Thinkpad's creator says goodbye to Big Blue and basic black

Arimasa Naitoh holds a cooling mechanism for an IBM Thinkpad. He wants to keep the product simple so people can concentrate on business

For 15 years it has been considered the model-T Ford of the computer industry - innovative, sturdy, reliable and only available in black.

Now the IBM Thinkpad, the laptop range aimed squarely at business users, is a healthy teenager still cared for by its doting father, Arimasa Naitoh.

The Thinkpad is in what Naitoh considers its third generation of development, one where the mobility of the workforce is driving its changes in design.

It also has some new siblings in the laptops of Lenovo, the Chinese computer-maker that bought the Thinkpad range from IBM last year.

After 30 years at IBM, during which time he accumulated 22 patents and joined the elite band of IBM Fellows, Naitoh moved to Lenovo, where he is now worldwide vice-president of development, overseeing the Lenovo and Thinkpad ranges from Tokyo.

Despite his loyalty to IBM, Naitoh saw the sale of the personal computing division as inevitable, given the economics of the computer industry and IBM's focus on IT services, software and research.

"To be honest, I wasn't surprised, I still love IBM. But we've continued to develop the Thinkpad as we were doing."

He points out that the initial perception of the deal was negative: "They will use some cheap stuff and put the IBM name on top of it," was the common response, he says. But the transition has been smooth and Lenovo had won respect.

"In China, I have ex-IBM people in research and development. I have more people than before and huge investment in new facilities."

He also has technology at his disposal which he could barely have dreamed of when he joined Japan's fledgling computer industry in the early 70s to build workstations for Japan's banking industry.

It was pre-personal computers and Naitoh's main concern was getting bank workstations to display Japanese Kanji and Chinese characters properly.

"The PC was born in 1981 but the processing power was small and the screen resolution was low. It wasn't enough to handle those characters. We developed a workstation for the Asian market," he says.

As the IBM personal computer took hold in the 80s, replacing the clunky workstations which had powered business in the previous decade, Naitoh began working on a "portable PC", the first awkward steps towards the laptop. Unfortunately, the portable PC wasn't very portable.

"I'd say moveable," says Naitoh.

It weighed 8kg and was powered by mains electricity only.

In 1988 IBM boosted its portable computing with the N40SX, a laptop with a monochrome screen and under two hours' battery life.

"It was a good start," says Naitoh.

Models with track-ball mouse wheels and removable hard drives followed and the first Thinkpad arrived on the market in 1992. By 2000, IBM had sold 10 million Thinkpads.

Through the Thinkpad's history, Naitoh says, the vision has remained the same: "I want to make a system as simple as possible so people can concentrate on their own business."

That's why there has been no Thinkpad introduced for the consumer market, no entertainment features added. The Thinkpad remains a business machine, though Lenovo targets consumers with other laptops in its range, such as the Lenovo 3000.

Naitoh said despite Japanese business culture dictating that you put in long hours at the office, workers needed to have information at their fingertips wherever they were.

"American people don't stay in the office so long. They need to go home and have dinner with the family," he says.

"Today many people are travelling and the decision-maker is not in the office. But the decision-making cycle never stops."

Being able to connect to the internet or virtual private networks was a major requirement and accounted for the inclusion of embedded mobile receivers in new Thinkpad models. So-called WWAN (wireless wide area networking) let you connect to the mobile network without having to install a mobile data card.

The service is already available on Vodafone's network here and in Australia. While there are no immediate plans to offer technology compatible with Telecom's network, the Thinkpads are being sold in the US with mobile receivers that are compatible with mobile networks there that use the same technology as Telecom.

Naitoh says laptop users still demand computing performance, something the new multi-core processor technology is helping to meet.

"But now there are different frustrations. Security software. [Microsoft] Vista is coming out with many new features, a new 3D graphical user interface," he says.

While the Thinkpad's insides will continue to evolve, there has been some compromise on that black colour scheme. You can now buy a Thinkpad in stylish silver.

"Many people want to have a Thinkpad that's not black," Naitoh admits.

Arimasa Naitoh

Next big thing: The hybrid cars being developed by Japan's automotive industry.

Favourite gadget: After his Thinkpad, the Apple iPod. He admires the BlackBerry but it is not available in Japan.

Alternative career: Initially wanted to work in research and development in the semi-conductor industry but Japan was only just emerging as a computer technology hotspot so Naitoh joined IBM to build IT systems for banks.

Spare time: Spent on one of the golf courses of Tokyo.