[HN Gopher] I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012
___________________________________________________________________
I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012
Author : hddherman
Score : 342 points
Date : 2022-01-10 07:42 UTC (15 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (ounapuu.ee)
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I'm using an old T520 as my main machine for the similar reasons
| - it's a rock solid machine. Yes, I gave it more memory at one
| point, and I replaced the HDD with an SSD. No, nothing new comes
| close.
|
| I only ever regret the decision when I am travelling through
| airports, when I see people effortlessly slide out their thin,
| light laptops while I heave around a machine of yesteryear, large
| and ominous-looking (I swear, the screening agent scrutinises the
| Thinkpad longer than he does look at your MBP), and heavy.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| It also seems that Linux hardware support gets worse over time. I
| upgraded an old laptop to a newer distro, and the CPU fan was
| constantly blowing, cpu scaling stopped working, video became
| buggier, Bluetooth would randomly stop working with A2DP,
| hibernation stopped working. It took nearly a year for me to
| figure out each of the issues, because this is Linux; we don't
| "help users" or "test hardware", that would make us soft and
| weak!
| TheFattestNinja wrote:
| I have been using as my only machine a T530 uninterrupted (think
| 10h/day uptime) since Nov 2012, both as a desktop replacement and
| to carry it around. I had to replace its motherboard recently but
| it was my fault as I put it in too enclosed of a space and
| overheated/burned it. Aside from a bit of fan noise, it's still
| going strong. It's definitely underspecced wtr to graphics
| nowadays, but still able to run things like League of Legends
| smoothly with just the integrated chip. Happy to answer questions
| about it if anyone is interested.
| kinow wrote:
| My only machine too since... 2015 I think? Replaced an old Dell
| inspiron, been running great with containers, IntelliJ, Jupyter
| Lab, dual monitor. Only Blender 3.0 doesn't work too well due
| to the old version of cuda. Other than that, never had any
| issues.
| jrockway wrote:
| Does League have demanding hardware requirements? It's older
| than that laptop.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Can't give you a good informed answer but I've seen friends
| play League on like 8 different machines -- all very
| unimpressive in terms of specs.
|
| I have to say, League is one of the very best games out there
| in terms of optimization and modest sipping of resources.
|
| Shame about the community though; fairly toxic and demanding
| (IMO) and that's why I'll never play it. But the game itself
| is a technical marvel.
| Paianni wrote:
| I 'retired' a T510 in 2017 that's slightly deficient by modern
| standards, Google Maps in particular is not much fun to use on
| it. I think their durability is overrated; a clip broke on the
| bundled battery and it wouldn't stay attached after that, and
| some of the plastic strips around the air vent broke off from
| being caught on something while in transit. I'm not a huge fan of
| the red nipple in the keyboard but it was very comfortable aside
| from that.
|
| Nowadays a tower suits me better.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > "I've been using this setup for over a month now, and it has
| been surprisingly adequate."
|
| Well, I don't know about you guys, but "surprisingly adequate"
| isn't really enough to get me to hit the "buy now" button.
| openplatypus wrote:
| I love these projects. I have T430 with 16GB of RAM. Sadly, it is
| i5 version.
|
| So far: - replaced fan to DELTA - refreshed thermal paste - added
| Samsung 860 EVO Pro - acquired (yet to install) USB-C charging
| port
|
| Until I replace the CPU, it is not good enough for Scala
| development.
|
| That said, compared to AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4700U and 32 GB in
| ThinkPad T14 it falls short quite fast.
|
| T430, X230 and T61p hold a special place in my heart, but these
| are dated platforms. Once to start getting to media processing,
| paying attention to battery life, CPU performance per Watt, etc
| you will look for modern architecture.
|
| I am personally pleased about move to Performance/Efficiency
| cores architecture. Not all tasks are created equal :)
| nicbou wrote:
| Excellent writeup. I don't think I'd be happy with that setup,
| but I still appreciate how you explain your thinking process and
| why you did things this way.
|
| I switched to Mac a little over a decade ago, and since then I
| don't really think about my computer. It's a tool that generally
| just works. It's not for everyone but it really solved that issue
| for me.
| amatecha wrote:
| haha, the similarities to my recent experiences are funny. I also
| recently have started using an X230 (same era as T430) and an
| X220, also running open source OSes and I used Hugo to publish my
| personal site, using the same theme as the article author. Today,
| these machines are so affordable and still offer excellent
| computation power and acceptable power efficiency. Not mind-
| blowing, but still fine. The repairability is a major plus, one
| of the best in a laptop I've thus far seen.
| Aldo_MX wrote:
| I updated my laptop this year and I picked the XPG Xenia 14, it
| ticked many boxes and I honestly loved it:
|
| 1. Easy to unscrew and upgrade (I bumped the RAM to 64Gb)
|
| 2. Has 2 M.2 slots (I replaced the stock SSD with 1Tb PCIE 4.0
| for the OS and apps and added a 2Tb PCIE 3.0 for media and data)
|
| 3. It has a thunderbolt port, so it supports an eGPU
|
| 4. It is incredibly thin and light
|
| 5. It has a decent collection of ports
| zokier wrote:
| For Thinkpads, T450 (from 2015) probably hits the sweet spot as a
| daily driver. Few important notes:
|
| * Haswell got most of the major ISA extensions like e.g. AVX2
|
| * T440 did not have buttons for Trackpoint, making it pretty
| awful
|
| * 802.11ac 5GHz wifi and USB 3 are nice to have
| bitwize wrote:
| My current main laptop is a T450s from 2014 or so. It's got 12
| GiB of RAM, enough to run most dev tools comfortably. The
| slowdown in CPU speed acceleration has meant that a PC from
| between five and ten years ago, or even more, is not as
| flagrantly obsolete as it once was, and I'd rather keep life in
| my old machines, especially when new machines start to grow
| features I don't want (like Pluton).
| mad182 wrote:
| I'm using X220 from 2011, it has i7, 8GB RAM and SSD, running
| Debian Linux.
|
| I don't even feel the need to upgrade. It's in ideal condition, I
| love the keyboard and form factor, and for my daily tasks mostly
| involving terminal, text editor and web browser if feels snappier
| than many modern machines I have worked with.
|
| I bought a new Dell laptop for my wife a year ago, and while the
| CPU and GPU are obviously way more capable for tasks like running
| games or encoding video, overall it just feels slower. It takes
| longer to boot, launch programs, even just switching between
| windows has some small delay. It probably would be quicker if I
| installed the same OS, but still - I feel better user experience
| from a decade old ThinkPad than new $1000+ machine out of box.
| mhb wrote:
| I'm also using an X220. I bought an X1 as a potential
| replacement but the trackpoint is unusable and the keyboard is
| a big step down. The X220 battery only lasts about 15 minutes
| though, so I need to keep it plugged in. I'd like to find a
| replacement battery but am not enthusiastic about prying the
| housing apart to install new cells or buying a knockoff from a
| faraway land which might start a fire.
| orang2tang wrote:
| The easiest way to tell the difference between a real and
| fake is by the white "recycle" sticker
|
| https://preview.redd.it/83f0fqegasa11.jpg?width=1263&format=.
| ..
|
| fake batteries have a poorly printed, "fat" looking battery
| on the recycle sticker and the real ones have a slender
| properly printed one. For context in the image the bottom one
| is fake.
| mhb wrote:
| Thanks, but the problem is that either it has the original
| cells inside and those will have the same issues as my
| current ones or it has new (possibly unmatched?) cells of
| unknown provenance.
| ssl232 wrote:
| I've stared at the image for 3 minutes and still can't
| figure out the difference. Where exactly is the "fat
| looking battery" you refer to?
| croutonwagon wrote:
| I just got off my X200s from like....2008.
|
| the 1.8 Ghz dual core was getting long in the tooth. But it had
| upgrades otherwise (newer ssd, though i had a factory ssd from
| day 1), and upgraded to 8GB of ram. Ran multiple linux distros
| on it great, including debian with awesomewm and even
| ElementaryOS.
|
| I will not admit what i bought to replace it, but im happy for
| the time being and it replaced by desktop and laptop in one
| (but wasnt cheap). I know theres no way it has the longevity i
| got out of that x200s.
|
| Technically the x200s is still in service though. I let my
| daughter use to get better with mouse/hand-eye coordination and
| do some reading/website work on it.
| linpined wrote:
| Lenovo Thinkpad really helped me throughout my college journey,
| the laptop never let me down.
| taffronaut wrote:
| I had a visitor over the holidays who needed to work but didn't
| have a laptop. I had 2x old T420 (released in 2011) so I combined
| the RAM and did a fresh OS install. My only hassle was finding a
| DP cable. Other than doubling the RAM, this was still a stock
| machine from 2011. CPU benchmark scores for this T420 are
| comparable/better than sub-PS400 new x86 laptops available at big
| box stores which was the other short-term option. Our visitor has
| had no issues with the T420 for Zoom calls, Chrome and other
| general stuff. I sold the RAM-less T420 and was informed that it
| was up and running with fresh RAM at its new home.
| herbst wrote:
| I've used a T420 as daily driver until just recently. It went
| travelling around the world with me, fell from rather high
| places, got wet more than once and much more.
|
| My new 460s is mostly just better because it's lighter.
| Performance plus is only noticeable in games and such stuff.
| jcelerier wrote:
| To be fair the sub-400 laptops are nearly the same in 2021 that
| you could find in 2011. Dual core with 1366x768 is still pretty
| common.
| taffronaut wrote:
| Sure. We're saying the same thing in different ways. A 2011
| reasonable spec i5 laptop from my trash pile is still at
| least as useable for day-today tasks as a cheap new machine
| in 2021.
| localhost wrote:
| There's a post[1] from 2019 about a group in Shenzen who update
| classic Thinkpads to modern specs. It's also been mentioned here
| a bunch of times [2-4]. I got an email from the group just a
| couple of weeks ago and they're building another batch. It's a
| bit sketchy with the Western Union funds transfer but I'm
| seriously considering it. I love the build quality of the x220s
| that I still have here, but would love to have better internals.
|
| [1] https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/ [2]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19246406 [3]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19246406 [4]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19413436
| NGRhodes wrote:
| I like to buy ex-corporate ~5 year old Thinkpads, get from a
| seller who gives atleast 6 months warranty, put new batteries in
| and they are usually far better in every way than anything new
| for the same price. Am currently very happy with my T460S, runs
| Linux or Win10 great. My previous machines that the kids use for
| school work and Roblox are x250 and x220, and previous to that I
| have an X200 and a T61, that all lasted atleast 5 years in my
| ownership, over 10 years old before they were sold on. I have
| noticed since my X200 a slow and steady decline in toughness (I
| presume in exchange for compactness). You do have to pick
| carefully, some models have terrible trackpads, often the base
| LCD screens are terrible for brightness and viewing angle, so you
| need to ensure you get the upgraded ones (eg IPS and/or higher
| resolution).
| mhb wrote:
| Where do you get new (X220) batteries?
| taubek wrote:
| GreenCell is very popular here where I live. Dozens of
| computer shops have them on stock
| (https://greencell.global/en/standard-batteries/2012-green-
| ce...)
| NGRhodes wrote:
| For my X220 I went for a cheap generic Chinese import (either
| Amazon or Ebay), its about 90% capacity of a genuine, but the
| price is so low its not a worry.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > I like to buy ex-corporate ~5 year old Thinkpads, get from a
| seller who gives atleast 6 months warranty
|
| I am curious if this a US thing only. I mean, I've heard of
| company vehicles in second hand market but never company
| laptops. In my experience all these company laptops get
| decommisioned by IT never to remove any data, but I never
| really considered what happens at End-of-life for those.
|
| A few questions:
|
| 1. Where do you find these retailers?
|
| 2. Where do you find suppliers selling new batteries for old
| devices?
|
| (all of my previous attempts at finding replacement batteries
| for laptops and e-readers always resulted in very poor
| performance or even faulty battery packs)
|
| edit: formating paragraphs for questions
| NGRhodes wrote:
| I am in the UK. I buy from eBay, there are a number of big
| sellers to choose from. I tend to get my batteries from
| Amazon, I've probably bought 6 generic unbranded for my
| thinpads over the years, generally they seem to be about 90%
| capacity of genuine, but low prices mean great value. One I
| bought in 2020 was faulty on arrival, rest have all been
| good.
| vurpo wrote:
| I live in Finland, and simply by Googling in Finnish I can
| find several companies reselling used company laptops, and
| there's at least one local one that I can physically go to
| (I've bought a used monitor from there, and they always have
| stacks of ThinkPads in the store when I go in).
| Markoff wrote:
| same here in Czechia, pretty much all refurb Thinkpad are
| from companies, my current T520 is from Singapore of all
| places, if you choose A grade is basically brand new
| condition just without brand new smell, they should use
| some spray :-)
|
| my next laptop will be again refurb Thinkpad, for wife I
| would choose something like X240 A grade 8GB RAM, that cost
| like 250EUR
| lproven wrote:
| It's 100% a UK thing as well.
|
| Most of mine came from Morgan Computers, but I also check
| Tier 1 Online and Bargain Hardware too.
|
| I emigrated, and I have yet to find a good such vendor in the
| EU. Recommendations welcome!
| taubek wrote:
| I buy my refurnished laptops from Techsavers
| (https://www.techsavers.com/). They have local outlets in
| few EU countries.
| eb0la wrote:
| I worked for a company that bought their servers from
| Bargain Hardware. Good service, and fast. No problems with
| hardware, of course.
| taubek wrote:
| I always go for refurbished laptops when I can. My reseller
| gives me two year warranty and I can buy extra three years
| warranty if want to. So I can get 2y warranty in price, and I
| can buy 3 more years. I live in Europe and at the moment I
| could get T460s with new 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM and 5 year warranty
| for some 900 EUR (price with VAT).
|
| My biggest disappointment was the trackpad on T440s. I hated is
| so much that I was thinkin about replacing it with a new one.
| Besides that I really like all of the ThinkPad laptops that
| I've used so far.
| bener wrote:
| I would vouch for this approach too. Ex lease laptops are
| really cheap, I've got a gen4 x1 carbon for easy carry daily
| use, a t460s at home, and so many of my customers love their ex
| lease Lenovos.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I was looking for a linux laptop last week. Dell only showed one
| laptop (Precision 7760 Workstation) that they support linux on.
| It doesn't seem surprising that if the reviewer bought a Dell
| that _Dell_ don 't support linux on, then it didn't support linux
| when the reviewer tried either.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| My company decided to sell some of the old laptops before
| Christmas and I immediately jumped for the T430 and bought a
| couple of them. I know they are solid and can't wait to install
| Linux on them to be my main development machine.
|
| Well I ended up installing Windows 10 but still they are pretty
| solid.
| k4rli wrote:
| Interestingly this CPU is only 20% faster than a newer i7 9750H
| ([link](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-
| Core-i7-9750H-vs...)). I'd imagine under load the performance
| will be similar since 9750H can't run at max without overheating
| in a slim XPS body being next to another hot (graphics) chip.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I find it funny how people seem to fixate so much on the fact
| that the author upgraded various components to say the title is
| misleading. As someone with apparently similar requirements, the
| take-away from this should be this:
|
| Even _though_ significant work is required to keep these old
| machines working, some people prefer to do so. Crucially, they
| prefer it _not_ because they love tinkering, but simply because
| the value propositions of 2021 /2022 hardware doesn't look
| better.
|
| As someone running a non-upgradeable Dell nightmare XPS13 2in1
| with a nice display, but horrible everything-else, I can relate.
| I've been looking at recent models lately and find it pretty
| bleak.
| duckmysick wrote:
| It's a classic case of the Ship of Theseus.
|
| https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/shi...
| lproven wrote:
| No, it isn't.
|
| The entire point of the "my grandfather's axe" or "my
| grandmother's broom" story -- of which Theseus' ship is the
| original -- is that there's nothing of the original left, but
| replacement was gradual so there's a feeling of continuity.
