an old core duo @ 2.66(oc @ 2.8) along with 8g dual channel ddr3 memory. Two ssd's and a 9600m gt nvidia. The machine(PM45) works spectacularly with windows 7. I will never think of changing it.
I found that when using windows 10 in old hardware it is better to install version 1809 or earlier as they will be smooth and not demanding as for 22H2 i don't recommend it for older device's.
My first computer ever was a thinkpad t30. Got it for $5 at a church sale when I was like 7. Loved that machine. Mainly used it to watch movies lol. Would bring it on vacation and watch movies in the hotel room.
I had one of these with the Turion X2 L625 back in the day. That second CPU core made a big difference compared to the MV-40. It ran even hotter, but it could almost play Left 4 Dead at non-PowerPoint frame rates! Almost!
The Turon X2 L625's are extremely rare. Very few were made. Did you customer order it when it was new? How did you get one with that upgraded processor?
@@klwthe3rd This was over a decade ago, but IIRC it was a canceled custom order that wound up on the Lenovo Outlet. At the time I needed a laptop with a good keyboard, and I wanted something small that had a snowball's chance of gaming competently, and the outlet listing put the "good" x100e well within my budget.
I still have my Lenovo x200 tablet. It looks like the first time out of the box so it is in an exelent status. P Dual core, 8GB, 256GB SSD, the Captive Pen with the little cotton wire and the docking station with DVD and an extra ssd hard-drive in a bay. A small wireless mouse and i love it. The only thing i did was cleaning it again, update the ram plus BIOS and a new accu 4 years ago. It works perfect under W7 64 bit. A bit slow yes but it works for what i need it. It is also a very good retro machine which will stay until i die.
I still own a Toshiba Satellite with an AMD Turion X2 and 3 GB of Ram. Those old AMD always had overheating issues but with a special thermal paste and a factory fan recall, it runs beautifully. Windows 8.1 embedded was the last Win OS that ran smoothly. After that, I ve been running it on Antix Linux OS for fun.
I too have an x100e but with the dual core Athlon Neo. Still Hella slow....and hot. Stock OS was Windows 7 but even that struggled at times. Xp seems like a decent fit, with Dosbox or similar.
Maybe its a good idea to try Atlas OS, a Windows 10 setup script that strips off all the junk thar comes with w10 and make the operating system much more lightweight and snapier
This might be a candidate for a decent portable DOS machine(no, really). Lenovo provides packet drivers for the ethernet card, SBEMU might work just fine on here for SoundBlaster emulation, and the CPU is already quite slow and single-core and could work well with setmul to slow it down to the required performance to run DOS games. Not to mention it would be that distraction-free typing device as well.
I have a ThinkPad T410 that I use for most of my 98 and xp erra gaming. It's currently running dual boot 10 and xp. Although it's uses on 10 are a bit limited.
I liked my Atom N450 Netbook back in the day. Squeezing out as much performance as possible was half the fun. I threw an SSD in it right away and that definitely helped. I prefer just getting modern hardware and emulators today, however, because you don't spend as much time waiting for things or tinkering. My current "Netbook" is just a small laptop with a modern CPU that can decode AV1 video codecs for watching UA-cam while travelling.
Check out the latest thinkpad 11e from 2021-22 - it’s a more modern take on this netbook. I believe there’s some upgradeability, 8gb of ram DDR4 optional and can be found cheap with more modern processors. These were mainly sold to the education market.
I have a Lenovo x131e, basically set up the way you have your x100e, but with xubuntu on it. I run a windows xp vm on it to play old games when I travel. It's better than I expected when I bought it and decided to un-Chromebookify it.
I remember HD 3200, I think it was one of the first iGPU's where you could play some at the time, modern games. I know there was some geforce igpu's but iirc they were like DX 7 compatible in a time when DX8 and DX9 was becoming the norm, in any case the laptop looks cool, netbooks were something special back then.
The X120e was my first laptop because of how efficient the AMD E350 was. After Windows 7, I used it with Mint and now it's running Cloudready/ChromeOS Flex. I only use it on ethernet now because of how slow the wifi card is
I had a direct descendant of this one with an Edge 11 series (intel i3 380um, 4 gigs quite the same specs but with an HDMI port) after being bored the limits of my eeePC 1000HE. Once I upgraded its poorly performing 5400tpm hard drive for a ssd, it was a quite capable machine for work on the go and dosbox games. Gave it to a friend which might still use it. It migrated to win10 but it was a bit too much for it.
I remember there being a patch for Windows 32bit so it would allocate/recognize more than 4gb, I can't remember if the kernel patch worked on Windows XP.
I was wondering that... admittedly I don't have a great deal of experience with x64 XP, and it's been a good decade or more since I used it! My guess is that drivers are likely to be pain?
it's not the OS's fault. I ran debian with pure i3 on that thing and web browsing is still pretty painful. There's no use in having a super lightweight OS and then try to run the modern bloated WWW on it.
Picked up an X200 at e-waste for NT$500 (about US$16) with a working, chargeable battery. The LCD panel has minor screen burn (previous user had a stupid centered tiny "wallpaper") but it works fine otherwise.
Viewers! Do not overlook the x120e. It's physically identical -- same body, display, great keyboard, etc., just with a newer AMD SoC, the dual core AMD E-350 with HD 6310 graphics. It's essentially the same exact laptop, just now capable of running things like Windows 10. I had the X100e in the video for years before upgrading to the x120e, which is so great I still use it to this day. I mainly use it for light digital audio work in Renoise and making retro alien landscape style art with Bryce 3D. In my opinion, best netbook ever made!!! :D
Does it support Windows XP? 🤔 Lenovo website is so messy that it's hard to tell (at least here in Europe) - I think it DOES, but I can't straight out tell from their crappy interface.
