Goodbye to an old friend

In Memoriam: My Lenovo ThinkPad, 2012–2026

After 14 years of faithful service, my old Lenovo ThinkPad is finally retiring.

Not because it died. Let’s be clear about that. It was still working.

Apparently, though, the tech world has decided it is simply too ancient to be entrusted with modern updates. At 14, it was roughly 158 in human years, so perhaps this is understandable.

But what a life it had.

It travelled out west with me by train and by plane, to New York, California and Alaska, to the Bahamas and Punta Cana many times. It worked from offices, kitchen tables, hotel rooms, hospital waiting rooms, on the beach, and wherever else I happened to set it down. It made it through a pandemic with me, when suddenly home was the office and the office was anywhere the laptop happened to be.

And it held a life.

My children’s weddings and graduations. The birth of our grandchildren. Christmases and family dinners. Thousands of photographs. Pictures of Jake, whom I still miss, and of the cats. Stories I wrote and stories I never finished. Ideas that went somewhere and ideas that didn’t.

My work. My hopes. My dreams.

Hundreds of interviews and articles. Vast amounts of research. Documents going all the way back to 2008. More words than I could begin to count.

Over its long and productive life, it touched the lives of countless people — although, admittedly, most of them had no idea their words were stored in a 10-pound black plastic brick. Its contributions were many, its service unwavering, and its memory — 16 GB of it — will not soon be forgotten.

People occasionally made fun of my ThinkPad. (I’m looking at you two especially, Kevin and Jason.) They’d look at their sleek, skinny, silver little laptops that barely tipped the scales at a pound, and then at my enormous black brick and laugh.

Go ahead.

To be fair, it did look a little ridiculous. It was thick, heavy and proud to be totally unglamorous. It had always had a bit of a weight problem. If it was a human, it would definitely be wearing sensible shoes. It had none of the sleek elegance of the newer models that appeared around it over the years.

But I loved that about it. It didn't pretend to be delicate. You could practically imagine it saying, Put me down anywhere. I’ve got this. I've got you.

That thing was a WORKHORSE.

While other people had to replace their laptops every few years, mine just kept going. It was turned on virtually every day, for hours at a time. I worked it hard. And for 14 years, it never failed me.

But the world moved on without it.

There’s something strange about retiring a machine that isn’t broken. We’re accustomed to replacing things because they fail. My Lenovo hadn’t. It had simply become obsolete by decree — still willing to work, still having so much to contribute, but increasingly unable to participate in a world designed for newer things. I've seen ageism. I confess I felt a little indignant on its behalf.

And so this is the end of an era. Today I began a new relationship — with, of course, another ThinkPad. Which admittedly is slim and silver and shiny, although I've never cared much about looks. Its personality is more important to me.

Where will we travel? What will I write? What photographs will it hold? What work will we do, what stories will unfold, what fascinating people will we interview, and what pieces of my yet-to-be lived life will eventually find their way onto its desktop?

I have no idea. But I can’t wait to find out.

My old ThinkPad leaves behind its longtime office companions: the LP printer, the iPhone, and the stapler, who was always there to hold things together.

Farewell, old friend.

You were big. You were black. You were clunky.

And you were absolutely magnificent.