|
| Whereas this is the original laptop with some upgrades. Same
| chassis, same motherboard, same screen, same (IMHO, bad)
| keyboard, but more RAM, more & faster disks, and a new CPU.
|
| This is not Theseus' ship, where nothing was left.
|
| The point of this story is that an end-user with normal tools
| can, at home, repair and upgrade a decade-old Thinkpad, but
| you can't do that with the new ones.
|
| The subtext is that in fact CPU performance isn't increasing
| much any more, and hasn't in a decade and a half. GPU
| performance is a bit but most of us don't need it, same as
| most of us don't need lots of CPU cores in a laptop. SSD
| performance is improving, somewhat, yes. Size, a lot.
|
| New laptops aren't _that_ much faster than old laptops.
| Unless you 're very demanding, old ones are good enough.
|
| So laptop makers, who need people to keep buying new laptops
| or they'll go out of business, are making laptops that you
| can't fix or upgrade any more.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Car industry is going in the direction of manufacturer
| rebuild (remanufacture), so laptop industry should do the
| same. Instead of making unupgradeable garbage,
| manufacturers should offer upgrades.
| lproven wrote:
| I am not sure of what you're saying, perhaps partly
| because I don't own a car, and never have since I got my
| driver's licence at age 38 or so.
|
| I do recall a neighbour of mine saying "back when cars
| went rusty" to me a decade back, which surprised me. A
| lot. Apparently they don't now?
|
| But modern cars, and many modern motorbikes, are sealed
| units which are not maintainable by the end-user. I
| dislike electronics like that.
|
| For this reason, for years now, I have favoured very
| cheap smartphones. If I _must_ have a sealed brick that I
| can 't fix or upgrade, then I will have the cheapest one
| I can get that does what I need.
|
| Luckily, there are very decent PS/EUR 125 smartphones
| now, from companies such as PPTV, iRulu and Umidigi,
| which are entirely usable and which I can replace every
| couple of years without pain.
|
| For laptops, I just use decade+ old Thinkpads for now.
| They're fast enough for me and the keyboards are better
| than any modern thing.
| antiterra wrote:
| Galvanized steel and clear-coat paint finish are a huge
| part of why cars don't rust as much as they used to. (But
| salt will eventually take a toll if you are coastal or
| live where roads are regularly salted.) Alternative
| materials like stainless-steel coated aluminum, or
| plastic coatings also contribute.
|
| Here's an article contemporaneous to the rise of
| clearcoats and galvanization:
| https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/1025/hrust.html
| kodemager wrote:
| How often do you upgrade your phone or laptop?
|
| I ask because I sort of went the opposite road, making
| sure I bought something that would last a long time.
|
| Aside from screen resolution and the modern "anything"
| thinking we all have high resolution monitors my old 2015
| MBP is still performing just fine despite its heavy
| usage.
|
| In the same period I've gone through 5 or 6 work laptops
| that were certainly not top end.
|
| I'm of course scared that the glory days of Apple died
| and my next mbp won't live 10 years, but I hope so.
| bbatchelder wrote:
| I follow more of this track as well...buy the highest end
| model and use it 2-3 times as long as you would a lower
| end model (but you're not paying 2-3 times the price).
|
| My 2015 MBP made it to the end of 2021 for me - when the
| fans started to have to run constantly and even still
| caused thermal throttling - when I had 2 Thunderbolt
| external displays attached (thus running the discrete
| GPU). I think it was an OS bug introduced in Catalina or
| Big Sur.
|
| I even tore down my hardware and re-applied thermal
| compound and clean dup the heatsinks...no joy.
|
| Running "pmset -g thermlog" while using it sealed the
| deal for me. I was only getting a fraction of the CPU
| power when running on two displays (and this is when the
| ambient room temp was 68-70F). I had a day when my AC
| conked out for a day and the room temp jumped to 76-78F
| and it was unusable.
|
| I am really enjoying my 16" 2021. Didn't realize how much
| of a slouch my 2015 had been by comparison.
|
| That being said, I still rock a mid-2012 MBP for light
| tasks when I just need a laptop and not a desktop
| replacement laptop.
| lproven wrote:
| Laptop: rarely. My main travel one is a Thinkpad X220 I
| bought used for PS150 in 2017. It replaced a Thinkpad
| X200 I bought used in 2013 for about the same price.
|
| I recently (end of last year) bought i7 versions of the
| T420 and T520, because for me they are the last
| generation of Thinkpads with good keyboards, and I hope
| they will last me for a while.
|
| My phone? It varies but typically every 18 months - 2
| years. Phones lead hard lives and don't last very long.
|
| Current: Umidigi F2. Before that: 2nd hand iPhone 6S+.
| Before that: PPTV King 7. Before that: Blackberry
| Passport (used). Before that: iRulu Victory V3. All those
| in the same time period that 2 old Thinkpads have
| covered, and all were relatively cheap.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Toyota announced last week it's going to offer a full
| overhaul of its BEVs in the UK every few years. So you
| can drive it back to the manufacturer and they will make
| it new, much like a major revision of an aeroplane. This
| is what should be happening with laptops as well. Sealed
| devices are a thing of the moment and will not last imho.
| nanis wrote:
| I did not know there was a name for this[1].
|
| I am regularly using a T400 which started life as a Lenovo
| 3000 N100.[2]
|
| Upgrades since then include a 2 TB SSD, 3.06 Ghz CPU, and
| WiFi.
|
| I do enjoy tinkering, but I also like the keyboard :-)
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
|
| [2]: https://www.nu42.com/2016/12/another-one-bites-the-
| dust.html
| jart wrote:
| I've been using my Thinkpad T420 since 2011 just fine and I
| haven't needed to do anything to it.
| chj wrote:
| How's the display going?
| wildzzz wrote:
| If they had the foresight to spend the money on the bigger
| display, they are probably just fine. It's not Rentina
| quality but it's good enough for something to use at home
| for non-work.
| jart wrote:
| Yes Thinkpads are very inexpensive so it makes perfect
| sense to max out. At least it did back then. I don't know
| about now.
| forinti wrote:
| I've done something similar with my machines, because it was so
| much cheaper than getting something new.
|
| You can get a quad core CPU for about $10, 16GB of DDR3 for
| about $100 and an SSD for $50.
|
| Even if you add a better heatsink and GPU, it's still cheaper
| than the cheapest machine you can get new (and they come with
| 4GB, which isn't enough nowadays).
| perth wrote:
| Pro Tip: get Dells business models like the latitude series
|
| The business Dell laptops blow anything lenovo has ever made
| out of the water in terms of specs, build quality, and
| serviceability. Also Dell's bios is way better and easier to do
| stuff in. I've had a t420 and I thought it was crap compared to
| the Dell business laptops. The cooling, plastic casing
| material, and serviceability just isn't there. On the T420 my
| palm rest cracked and to replace it you pretty much had to
| fully take apart the laptop to get it off. ifixit rated that
| particular repair at a pretty high difficulty, so instead I
| took the reusable components out, binned it, and used a Dell
| latitude.
|
| Currently I don't own a Dell business laptop however. Right now
| I'm using an Intel NUC Laptop and it does pretty good.
| dustyharddrive wrote:
| Where did you buy that NUC laptop from?
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Yep - Latitudes are always cheaper than their Thinkpad
| equivalents (example, my e6220 was about 2/3rds the cost of
| an x220 (this was about 5 years ago).
| bluedino wrote:
| They are still a level much lower than Lenovo.
| csdvrx wrote:
| Agreed. Their BIOS is full of bugs. I've investigated a few
| on the 7275 (business grade): I believe it's technically
| impossible for it to really sleep on Windows, regardless of
| how you look at it. It just saves a little bit of power
| while it looks like it's sleeping, then Windows realize
| it's an unacceptable power draw and pulls the plug (power
| off) then transparently resumes from a S4 hibernate to
| disk.
|
| Check my previous post
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29762909
| Kadin wrote:
| I've used several Dell business laptops, most from the
| Latitude Exxx series, and they are great machines.
|
| From what I can tell, they were made to compete directly with
| the IBM/Lenovo T-series Thinkpads. Similar form factor,
| ability to use docking stations, good keyboards, even the
| Trackpoint-like pointing device in addition to a traditional
| trackpad.
|
| Although I haven't used a recent Lenovo T-series for any
| length of time, the Dells appear to compare very favorably.
| More metal construction, so they dent rather than cracking.
| Docking stations seem to be less expensive. Displays are on
| par. Similar battery life.
|
| I wouldn't turn down a T-series if somebody handed me one,
| but many of the points the author makes in TFA about his
| T-series are true of the E-series Dells also.
| lgrialn wrote:
| Overall, I prefer my old thinkpad to my old latitude. Typing
| on it right now. A proper keyboard.
| Sherl wrote:
| The tip on purchasing business grade laptops applicable to
| several companies as well. I have the P series and it's going
| strong for 5 years after all the abuse of grad school and
| internships and now another degree. Apart from the wear on
| the rubber coating on the lid, the plastic is still robust.
| If you want upgradability from Lenovo, I think P series tick
| most boxes. The form factor is different here.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I haven't worked with anything newer, but the late 2000s Dell
| Precision laptops are a true pleasure to work on -- a great
| deal more pleasant than any Thinkpad I've cracked open. With
| just four screws I'm inside of my old M4400 and can pop off
| its heat sink, change thermal paste, swap CPUs, change
| wifi/Bluetooth/cell cards, etc.
| chucksmash wrote:
| This has been the move for me.
|
| I have a Carbon X1 running Windows through work and Latitude
| running Linux at home. It's not fair to compare the two
| because they are different weight classes and running
| different OSes, but the X1 battery life and performance have
| really put me off the smaller form factor. It's puny and it
| regularly gets ~2 hours off a charge versus 4-8x that on the
| Dell, all just to save a kilo.
| y4mi wrote:
| There are upgradeable options though. The framework Laptop to
| name the most hyped current option for example.
| fho wrote:
| The problem with these projects is that they are all the hype
| for a while and after the hype dies down you are left with
| laptop that is only in theory upgradable.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Why not instead someone just market a replacement keyboard
| for one of the more popular laptops? It sounds as though
| modern keyboards are the primary pain point for newer
| laptops.
|
| (Or if a 3rd party had marketed an inexpensive replacement
| power-brick for the author's 2001 Apple iBook perhaps he
| would still be using it.)
| goodpoint wrote:
| Patents, followed by a small battalion of lawyers.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You make it sound like it's a kickstarter.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It may not be a kickstarter but it is definitely a
| startup in a tough space, being skeptical of its long
| term success is pretty reasonable.
| j45 wrote:
| Try one out before you start with that conclusion
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's the thing, their USP is long-term maintainability
| and upgradeability, but if they call it quits in a year,
| you're stuck with a niche product that nobody else is
| willing to make parts for.
| easton wrote:
| To be fair, once you hit 5 years (or if you're unlucky 3
| years) it becomes just about impossible to get OEM parts
| from Dell or Lenovo and you have to resort to
| cannibalizing broken ones off eBay or your parts bin if
| you're in enterprise. So either way you could end up in
| the same boat, except if framework comes up with a gen 2
| it's possible with enough consumer pressure they'll make
| the parts cross compatible.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| > you have to resort to cannibalizing broken ones off
| eBay or your parts bin if you're in enterprise
|
| Except these graveyards are ENDLESS because of the amount
| they produced and companies threw away. My favorite is
| all the originally $150 docking stations that you can
| pick up for under $20 (or at least when I was in the
| lenovo t series game).
| easton wrote:
| Fresh (or at least gently used) batteries are the reason
| I had to stop using my X220 though, as I bought like
| three different batteries (one OEM that was old stock,
| and two third-party) and none could keep it up for more
| than an hour. That's tough without OEM support.
| j45 wrote:
| A bit part of the Frameworks USP isn't understandable by
| many laptop users who haven't repaired or upgraded their
| own laptops in the past.
|
| They will just buy, while a repairable laptop could
| create beginners who can learn to maintain well designed
| equipment.
|
| It might not give the iPhone 23 feels.
| j45 wrote:
| Stuck with a chassis and motherboard, but not the ram,
| storage, wifi or power supply.
|
| They seem to have too much invested to not make it a
| year.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| What conclusion, I'm not asserting they are going to
| fail. Startup failure rates are close to 90%, being
| concerned that this startup _might_ also fail isn 't
| unreasonable.
| j45 wrote:
| Let's not skim the surface.
|
| The Framework seems to be a modern Thinkpad with a
| similar USP of how they were built in 2012 before
| manufacturers tried to introduce and convince consumers
| of disposable laptops for the past 10 years.
|
| The reason I suggested handling one is the build quality
| for a first gen device is hard to believe until you hold
| one and use it for a few days or weeks. The framework is
| well beyond the quality of first gen devices and feels
| like the smart people at Apple, Lenovo, etc got together
| to build a laptop and delivered.
|
| Let's look at it from where you're presenting it:
|
| Customers exist in multiple segments: Pioneers, Early
| Adopters, Early Conservatives, Late Conservatives and
| Laggards.. distributed on a bell curve.
|
| It's true startups largely fail because most fail to find
| a product people want, or deliver on finding a market and
| distribution for it. They seem to have resonated.
|
| Successful startups often need to appeal to a large
| enough Pioneer and Early Adopter market to sustain
| crossing that little chasm to sustainability. Seems like
| a premium priced product is selling out in batches and
| getting decent reviews.
|
| Laptops are not a small market. Likely enough pioneers
| and early adopters exist, unlike the conservatives and
| laggards that delay adopting technology until validated
| by others. Someone can run Windows or Linux.
|
| Maybe you're not an early adopter or pioneer.. but many
| entrepreneurs and creators could be. Innovators usually
| exist in a mindset of possibility leveraged with unfair
| advantages and Framework seems to have a few.
|
| While I don't work for Framework, I've sadly owned 10-15
| laptops. With each new laptop I also buy the death of
| that device. The framework has as many if not more
| replaceable components from third parties.
|
| On being reasonable, I think it's fair to say that not
| everything is for everyone. You or I are not everyone or
| everyone's needs.
|
| All it has to do is last 2-3 years without much ado,
| which it probably will, while being produced in small
| batches that are hopefully profitable.
|
| I bought and returned my framework and outlined why in
| another comment, mostly I learned I didn't have the time
| to tinker, but I don't think there's an option like it on
| the market.
|
| My guess? Framework will be around, and might even build
| up like Razer, System76, etc and be acquired by a large
| manufacturer.
|
| Edit: Forgot to add the initial link between a 2012
| Thinkpad and Framework.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _The reason I suggested handling one is the build
| quality for a first gen device is hard to believe until
| you hold one and use it for a few days or weeks._ "
|
| I haven't seen one, but that's at odds with peoples
| comments in this thread from last week:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29806430
|
| "one of the worst purchases I've ever made. [...] This
| last point is pretty minor, but the hinges are floppy.
| The whole screen shakes around when I type on it."
|
| "Build quality. I'm convinced if I drop this thing it's
| all over. All in all I'm mad at myself for spending over
| $3k on a productivity configuration centered around what
| is pretty much beta hardware. I should have known
| better."
|
| "Re build quality: yes, it is a bit flimsier than I would
| like (though have definitely used laptops that are way
| worse)"
|
| > " _All it has to do is last 2-3 years without much ado,
| which it probably will_ "
|
| If that's all you need why wouldn't you buy a non-
| upgradeable one? It'll be thinner, lighter and less fuss.
| The framework seems to be targeted at people who want a
| decade of use with upgrades.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I really hope you are correct! I would love to see a less
| consumer hostile (and more environmentally friendly)
| business model succeed and start to gain traction.
| catach wrote:
| My intuition is that _hardware_ based startup failure
| rates are significantly higher, still.