@@kkolakowski Yes, with SATA set to compatibility mode, same as in this video. There -is- a working AHCI F6 driver for it but I haven't managed to get it working in years as the XP installer does not detect even supported USB floppy drives.
0:04 that computer brings me memories because the elementary school gave you that where im from (i edited the give to gave bc they not longer gives you)
I remember having a lenovo netbook for a while but I completely forget the name, or the year haha. I guess a generation or 2 after this and not their thinkpad. It came with 8gig ram, 512gb hdd and athlon.. something, with integrated gpu and 16:9 screen running vista 64 at a decent price, I loved it and it was great for emulation, I wish that I could remember the model number. I honestly wish that I could remember more but I only had it for 3 months I guess before giving it to my sister and nephews.
I had the updated version of this, the X120e. Form factor was perfect for my use case, but the AMD E-350 was just too weak. I wished they would make 11" machines again.
Actually just ordered one of these for cheap. Here in Brazil it's difficult to get a hold of a good windows 2000/XP era machine to play games from that time period (things like nfs porsche unleashed, gta vice city, quake 1 and 2, that kind of windows 98~2000 type of thing). Seems to be in very good condition and comes fitted with an ssd, so my plan is to put windows xp (actually if I can get 2000 working with drivers, even better) and run old stuff in it. It's that kind of thing that was terrible at the time it released (like all netbooks) but actually has value now that it's dirt cheap if you wanna use it to run things way older than the machine itself.
9:06 The fact that Lenovo provided DOS drivers for the X100e is amazing for a laptop that new, and it is even more amazing that they are still hosting the drivers for it today!
it's just the network adapter and maintenance stuff
@@themacintoshnerd that's all the drivers it needs though. At least for FreeDOS.
If you're wondering why the laptop still looks dirty after cleaning it - it's the paper towels. Whenever you wipe something down with paper towels, it leaves a lot of white paper fibers behind and it generally looks bad with a black computer or a black screen. Get yourself a couple of soft automotive microfiber cloths (they're like $5 for a six pack at autozone) and, once the windex has dried lightly brush the surface with a dry cloth to remove all the paper fibers.
It's probably not super important to get your electronics "camera ready" for day-to-day use, but boy is it distracting on an all-black Thinkpad.
Now I can't unsee it!
and compressed air to blow away any remaining debris. =]
I use cotton balls and alcohol, and then a milder alcohol + distilled water mix sprayed onto microfiber reusable cloths (the ones that come with eyewear and screen protectors, as they seem to last me for a long time, so they tend to pile up. That does wonders for me.
school/scotch tape for lifting greasy fingerprints and stubborn lint
@@elfedorausado I use furniture polish on the plastic and microfibre cloth. A lot of these laptop are pretty tough. I dunno why people are soo careful with them.
One thing I loved about the Trackpoint (the red eraser-head looking pointing device) on Thinkpads is that a touch typist can keep their fingers on the home keys while moving the on-screen mouse pointer. Very good for writers and command line nerds like me.
New keyboard….. yuck
I always called that red thing “the nipple”
For spreadsheet work as well. I specifically bought an external Trackpoint keyboard since I spend a lot of time in Excel.
Always wanted a ThinkPad because of this trackpoint. My dream is to have a system with the least need of a mouse possible. Only CLI and small touches without taking the hands from the keyboard.
Always end up losing mine
I have an almost identical model (X120e)
True story, I coated all the electronics inside with wax and dielectric grease so I could use it in rain and snow. The idea being I could use it when it to look up issues, guides, and parts, when working on cars and trucks broke down in bad weather.
But as TDNC said, I found it was mostly good for writing. So now I just write children's stories on it.
Interesting. I flip laptops on the side, and I am thinking on keeping an X61 I got a hold of recently just because of the keyboard, as I need it for word processing, and it is buttery smooth 😂 probably install Zorin in it
@@elfedorausado I have an X60 and the design is identical to X61. I say, always keep it. It's the best designed laptop ever. I love every part of it; the 4:3 screen, the awesome keyboard, lack of camera and touch pad, the solid latch for the lid. I run Void with XFCE with mine, it has 64-bit Core2Duo T7200 processor but still feel slow with a more complex desktop environment.
@@elfedorausadoI don't recommend zorin it's not as usable as something like linux mint
I am planning on bying x120e for myself as a second laptop. Any thoughts on the laptop's performance so far?
@@Milena-ix5mq It's pretty slow. Don't expect to do anything heavy with it. Even for web browsing, it's a bit sluggish unless you're mostly using websites like wikipedia.
But for text editing and word processing, command line applications, local media viewing and playback, etc, it can be pretty great.
So if you're looking for a machine to run lightweight Linux, or older OSs, for lightweight or retro tasks, then this machine is tougher than nails, has a great keyboard, is super compact, and if you can find a good battery, then the battery life is pretty decent too.
But if you want a general purpose computer, for watching youtube while browsing social media, or anything like that, then you might want to look for something a little more capable, as this machine will chug quite a bit, if it will take it at all.
I picked one of these up from a computer recycling center in Knoxville and was impressed with how well it handled, if a little hot. Performance on these is uh, a little low, but for basic tasks that make use of its amazing keyboard this ThinkPad offers a blissful experience!
I saw the video thumbnail and immediately knew what was being featured. I was also reminded of the ThinkPad Mini 10, which was a cost-reduced version of the X100e made specifically for schools in NSW in Australia as part of a student laptop programme they had in around 2010 or so (if i recall correctly).
