[samatman]

I was around in the heyday of the ThinkPad, and this is (mostly) backward.

It was always the standard kit of the stereotypical scruffy Linux hacker, but it was mostly just a really good laptop. The connoisseur's choice, reliable, repairable, and IBM would come to you and fix it on the desk if you paid them.

A lot of that demographic have switched to MacBooks or one of the many ultrabook-type laptops of a similar design language, and what's left is the crew who valued the ability to hack on the machine.

They were always there, but they're most of what's left.

[fsagx]

  It was always the standard kit of the stereotypical scruffy Linux hacker

the T40 was the first laptop w/linux combo that I found where everything just worked. Ubuntu 10.4 in my case.