| j45 wrote:
| They might just pull it off though.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Right! Yeah, I didn't want to get into a debate about the
| actual product and product space ...
| notRobot wrote:
| I love frame.work as a concept, but it's definitely not a
| "proven" concept at the moment. The company could very
| well go under or choose not to support upgrading the
| laptop.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Even assuming Framework shuts down tomorrow and destroys
| their existing stock of replacement parts and the specs
| for making new ones, I would argue that you can at the
| very least assume permanent availability of RAM, SSD,
| Display (it uses a commodity panel), fan, and battery
| (there are knockoff batteries for much more obscure
| laptops).
|
| I would assume that keyboards, trackpads, etc. will also
| be available as some laptops bite the dust and are
| scavenged for parts.
|
| Whether the motherboard/CPU will actually be upgradeable
| obviously remains to be seen. The 11th Gen CPUs get a lot
| of flak, but they have good single-core performance which
| will make them suitable for general use for a long time.
|
| It's at least equally upgradeable as the first ThinkPads
| with soldered on CPUs, which by today's standards is
| still pretty good - and if framework deliver on their
| promises, then it will be even better. But either way the
| baseline isn't bad.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > you can at the very least assume permanent availability
| of RAM, SSD, Display
|
| Quite the opposite. That would only apply to a very
| popular laptop like some thinkpads.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It uses off the shelf RAM and SSDs. For replacement
| displays I'm not sure but they seem to be pretty widey
| available for mildly popular devices.
| cehrlich wrote:
| The Framework Laptop uses the same panel as the Acer
| Swift 3 and several other quite popular laptops, so
| should be good in that regard.
| ihateolives wrote:
| > I would argue that you can at the very least assume
| permanent availability of RAM, SSD, Display (it uses a
| commodity panel), fan, and battery
|
| I mean, you can buy a new-ish Thinkpad where you can
| replace/upgrade all of those things. You get great
| compatibility and most hw/sw compatibility bugs are
| already known and have workarounds. Framework has to have
| some other value propositions as well besides being able
| to replace things you mentioned.
| cehrlich wrote:
| As I said, that's the absolute worst-case scenario.
|
| I don't own one personally, but reviews have been
| overwhelmingly positive so presumably it does have
| something to offer beyond replaceability. (disclaimer:
| some people on HN seem to have had some driver issues on
| Linux on theirs)
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I love the idea of framework! But I also live in France and I
| can't get myself to do another _pre_ order adventure right
| now. When they start actually shipping I might go for that,
| although frankly I still might wait for a Ryzen model.
| brightball wrote:
| I'm watching them closely for my next machine in a year or 2.
| maupin wrote:
| I've been using a Dell XPS13 (not 2 in 1, but top of the line
| everything else) for dev work for a year now and I love it.
| It's small, light, and runs my virtual environment handily.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Those upgrades are "period correct" parts though. The part
| about value propositions are right but it's not that he
| installed modern components like latest 12th-Gen CPU or NVMe
| SSD.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I personally find the value prop of my 2020 and 2021 model
| laptops, and my 2022 model desktop, to be rather good.
|
| 2020: Razer Book 13: 4 core, 8 threads, AVX-512, Thunderbolt 4.
| Weird gaming company, yes, but also competent thermal design
| and the machine works perfectly. This CPU when cooled properly
| is going to be at least 200% faster than that old Sandy Bridge
| CPU in the article, and that CPU has a much higher TDP so
| cooling an 11th gen properly is a piece of cake comparatively.
|
| 2021: MacBook Pro 14, M1 Pro CPU. The CPU that scared the pants
| off Intel. Say no more.
|
| 2022: 12th gen Intel Core. The empire strikes back. More than
| doubles the single-threaded performance of 11th gen Core in
| many cases.
|
| And these machines are cheaper than ever. Competition works.
| znpy wrote:
| > the value propositions of 2021/2022 hardware doesn't look
| better
|
| I'm glad you managed to distill my feelings so clearly.
|
| Most new things are just gimmicks, it's pretty rare that good
| innovations come into the laptop area.
|
| Think of stuff like non-16:9 displays: older thinkpads had
| beautiful displays that were amazing for doing actual work. Now
| we're seeing 16:10 displays coming back, and it's awesome.
|
| The ThinkPad T42 I had in high school had a 14" 1400x1050
| display and writing documents was very comfortable. Then a dark
| age came, and all laptops had 16:9 displays... Editing a
| document in Word/Writer was a pain in the ass. Between the
| title bar, the windows icon bar (start menu and iconized
| applications) and the various office toolbars (and the f-ing
| ribbon toolbar) you could barely see the text you're writing.
| It was really moronic.
| vetinari wrote:
| Getting off-topic, but you know that ribbon bar is
| collapsible, right? Also Windows up until 10 supported slim
| task bar, 11 unfortunately doesn't, probably as a
| compensation for the better displays available :(.
| znpy wrote:
| > Getting off-topic, but you know that ribbon bar is
| collapsible, right?
|
| Yes but it was really meant as an example. Take for example
| another program like a web browser: between the title bar,
| the menu bar, the tab bar and the bookmark bar and you're
| losing a lot of vertical screen real estate.
|
| Yeah the bookmark bar is collapsible and nowadays firefox
| and other browsers hide the menu bar, but those are useful
| features (particularly the bookmark bar) and I just want
| them around.
|
| The problem is not that I should be hiding useful stuff
| like the ribbon bar or the bookmarks bar, the problem is
| that 16:9 displays are moronic and should not have been
| pushed onto everybody forcefully.
|
| They might be okay for content-consumption-oriented
| laptops, but they're awful for real-work-oriented laptops
| (readl work raning from editing a spreadsheet, editing a
| document in word and even editing code of course).
|
| --
|
| No wonder that high-end external display vendors like
| Dell/HP (and others) kept selling 16:10 external displays
| for professional use.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| And newer laptops are all so damned _huge_ , and they have
| terrible keyboards and trackpads with no buttons that are
| offset to one side.
|
| My favorite laptop currently is an HP EliteBook 2760p that I
| got for free from a friend who works at a company that was
| throwing it away. Aside from the battery being dead, it's the
| best laptop I've ever used.
| bstpierre wrote:
| My 2012 Dell XPS14 is still my preferred laptop even without
| any upgrades or tinkering. I have a somehwat newer XPS13 for
| work that is also decent (but not as good as the '12), and
| according to the calendar I'm due for a refresh but like you
| when I look at what's available I don't see any reason to go
| through the hassle of an upgrade, never mind the cost.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I had the 2012 XPS, it was _great_! That 's what got me back
| to XPS two years ago, which... turned out to be a nightmare.
| And apparently they are doubling down on this:
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/dell-xps-13-plus-
| buzzy-c...
| Shakahs wrote:
| The upgrades aren't even substantial. The CPU, RAM, and fan are
| all original parts. You could've ordered this exact
| configuration from Lenovo. The only deviation from stock is the
| AC WiFi upgrade.
|
| I daily drive a T530, it was max spec already so I haven't
| changed anything. It has more than enough power to do software
| dev.
| sundvor wrote:
| I see you also follow my rule: When buying a laptop, always
| buy top spec.
|
| My laptop is an OG X1 Carbon i7/8/256. I can't upgrade it
| easily, but I'm actually happy with it for my purposes. My
| main driver is a Ryzen desktop though, that's a proper beast.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| I have that exact laptop, abd my only gripe is battery
| life. How's that holding up for you?
| sundvor wrote:
| That's awesome! My battery life is not good at all. I had
| it replaced after 3 years - bought it ahead as part of
| "warranty", but it's likely due for another replacement
| now.
|
| Other than that it's only recently started to show some
| scuff marks on the corners. Everything else is still
| holding up great, especially the keyboard.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > I see you also follow my rule: When buying a laptop,
| always buy top spec.
|
| ive become a believer for both desktops and laptops.
|
| the ratio of hardware performance to software performance
| requirements increases over time, but its linear and the
| slope is small. knowing that, you can buy cheap machines
| frequently or expensive machines infrequently and hit a
| similar $/time expenditure - but one way you get fast
| puterz and the other way you dont.
|
| the details matter of course. $/performance hits a sharp
| breakpoint and turns exponential around the 80th
| percentile. for my money - and everyone i know uninterested
| in the bleeding edge - a couple notches below the best is
| an incomparable deal that also saves the time of frequent
| research/upgrades/purchasing.
| Retric wrote:
| It really depends on what you're doing. When the cheap
| machine still lasts 5+ years the value proposition of
| going expensive just isn't there.
|
| IMO, the reason to buy a more expensive machine is simply
| the benefit of using a faster machine for several years.
| If you're spending 20 hours a week on a PC then it's
| worth stretching the budget a little. However, that
| generally only applies to one or two form factors not
| everything phone, tablet, desktop, and laptop. If the
| only thing you use the tablet for is Netflix in bed then
| a cheap one is probably fine.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| There's also the fact that on the pricier machine you'll
| get better hardware, as in "nicer to use".
|
| For example at work, we use HP Pro and Elite books. Just
| got a brand new one the other day, and while the screen
| is incredible compared to the 2013 models, it still looks
| like absolute crap compared to my 2013 MBP. And I'm not
| talking resolution, I'm talking washed out colors and
| ridiculous viewing angles.
|
| All along these years, they also had shitty touchpads,
| shoddy body assembly that would dig into your wrists
| while typing, atrocious coil whine, loud fan spinning for
| no reason, power light that would blind you at night,
| etc.
|
| So even if the total price paid was lower than my MBP
| (which I doubt, since I'm on my fourth HP in 6 years), it
| basically means that during these 8 years I would never
| have used a nice computer. And only this last one (with a
| zen 3) is actually faster than my old Mac.
| wildzzz wrote:
| I specced my T420 freshman year of college but had a budget
| from my parents so I skipped out on getting the upgraded LCD
| panel in exchange for the i7 CPU. That laptop lasted me a
| couple years until I grabbed a tablet X61 and then a X200 for
| taking notes towards the end of college. I'm now back to my
| T420 and have spent a little but of time upgrading things the
| drives, ram, wlan card, downgrading to a smaller 6 cell
| battery, and doing the ivyrain bios. I really regret going
| for the cheaper panel as upgrading to a 1600x900 is not a
| simple process and the cost is halfway to just buying
| something modern. My girlfriend was going to give me her old
| Lenovo Flex 14 when she got MacBook but she loves it more
| than the MacBook and I'm not really a fan of either laptops.
| I love my old T420 but I'm stuck between spending money on
| sentimental hardware or just buying something newer.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Crucially, they prefer it not because they love tinkering,
|
| I'm not sure what part of this article gave you this idea? It's
| clear to me the author is gravitating towards a solution that
| allows him to tinker to his heart's content. I mean did you not
| see the pile of wires connected to the eGPU -- on a laptop?
| samstave wrote:
| HP Omen 15" is your friend. Ryzen and GTX 3070 - all SSD
| interfixus wrote:
| My T440p started life in 2013 as a work PC in an engineering
| firm. Was then retired and sold for scraps to an employee, a
| friend of mine who later passed it on to me. I splashed out and
| bought a brand new, higher res display on eBay, less than USD
| 100 and the quality keeps blowing me backwards. Plus 8GB more
| RAM for a total of 12, and a new 1TB Samsung SSD, and soon
| perhaps a battery replacement. And they can damned well pry the
| thing from my cold, dead hands. It's just a superbly well
| designed and satisfying piece of machinery to handle.
|
| Meanwhile, a much newer Lenovo is sitting largely unused except
| for the occasional batch job and some audio processing.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I run two Thinkpad T420s and one T420 at home, for myself and
| family.
|
| The T420s in particular are as small as I need a laptop to be
| (T420, no 's', is a bit bulky and old school); and yet they are
| fully modular - you can swap out battery, or Ultrabay (DVD to
| HDD to extra battery) with a quick pull of lever; it takes one
| well-marked screw to access primary hard drive or RAM. They're
| reliable, sturdy, good looking in a timeless way; AND, they
| don't try to re-invent the keyboard. This is a massive,
| _massive_ reason I stick with the *20 series of Thinkpads - all
| modern laptops feel the need to reinvent the layout, which
| means I can NEVER use my muscle memory to do Ctrl-Home, Ctrl-
| End, PgUp, PgDwn, which I use constantly. They get relegated to
| some tiny buttons in non-sensical random places that differ
| between manufacturers and models. I had to use HpElitebook and
| Dell something or the other for work, which were fine laptops
| in their own way, but try to emulate Apple in size and format,
| and the keyboards were maddeningly awful in their layout.
|
| Less of a Rant, more to the point - the T420s is perfectly
| usable today without any crazy "mods" - a $40 SSD which
| literally slots in is pretty much the only thing it needs. We
| do browsing, movies, light photo browsing/editing, email, MS
| Office, Schoolwork, etc all on them a full decade after their
| release :)
| 627467 wrote:
| I've got a T430 as my personal laptop (although I still use the
| work one more than I should) 2-3 years ago specifically because
| of its upgradeability.
|
| Since then I found myself having the haul the laptop enough times
| to wish for something smaller and lighter so acquired a smaller
| X240.
|
| I don't plan to move away from (these) ThinkPads until the arm-
| based improvements make it compelling enough. Hopefully someone
| will make a arm-based laptop that is as modules/thinkerable as
| ThinkPads.
| miahi wrote:
| I did almost all the same upgrades to my T430 around 2014, with
| small variations (BIOS reflash with hardware programmer instead
| of software workaround for wifi upgrade, as at that point no
| workarounds existed). I used it for more than 2 years, but I had
| to upgrade because I needed more RAM. It still lives with a
| friend. It was surprising how well the CPU behaved, especially
| since the thermal solution was not really created to handle 45W
| CPUs (there were no T430 laptops with quad core CPUs).
| knaik94 wrote:
| This laptop doesn't have a dedicated GPU and while I love my old
| thinkpad, a third generation i7 isn't powerful enough to do 4k
| h265 decoding and physically lacks any hardware acceleration for
| vp8, vp9 and both 8 and 10 bit h265. 1080p content is fine but
| with 4k it will start to struggle. This author doesn't seem to be
| using the laptop for multimedia consumption, but I would like to
| bring this limitation up for anyone looking to run this
| generation of thinkpad as a daily driver. If someone was planning
| on doing screen recording, I would strongly urge them to pick a
| newer generation of processor that can do hardware accelerated
| video encoding. A 720p webcam is fine, but seems like the limit
| as well since the author had to drop the desktop resolution to
| 720p to use OBS screen recording functionally. It's a great
| machine though and I completely understand why someone would feel
| those tradeoffs are worth looking past. I miss my w520 sometimes.
| I have never felt so at home with another machine.
| vetinari wrote:
| Well, it is not much equipped to output the 4K either; the
| internal display is 1600x900, you can upgrade it to full hd and
| the external output can do 4k@30 at most, even the thunderbolt-
| equipped model.
| javchz wrote:
| My main Laptop it's a T430, and from time to time I use a T440p.
| It's amazing how you can disassemble the whole thing with only
| one screwdriver and upgrade almost everything.
|
| The T420 keyboard mod it's what's stopping me from upgrading to a
| newer model. Don't get me wrong it's not mechanical or anything,
| but has the comfiest layout I have tried on any laptop so far.
|
| There are some drawbacks:
|
| * New batteries are rare
|
| * The display it's bad
|
| * After Covid, it's expensive to get replacements parts like
| plastics bezels or motherboards.
|
| * The GPU or iGPU it's bad. Gonna be a problem in a few years
| with how demanding web pages are. Forget about video editing or
| gaming beyond simple things.
|
| * New Linux kernels could drop support for some of the drivers in
| the future. This thing's great, but it's old.
|
| In any case, if I upgrade to anything in the future, it will
| probably be a framework laptop.