I have some models that still have IBM and Lenovo logos together on system. Don't see those to often. Love the feel of a IBM, definitely something special. If you know you know. 😊 Thx for sharing.
That's because during the IBM to Lenovo transition, Lenovo understood that die hard IBM buyers would want their laptops with IBM badges for the first couple of years. Actually it was in the agreement that IBM struck with Lenovo during the sale. Lenovo had to offer for acouple years IBM badges on their laptops as an option during configuration by customers. I have (2) laptops that have that rare configuration in my collection and i LOVE THEM.
If you dont already have one, you might consider creating an XP installer with AHCI drivers slipstreamed in.
i wish the 64 bit xp was easier to get, i dont think i found a working iso but the last time i did that was 2018 so that may have changed. xp64bit with ahci drivers would be pretty good i'd assume
@@nono-oz4gv64-bit XP didn't have very good support and didn't offer any advantages on systems of that era really
@@tannisroot yea i was trying to remember what problems i had and i think driver support was non existent, and the only real advantages it provided were pointless when os's like vista and 7 were around
@@nono-oz4gv One doesn't really need XP 64-Bit as with regular 32-bit XP, a CPU with PAE and a PAE-aware patch, one can patch 32-bit XP to use 64GB of RAM, if missing a bit because of the old PCI/AGP/PCIe Memory Hole.
I've managed to do that on a system with an i7-3770K, GTX 780 6GB (rare as hen's teeth it seems) and 32GB DDR3-1600 (4x8GB) dual-booting XP and Win10, for playing and recording retro games in XP then editing in Win10.
Sounds like a security nightmare
The thinkpads of old are like the best case for how linux can revive old hardware
Yeah, reviving old hardware just to contribuite to the exploitation of innocent people...
Mostly because there's a lot of interest and demand in making Linux work on them, there's plenty other old hardware that work very poorly on anything but Windows still
Linux works fully on the Surface. Linux has better GPU drivers than macOS on the M1 Macs. Linux runs on every phone not made by Apple. What does Linux *not* work on these days?
@@xerzy Old VAIOs, in my experience
@@realgeorgewbushmight be because they use older consumer hardware like wiifi chips that don't have open source support.
I recently got a ThinkPad X220 from the carboot for £28 (knocked down from £35) and I absolutely love it, I stripped the entire thing, cleaned it very thoroughly, rebuilt the entire keyboard after scrubbing each key (it took me 6 hours to rebuild the keyboard and clean it), it's basically brand new and I absolutely love it, I go to grab my X220 with Debian KDE on it now instead of my ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2 whenever I go anywhere lol. :)
I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding the x220. Just wanted to share with you that you can upgrade the screen in it to an IPS screen fairly easily if you don't care for the TN ones they came with. It is nowhere near as involved as trying to upgrade to an IPS on the T420s. Its a 1:1 swap - the pin connector on the IPS screen is the same as the one in there now. Cheers!
These are also great for Hackintoshing.
The only thing holding me back from using my x220 as a primary laptop is its screen.
TN 1366x768 just doesn't cut it in 2023.
There is still hope as it's possible to use DisplayPort lines from a dock connector to drive a 1080p screen.
Look up "x220 nitrocaster mod".
I got my X220t in 2019, in almost perfect condition.. it's still going great, but I'm hankering after an X230 to modify. 😁
Put that second m2 SSD in.
I have 500gb of sample libraries on it and nothing else.
Nice!
@@Armand79th
Kinda wish the Netbook form factor would make a big comeback.
the closest thing these days, and thats a stretch, is the Macbook Air. Bigger than a normal "netbook" but much more capable as well, and still relatively small in its own right.
@@MichaelAStanhope Well the chromebooks took the market over as well.
Me too, I had an alienware M11x that was a gaming netbook basically but at 11 inches, I loved it, I got a long shelf life out of it.
@@neoasura very true except Netbooks ran a mainstream OS. I have no experience with a Chromebook but to me if it can’t run DOOM it’s not worthy 🤣
The 11-12 inch form factor is perfectly adequate for a notebook
I personally own an X120e with similar specs, and I'm glad I have an X120e as apposed to an X100e as I heard those have an overheating problem. I'm also a small laptop/netbook enjoyer, so I'm glad to see another video on a tiny laptop.
Also, fun fact about mine: when I got it, someone had already put 8GB in it, which was a nice surprise.
the X100 is the black sheep of the Thinkpad X series. If you really want a small, retro laptop, the X60 or X61 are great options. They are light, battery lasts forever, and they have that classic 4x3 aspect ratio on the screen. If you want to move into some retro widescreen, the X200 is a good option. Both have Intel Core2Duo processors so they blow the single core Athlon out of the water. I have an X61, X200, and X201 Tablet, and they are all solid machines, although my X61 is still my favorite.
Don't hate on the black sheep dude 🐑🐑🐑🐑
My main laptop is an X230T with 2x 8Gb 1866Mhz, a motherboard modded with an i7 3615QE (4 cores with HT) and a 2Tb 870EVO. Still doing great, love this little beast
I have a similar X230 (non tablet though) setup as you, goes like stink even now.
Love this channel! Great content, and it's like a Time Machine back to the 80's, 90's, and early 2,000's, my wheelhouse.
i used this for grad school and travel abroad, it was an excellent device back then
This laptop got me through college :-) I also finished Starcraft II with it and spent a summer using it to scan and restore all my old family photos.
Well shoot I went and got one of these from eBay. Should be a blast for some XP gaming on the go and a nice addition to my small Thinkpad collection. Another awesome video as always Colin! Also big congrats on getting your DayStar working. What an absolute UNIT!
