Very little is known about the origins of the IBM Thinkpad 130. Someone familiar with Thinkpads can smell a rat a mile off. The cheap plastic, the inferior keyboard, the 'multimedia' styling.... Oh my god, you turn it on and you're greated with "BIOS Utility".... aaaarrggghhh it's an Acer!
Yes, for some reason IBM re-badged one of their subbed out iSeries models for Japan - those with plastic that now snaps like a fortune cookie and famed for low reliability and sub-par displays.
IBM referred to it as the ThinkPad i Series 1200/1300.
| Model | IBM Thinkpad 130 |
| Machine Type | Type 1171 (same as the iSeries) |
| Release Timeframe | Introduced 2000 |
| Preceded by | Not a lot |
| Superceded by | Even less |
| Motherboard Specs | 700Mhz Celeron with PC100 SDRAM 64Mb on-board, 20Gb HDD, DVD-ROM drive |
| Display Specs | 14.1" TFT sporting 1024x768 with 4Mb VRAM |
Incredibly, this machine has fared rather well - I suspect it was hardly used. It came with a bunch of original documentation and optical media. It is a little odd and curious seeing the hurried 130 branding. For ages I saw the 130 referenced in a lists of all numbered Thinkpads and I wondered what this curious exotic machine was. Was it related to the PalmTop PC110? Was it a smaller 230Cs? No, it was just an odd marketing enterprise that may well have died with IBM switching to letters to categorise their models.
The iSeries 1200/1300 machines are also well known for their hinges snapping the flimsy plastic bases, so open yours carefully!
Other machines in this series were known as the ThinkPad i1210, i1230, i1250, i1260, i1330, i1370 and the ThinkPad 130 - it seems the 130 was the 'pinnicle' of this series.
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