|
| M1 Macbooks are probably the best cost-benefit laptop out there
| for a lot of people (battery, display, cpu power), and I kinda
| want to try one. But I don't feel comfortable voting with my
| wallet for Apple's practices, especially with how hostile they
| have been with the "right to repair" movement.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > The display it's bad
|
| You can retrofit a 1080p lcd with a controller board and a
| little effort.
|
| > M1 Macbooks are probably the best cost-benefit laptop out
| there for a lot of people (battery, display, cpu power), and I
| kinda want to try one. But I don't feel comfortable voting with
| my wallet for Apple's practices, especially with how hostile
| they have been with the "right to repair" movement.
|
| I'm not a particular fan of Apple either, but the M1 Macbook
| was the first laptop that made me want to permanently switch
| from my old x220. It's simply that much better.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Faster hardware maybe but I think the ThinkPad has other
| benefits, like being easy to repair and upgrade. I'm
| extremely frustrated at my 2018 MBP, I stupidly went with the
| cheaper 256GB option and really wish I could just pop in a
| 1TB drive. Plus once the honeymoon period with macOS ended
| I'm now essentially stuck with an operating system I've grown
| to hate as support for Linux is dismal even with the latest
| kernel 3+ years on (No keyboard, trackpad, WiFi, Audio,
| suspend support plus more little issues!). An x220 or other
| ThinkPad should be very well supported. M1 macs have more
| interest from Linux devs right now but I'd be hesitant to
| pick one up unless it runs Linux perfectly now out of the box
| with most distros.
|
| I have seriously contemplated picking up an X220 or some
| other old ThinkPad even though the hardware would technically
| be a massive downgrade.
| jgilias wrote:
| I similarly use a Dell Latitude from 2012. After upgrading to
| 16GB RAM I don't have any issues with it whatsoever.
|
| At work for new devs we bought ThinkPads with Ryzen. These are in
| general fine, except that multiple people have this weird issue
| with the computer completely freezing at random times on Linux.
| The one person who had Windows didn't have this issue. If it
| weren't for this issue that would be our default buy for new
| hires. Now, I don't know really.
| einr wrote:
| > At work for new devs we bought ThinkPads with Ryzen. These
| are in general fine, except that multiple people have this
| weird issue with the computer completely freezing at random
| times on Linux. The one person who had Windows didn't have this
| issue. If it weren't for this issue that would be our default
| buy for new hires. Now, I don't know really.
|
| Likely an issue with the C6 power state. Try searching for
| "ryzen linux c6 state" and you'll find plenty of people with
| these issues. Try updating BIOS, disabling C6 in BIOS or with
| https://github.com/jfredrickson/disable-c6.
| jgilias wrote:
| Thanks for the tip!
|
| I know that some of the guys have tried some of the fixes
| that can be found online with limited success, I'll forward
| this to them!
|
| It's a real pity though! Were it not for the freeze issue the
| laptops would be quite solid!
| jeffjeff2 wrote:
| "To make this machine viable in 2021, you need the CPU, RAM and
| SSD upgrades at the very minimum"
|
| This is not really a 2012 machine any more.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| knaik94 wrote:
| The ram upgrade was common since the 2012s, thinkpad sold 16gbs
| as an upgrade while buying the laptop at the time. SSDs needing
| to be upgraded has also been recommended since that time. And
| the processor update was simply maxing out the processor
| upgrade from that generation. It was available on the
| workstation version of the thinkpad in the same generation. The
| i7-3820QM release date is 04/23/2012. It's still a processor
| from 2012. A new SSD doesn't mean current gen speeds, the
| internal and the caddy are still limited to sata 3 speeds. It's
| a very 2012 machine, a very nice 2012 machine and still lacking
| a dedicated GPU.
| hddherman wrote:
| I'd argue against it, the core of the machine that makes the
| laptop a laptop is still the same.
| Kudos wrote:
| Does the ship of Theseus become not a ship?
| dijit wrote:
| That CPU is generationally accurate though. It would be
| possible to have that much ram and that CPU when the system was
| brand new.
| rgoulter wrote:
| My favourite example of Ship of Theseus is the joke about the
| axe which has had its head and handle replaced:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIdUEzQKyJo
| jychang wrote:
| This DEFINITELY doesn't count as Ship of Theseus. All those
| parts are designed to be replaceable on the Thinkpad.
|
| If you really want to talk about Ship of Theseus-ing a
| Thinkpad, the hardcore guys have literally ripped out the
| motherboard and installed a completely different motherboard
| with a modern i7 CPU. These "frankenpads" include the X62
| (Broadwell CPU and motherboard in an old X61), T70 (Kaby Lake
| CPU in a T60), X210 (Kaby Lake R CPU in a X200 body). They also
| rip out the LCD and replace it with a modern IPS display. They
| sometimes also rip out the keyboard to replace it with an older
| keyboard- T420 keyboard in a T430 is common.
| xondono wrote:
| > the hardcore guys have literally ripped out the motherboard
| and installed a completely different motherboard with a
| modern i7 CPU.
|
| So, a CPU upgrade? How is that not what OP mentions?
|
| The LCD upgrade is also on the wishlist..
| einr wrote:
| > So, a CPU upgrade? How is that not what OP mentions?
|
| Are you asking how replacing the motherboard in a laptop
| with a custom third party hobbyist replacement is different
| from putting a faster CPU in a CPU socket?
| xondono wrote:
| I had confused the model with a non socketed one
| hashhar wrote:
| I think most people are not aware that there was a time
| when laptop CPUs were replacable and not soldered on.
| ohazi wrote:
| This kind of CPU upgrade was all but supported by the
| manufacturer.
|
| Unlike modern laptops, the T430 motherboard had a socketed
| CPU (like a desktop motherboard). Upgrading the CPU was
| only marginally more difficult than upgrading the RAM (as
| long as the replacement CPU had the same package/pinout and
| was supported by the chipset). Lenovo datasheets would even
| give you a table of every CPU configuration they tested.
|
| The "hardcore guys" mentioned by the parent are installing
| bodged motherboards that were never designed to fit in a
| given model's enclosure, occasionally doing major board
| surgery to make it work.
| alephnan wrote:
| There were reasonably fast laptop SSDs in 2012. I had the intel
| one In my x61 and x201 thinkpad. The specific components though
| may be faster, then again the newer SSDs would be bottlenecked
| by the motherboard bus. Sourcing newer models would be a matter
| of logistics, not performance improvement. Same with RAM. CPU
| improvements have also been marginal in my opinion, for intel
| chips, depending on your workload. I was running photoshop
| professionally just fine, video maybe not so much.
| [deleted]
| Demcox wrote:
| Being a frequent on /r/thinkpads I was delighted to see a fellow
| ThinkPad enthusiast!
|
| Can't remember how many TP's I've had over the years but I'll
| attest to the older models being solid laptops. The newer ones,
| however, are disappointing.
|
| My last good ThinkPad was a T470s with an i5, 8GB, 256GB
| (UNIX/Windows). After several years of (ab)use, I wanted to
| splurge on a X1 Gen3 and the specs were more than enough for my
| needs with an i7 (hexa-core), 16GB, 512 GB, 1050TI, 1080p 400nits
| display. However, when I got it and started to use it hardware
| issues stared to pile up. I went back to my trusty T470s and sold
| the X1.
|
| Now I have an MBP M1 Pro and it's great.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Mine T440s survived being soaked twice. Once with hot latte, once
| with mineral water. Both times it was completely soaked.
|
| It has internal battery which means it is not enough to power it
| down, you actually have to go to BIOS to turn the battery off.
| But when I spilled latte the keyboard stopped working and I was
| unable to power it down. I had to turn it around to open it up
| and in the process the sweet latte reached every single part of
| the motherboard.
|
| The second time, I had the laptop in my bag. I put the bag on my
| lap on a bus stop and after some time I felt water on my legs. I
| yanked the laptop and from inside water started poring. I think
| there was at least 0.2-0.3L of water in it.
|
| As I just moved I had no tools on my hand. I had to call my boss
| and tell him I need to take care of my laptop. I then drove to a
| shopping center to buy IPA, demineralized water and tools.
|
| Water got absolutely everywhere. It was between individual leaves
| of LCD panel. I had to disassemble the laptop into its
| constituent parts including the display.
|
| In both cases I have thoroughly washed the laptop (actually
| submerging it), first in water and then in IPA.
|
| The laptop is still fine and other than a little bit of
| discoloration of the LCD panel and a small bit of hair from my
| beard _within_ the panel which I missed when assembling it, you
| wouldn 't say anything bad happened to it.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| This article makes me more glad than ever that I saved all my old
| Stinkpads (a name I use cynically, yet affectionately). They're
| the only brand of laptop I've used since when they were made by
| IBM. I have 8 or so now. None of them quit working -- all
| replaced just because I wanted a newer model. Reliability and
| Linux readiness has never really been an issue (except the normal
| Nvidia driver issues). These, along with a stash of IBM M-101
| keyboards keeps my ergonomics consistent since the 90s.
| post_break wrote:
| I've got an X230 still I need to offload. 16GB of ram, IPS panel,
| 9 cell battery. Would anyone be interested? Not sure if this is
| against the rules. Located in Texas.
| Markoff wrote:
| It's funny to read this on Thinkpad T520, only thing I upgraded
| is 240GB mSATA SSD disk for system and i had there already 8GB
| RAM with empty slot to upgrade (stil no issues, so not rushing to
| uprgade), keeping 320GB HDD for media and backup, thinking
| whether to buy external harddrive or Ultrabay adapter and install
| third hard drive since I don't use DVDRW at all anyway.
|
| There is no problem with speed, I chose 520 because year later
| they already fucked up keyboards, not that it would matter now
| when I started to use later external keyboard, mouse and 32"
| display.
|
| Btw. I don't understand his issue with HDMI, I have connected
| display directly through DP cable.
|
| Instead of tablet I'd consider for wife something like X230/240.
| userbinator wrote:
| _The Intel CPU-s had throttling issues that made them unusable
| for basic things like calls over Google Meet as they would
| throttle to 400 MHz._
|
| That seems to be a common theme with the newer laptops. Look up
| "Intel DPTF" and power limits. They are severely throttled by
| firmware/drivers, long before they actually hit their (thermal)
| limits. There are various tweaks to unlock the full potential of
| the CPU, the easiest of which is to disable all the manufacturer
| crapware completely.
| gocartStatue wrote:
| We hit the 400Mhz problem as well, on corporate high-end 14"
| Dells. Disabling thermald did not help much, as the laptop
| almost melted. But we discovered a "magic" spell involving
| rmmod/modprobe.
|
| It sparked a kind of a custom: - guys, my laptop is throttling
| hard (...) - here, run this untrusted code snippet as root -
| yaay, it worked!
| userbinator wrote:
| _Disabling thermald did not help much, as the laptop almost
| melted._
|
| They'll throttle and hard-shutdown long before permanent
| damage occurs. Recent laptop CPUs have maximum temperatures
| of ~100C and are perfectly fine to stay at that temperature
| 24/7.
| selimnairb wrote:
| I know they are the opposite of upgradable, but the new MacBook
| Pros solve all of the author's other problems (assuming they
| don't have to run Windows).
| selimnairb wrote:
| And I should mention that I very much support repeatability and
| reuse. However, as a father of a young kid, I don't have
| anywhere near the spare time to even contemplate doing
| something like this. Hence, I need my hardware to "just work"
| (for my use cases) with minimal annoyance. That's what I value
| about the MacBook Pro M1 Pro.
| ho_schi wrote:
| Using here an X220. I replaced the HDD by an SDD and extended the
| RAM - it is still working. Currently I'm looking for a new small
| "44" battery (which fits completely into the body) but the
| replacement I received has a malfunction. I've still a 44+ which
| provides a longer runtime but also weights more. Plus the
| excellent hardware-maintenance manual! Of course always running
| with Linux. The new models are more sturdy (good) and provide a
| lot more CPU and GPU-Power (AMD) but the RAM is soldered and the
| battery not swap-able.
|
| We need laws which enforce sustainable devices wich swap-able
| disks, main-memory, batteries and long time spare part supply
| including maintenance manuals. It shall be EXPENSIVE and
| UNATTRACTIVE for both vendors and buyers to purchase devices
| which doesn't offer this. How? Put well understandable "traffic
| lights" on every device by category {software replaceable, spare
| parts, maintenance manual, batteries}. Every single red light
| needs to increase the price by 30%[1]. I don't call for
| prohibition! Sometimes somebody need something extra flat and
| soldered and whatever reason - but even how uninformed you are -
| you must be aware of it how you harm yourself and anyone else.
| Apple MacBook: Software not replaceable + 30%
| Batteries glued and not purchasable from third parties + 30%
| Maintenance manual not published + 30% This adds 90%
| extra tax upon price. Lenovo ThinkPad:
| Batteries screwed or glued, even require buying a "guarantee" for
| replacement service + 30% Main-Memory soldered + 30
| This adds 60% extra tax upon price
|
| Smartwatch which is glued? Guess what! And I'm not saying adding
| another 30% extra for the not replaceable software because it
| allow it to be an embedded appliance. In case of Smartphones this
| will be another 30%.
|
| I hope both customers and vendors will change their behavior
| quickly. If not we have a lot money to spend for health, schools
| and social support. What I don't want and not require is that you
| use your laptop for ten years. That unfair and not necessary but
| something possible and even normal. And if you're a developer or
| gamer, sell the old one and buy a new one. As long the devices
| can be used a long time it is good.
|
| [1] I've chosen a high value to ensure an effect, especially -
| but not limited - to the high end market.
| spaceisballer wrote:
| X220 checking in. All I've done is a new battery, SSD and
| upgraded to 16gb ram. My son plays Minecraft and Roblox on it all
| the time and works great. Keep considering upgrading it but it
| works great for what's it's being used for.
| vpilcx wrote:
| That's so weird because I'm currently using the T420. My desktop
| has basically stopped working so I had to start using this one
| with Ubuntu 18 something. Pretty disingenuous to say you're using
| an old Thinkpad when you've upgraded the RAM to max and
| everything else. I haven't (4gb currently) and it can be pretty
| frustrating.
|
| YouTube and other video sites will start to freeze up after
| awhile and forget about multiple tabs of videos because that will
| just speed up the process. My browser gets too slow on certain
| web games. Ultimate Paperclip, now that I've progressed to the
| end, is unplayable.
|
| Otherwise though, outside of gaming, the switch from Windows to
| Ubuntu has been relatively painless and unnoticeable. I tried
| doing some music production with LMMS and VMPK. For some reason,
| the audio just isn't registering even though it works fine for
| all other applications. But not too bad considering it was my
| last resort before having to buy a new computer or spend money
| trying to repair the old one.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| tl;dr: some people have too much time and no interesting hobbies.
|
| any Thinkpad above t430 will work just fine as well.
| shusaku wrote:
| I don't think the author is alone in keeping an older thinkpad
| running by upgrading its components, that's part of why they're
| such popular machines with tech people. I have to say though, his
| complaints about the newer machines doesn't resonate with me, my
| T495s works great (the only issue is the awful Lenovo buying
| process)
| alcasa wrote:
| I honestly feel like there were some issues in their specific
| hardware selection. Linux shouldn't be that bad on a recent
| Thinkpad system
| crypt1d wrote:
| Seems like lots of IT folks have fond memories of the T420/T430
| (and X220) era. I personally think it was the golden age of the
| Thinkpad line, going back perhaps to T40/T42, it was some of the
| best laptops I ever worked on. No other laptop has come close to
| getting it right since. It was really the perfect combination of
| build quality, modularity and performance that won me over.
|
| I'm now on the new M1 Pro Mac and while the battery life is
| amazing, I felt a lot more confident working on my T420 back in
| the day. And yes I tried the X1 Carbon/Extreme lines, and I
| wasn't sold on them either.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I've used an X200 for ten years (I bought it used with 3 years
| on the clock) and I'm actually surprised that the X200 is kind
| of glorified nowadays as one of the best Thinkpads ever,
| because back then the X200 was decried for its numerous build
| quality issues (palmrest, right half of the keyboard, thermals,
| noise etc.). The X200 is of course build fairly well compared
| to the more recent models, but that's hardly surprising. From
| my PoV the Thinkpad series has been constantly and consistently
| reducing build quality for at least 15 years.