Definitely, Especially when you consider many older games don't do well with multicore CPUs. So a singlecore CPU here is basically perfect for it.
Can confirm it's a perfect windows XP machine. I also went ahead and dual booted Debian with xfce to run some emulators and source ports too. As long as you're not running anything too bloated (like youtube or electron apps), modern Linux is actually pretty snappy on that thing.
I'm currently overhauling my Mini10 (a cheap-ass version of the x100e, made for Australian school students in 2009) to be my university laptop. It's 14 years old and still runs. It now has (or will have once I am finished tinkering) 5 USB2 ports, HDMI, VGA, SD Card, fingerprint scanner, backlit keyboard, external wifi antenna, an internal USB3, 16gb RAM, 500GB mini SATA, a second heatsink system and microfan, a new IPS screen, and upgraded speakers. I have the CPU from the higher-spec x120e in it, so it's a little snappier than the original. The additional heatsink got over the biggest problem, which was always thermal throttling. I modded the case pretty heavily to allow for more airflow, including using shims made from another x100e case to make the bottom half of the shell ever so slightly deeper. I also removed the bezel from where the speakers originally sat and made that area the same thickness as the rest of the case, again, for a little more space. The laptop now rests on some 3d-printed folding legs for airflow. The internals corners and back of the screen have been re-enforced with some aluminium sheet.
It's incredible what you can do with old netbooks. The form factor is unbeatable for people like me who are constantly on the move. It will never be a gaming or video-editing beast. That's not the intention. Its purpose is reliability, portability, and usability.
Very controversial laptop among the ThinkPad crowd when it was released: AMD cpu, chiclet keys, no soft touch (even came in red or white), no thinklight, no rollcage, crap battery life. If they had named it the ThinkPad Edge 11, it would have been okay. But giving it the "X-series" honors ruffled some feathers. Bought mine new in May2010 - dual core Neo X2. Still use it for some retro gaming in Win7. My dual core L625 benchmarks about the same as my old TP X60s (1.66GHz Core Duo), but runs a lot hotter and a lot less battery life. Dual core was a cheap BTO option at the time, but the "e" was for education and most of these went to schools with the lowly MV-40.
I love that you did this video as I've got a Thinkpad L520 (15.6" 1366x768, 720p camera, Core i5 2520M, 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1333MT/s) that I've upgraded from the original HDD to a 2TB Crucial BX500 and soon will boost to 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600MT/s ($41 AUD, it's cheaper than finding a 16GB kit of DDR3-1333MT/s) that I bought new back in 2011.
It is currently dual-booting Win7 Ultimate x64 and Zorin-OS 16.3, and is still fairly snappy if only limited by the 8GB of RAM (hence the upgrade to 16GB) with about half of it going to my Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 modpack (Mango Pack) install and that causing Zorin-OS to use the Swap file a lot.
It will not stress the hinges so much on your laptops if you open the lid from the middle of the screen instead of the edges. Only a tip for those older laptops with fragile hinges and it will make newer hinges last longer too. ☺
ram and CPU always hold these retro builds back. Even with 8 gigs of ram, half of that will be used by the browser nowadays. You're either browsing the web, or doing something else, never both. And you can forget watching video while doing other stuff. Also for systems like this i think a light Linux distro such as Lubuntu or Puppy Linux would be better. Linux Mint is heavy for something this old.
Those 2 4GB ddr2 sticks are quite hard to find nowadays.
I always look forward to hearing your intro
I recently picked up a Thinkpad T20. I replaced the HDD with an SSD I got off of eBay since I don't trust the old HDD. It has a PS/2 mouse connector and Soundblaster support for which I found the DOS drivers. It's makes a great pure DOS machine as well as a Windows 98 machine. I can even use the parallel port with something like SNESKey so I can use console controllers - just had to make an adapter.
Thank you this video!
It's very similar to my Lenovo IdeaPad s12 which is used a lot in 2010.
Back in a days it used to be pretty reasonable machine, considering it's size and weight.
but mine has Intel Atom with Intel GMA 950 graphics and Windows 7.
it was enough for minor Photoshop work and 720p video playback via player, but it really struggled with even 480p videos on UA-cam.
Overall it was really cool to have small, lightweight machine for that time.
I've just refurbished an IdeaPad S210. Doubled the RAM, dropped in an SSD, and replaced Win 8 with Win 10. It activated with the Win 8 key with no issues. Found a new battery online. They still make batteries for these things and only about £27. The person that asked me to do it was really happy with it. It's only a Celeron, but you wouldn't know it.
I had a MSI netbook with a AMD e-350 dual core APU and it was great, olso powerful graphics performance. It could run GTA SA and more old 2005 games fine. Although with windows 7.
I got one of these years ago, still have it, runs fine with Debian and a light window manager. It's now a good emulation machine with Retroarch!
A couple of other choices on these older laptops and PC's is Raspberry pie for PC, or Android-x86 for PC. Both will work on very low resource PC's, and are up to date for browsing the internet, UA-cam, & emails and such.
I have one of these that I picked up a few years ago. I really like the machine and it runs well with Haiku os. I like the form factor, if they made this same model with new hardware, I would buy it.
Yay, Haiku!
I found it just about a week ago and getting into it. Got it running in a VM but aiming at getting a Thinkpad.
Edit: How do you get on with the rather low resolution compared to today’s standard of mostly 1920x1080 or more?
I had the X120e version, which had the dual core. I remember wanting the X100e, but seeing it was only a single core it was a no go. So when they announced the X120e, I picked it up, I also upgraded the ram and the SSD back then.
