This Tiny Gaming Laptop Recreates The Iconic Nipple Of The ThinkPad

Kumari Shrivastav - Aug 28, 2019

Built by Paul Klinger, ThinkTiny is a small-sized duplicate of the famous ThinkPad, with attention to the very detail of its iconic red pointing stick.

Macbooks from Apple is arguably the most well-known laptop brand in the world, but another household name that is popular with businesses is ThinkPads (first from IBM, now developed and sold by Lenovo). The ThinkPad line has been available for nearly 30 years and was behind some significant innovations in laptop design. One of those is the iconic TrackPoint “nipple mouse” that has recently been recreated by Paul Klinger as part of his miniature ThinkPad project.

A-close-up-of-Paul-Klinger’s-tiny-laptop-inspired-by-the-ThinkPad-1 — A close-up of Paul Klinger’s tiny laptop inspired by the ThinkPad

The ThinkPad laptop is one of those iconic and timeless designs that is deserved to be remade into a fine small version. Paul Klinger’s work – the ThinkTiny – has the red nub as a joystick for nostalgic titles such as Lunar Lander, Tetris, and Snake.

The-ThinkTiny-is-able-to-run-these-retro-game-titles-2 — The ThinkTiny is able to run these retro game titles

The TrackPoint (normally called a nipple) is a pointing device allowing users to control the movements of the cursor on the screen. This device spares you from using a touchpad or carrying around an extra mouse and hence better laptop’s portability. Similar to the all-black boxy design, the TrackPoint is such an iconic point of the ThinkPad line; and on his ThinkTiny, Klin ger kept the nub as the sole input device.

The-red-TrackPoint-is-one-iconic-design-from-Lenovo’s-ThinkPad-line-3 — The red TrackPoint is one iconic design from Lenovo’s ThinkPad line

Using an ATtiny1614 chip, the ThinkTiny is apparently not compatible with apps like PowerPoint, Excel or Word. It is designed to be a miniature gaming laptop running retro arcade games on its OLED screen.

Klinger does not intend to go commercially with ThinkTiny, which is understandable given the likely pursuits from the mother company Lenovo. But Klinger has kindly uploaded all his materials including the design code and printer files on his GitHub page if you want to give it a go and build one of your own.