|
| (That being said most of the issues the X200 has had were just
| things that feel poorly, it won't fall apart)
| jkepler wrote:
| I still use my x200s, though its battery barely holds a
| charge, so I use it docked with am external monitor, as a
| desktop machine. Most of my work is writing, so no issues
| with its lower CPU compared with newer machines.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| On the MacBook side of things, the jump from a 2012 machine to a
| 2020/2021 M1 machine is enormous.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| My T430s: would be nice if I can pull out better battery life
| (have two new ones) and has some occasional issues with the
| wiring for the network hardware kill switch. It's perceptibly
| slower on some pages, but only slightly (never bothered to figure
| out if it was the old WiFi or the CPU, an i7 for the time). It
| has some superficial cracks on it. It would also be nice to have
| USB-C and all that new stuff. But: with a screen upgrade (1080p
| with the ASIC card) and the best laptop keyboard I ever used and
| spare parts online galore and the potential at least to easily
| swap the BIOS and upgrade further, and perfectly fine and
| performant for the software development I do, it's close to
| perfect. Maybe a T430/quad-core would be nicer, but I'd rather
| just own my work computer (T470p, which is also close to perfect
| as well, but in other ways.)
|
| So, it is rather funny to confirm again what some others might be
| thinking. The hardware is old and will have longer-term support
| issues, but for now and for a long time, I am glad not to think
| about having to get a new laptop for any use.
| ralphc wrote:
| I have my own version of "Bill Gate's" quote , "640K Ought to be
| Enough for Anyone". An i7 with 16GB of memory ought to be enough
| for anyone. "Anyone" in this case is the typical office worker or
| home surfer. Gamers, devs with a bunch of VMs, data scientists,
| no, but the vast majority of people surfing and running Office?
| It's enough.
| hddherman wrote:
| In case my internet connection fails, here's a Wayback Machine
| snapshot:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220110074515/https://ounapuu.e...
|
| I really appreciate your feedback, thoughts and own experiences
| that relate to this post!
| einpoklum wrote:
| Is it possible to make the more tricky upgrades (CPU, display,
| fan) on similar models but from the X-series ? X201, X210,
| X220? I would love to do it on mine.
| evandrofisico wrote:
| At least for the x220, there are display and fan upgrades
| (mine uses a x230 fan), you can max ram at 16Gb (the manual
| says 8Gb, but 16Gb works just fine), but the CPU is soldered,
| so no upgrades on that.
| bradfa wrote:
| I still use my T420s as my daily driver laptop. I'd like to get
| something with a better screen and faster CPU but it's still
| reliable so it's hard to justify.
|
| What batteries have you had good luck with? My main and
| ultrabay batteries are both down to around 50% of original new
| capacity now.
| fsflover wrote:
| All the same advantages, plus 64 GB RAM, hardware kill
| switches, thin metal design, Coreboot and no compromises:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-14
| the_only_law wrote:
| Well... maybe aside from price.
|
| It is kinda cool that I can get it shipped with Qubes though,
| which I assume means hardware support is solid.
| fsflover wrote:
| How much did it cost to perform all your upgrades?
| danieldk wrote:
| I had similar experiences with the T14 AMD that I used for over
| half a year. On Linux the Trackpad would often not come back
| after sleep. Also, the battery would drain very quickly in S3
| suspend. The laptop would take off during video calls (though
| the fan noise was definitely not as bad as with many Intel
| models). In the end it was really a thousand of paper cuts,
| especially with Linux, despite the laptop being certified with
| Linux. The hardware itself was pretty ok and worked fairly well
| with Windows (I just don't like Windows).
|
| In the end I went back to MacBooks. First an M1 Air, now a MBP
| 14" with an an M1 Pro. They are insanely fast, while staying
| cool. The fan on the Pro only spins up during long builds, but
| even then it's barely audible.
|
| If you don't like macOS, getting an old(er) ThinkPad is
| probably the best option.
| zibzab wrote:
| Note that Linux certification applies only to specific
| distros/versions.
|
| Ubuntu LTS works flawless on my thinkpad but some stuff break
| on Ubuntu 21.10.
| XorNot wrote:
| These days I just wish we'd go back to the days of easily
| removable keyboards, and _several_ keyboard options for each
| model.
|
| I'd like a 15" laptop without a weird offset numeric keypad I
| never use, and the old style short travel keys you used to get
| rather then these rubber things with no surface texture - like
| you would've found on an old gateway laptop.
|
| Somewhere along the way, everyone trying to emulate Apple has
| just ruined things.
| JALTU wrote:
| Reading this on my 2012 15" Retina MBP w/ 16GB and 2.3 GHz Core
| i7 running High Sierra.
|
| Don't know what those CPU numbers mean since everything still
| "just works!" ;^)
|
| Okay, actually Adobe cloud software tanked years ago, and my
| Tweetdeck is a bit slow to load, and my iPhone 11 Pro's photo
| features don't work consistently, but otherwise, I figure I can
| wait for the M2 MBP.
|
| p.s., Thanks goes to my employer for the 2020 MBP in case I truly
| need something recent, like the Touchbar. No, just kidding! ;^)
| bluedino wrote:
| > Replace the display with a compatible 1600x900 panel that has
| better image quality. The current screen is awful
|
| The TN displays from those days are so bad. Why Lenovo didn't at
| least have an IPS option for their machines (other than the
| tablets, which they did), is a mystery to me.
|
| The T430S was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
| Atrocious. I finally stuck to MacBook Air/Pro at that point.
|
| https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T430s-N...
|
| In the last couple years, they started putting decent 1080
| screens in (sometimes the brightness is lacking, but my T480 is
| not bad at all), and they have a fantastic 1440p screen in some
| models.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I've generally been in this camp, up until last month my primary
| personal box was a 5-6 year old Chromebook (HP Chromebook 13 G1),
| which with the recent ability to run Linux containers let me do
| almost everything in my "home" workflow.
|
| However, a month ago I got one of those new Macbooks to fill in a
| few voids the Chromebook and borrowing my wife's laptop couldn't.
| The biggest being video editing. The main incentive was back in
| October when I spent ~30 hours editing my kids school concert
| video. Playing all sorts of tricks to get the machine to be
| barely useful for editing, etc.
|
| That Mac hardware lets me copy the media from my phone or action
| cam and _directly_ edit it. I don 't have to generate optimized
| media, and it's lightning fast at scrubbing and rendering.
|
| Now I'm running into wanting to update my work laptop, which is
| only a couple years old, because I got 2 4K monitors on end-of-
| year sale, and the laptop can only drive them at lower
| resolutions.
|
| So, yes, for many use cases older laptops are just great.
|
| I felt stupid spending that money on a new laptop, for what is an
| infrequent use case (videos, slicing 3D files being the big
| ones). But, what previously, even with my desktop that died, was
| a painful experience, has now become a joy. That has made it
| worth the price.
|
| Plus, my spend on laptops over the last 7 years, personally, has
| been around $700.
|
| If an old laptop works for you, great! If an old laptop plus some
| new upgrades works for you, fantastic! But, don't forget that if
| spending some money can solve a pain point, it might still be a
| good value.
| causi wrote:
| _Do something fun with the ExpressCard34 slot._
|
| Shame it isn't a 54 slot. You'd be able to get an expresscard
| bluetooth mouse. They're comfier than you'd expect and incredibly
| convenient. They even charge while stored in the slot.
| alcasa wrote:
| Or use it for an eGPU connector, I believe there were also
| options to use it as additional storage
| zibzab wrote:
| There is a community (on Reddit ?) using X200/201 with
| homemade eGPUs to play AAA games.
| s_sousa3 wrote:
| I mourn the loss of my W541 every day. Survived a series of
| absurdly intense physical traumas that would have obliterated a
| lesser machine, until she was unjustly stolen from me by the
| corrupt federales of Quintana Roo. But that's another story.
| bondant wrote:
| I'm still using my W510 from 2010 every day. Since most of my
| work is done on remote computer I don't need much power anyway. I
| have only updated the old hard drive with a good SSD. I also have
| plenty of ports (VGA, DP, RJ45, 3 USB), and the laptop is very
| sturdy I let it fall many times by mistakes and even through
| there are some cracks in the case it is still perfectly usable.
|
| Although it's not perfect, the laptop is heavy (about 3kg) and
| thick (about 3cm). But when I look at possible modern alternative
| it seems there aren't many which offer multiple ports and easy to
| do maintenance in a somewhat slim and lightweight case. The
| closest I've seen is the Fujitsu Lifebook U741X series (if
| someone has used it with Linux please share your experience). I'm
| also aware of the Framework laptop but it's bleeding edge so I
| better wait and see how it turns out to be repairable and robust.
| brynjolf wrote:
| Anyone have a recommendation for a new laptop with a H processor?
| I want Thunderbolt and 8 cores.
|
| I'm thinking about HP Zbook G8
| gigel82 wrote:
| Let's circle back in a few months; I too feel nostalgic when I
| visit my dad's and play some classic games on the old faithful PC
| from my youth (still rocking a 17'' Trinitron CRT). But after a
| few hours reality hits since I use my PCs nowadays to actually...
| get stuff done. I can't imagine that PC would be very useful for
| any productivity work, at most (frustratingly slow) browsing.
| toomim wrote:
| Nah, the upgraded 4-core T430 is plenty fast and very
| productive. You'd be surprised.
|
| I used a dual-core upgraded T430 for quite a while. The problem
| was actually the battery life. 2-3 hours just doesn't compare
| to a M1 Macbook's 13 hours.
| bubblethink wrote:
| For anyone who wants the most powerful laptop from this
| generation, T530/W530 can be equipped with i7-3940XM and has a
| good wide gamut FHD display. igpu models are recommended for
| battery life and linux. They are also supported well by coreboot,
| and you'll be able to run just about any OS on them. A slightly
| newer T440p is also a decent choice.
| _shantaram wrote:
| Don't forget that they're the last gen compatible with the
| classic keyboard.
| harha wrote:
| Laptops in the early 2010s kind of reached a level of being
| adequate enough for most use-cases that it's hard to really
| justify an upgrade.
|
| I feel, as I write this on my late 2013 MacBook Pro, that it's
| powerful enough for most normal activities, read, browse, video
| calls, work on not too large data sets, etc. Anything that needs
| to run longer than I keep the laptop open can run on a different
| device, many programs are now web apps. The screen has a high
| resolution and the keyboard is good, if only battery and RAM
| replacements were easier it would be as good as new.
|
| This is different to for instance my older laptop from 2008 or
| that before from 2004 - horrible screens, battery life, no fast
| wifi or USB.
|
| But also compared to newer laptops, mine seems to get exactly the
| right balance between being robust and lightweight.
| wnolens wrote:
| I'm also using a 2013 MacBook pro as my personal machine.
|
| I walked into the Apple store a few years ago with the
| intention of replacing it with a shiny new one. I hated the new
| keys and at the time couldn't get a physical ESC key, so I've
| been happily stuck in 2013 since.
|
| My employer gave me a 2020 MacBook pro (has physical ESC key)
| and it is a better laptop, worthy replacement.. But to keep
| personal development separate and save a few thousand dollars,
| my 2013 is still going strong.
| snapetom wrote:
| My most used laptop is still my 2015 MBP, the last generation
| with that stupid touchbar. It does Docker great, which is
| mostly what I need. The fan whirls almost constantly when I do
| a docker start, but so far, no issues. I have a newer 27" iMac
| and work gave me a 2018 MBP, but that 2015 is still my
| preferred portable.
|
| This last summer, I traveled to South America. Worried about
| potential theft and travel load, I loaded Kali Linux to my
| first gen MacBook Air (2012) for shits and giggles. I wanted
| something that can do the standard email/web, review and backup
| photos from SD cards, and VPN/SSH into work in case of absolute
| emergencies. It went great. Some people warn how Kali isn't the
| best machine for bare metal, every day use, but I had zero
| problems with it for my use case.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, I love my late 2013 MacBook Pro! I also recently
| purchased a bunch of ThinkPads (X230 and X220) to round out my
| options so I have these nice era of computers going forward for
| a long time, since I know they will become harder to find over
| time. Def agree about the "early 2010s" laptops hitting a good
| place, kind of optimal balance of features vs. simplicity IMO
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I still use my 2013 MacBook Pro too, but with Windows 10 on it.
| Honestly it's a very well made machine and perfect couch
| computer. I've been wondering about refreshing its thermal
| paste to cool it down and extend it's life further. But I
| wouldn't dare try to open it, especially since it still works
| so well.
| 300bps wrote:
| To me VDI is the way to go. I want my development machine to be
| in the cloud and always running.
|
| I want a lightweight notebook that only takes into
| consideration screen, keyboard and battery that I can connect
| to my virtual desktop from anywhere.
|
| I want a dedicated desk at home with a $40 PCoIP thin client
| purchased used on EBay hooked up to my multiple monitors that
| connects to the same virtual desktop.
|
| With this you can truly work from anywhere even if your
| notebook is stolen or dies. With AWS Workspaces you can be as
| redundant as you want, you can create a daily snapshot of your
| Workspace if you want and launch it in any region if your
| primary region goes down.
| harha wrote:
| I prefer having a laptop that's powerful enough on its own,
| this gives me a lot of freedom when the internet is bad. I
| also like to have a desktop with a nice screen and a bit more
| power that I can use to run things that take a bit longer.
|
| Everything more serious happens in the cloud, yes, but it's
| good to know that I can achieve reasonable results, browse,
| watch videos and send e-mails.
|
| Even though I'm kind of excited for a new M1 Macbook with way
| more battery and faster apps, I wouldn't spend money on it
| until I absolutely have to.
| xputer wrote:
| My employer makes us do this and I absolutely hate it. It
| slows me down so much. I now have to effectively maintain two
| machines that cause issues at twice the frequency. The server
| isn't even notably faster than my MacBook. Moreover, in my
| experience, the uniformity of these cloud development
| machines also encourages developers to get lazy and start
| making all sorts of assumptions about the environment the
| application runs in. This makes it impossible over time to
| run the application locally and will cause issues during the
| inevitable hardware upgrades in the future.
| 300bps wrote:
| _I now have to effectively maintain two machines_
|
| In a VDI infrastructure, your physical desktop should be
| either literally or effectively a dump terminal that gives
| you access to your virtual desktop. Why would you be using
| both?
|
| _The server isn 't even notably faster than my MacBook_
|
| That isn't the benefit. The benefit is having a desktop you
| can access from anywhere with Internet access regardless of
| what physical client you have access to. Another benefit is
| that everything is centrally backed up including a full-
| fidelity copy of your workstation. Another benefit is that
| it is lower cost than distributing high-end
| desktops/laptops to users.
| gruez wrote:
| How do you deal with the noticeable latency? It's pretty
| annoying even on LAN with RDP. I imagine it'll be worse on
| the cloud.
| 300bps wrote:
| I don't notice any. I also don't use RDP - for Amazon
| Workspaces I use their app that utilizes the PCoIP
| protocol.
|
| Other than that my last job was working at one of the
| largest banks in the United States. We were 100% virtual
| desktop since 2014.
|
| My current employer just switched to about 95% virtual
| desktop.
|
| Nobody ever complains about latency. I think it's a given
| that literally everyone will switch to this method at some
| point - there are too many positives.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Everyone I know who works in VDI complains about latency.
| My wife's whole company uses virtual desktops, and
| anytime she's working from and I look over her shoulder I
| shudder, it's incredibly noticeable.