Sadly it was still quite slow, while I loved the form factor, i sold it after 6 months and bought a Thinkpad X220 - a laptop I still have to this day, while not my daily driver (X260 is), it was a proper laptop with a proper cpu.
I had a rare X100 in bright red with an AMD Neo CPU. It ran hot but did a great job as an internet and photo offloading tool overseas. I wish they did this form factor again.
got the successor x120e with the AMD Fusion E-350 years ago. basically the same cpu but with 2 cores. Yeah, still agonizingly slow so I got rid of it. but I ran it with 16 gb ram yay. it even got HDMI! the next successors x130e and x140e have nice fast cpu options up to a quadcore and usb 3.0! but I don't like them for being way heavier and bulkier than the X100e/x120e. In the end I keep using my X201, x201T and X61 instead.
I owned that thing, got me through a year of college.
Very portable, and as long as you didn't use it for HD media or large websites, it didn't overheat and shut off!
it was hell. I still loved it though.
forgot to mention that in my case the biggest bottleneck was the GPU, not the CPU (I own the dual core version). Today I still use it for torrenting, After many, many experiments I landed on Windows 7 32 bit. As long as you disable GPU acceleration on literally everything but the web browser, you get an acceptable experience.
I've got a few older thinkpads this year, aT40 and an x40 used but very slightly, and then an a22m and a t42 brand new in plastic. Have been doing some Tiberian Sun and quake iii LANs with them. Fun old systems.
was this the first thinkpad to move away from the classic design? I assumed the redesign began with the 40 lineup and the x1.
I have this model well the i3 model. Under Windows 10 and mint Linux. I was able to install 16gb ddr3. Ive run a lot of Linux distros on it. Its worth it to get 250gb and up ssd tho. It really pops with more ssd but its still kinda dinky, but it can be a good one for Batocera
7:03 isn't there a 64-bit Windows XP version? pretty sure there was
Oh! I remember these from school! We used to go to a large locker and get these for class sometimes!
There is a way to configure Server 2003 in a way that it can be used like xp with direct x newer drivers and patches and 8gb of RAM
Got hold of a Sony Vaio 2011 All-in-one. Turns out it’s the fully specced four core 8 thread i7 model with hdmi in and out.
A clean out, fresh paste, SSD, upgraded RAM to 16gb and a new wifi-card (to get wireless ac & bluetooth 4.0) and it’s a fantastic 24 inch monitor that also includes a whole pc. Great for old games and work.
The person who gave it to me said the reason was “it wasn’t Windows 11 compliant”…. Her loss.
What do you do with the spare 2.5 inch hard drives? Looking for ideas.
Also, consider installing Tiny XP from back in the day. 😅
Sometime I buy a 2.5 inch usb hdd enclosure. Beware these old hdds aren't that reliable, but are good for swinging big files between computers.
I've got a thinkpad I set up to use for writing ONLY with a tiling window manager but I think the setup is maybe a bit too bare bones and I don't use it frequently enough for arch to be a good choice. Might go back to the drawing board and start with a different Linux
I’ve used the newer X120e for several years, upgraded all the way to Windows 10. While it’s small, it’s also quite heavy for its size.
That Thinkpad netbook was mostly used for business or educational purposes, there’s no way you could use it for big retro FPS games, only retro games with low settings!
You'd be surprised. I got Unreal Tournament 99 running on max settings with a super smooth framerate, same for quake iii arena. Even Need for Speed Underground, from 2003, runs great on high settings at 800x600 res. On Win XP of course. Also tested Flight Simulator 2004, The Sims 2, Warcraft 3, those all worked great too. The CPU is comparable to like a Celeron from the Win XP era and the GPU is actually pretty acceptable for games from between 1998 and 2004. Much better than the intel GMA igpus.
@@ElShogoso but these netbooks have bottlenecks from their limited motherboards, even if you can get a CPU and GPU that’s comparable in performance for retro gaming. It would still have issues.
@@Markimark151 Well I use it for that exact purpose and haven't had any issues playign the games I mentioned. In fact it's leagues better than the PC I used to have in the windows XP era. I remember the struggle of playing gta san andreas on a dell inspiron 2400 hah. Of course, it's not gonna do well with beefier games like far cry or doom 3 (and I don't see any reason to try anyway, those games work fine on modern systems), but anything from the 90's and up to 2003 or so runs pretty remarkably, so you still have a library with bangers like Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Zoo Tycoon, The Sims, Halo 1... Heck I even ran some more modern stuff like Minecraft Alpha on Linux and got it playable above 30fps. Emulation works great too.
@@ElShogoso good for you, but these netbooks are still watered down for most retro enthusiasts.
@@Markimark151 dunno what a retro enthusiast's standards are, but people sure seem to love making excuses to not have fun with what they have. I just wanna play my childhood's games in a smol laptop I can take anywhere. I'm sure a lot of people could also give life back to these old netbooks with linux based emulation distros like Batocera. Anything up to the PS1 emulates great. And it's x86_64 too so any linux distro will run.
In fact, the fact the snobbier collector folks have zero interest in that machine is exactly what makes it a good alternative for people who just want a cheap box to play old games - they're cheap. I got mine for 15 bucks.
After watching this video i went on a hunt to find one of these machines. According to your data and in the Factory service manual, those two other models with the dual-core processors were offered but are EXTREMELY rare. The CPU's are soldered onto the motherboard so the only way to upgrade a single core model is to find a used motherboard that has either the Athlon Neo X2 or the holy grail motherboard with the Turon Neo X2. Every single one listed on ALL the major sites had the Athlon Neo MV single core processor. I'm still going to keep looking though.
