It’s amazing how compatible VMware ESXi is with almost any normal laptop or desktop computer.  However, I did run into some trouble trying to get ESXi 5.5 to find the network adapter on my E6440.  The VIB (driver) for the NIC happens to be out of date.  Luckily, this post has an excellent walkthrough of how to get the updated VIB and how to build a customized ISO.  Once complete, use Rufus to make a bootable USB from the customized installer.  Unfortunately, it looks like the BIOS doesn’t support an SD card as a bootable device, so I used an external USB drive as the target device.