| 300bps wrote:
| I have no experience with that. I am connected to a
| virtual desktop right now that is in my employer's
| datacenter. I am at home on my personal desktop. On my
| company virtual desktop I am running Zoom and am on a
| conference call with 11 people all of us have video
| turned on and there is literally 0 latency that I can
| perceive. I have a local Logitech webcam that is
| perfectly accessible from my VDI desktop.
|
| Moving windows around is something that I typically
| utilize to test for lag and there is just none. My
| previous employer was literally using this for 7 years
| before I came to my current employer and I was so happy
| when we switched to VDI.
|
| Of course it depends on your Internet connection and your
| ISP's connection pathway to get to your VDI but I've
| regularly connected to my VDI desktops over the years
| from Starbucks WiFi, Dunkin Donuts wifi and many others
| with no perceived latency.
| gruez wrote:
| >I have no experience with that. I am connected to a
| virtual desktop right now that is in my employer's
| datacenter. I am at home on my personal desktop. On my
| company virtual desktop I am running Zoom and am on a
| conference call with 11 people all of us have video
| turned on and there is literally 0 latency that I can
| perceive. I have a local Logitech webcam that is
| perfectly accessible from my VDI desktop.
|
| inpreceptable latency in teleconferencing doesn't tell
| you much. There's already so much latency built in (eg.
| the webcam itself, the encoder/decoder, the time it takes
| for your packets to travel over the internet to the relay
| server and then to the other attendants) that the extra
| latency added by VDI can be buried. On the other hand
| when you're doing any sort of interactive editing the
| latency is very noticeable, because there isn't much
| latency to start with.
| ericls wrote:
| Old thinkpads are like framework laptops
| giantg2 wrote:
| My laptop is a 32 bit dual core from 2008ish. Just needed a new
| battery and an upgrade from hdd to ssd. Works pretty well for
| most stuff.
| jjkmk wrote:
| Primary issue I have with Lenovo systems is the swap of the FN
| key and the Ctrl key.
|
| I know it can be changed in BIOS, I just hate the idea of
| breaking the standardized layout.
| hpd wrote:
| Funny story, I'm actually looking to make the opposite switch
| t430 -> t480.
|
| My t430 is already equipped with 16gb ram and modded EC so I can
| use cheap 3rd party batteries and the OG 7 row keyboard instead
| of the trash 6 row island keyboard. There are still some upgrades
| to be made like i7 QM cpu, and a 1600x900 IPS screen, but I just
| can't justify the costs anymore.
|
| The reason for moving to t480 soon is that I'll be doing the t25
| frankenpad mod solely just for the 7 row keyboard. Better power
| effiecient cpu, nvme and high res screen is a cherry on top.
|
| So far my thinkpad experience has been superb, and both my
| machines t410 + t430 have survived many drops and various liquid
| spills(water/coffee/alcohol) and besides replacing the keyboard,
| I had 0 issues. Hopefully the t480 will be similar experience.
| internetuser103 wrote:
| I still use a T430 in my kitchen, great laptop.
| bjarneh wrote:
| After upgrading the display, CPU, disk, RAM, fan, battery it's a
| bit click-baity to say you've gone back to a 2012 ThinkPad - but
| interesting read non the less.
|
| What surprised me the most is that Lenovo ships something as
| annoying as a loud fan (easily replaceable even for a home
| tinkerer). Of course they save a few pennies per laptop; but no
| laptop can ever be good if it's noisy. That was one of the main
| reasons why I bought an X301 ThinkPad many years ago, even when
| it fanned like crazy it was very quiet. But the clever design of
| the original ThinkPad's was starting to fade already then; the
| X301 actually had it's speakers on top. So you could spill liquid
| on it, unless you happened to spill it on top of one of your top
| mounted speakers of course.
|
| I've also gone through a few ThinkPad's over the years, and ever
| since they stopped being IBM; they seem to loose more and more of
| the "premium feel" for every generation. Especially the keyboard
| is way better on my old T40 then on the one I use right now
| (T14).
| imran0 wrote:
| It should be noted that he didn't upgrade the parts to their
| 2020 equivalent or something, they are all original components.
| He could have bought it from Lenovo or order from ebay.
| karteum wrote:
| > After upgrading the display, CPU, disk, RAM, fan, battery
| it's a bit click-baity to say you've gone back to a 2012
| ThinkPad
|
| Well, I think the main point is : regardless of how better some
| modern components are (e.g. screen resolution, CPU energy
| efficiency with 10nm process, etc), the build quality, keyboard
| comfort, repairability and amounts of I/O are critical aspects
| that have dramatically regressed in the recent years. (Not even
| mentioning the Intel ME and Boot Guard that prevent flashing
| Coreboot).
|
| Besides, it also shows that a 10 years old CPU/GPU is still
| perfectly usable (and since we only have one planet, it would
| be desirable to extend the lifetime of our devices...
| (upgrading the RAM/SSD/Wi-Fi has an environmental impact, but
| far less than changing a whole machine !)).
| xxs wrote:
| "upgrading the display, CPU, disk, RAM, fan, battery it's a bit
| click-baity to say you've gone back to a 2012 ThinkPad - but
| interesting read non the less."
|
| That's the good part - it's possible, and it's serviceable. My
| spouse uses a 10y (almost 11y) laptop, it has pretty much
| everything changed & upgraded. CPU, RAM, keyboard, CD->SSD,
| HDD->SSD, battery, fan, wifi 801.1 b/g -> ac+bluetooth. The
| discrete GPU is not replaceable, of course.
| bjarneh wrote:
| > That's the good part - it's possible, and it's serviceable.
|
| Agreed. The way things are constructed now (cell phones are
| of course 10 times worse), where everything is glued in place
| in order to break if anyone tries to replace them are
| terrible. The tinker tutorials on youtube seem to be more
| about which temperature different glue melts at, and which
| temperature the parts glued get destroyed at; then anything
| else.
|
| My next laptop will probably be a https://frame.work laptop
| for that very reason.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I've got a dozen ergonomic and mechanical keyboards. The feel
| of the keyboard is very important to me, just like a good
| fountain pen. So when my employer was giving to me a new
| Thinkpad I was excited. Thinkpad was the only laptop whose
| keyboard I could stand.
|
| This T-14 has a keyboard as horrible as any Asus. It looks
| exactly like the standard Thinkpad keyboard, but the key
| travel, the bottoming-out, the spring pressure, are all
| horrible. Even just rubbing the finger over the plastic it
| feels half as thick as the previous models, you don't even need
| to press a key to feel the difference.
| bjarneh wrote:
| The corner cutting seems to have started the moment IBM sold
| ThinkPad to Lenovo. The fact that ThinkPad used to sell
| laptop keyboards for desktop use, says it all:
|
| http://www.notebookreview.com/picture/?f=48072
|
| It didn't take more than a couple of years before Lenovo
| discontinued this gem either; in favor of a cheaper
| alternative (in terms of production cost).
| tristor wrote:
| Everyone knew this was going to happen as soon as the sale
| was announced. Say what you want about IBM, for decades it
| was a company run by and for engineers, which meant that
| things like quality and tolerances were important product
| requirements, and they sold it to an entity essentially
| created to do acquisitions of IBM IP based out of China so
| it could be manufactured more cheaply. Lenovo did exactly
| what every expected, and it's honestly a miracle that
| modern Thinkpads are as good as they are, because they
| still stand neck and neck with Dell, where by all
| expectations they should be scraping the barrel.
| necovek wrote:
| They still make and sell a T-based laptop keyboard in the
| form of https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-
| software/keyb...
|
| They always had silly, hard-to-search-for names (it seems
| the variants I have are called "Thinkpad Compact USB
| Keyboard with Trackpoint" and "Thinkpad Compact Bluetooth
| Keyboard with Trackpoint"):
| https://support.lenovo.com/nl/en/solutions/pd026745,
| https://support.lenovo.com/de/en/solutions/pd026744
|
| While they are not original T keyboards, they are supposed
| to match more recent T layouts. At some point, they had
| bluetooth and USB variants (I've got 5-ish of them around
| the house, I love the trackpoint for HTPC use), but this
| seems to be a newer iteration of those.
| bjarneh wrote:
| Yes, but they really shouldn't have touched the original
| design; it was just right. I haven't seen those later
| models in person, but when I worked as a consultant 16
| years ago in Oslo, we had 2 guys in my company that
| lugged that original ThinkPad keyboard around to every
| assignment they got.
| [deleted]
| knaik94 wrote:
| Thinkpad sold that model with 16gbs as an upgrade while buying
| the laptop at the time. SSDs needing to be upgraded has also
| been recommended since that time. And the processor update was
| simply maxing out the processor upgrade from that generation.
| It was available on the workstation version of the thinkpad in
| the same generation. The i7-3820QM release date is 04/23/2012.
| A new SSD doesn't mean current gen speeds, the internal and the
| caddy are still limited to sata 3 speeds. It's a very 2012
| machine, a very nice 2012 machine.
| bjarneh wrote:
| True; I just feel that most titles are a bit exaggerated
| these days to sound more sensational then they really are. If
| I were to write a book, I'd gladly use an old ThinkPad due to
| the nice keyboard. But I hope I don't write a blog like this
| if I do: "Why I went back to my 2003 ThinkPad" :-)
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I have two Thinkpad X230T 2nd Gen i5 (T stands for touchscreen,
| it has a swivel capacitive touchscreen and a stylus) They don't
| have webcams (they have space for it but these being refurbed
| office models they were probably sold without webcams installed.
| But I have a seperate 360p webcam in some drawer should the need
| arise.
|
| The one I'm using right now has windows 10 (no W11 support ;p),
| the other has chrome OS. (but only one charger sadly, original
| battery and charger are a pain in the butt for me to find).
|
| These are perfect for my casual needs, and If I need anything
| extra, I have a refurbed Thinkstation S30 with a quaint Quadro
| 2000 card (no prefix). (It has no w11 support either, heh)
|
| My real issue is battery (even the chrome OS one has ~2 hrs
| battery, I really thought the lightweight OS would help but
| hasn't) and inability to play x265 codec files. Backlit keyboard
| would have been nice but eh.
|
| But with an SSD and and 8gb ram upgrade, it's a dream to use,
| it's a nice compact size, the keyboard is amazing, and it has
| decent port selection. I don't game or edit videos or whatever,
| and I'm never far from a charging point (the charger is a slim
| tube thing, so takes barely any bulk) so I'm not sure why I would
| need more for quite some time, as long as nothing is physically
| wrong with it.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| At the risk of nitpicking, the T stands for Tablet, not
| touchscreen. The full product name is ThinkPad X230 Tablet,
| which is often shortened to ThinkPad X230t or ThinkPad X230T.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| ah damn, mixed that up, sorry
| mathiasrw wrote:
| I really miss my x41
| Shorel wrote:
| > I'd like to thank Intel here for making this possible. The CPU
| innovation stagnation between 2012-2017 has resulted in 4 cores
| still being an acceptable low-end CPU in early 2022. Without
| this, my laptop would likely be obsolete by now.
|
| Hahaha, this last sentence seals the overall tone of the article.
| emptybottle wrote:
| What's hilarious to me is that Apple considers their own
| computers of this era to be "vintage"
|
| No joke, that's the real term https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/HT201624 "About vintage products. -- Products are considered
| vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than
| 5 and less than 7 years ago."
|
| Well, not much has changed on the intel side in that timeframe.
| My 2013 laptop is still getting OS updates and performs fine
| for my needs. And now I can brag that I'm running a vintage
| computer as my daily driver.
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| Planned obsolescence is Apple's bread and butter.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| no, it's not; continued innovation motivating upgrades,
| however, is. (disclaimer: was an engineer with a great rank
| inside Apple for several years)
| musicale wrote:
| > continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is
|
| Apple seems overly aggressive about breaking
| compatibility on iOS; as a result tons of apps break
| every year. This imposes an ongoing burden of maintenance
| costs onto developers, and many games and apps are simply
| abandoned. It seems to me that saving Apple time and
| money at the expense of developers and users may be the
| wrong trade-off in the long run.
|
| And that's not even counting the 32-bit apocalypse which
| broke most games on iOS and macOS. "This app needs to be
| updated" but of course it never will be... Many of them
| have been pulled from the app store as well.
|
| Windows does fairly well in terms of ongoing
| compatibility on the desktop, and (non-phone) gaming
| handhelds rarely break compatibility with old software
| (consider the 3DS which went through 5 or more hardware
| revisions and many firmware updates with negligible
| game/app breakage.) The few things that tend to break
| over time are online multiplayer games when they pull the
| plug on the servers, or streaming apps like Youtube or
| Netflix.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| to your point, i wonder how many of the "needs to be
| upgraded" apps just need a recompilation with current
| Xcode, then resubmission, and I don't know the answer.
| Kadin wrote:
| Seems arguable -- but if that's the case, they are one of
| the lesser offenders in the market right now.
|
| The lifespan of much of Apple's hardware is considerably
| longer than most competitors' products. This is especially
| true with phones. I'm using an iPhone 7 right now, which
| was first released in Sept 2016. So, five full years and
| counting, and it's still running the latest iOS version.
| Not just "still gets security updates" on an old OS, but
| actually runs the latest release.
|
| For hardware in 2022, that's not bad.
|
| Personally, I think it's kind of a low bar, and we really
| ought to be able to do better. (I think a 5-year lifespan
| for a phone or a laptop, and 10 for a desktop, should be a
| starting point.)
| wyre wrote:
| This sentiment is thrown out a lot but Apple has some of
| the best LTS on their hardware in the business. 6 year old
| iPhones are still getting updates. Someone in this thread
| mentioned their laptop that Apple describes as vintage is
| still getting updates. Apple is still selling a 4 year old
| smart watch as new.
|
| I feel much better spending my money on Apple products
| trusting it will be supported for a long time than spending
| it on another device where I will be lucky to have support
| for more than 2 years.
|
| I would say Apple's bread and butter is creating an
| ecosystem of hardware and software that works so well
| together that choosing to leave their environment is such a
| hard decision that it is easier to stick with Apple.