There was one on my country’s version of ebay, I bought it, and it turned out to be one with the anthlon neo x2 lol
It’s not much better than the single core on though. Cpu benchmark says the difference is 7%
@@lukamarko1037 Well that ones's still a good one to have. The Athlon is a dual core processor so it's still a great find.
@@lukamarko1037 Benchmarks can be subjective. You have to see how it's performance is in regards to everyday tasks. I think you will be surprised.
It’s slow as hell 😂. I’ll try to put tiny 10 on it, see if that helps.
I used to have that Thinkpad netbook, thing was slow as molasses. It also was always underclocking itself due to thermal regulating, I even reseated the heatsink and replaced the thermal paste early on but the thing always ran super hot.
I had this MV-40 configuration in an MSI Wind U230, that also had a spare mPCI-e slot which had all the lanes present instead of just USB as it could be specced from factory with an Avermedia TV card. I used to play Fallout 3 on it with some heavy graphical concessions, it also ran Far Cry 2 pretty well, I also overclocked it and yes it did get pretty hot!
I actually added the TV card (and aerial cable which had a cutout on the shell) later, then a Broadcom Crystal HD decoder, then a dual Micro SD adapter and finally a USB adapter card to that spare mPCI-e slot.
Ahh back in the day when even a low(ish) end, highly portable machine like this gave you two RAM slots for upgrading!
Single thread performance issues are really interesting. Like... I remember getting along just fine with a single thread for so many years, I appreciate that the OS & software demands are much higher now but it's still surprising just how demanding even a web browser can be nowadays given we did all of this and more back when single threaded CPU's were the norm.
Yeah, nowadays on many low end laptops you have soldered RAM and eMMC storage
it's bloat and telemetry. fundamentally nothing different with windows xp and windows 10, excluding third party apps it all navigates and works the exact same except maybe windows 10 has a desktop switcher system and notification panel but what the hell else makes a single core grind to a 100% usage halt even in the desktop.
>8:03
>HD3200 with 32bits Bus Width
I had a ThinkPad Edge 13 back in the day.
It came with a AMD Turion Neo X2 L625 Dual-Core and it's had the same gpu.
The gpu was horrible thanks the cut bus speed...
One thing you can do to get XP to use that extra RAM is dig up a copy of the PAE patch somebody made for XP (a project called One-Core-API seems to be one such patch, plus a whole bunch of other enhancements, kind of like KernelEx was for Win 98). See, the XP kernel CAN handle more than 4GB of RAM (sort of like high memory on DOS, PAE does something kind of like that on newer Intel CPUs). It's just that, being 32 bit processes, any individual process can only handle 4GB and MS made the decision to limit the consumer OSes to 4GB. The initial release of XP actually had PAE enabled, but that got killed off by SP1, if I remember correctly. Server 2003, based on the XP kernel, had it turned on still, but of course you don't want to run the server OS. But all the code is there in XP and it works, it just needs to be patched to be enabled. There's also the very odd Windows XP Professional x64 Edition that isn't quite sure if it's Server 2003 or XP.
It is also possible to install 64-bit version of Windows XP 🙂But it wasn't very supported at this very early stage, so there might be issues, especially since we would like to use it for retro gaming so compatibility would be quite important 🤔
@@kkolakowski Yes, that's Windows XP Professional x64 edition (not to be confused with Windows XP 64 bit edition - that's for Itanium). I had it for my work computer for awhile. It's weird. It's really Server 2003 dressed up like XP Professional. So alot of drivers are hard to get - it wasn't that common so alot of people didn't bother with drivers and normal XP drivers don't work and Server 2003 drivers sometimes work, but those aren't all that common. Application compatibility seemed OK, in general , though.
I would have expected a bit more testing on MS-DOS compatibility. You mention win 9x family (ME included), so dos games are a thing. Does commander keen have issues with graphics? How's the SB compatibility in dos? Does bios allow using USB mice/keyboards under dos?
I have X140e which have A4-5000 APU. It was a good lugged-ish mini-laptop that was good enough for office work, web surfing, and can run app players to run android mobile games. The successor to it, Thinkpad 11e, lacked the trackpoint so it may not be called thinkpad anymore and now the line is discontinued. And the 'e' stands for 'education', 'cause this line was for K12 students.
I've been planning on getting an older Thinkpad and putting something like XFCE or MATE on it just because I like old tech and I like using it, like properly using it everyday.
About the “being a 32-bit OS I wasn't able to make effective use of that 8GB RAM upgrade”: you can solve it either running Windows XP 64-bit or XP 32-bit modified with PAE support
I had this laptop in university, tried Win XP on it, Win 7, Ubuntu 10 something and Arch Linux. Arch was the most snappy, especially with installed tile window manager (I used Awesome WM). But the slow CPU was an issue even back then, it had troubles playing some YT videos with quality more than 480p, and it's around 2013.
Loved the x100, this was an amazing workhorse
The successor X120e with the dual core AMD E-350 was pretty zippy for its time. I could run WoW at 1024x600, medium settings, and pull around 30 fps. And it was a more than serviceable student laptop w/ an SSD upgrade. Probably the best $400 laptop I've ever owned.
I had a Thinkpad T430s from 2020 through august 2023 I loved the track pad especially but sadly it broke and the power also eventually died so i had to upgrade to a ideapad gaming 3 but i must say i really miss the trackpad
Until a couple years ago I owned a x120e! I genuinely wish I kept it. It's kind of sad because these could have been great little machines, if the CPU wasn't a limiting factor in what you can do with them.
I have an x120e too, I ran the most cutdown version of Arch Linux with i3wm on it, but somehow Haiku was running smoother on it than Linux.
