I am an avid ThinkPad collector, having owned (at one point or another) more than 50 ThinkPads as of December 2014. The one that stands out as having the cleverest engineering is the 701c. This is because of the butterfly keyboard. As its name implies, they managed to fit a full-sized keyboard in the laptop, which folds up when the lid is closed. This was needed back then, since widescreen laptops didn’t hit ThinkPads until the Z Series in 2006. The butterfly keyboard was used in the film GoldenEye, and was easily distinguishable in coffee shops for the next few years. Quality-wise, the build isn’t the greatest – the 701’s are known for battery corrosion, board separation, and (worst of all) a CMOS battery that requires Torx screws to get at. However, it is really neat to open and close the laptop (although that resulted in the hinges breaking on 1 of my 2 butterflies). The 701c model had an active-matrix screen; the 701cs had a dual-scan, passive-matrix (DSTN) screen which was inferior. Both screens had a whopping 640×480 resolution.

2020 Update: Since I originally posted this in 2014, the YouTuber known as LGR did a video (in 2018) on this laptop. I’ve continued to collect these since my 2014 post, picking up a total of 5 (and selling 2, one of which I sold at a loss) over the years. In 2015, you could still get these on eBay for under $50 shipped, but the world is quite different now than it was even a year ago, let alone five years ago. Here are some additional pictures of my 701c(s) laptops, taken between 2014-2020:

Below, you can see a comparison of the 701c vs. 701cs screens, in BIOS setup (701c Active Matrix first, 701cs Passive Matrix second):

And here is a comparison of the color bars (701c first, 701cs second/third):

Finally, here are some more pictures (only the first is 701c, the rest are 701cs):

Below are the original pictures from the 2014 posting.

Revised on October 10, 2020