What happened to the Titanium in ThinkPad T Series? Bring it back!

Question

I have owned seven T series ThinkPads in my life, and I have converted to MacBook Pro.
Why has Lenovo removed the titanium from the T61?
IBM had named the T series for its titanium. That is where the T had come from.
They have said that they have removed it for better wireless connectivity. MacBooks are made of aluminum, and they connect perfectly. Furthermore, IBM titanium models had connected just fine as well.
To replace the sexy titanium cover with a cheap painted plastic is product line suicide!
The paint comes off the T61, and it feels so cheap.
This is why I have converted to MacBook Pro.
Lenovo, please bring back the titanium casing. The Z series had been brilliant. You did not give it a proper chance.
Professional notebooks are to be made of metal casing, titanium or aluminum. Anything else is substandard.
Bring back titanium, and you will see five immediate notebook purchases from me.
MacBook Pro, with an aluminum unibody enclosure **As of September 15, 2008, our company has completely switched to Apple. Having used ThinkPad products for over 10 years, we had desperately tried to find just one reason to continue using these products, to no avail. We are of the view that ThinkPads are no longer premium products. We wish you the best of luck with your ThinkPad! Happy computing…**

Answer 1

Hello,
I have never seen an IBM or Lenovo ThinkPad T-series notebook with a titanium lid.  I checked this article on Wikipedia, and it did say that some models of the the Z60 series (and maybe the Z61t) had a titanium lid.  The Wikipedia article did state, though, that ThinkPads contain several novel components, including magnesium and titantium, carbon-fiber reinforced plastic and other composite materials and alloys.  So maybe there is some titanium, but just on the inside or at the hinges.
I have a friend who has one of the Apple Mac Books with the aluminum chassis, and he uses an external wireless card with it because he says its wireless reception is poor.  I believe he may have one of the older models, though, so this may be something which has been corrected in later generations.
If you really do want a titanium lid, perhaps you could order a sheet from a company like Online Metals, have whatever burnishing, laser-engraving, polishing, coatings and so forth applied, and then do some kind of chemical or RF weld to bond it to the lid. 
Personally, though, I think that if you are going to go through that kind of effort, it might be more interesting use a material like palladium foil.  That might be a little more expensive, though, then using titanium.
If the issue, though, is just the color of the lid and not its place on the periodic table of the elements, then perhaps you could use a service like ColorWare, LaptopDesign or M-Tech to paint it for you?
I have often wondered how IBM chose up with the letters A, G, R, S, T and X to describe various models.  I had thought the "T"-series meant "thin-and-light" and not "titanium."  It is strange that they used "T" instead of "Ti" for the model name, but perhaps they wanted to avoid confusion with Texas Instruments who, in the past, has had their own notebook computer models.  I wonder what elements or materials the other letters in the other lines are supposed to represent?
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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