Compiling a basic C program was slow and I am wondering how I got through my first semester in CS with that thing. Learning vim on a thinkpad is one of the best thing you can do with that keyboard
I still have an X120e, and the other issue besides the sluggish dual core APU in the machine is the whitelisted WiFi card that can't be upgraded unless you hack the BIOS, but it runs Solus Budgie well enough for a very basic daily computer, so I keep it around as a backup machine. I've never tried any retro gaming on it though.
If you want something cheap and cheerful from this era that's still usable as a daily driver, and is kind of rugged originally being made for the educational market and if you don't mind an 11.6 in 720p screen look at a Thinkpad X140e with a quad core AMD A4 APU that will take 8GB of DDR3L RAM, and runs Solus Budgie Linux, or Manjaro GNOME w/Traditional layout with ease, and runs cool as can be. I've had one for years, and while I have newer faster desktops, laptops, and even tablets, every so often I just keep going back to that little X140e, and enjoy typing on it so dang much(trackpad is another issues, but thank GOD for the Trackpoint LOL!).
Having said that the real killer of almost any Thinkpad from this era now are finding new batteries, and if you do getting them from a decent 3 party seller that does not charge you an arm, and a leg.
@@harrytsang1501 I have an X120e, and never have been able to get Haiku to boot from USB no matter if it's the 32bit, or 64bit version, maybe it comes down to revision numbers with different chipsets on the mainboard? 🤷♂
@@CommodoreFan64 maybe it's a different configuration/revision
Mine had the lowest end single core AMD netbook processor that measures below the raspberry pi 3. Besides programming assignments, I mainly used that to SSH into other Linux machines
I have been using IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads for decades now and they are hard to kill.
i loved Thinkpads - they were built like tanks! I had a T20 for enterprise sales & it was a beast! when it came time to buy my own computer in 2001, i think (ahem) i got a refurb T21 or T22 & I remember the day i got MAME and Metal Slug working - made me so happy - it became my new demo! 👾
I don’t know about this particular laptop, but on many thinkpads with an empty cell modem spot, you can install a second nvme drive. It gives nice expanability
Interesting that you mentioned the usecase for writing. I recently was looking for a compact device of this caliber for around this exact price point with this usecase in mind. I have settled for now on a slightly outdated 2n1 dell chromebook, but I can't deny that the keyboard on this model would've proved for a far superior typing experience. It's a bit of a shame that the CPU on this was so underpowered even for the time I'd say being single core. Otherwise it would have aged perfectly well. I do kind of like the idea that it makes things distraction free, but that also proves problematic if you have to do a lot of researching on your projects. Really awesome video!
I recently picked up a ThinkPad 11e (1st gen) which was apparently a rugged small laptop for students. 8G RAM and Debian and it's a fantastic netbook. One of the best keyboards I've used on such a small machine, I love typing on it. Screen viewing angles are a bit crap tho.
I have core an old core duo @ 2.66(oc @ 2.8) along with 8g dual channel ddr3 memory. Two ssd's and a 9600m gt nvidia. The machine(PM45) works spectacularly with windows 7. I will never think of changing it.
The x100e is my favourite thinkpad! Still use it as my daily driver
I found that when using windows 10 in old hardware it is better to install version 1809 or earlier as they will be smooth and not demanding as for 22H2 i don't recommend it for older device's.
7:07 Why couldn’t you have used Window XP 64-Bit Edition?
My first computer ever was a thinkpad t30. Got it for $5 at a church sale when I was like 7. Loved that machine. Mainly used it to watch movies lol. Would bring it on vacation and watch movies in the hotel room.
I had one of these with the Turion X2 L625 back in the day. That second CPU core made a big difference compared to the MV-40. It ran even hotter, but it could almost play Left 4 Dead at non-PowerPoint frame rates! Almost!
The Turon X2 L625's are extremely rare. Very few were made. Did you customer order it when it was new? How did you get one with that upgraded processor?
@@klwthe3rd This was over a decade ago, but IIRC it was a canceled custom order that wound up on the Lenovo Outlet. At the time I needed a laptop with a good keyboard, and I wanted something small that had a snowball's chance of gaming competently, and the outlet listing put the "good" x100e well within my budget.
@@needfuldoer4531 Wow that is such an interesting backstory 😄. What ever happened to that laptop?
@@klwthe3rd It's in a box with other retired laptops.
@@needfuldoer4531 I want to buy it from u if you still have it.
I am a Lenovo fan, so this video made to want an X-series Thinkpad.
This appears to be an identical Netbook to the IdeaPad S10 that came out around the same time just with a ThinkPad style shell.
I still have my Lenovo x200 tablet. It looks like the first time out of the box so it is in an exelent status. P Dual core, 8GB, 256GB SSD, the Captive Pen with the little cotton wire and the docking station with DVD and an extra ssd hard-drive in a bay. A small wireless mouse and i love it. The only thing i did was cleaning it again, update the ram plus BIOS and a new accu 4 years ago. It works perfect under W7 64 bit. A bit slow yes but it works for what i need it. It is also a very good retro machine which will stay until i die.
I still own a Toshiba Satellite with an AMD Turion X2 and 3 GB of Ram. Those old AMD always had overheating issues but with a special thermal paste and a factory fan recall, it runs beautifully. Windows 8.1 embedded was the last Win OS that ran smoothly. After that, I ve been running it on Antix Linux OS for fun.
I too have an x100e but with the dual core Athlon Neo. Still Hella slow....and hot. Stock OS was Windows 7 but even that struggled at times. Xp seems like a decent fit, with Dosbox or similar.