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| It's easier to bring the obsolescence bugging users to
| update. And you cannot disable the popups.
| speed_spread wrote:
| It's not Apple, it's any closed-source hardware. The
| moment the vendor no longer supports it, it's dead. Not
| counting those few rare cases where fanatics reverse
| engineer it.
| [deleted]
| selectodude wrote:
| Vintage is a technical term for "we don't stock parts to
| repair these anymore" not "they're unusable and you should
| throw it out".
| disqard wrote:
| s/technical/marketing/g
| mattl wrote:
| Possibly legal.
|
| I heard a story that the original Apple II machines came
| with a warranty that had no expiration and that
| California residents who purchased a machine in
| California are still entitled to hardware support on the
| machine.
| iak8god wrote:
| Right, Apple specifically calls those "obsolete":
|
| > About obsolete products
|
| > Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped
| distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Indeed. Not only are my ThinkPad T420s still usable around home
| (see another post here), but my AMD FX-8350, approaching a
| decade, is still going strong as my _primary_ (gaming, photo
| editing, etc) desktop.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, so something I used to do was buy used servers from ~2010
| or so (5-6 years old at the time).
|
| Due to the fact that CPUs really haven't changed a lot for
| servers (at least for the stuff I was doing), it was a
| relatively cheap way to get 40+ core computers for less than a
| thousand bucks.
| jagger27 wrote:
| If it weren't for the cumbersome and outdated iDRACs and ILOs
| of those old servers they'd still be perfectly usable for
| lots of things. If you don't need out of band management it's
| probably best to ignore them as much as possible.
|
| I used a PCIe to M.2 NVMe adapter and an EFI shim so that my
| Dell R820 could boot from it (which is not supported by the
| BIOS). Stuff like that adds a ton of life to older systems. I
| still got rid of it because it was too loud and power hungry
| for what I was doing. Surprisingly, I was able to sell it for
| roughly what I paid for it over a year later. 32 cores and
| 192GB of RAM for under a grand is pretty incredible.
| tombert wrote:
| > I still got rid of it because it was loud and power
| hungry.
|
| Same! I loved my 48 core server, but there was actually a
| glitch in the Con Edison system where I ended up getting
| free power for two years [1], and once they fixed it and I
| got a power bill email for almost $900 while I was at work,
| I called my wife and said "UNPLUG THE SERVER NOW. RUN,
| DON'T WALK!"
|
| [1] To be clear, I didn't _know_ there was a glitch, I just
| thought power was cheaper in that apartment. I 'm not
| greedy, I'm just dumb.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| $900 for a month? That seems excessive. 720 hrs * 1.8 kW
| = 1296 kWh. 1800w is a maxed out 120v 20A circuit.
|
| I pay about $0.10 per kWh, that's $129.60 for a month.
| tombert wrote:
| Well, $900 was the total power bill. I also had one
| window units running in that room, and another window
| unit running in my bedroom, and I also actually had an
| Apple XServe running that I was using as a media server.
|
| I think what caused such a catastrophic power bill was
| the surge pricing in NYC that happens in the summer, and
| the servers pumping out a ton of heat, forcing the AC's
| to run harder and longer.
| MR4D wrote:
| This.
|
| Last January I converted my old (2012) quad-core Intel desktop
| and gave it to my son for gaming. The only thing I had to do
| was add a 1-TB SSD and put in an RTX-3060 Ti, and it runs every
| game (Fortnite, CoD, etc) at 100+ FPS without any issues. I'm
| still amazed that a simple GPU change and the machine keeps up
| with his friends brand-new AMD box (not sure what chip, just
| that it was new in 2021).
|
| When the 12th generation intel chips came out last month, it
| was the first time I felt good about the future for chips.
| (Yes, I know AMD has been kicking their butt, but that's been
| in core count and power, which aren't as relevant for my son's
| gaming.)
| terminalcommand wrote:
| Was it a Xeon processor :)?
| MR4D wrote:
| Ha - it actually is!!!!
|
| This is too funny - I was about to reply to you, and then
| decided to check my files. Lo and behold, I found that when
| I bought the components in March 2012, I bought an Intel
| E5-2609 (which is indeed a Xeon!) for $299. Had I not
| looked, I never would have guessed.
|
| Thinking about it now (and I might be wrong), the machine
| has 32GB of RAM, so I might have bought the Xeon to go
| above 16GB. Can anyone confirm if that would have made
| sense at the time (or if my memory is just fuzzy?) ?
|
| Chip details here: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/
| ark/products/64588/i...
| salamandersauce wrote:
| In more CPU demanding games it will start running into
| trouble. Even on a single-threaded performance level a Ryzen
| 5600X is about twice as fast as a Core i5-2500k from 2012.
| devwastaken wrote:
| The Ryzen 5600X is _the_ gaming CPU of this gen outside of
| the lower budget Intel chips. Ryzen didn 't just win on core
| count they won in single thread too because competing Intel
| chips are 120W, which limits their performance on stock
| cooling. The 5600X is 76W actual.
| smoldesu wrote:
| There's also the slightly more relevant metrics like IPC
| which is much lower on Ryzen chips overall. Maybe their
| single-core speed _is_ a little slower, but they make up
| for it with incredibly high-performance instruction
| optimization. 64-bit division on a Coffee Lake CPU is a
| 36-cycle instruction, with up to a hundred cycles of
| latency. The same instruction on a Zen3 CPU is no more than
| 17 cycles, with latency no lower than 12. That 's a rather
| extreme example, but it definitely makes a difference.
| terafo wrote:
| It was. Now there's 12400F which offers just slightly lower
| performance(few percent slower) at almost half of the
| price. And there's 12600k which at the same price offers
| slightly better performance in gaming than 5600x, but in
| multithreaded workloads often outperforms 5800x.
| dijit wrote:
| that chip can suck down 150W of cooling (which is likely
| the cooling setup that benchmarks will be running with).
|
| Not going to argue semantics here, but the grandparents
| point was that cooling the intel chips tends to be where
| it falls down (thus, the real world may differ
| significantly), even if there are paper gains in game
| benchmarks.
|
| Offering a chip which takes double the cooling is just
| leaning into their point.
| gigel82 wrote:
| It's not just the cooling, it's power usage in general,
| that's how Intel moved ahead with this generation...
| 12600K is using 224W compared with 5600X's 134W during
| the same test (SuperPi stress test where 12600K scored
| worse at 389s vs. 5600X's 380s).
|
| Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that the competition is
| heating up again, that can only be good news for
| consumers. But sucking more power to deliver perf gains
| is totally the wrong direction for this.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Game performance, and cooling in general outside of a
| very specific use case, isn't affected by what the
| marketing department of Intel says the 10 core AVX
| wattage of the 12600k is being compared to what the
| marketing department of AMD says the 6 core AVX wattage
| of the 5600X is.
|
| When a single core is maxed out the real world measured
| difference is roughly 12 watts between the two and
| remember the 12600k is doing slightly more per second
| than the 5600X. If your gaming device of choice is a
| laptop that'd be interesting but both are desktop gaming
| CPUs. If 24/7 all core workload power efficiency is your
| concern I'd steer you away from either gaming optimized
| option.
|
| I really like what AMD has done, my last 2 desktop CPUs
| have been a 3900X and a 5950X, but if I were to buy a
| entry level gaming CPU right now the 12600k would be very
| interesting regardless what the all core AVX thermals
| look like on a stock cooler.
| terafo wrote:
| 12400f costs 180 dollars right now. 5600x costs 300
| dollars. They perform similarly in gaming tasks(5600x
| does have larger L3 cache and in cache-sensitive
| professional applications it is faster). 12400f draws
| 117W(intel spec). You won't be running both of these CPUs
| with their stock coolers so, the difference in CPU cooler
| costs will be 20 dollars at most(if you are not opting
| for some kind of water cooling on mid range build, which
| would be insane). Heck, even if you buy CPU cooler you
| still end up spending less money than on 5600x with stock
| cooler.
| jorvi wrote:
| A 12400F is slower than a 5600X in games?
|
| That's really weird because a 11400F has better
| performance..
| unethical_ban wrote:
| What other metrics are there for a processor in gaming, if
| not (compute) power per core, as well as core count?
|
| Sure, a gaming computer doesn't need 8 cores as much as an
| encoder, but AMD's single core performance is right up there
| with Intel, for much less money.
|
| Disclaimer: AMD fanboy and stockholder
| MR4D wrote:
| I was using power to mean electricity, not compute power.
| Thanks for noticing that ambiguity.
|
| As for your comment about core usage in games, I'm still
| surprised how few cores it takes, even for modern games.
| Not my knowledge area at all, so all of that part of gaming
| and computing architecture is a bit opaque to me.
| stremrn8 wrote:
| mikepurvis wrote:
| My wife has been gaming on a fourth-gen i5 + RX 570 for a few
| months, and it was mostly fine until Halo Infinite-- with
| that title it was pretty clear that she was CPU bound, with
| the system chugging on open areas, mob AI, particles, etc.
|
| We upgraded her to a second hand B450 mobo + Ryzen 2400 and
| that's been fine. Still running on low settings due to the
| limited GPU, but everything is at least playable. And this
| motherboard has FW updates that support 5xxx series Ryzens,
| so there's upgrade headroom there now as well.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| Don't upgrade for Halo Infinite. That game also turned my
| otherwise fine machine into a potato. I've since fixed the
| issue by not playing halo and playing splitgate instead.
| testudovictoria wrote:
| I have plenty of time in both Halo Infinite and
| Splitgate. Even if you take away the portals, Splitgate
| doesn't play like Halo Infinite at all. They look and
| sound similar, but they play and feel very different.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I went back to a 2008 R-series several years ago after having
| some newer laptops fail on me. I still had it and it kept
| working, so I kept using it. Last year I finally decided I
| needed a trackpad so I upgraded to a W500 (2009) which if you
| squint is the same computer with everything upgraded slightly.
| It's low-end, but it can still do a lot of work and even load
| Facebook or recipe sites if necessary.
|
| Overall, I've found that even in 2021 a Core 2 Duo can still be
| a sufficient low-end CPU. Thanks Intel!
| montroser wrote:
| Check out the https://frame.work laptop. Repairable, upgradable,
| beautiful 3:2 screen. This one checks all the boxes...
| hffftz wrote:
| Looks nice but too bad it doesn't have any AMD options.
| somesortofsystm wrote:
| I have, over a few decades now, treated my computers like an
| artist would treat their paper notebook, and have therefore every
| laptop/portable in my personal collection as reference. Well,
| almost, I was lucky to have had a GRIDpad back in the day, and I
| still haven't got around to finding a Dauphin DTR-1, but .. yeah
| .. the point is, my Thinkpads are still freakishly reliable,
| great computers, upon which to hack.
|
| Another thing, more 'personal' computing experience .. Prior to
| his 'upgrade' to a gaming laptop, I had the eldest of my kids on
| an ol' Thinkpad or two, Linux of course, and not only did they
| gain much great understanding of things before encountering the
| consumer zone, their siblings act as force understanding
| multipliers.
|
| I am often much amused at their insight into why their friends
| Windows bollocks needs to be blown away &etc. .. although they do
| somehow seem to have managed to maintain their own Windows
| (gaming) systems well. They at least knew what Linux was before
| that became a thing in their lives.
|
| I attribute that fact to the Thinkpad being really great to hack
| on, and solid enough to give to an 8 year old and expect to have
| it sort of still work for a while, and in our case, a few early
| hacker minds were well serviced by its dependability ...
| rmm wrote:
| My circa 2011 x220 thinkpad is the greatest most indestructible
| machine ever. It survived 10000kms of travelling on airplanes,
| the Indonesian jungles, underground gold mines and to this day
| runs like a champ.
|
| Sure a couple keys are missing, a few superficial cracks but I
| will never be able to throw this guy away. So man memories
| qzw wrote:
| I'm sure you're aware, but in case other aren't, individual
| Lenovo keycaps can be easily bought online.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| 10 years used laptops are wonky. Maybe nice DIY project but
| definitely not as main workstation for travels. And if you want
| multiple 4k screens or newer peripherals...
|
| My current setup is Dell XPS 13 from 2015 and portable Deskmini
| PC with Ryzen 7 5700g. This laptop is pretty hackeable ultrabook,
| over years I replaced chassis, keyboard and some ports. But it
| has only 16GB RAM and supports only 1x4k@30Hz, so it will be soon
| replaced by Framework laptop (64GB RAM, 4x4k screens).
|
| And Deskmini is tiny 2kg PC with great desktop CPU. I found all
| high end laptops to be rather expensive and with insufficient
| cooling for constant load. With this I can have proper desktop
| performance in laptop sized package.
|
| So my final setup will be two computers, with 12 cores and 128GB
| RAM and weight of only 5KG. I can use 7x4K screens and have total
| 20 TB of integrated storage. All cheap hardware with no crazy
| hacks.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| 1.5 years ago I went ahead and upgraded my retired workplace
| laptop, a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E743 from 2014:
|
| - bigger 500 GB SSD, resized system partition (no re-install
| necessary)
|
| - replaced the dual core CPU with a quad core model (Intel Core
| i7-3612QM, 35W)
|
| - replaced its really crappy keyboard with a backlit one from a
| later model that fitted
|
| https://www.facebook.com/gernot.kieseritzky/posts/1022366591...
|
| All in all the upgrade cost me about EUR200 (about US$230) and
| the laptop is still up and running, used daily for home office
| and private stuff (including streaming of retro games on Twitch).
| Replacement batteries are easy to come by but we still had some
| unused spares at my workplace.
|
| Unlike the Thinkpads these laptops are kind of an underdog when
| it comes to its modding community. But these things are actually
| quite hackable. I wonder if I could have even tried to plug in a
| 45W model of the same CPU mentioned in TFA to get even more
| processing power and maybe modded the cooler that is a bit too
| loud for my taste.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Also a nice thing on Fujitsu Notebooks is, the power adapter
| stayed the same since many many generations. I can use the same
| adapter for my 2006, 2014 and 2020 Fujitsu notebook. And yes, I
| upgraded also the two older models with more Ram and SSD.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| A car from 1950s and up is quite serviceable today, and I think
| we're getting to the same place with computers.
|
| I don't buy things on principle (freganism/volunteerism), so I'm
| restricted to hand-me-down computers, and I've been quite happy
| with this for the past 7+ years.
|
| Of course, my work is mostly text-based, but I'm quite happy with
| a high-end 6-year-old computer today, and before this was using
| an 8-year-old computer low-end computer with some obstacles.
|
| I think that as a web developer, I can promote this idea further
| by leaning hard into the accessibility and compatibility
| spectrum, really embracing "Any Browser" 100% and leaving no
| browser, client, user, scenario, network condition, etc. behind.
|
| And I do. All the sites I develop, as well as the framework I use
| for them, are guaranteed compatible with Netscape 2.0+, IE 3.0+,
| Opera 3.0+, and pretty much everything that's come since then,
| including text-mode, no-JS, and screen-readers.
| marcodiego wrote:
| My laptop is from 2012 too. It has got an i5 processor with 2 HT
| cores, so the OS sees 4 cores. I upgraded its RAM to 8GB and
| replaced the HD by a 1TB SSD. Good enough for what I do.
|
| I tried a recent machine with a modern i5 and the same amount of
| RAM and a 1TB SSD. The owner asked me to update the OS to windows
| 11. It didn't seemed faster than my laptop with ubuntu 20.04.
|
| A 10 year old laptop may be still good with enough RAM and a SSD,
| but I doubt recent versions of windows will run well on such
| machines.
| icey wrote:
| Linux works amazingly well on these machines, fwiw. I have a
| modded x230 that performs surprisingly well with Arch. Ubuntu
| worked great on it as well. So many Linux users use Thinkpads
| that the chipsets are very well supported.
| bungle wrote:
| > The CPU innovation stagnation between 2012-2017 has resulted in
| 4 cores still being an acceptable low-end CPU in early 2022
|
| I recently got M1 Max MacBook, and I was expecting a huge jump
| from my 2010 Mac Pro, but on my day-to-day work. It is barely
| noticeable, despite the raving reviews of M1. Perhaps for me it
| is not about things getting obsolete, but more of that my own
| needs on CPU/GPU performance were pretty much fulfilled in 2010.
| I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high. Or perhaps it
| is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops.
| I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have
| been the SSDs and then the NVMe.
| fhe wrote:
| I use the M1 Mac Air for office work. It replaced my 2017 MBP,
| and the difference is very noticeable -- with some 3 dozen tabs
| open on my browser (not the best of browsing habit) the M1 can
| take it without breaking a sweat. Yet for entertainment and
| hobby programming I revert back to my (really) old 2011 iMac
| that runs High Sierra -- I have invested much time fine-tuning
| that machine. I tried to migrate the setup to the M1, but a
| bunch of dependencies were broken. I'd stay with the iMac for
| as long as the hardware can hold out.
| alcasa wrote:
| If you mean Mac Pro and not Macbook Pro I wouldn't be that
| suprised. Single thread performance is mainly dominated by
| clock speed and possibly instruction set improvements. Having a
| much higher TDP there isn't much magic you can work to make a
| Laptop faster than a recentish desktop system.
| maccard wrote:
| > I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high
|
| This isn't true for all programmers. I'm a programmer, and
| until 3 years ago a good chunk of my day was spent waiting for
| compiles to finish.
|
| > Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on
| bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in
| last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe.
|
| Not even remotely close. I have an AMD threadripper [0] in a
| desktop PC under my desk that I use for development. This is a
| mainstream, readily available x64 processor with 32 cores (and
| hyperthreading) that can sustain just 3.8GHz for at least 30
| minutes (I've not pushed it any farther than that because I've
| needed to). Based on PassMark benchmarks [1], the threadripper
| is substantially quicker than the M1 Max.