Maybe its a good idea to try Atlas OS, a Windows 10 setup script that strips off all the junk thar comes with w10 and make the operating system much more lightweight and snapier
This might be a candidate for a decent portable DOS machine(no, really). Lenovo provides packet drivers for the ethernet card, SBEMU might work just fine on here for SoundBlaster emulation, and the CPU is already quite slow and single-core and could work well with setmul to slow it down to the required performance to run DOS games.
Not to mention it would be that distraction-free typing device as well.
I have a ThinkPad T410 that I use for most of my 98 and xp erra gaming. It's currently running dual boot 10 and xp. Although it's uses on 10 are a bit limited.
I love this kind of video. Do another one with newer model lik x230 or even t460
I liked my Atom N450 Netbook back in the day. Squeezing out as much performance as possible was half the fun. I threw an SSD in it right away and that definitely helped.
I prefer just getting modern hardware and emulators today, however, because you don't spend as much time waiting for things or tinkering.
My current "Netbook" is just a small laptop with a modern CPU that can decode AV1 video codecs for watching UA-cam while travelling.
Check out the latest thinkpad 11e from 2021-22 - it’s a more modern take on this netbook. I believe there’s some upgradeability, 8gb of ram DDR4 optional and can be found cheap with more modern processors. These were mainly sold to the education market.
I have a Lenovo x131e, basically set up the way you have your x100e, but with xubuntu on it. I run a windows xp vm on it to play old games when I travel. It's better than I expected when I bought it and decided to un-Chromebookify it.
I remember HD 3200, I think it was one of the first iGPU's where you could play some at the time, modern games. I know there was some geforce igpu's but iirc they were like DX 7 compatible in a time when DX8 and DX9 was becoming the norm, in any case the laptop looks cool, netbooks were something special back then.
The X120e was my first laptop because of how efficient the AMD E350 was. After Windows 7, I used it with Mint and now it's running Cloudready/ChromeOS Flex. I only use it on ethernet now because of how slow the wifi card is
I had a direct descendant of this one with an Edge 11 series (intel i3 380um, 4 gigs quite the same specs but with an HDMI port) after being bored the limits of my eeePC 1000HE. Once I upgraded its poorly performing 5400tpm hard drive for a ssd, it was a quite capable machine for work on the go and dosbox games. Gave it to a friend which might still use it. It migrated to win10 but it was a bit too much for it.
X100e VS X120e:
DDR2 VS DDR3
Without HDMI VS With HDMI
I could see myself picking up that odd ThinkPad for retro gaming but then again, I too have an old HP ThinClient for that.
I remember there being a patch for Windows 32bit so it would allocate/recognize more than 4gb, I can't remember if the kernel patch worked on Windows XP.
7:03 hey Colin why not give windows x64 XP a go instead?
I was wondering that... admittedly I don't have a great deal of experience with x64 XP, and it's been a good decade or more since I used it! My guess is that drivers are likely to be pain?
@@brick6347 perhaps.
I had this laptop about 3 years ago and very quickly got rid of it and upgraded after waiting for ages for basic tasks to load
You should have tried lubuntu or any lxde interface extremely light on system with modern functions.
it's not the OS's fault. I ran debian with pure i3 on that thing and web browsing is still pretty painful. There's no use in having a super lightweight OS and then try to run the modern bloated WWW on it.
Picked up an X200 at e-waste for NT$500 (about US$16) with a working, chargeable battery. The LCD panel has minor screen burn (previous user had a stupid centered tiny "wallpaper") but it works fine otherwise.
Viewers! Do not overlook the x120e. It's physically identical -- same body, display, great keyboard, etc., just with a newer AMD SoC, the dual core AMD E-350 with HD 6310 graphics. It's essentially the same exact laptop, just now capable of running things like Windows 10. I had the X100e in the video for years before upgrading to the x120e, which is so great I still use it to this day. I mainly use it for light digital audio work in Renoise and making retro alien landscape style art with Bryce 3D. In my opinion, best netbook ever made!!! :D
Does it support Windows XP? 🤔 Lenovo website is so messy that it's hard to tell (at least here in Europe) - I think it DOES, but I can't straight out tell from their crappy interface.
@@kkolakowski Yes, with SATA set to compatibility mode, same as in this video. There -is- a working AHCI F6 driver for it but I haven't managed to get it working in years as the XP installer does not detect even supported USB floppy drives.
0:04 that computer brings me memories because the elementary school gave you that where im from (i edited the give to gave bc they not longer gives you)
I remember having a lenovo netbook for a while but I completely forget the name, or the year haha. I guess a generation or 2 after this and not their thinkpad. It came with 8gig ram, 512gb hdd and athlon.. something, with integrated gpu and 16:9 screen running vista 64 at a decent price, I loved it and it was great for emulation, I wish that I could remember the model number. I honestly wish that I could remember more but I only had it for 3 months I guess before giving it to my sister and nephews.
I had the updated version of this, the X120e. Form factor was perfect for my use case, but the AMD E-350 was just too weak. I wished they would make 11" machines again.
Actually just ordered one of these for cheap. Here in Brazil it's difficult to get a hold of a good windows 2000/XP era machine to play games from that time period (things like nfs porsche unleashed, gta vice city, quake 1 and 2, that kind of windows 98~2000 type of thing). Seems to be in very good condition and comes fitted with an ssd, so my plan is to put windows xp (actually if I can get 2000 working with drivers, even better) and run old stuff in it. It's that kind of thing that was terrible at the time it released (like all netbooks) but actually has value now that it's dirt cheap if you wanna use it to run things way older than the machine itself.