|
| [0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-
| threadripper-3...
|
| [1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-
| Threadripper-...
| bungle wrote:
| Yes, definitely not true for all programmers. I guess with
| games, if you cannot get real time with instant compiles
| development experience with 120fps running 8k in debug mode,
| there is a room for improvement.
|
| I compared highend 2010 desktop to highend 2021 laptop on my
| use case (which is arguably much lighter). And for my
| workloads, the laptop is no more a limiting factor (which is
| great, but not a leap from 2010 desktop). I can imagine
| todays desktops could be much better compared to todays
| highend laptops, but it feels like the most of what I do,
| there is little reasons to upgrade. Which is also great. With
| Macs the latest macOS support is removed usually from 5 years
| old machines, but that feels mostly baseless from technical
| perspective as with hacks you can still run the latest just
| fine.
|
| Perhaps it is a nostalgia / romancy. Having a 12 years old
| machine as you daily workhorse where upgrade was not a leap.
| That is something I haven't seen before, and I have been in
| this industry since 90ies and a PC user since 80ies.
| maccard wrote:
| > Yes, definitely not true for all programmers. I guess
| with games, if you cannot get real time with instant
| compiles development experience with 120fps running 8k in
| debug mode, there is a room for improvement.
|
| Day to day that doesn't matter. I work on multiplayer
| games, and being able to run 8/12/16 clients on one machine
| at 10 fps at ultra low graphics is far more important than
| being able to run stupid resolutions. You do bring up
| another point though - GPU performance. Apologies for the
| links but I'm on my phone, but [0] and [1] have 3dmark
| benchmarks for the M1 GPU and an RTX 3090 GPU - the 3090
| scores twice what the M1 GPU does. This might not be
| important to you, but it is to some people.
|
| > And for my workloads, the laptop is no more a limiting
| factor
|
| Ultimately that's all it comes down to. If you're not
| limited by the form factor/performance of a laptop power to
| you, but some of us are!
|
| [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M1-GPU-GPU-
| Benchmarks-an...
|
| [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-
| RTX-3090-GPU-Be...
| Aeolun wrote:
| > the 3090 scores twice what the M1 GPU does
|
| It helps that you can buy a maxed out macbook pro for the
| price of a single 3090 though.
| maccard wrote:
| I can buy a high spec showhorse for $40k, or a new mid
| range sedan for $40k. That doesn't mean that the maxed
| out showhorse will work for commuting to work every day.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| A 3090 is $2300 right now, even paying the scalper tax.
|
| How much M1 MacBook Pro is that getting you?
|
| That said, I do wish the M1 GPU could game; my downtime
| hobby is the only thing stopping me from buying one.
| jhickok wrote:
| >A 3090 is $2300 right now, even paying the scalper tax.
|
| Where can you find that? lowest I can find is 2800 new.
| There are some pre-owned for 2700 and some open auctions
| at roughly 2300 but those will land substantially higher
| than 2300 I would imagine.
| Shorel wrote:
| The 3090 is such an overpowered (and expensive) card,
| that another GPU doing half of what the 3090 can do is
| still damn right impressive. And in a Laptop!
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah that's actually a serious compliment to the M1 GPU
| if the 3090 is merely double the scores?! I expected it
| should be like 4x or more! That's awesome.
| openplatypus wrote:
| Oh, can you share more? What is your programming environment?
|
| I am debating a move to desktop/workstation with desktop CPU
| to support smoother Scala/lots-of-containers development
| experience.
|
| Pandemic made laptops less appealing. With digital nomadism
| being a question mark for some. Yes, I do know some still
| continue to practice this lifestyle. I can be only jealous :)
| maccard wrote:
| > Oh, can you share more? What is your programming
| environment?
|
| I work in games and write C++. Compile times are long, and
| we deal with large amounts of assets (current project is
| ~50GB of textures, models, animations, sound. This is
| small. Last project was >500GB).
|
| > With digital nomadism being a question mark for some.
|
| Sure, if you want portability or being able to move around
| this sort of machine won't work for you, but I live with my
| partner in a nice city, work remotely and have a separate
| home office. I have almost 0 need for the portability of a
| laptop.
| archi42 wrote:
| Depending on your needs(!), you can just use the laptop as
| a frontend for a much more powerful machine. I did that for
| a while with a Sandy Bridge (core i7-2xxx gen) dual socket
| server in the basement, and it did work quite well. No
| matter if I was at home or somewhere else - but for dev
| work ssh into the Linux host OS was enough for me, with an
| occasional RDP into a Windows VM.
| openplatypus wrote:
| I considered this option with NoMachine and in-house
| power-machine or cloud workstation. In a way make sense,
| but ultimately, I decided against because:
|
| Security - having open port to workstation makes me
| scared; bugs/0-days are discovered every day;
|
| Quality Internet Connection - less tricky as most access
| would be local LAN, but I am certain that few times I
| need it remotely to fix a production issue, something
| will go wrong;
|
| Maintenance vs Cost - in-house machine would be cheaper
| but will require remote power on/off capability vs in
| cloud server being rather pricey
|
| But yes, in general, I agree. Having a light, portable
| device with long battery life and connecting to a remote,
| beefy machine would be a dream. And I am not imagining
| it, as this was my workflow back in 2013 when I was
| working for a bank. If it was possible then, it
| definitely is possible today.
|
| Have high hopes for https://shadow.tech/
| archi42 wrote:
| Thanks for taking the stand here; generally new laptops are
| fast and especially the M10 max seems like a nice rig that
| beats some desktops for some programmer workloads. Maybe even
| many desktops for most programmer workloads, IDK. But besides
| not all programmer workloads being equal, desktops also
| compromise high end platforms like your sTRX4, and those are
| a little bit different.
|
| Also, I'd like to add memory constraints as an example of
| workload inequality: The M10 max only seems to support 64GB.
| Good for many, but would be a huge draw back at my last dev
| job. The problem could inherently use huge amounts of memory,
| and exact memory usage was not always predictable. Especially
| for those colleagues which did a lot of work for customers,
| changing one parameter could mean coming back to a OOM after
| the program run for a night (or longer). Thanks to 128GB this
| became much rarer, but the for the type of program at some
| point the only viable option to safe memory is to accept a
| worse result.
| bungle wrote:
| My 2010 Mac Pro has 48 GB of RAM, this 2021 M1 Max has 32
| GB. So not much has changed on that respect either. Except
| on 2010 I imagine it was struggle to get even 16 GB on a
| laptop.
| maccard wrote:
| > Also, I'd like to add memory constraints as an example of
| workload inequality: The M10 max only seems to support 64GB
|
| That's a really good point. In my last job, our machines
| had 256GB of memory to fully utilise the 3990x cores.
|
| > desktops also compromise high end platforms like your
| sTRX4, and those are a little bit different.
|
| They're a little bit different, but they're still
| mainstream, readily available desktop envioronments. You
| can go on Scan here in the UK and order one of those
| systems just like you can order any other intel or AMD
| system.
| ribit wrote:
| What about real world tests for you specific workflows? My M1
| Max runs my daily bread and butter R scripts approximately 4x
| faster compared to a top of the line Intel Coffee Lake. For
| me it's a huge improvement. Having over 100GB/s RAM bandwidth
| per core and a huge cache are a big thing for many latency-
| sensitive workloads.
| maccard wrote:
| I don't actually own an M1 Max, so I can't do a straight up
| comparison right now sorry. I upgraded from an 8700k to a
| 3970x, and for compilation the speadups were pretty much on
| paper gains. Each individual compilation task is ~10%
| slower, but the parallelism of 32 cores means that overall
| it's a 5x speedup over my previous CPU.
| Copenjin wrote:
| 3 times faster with 64 cores instead of 10, that slower
| single thread performance is having a big impact.
| maccard wrote:
| 32 cores, not 64.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I dunno man.. You're comparing a CPU which costs as much as
| the complete machine (or two M1 airs). It's not portable has
| a TDP of 280W. Still it's 30% slower single threaded. For
| multithreaded it's 2.7x as fast. So yeah, maybe for rendering
| it's faster, but it won't be as snappy as the M1.
|
| Then again, if you wanna use it for rendering, just buy 4 M1
| macminis for the price of one CPU. Or 6 minis if you add all
| the other stuff you need.
| maccard wrote:
| The claim was that laptops are on par with desktops, not
| that they're good replacement for many workflows. This is
| just flat out not true.
|
| > It's not portable has a TDP of 280W
|
| That doesn't bother me in the slightest for a workstation.
|
| > So yeah, maybe for rendering it's faster, but it won't be
| as snappy as the M1.
|
| Nobody who cares about performance is doing rendering on a
| CPU, it's all GPU accelerated. It's not about "snappiness",
| it's about suitability for work. I upgraded from an 8700k
| to this machine and saw a 5x speedup (my compiles dropped
| from 30m to about 6 minutes).
| jbverschoor wrote:
| > not that they're good replacement for many workflows.
| This is just flat out not true.
|
| it is a good replacement for many. It might not be the
| fastest of all, but that doesn't mean it's not a good
| replacement
|
| It's faster single threaded, and will be faster until you
| fully saturate more than around 14 threads.
|
| Couldn't find a linux compilation benchmark, but here a
| comparison with the M1 on compilation performance:
|
| https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-eigen
|
| Compilation test shows that it's even faster.
| maccard wrote:
| It looks like this is basically a serial benchmark, so
| yeah of course the higher raw clock speed will win out.
| The run is also less than a minute, so most laptops will
| happily burst for that long, however what happens if you
| throw a 5/10/15 minute compile at it?
|
| > Does It Scale Well With Increasing Cores?
|
| > No, based on the automated analysis of the collected
| public benchmark data, this test / test settings does not
| generally scale well with increasing CPU core counts.
|
| If your workload is compiling a single file serially,
| then sure this might be a great upgrade for you. I went
| through the copmpile benchmarks and the only other one
| that has an M1 mac and a 3970x on that site is build2 [0]
| which shows the m1 is 4x faster on a build that scales
| well with cores. FFMpeg [1] doesn't list the M1 in the
| test table, but it does have one benhmark [2] which is
| again quicker with the threadripper.
|
| [0] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build2
|
| [1] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-ffmpeg
|
| [2] https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2201040-NE-
| FFMPEGBUI53
| jhgb wrote:
| One interesting thing would be to know how much of the
| performance improvement in some of the compile tests is
| due to the high-bandwidth memory interface on the M1
| chip. Since the M1 chip has both different cores AND a
| quintuple memory bandwidth compared to
| Ryzen's/Threadripper's off-chip memory, if you consider
| things like cache misses, one has to wonder what's the
| contribution of both to the performance increases.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Nobody who cares about performance is doing rendering
| on a CPU, it's all GPU accelerated.
|
| Has OSL already been ported to GPUs? You're implying that
| OSL users such as film studios "don't care about
| performance" but I suspect this simply isn't true.
| maccard wrote:
| Sorry, I can't edit my original post to update but you're
| right.
|
| A large amount of commercial renderers and commercial
| rendering software is GPU accelerated which was what I
| was trying to refer to (and would like to update my
| comment to but can't).
|
| That said, given the render times for indiovidual frames
| a laptop is going to end up thermally throttling which
| will wipe out the single threaded gains, and being
| limited to very small amounts of ram is likely going to
| make using a current M1 Mac impossible for anything like
| OSL.
| glogla wrote:
| I think comparing old desktop with new laptop is going to give
| you different experience than comparing old laptop with new
| laptop.
|
| I got M1 Air and not only is it a huge difference from my
| previous 2017 MPB 13" (which I gave to my mother who spilled
| coffee into her previous laptop), it is much better than my
| work provided 2019 MBP 16".
|
| "Snappiness" is subjective and hard to measure, but the
| thermals are huge difference. My work MBP is sitting at 63degC
| with just Firefox pointed at HN. On both my old MBP and the
| work one, playing 1440p video (native screen resolution) would
| make it loud, and playing 4k video on 4k monitor would turn it
| into a vacuum cleaner.
|
| The Air is completely silent at all times (it has no fan) and
| sits at 32degC while playing 1440p and maybe 40degC when
| playing 4k content.
|
| It is of course possible, that this is all because the previous
| Macbooks were _so bad_ (and due to hw decoding for common video
| formats) but I had similar "Jesus this is such a loud,
| overheating mess" experience with other laptops as well. But
| desktops have much better thermals already - so for you, the
| biggest difference would be the mobility I guess.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I had a dual CPU nehalem around 2010 under my desk. It was a
| beast. 8 cores, 16 HT. Now I have an M1 Max and I have yet to
| get it to spin its fans up. So I don't know what your day-to-
| day work is, but is it possible it's just not CPU bound?
| kalleboo wrote:
| I had a similar experience to the OP with my previous Intel
| laptops - they've quickly get too hot and throttle and that
| would kill the performance. When they weren't throttling,
| performance was fine.
|
| For me the big win with the M1 Pro was that I could work flat
| out and not worry about it overheating and giving up.
|
| It's a lot easier for desktops to have adequate cooling and
| power.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I gave up on a Macbook Pro to use a Thinkpad T420s, the last one
| with the traditional keyboard. Aside from maxing out the memory
| and the SSD, I only upgraded the LCD panel to a better one
| ordered on AliExpress.
| zibzab wrote:
| Am I the only person who is just fine with the new keyboard?
|
| Obviously the ones on ideapad and whatnot are not in the same
| league, but the keyboard on T450s and T460s are pretty awesome.
| lproven wrote:
| I've been discussing just this with the folks in reddit
| /r/thinkpad recently.
|
| There are lots on your side, but I see lots of upvotes for
| the new-keyboard-haters too.
|
| For me, the 220/420/520 are the last good Thinkpads. I have
| all 3 and use them all regularly. Anything after that, IMHO
| the chiclet keyboards are unusable trash.
|
| They've got even worse since the ?30 generation and now are
| right down there with Dell and other cheapo glued-together
| skip-ware.
|
| (Skip = dumpster in USian.)
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I would not dismiss Dell so quickly. Screens in their 7000
| series of the same era were much better. Keyboards were
| trash.
| ya_throw wrote:
| Does this mean that "things that have survived for 10 years are
| more durable than average", or "in the last 10 years, we have
| become unable to make useful, durable laptops"?
|
| If it's the latter, then I can hear the footsteps of the Anti-
| Singularity getting ever closer....
| ciphol wrote:
| We're capable, companies have just decided there isn't a market
| for it.
|
| Or else there are still useful durable laptops being produced,
| but not this model or this company.
| ya_throw wrote:
| What's the difference between the two? Especially when the
| product in question requires the co-ordination of 10s
| (probably 100s) of thousands of engineers, designers, and
| operatives, as well as a mass-market able to make the initial
| investment worth it.
| laangregor wrote:
| Do you also have a comparison to macbooks?
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Dell Latitude and Precisions from this era are also an excellent
| choice, paired with a docking station @ home with dual monitors,
| you're golden.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I'm all for frugality but that seems like a lot of compromises
| for what is this person's main work laptop. Cool that it works;
| but why have a slow workhorse like that?
|
| I picked up a Samsung Galaxybook a few weeks ago. Nice core i5
| system on a chip thing with Iris XE gpu. Runs cool including when
| under load and it's fast enough. Driver support seems decent in
| Linux. Even the graphics are quite alright. I played some steam
| games with it even. Nothing recent though.
|
| The touchpad is a multitouch thing that sort of replicates what a
| decent macbook would be capable off (but with way less
| precision). The keyboard is alright and they even squeezed in a
| numeric pad. It has 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Decent battery life
| too. With Manjaro it's quite a nice work laptop. Not bad for 700
| Euro.
|
| At that price (which was a black Friday discount), why bother
| patching up a ten year old laptop. Not worth the expenses on the
| parts IMHO.
| zwaps wrote:
| For one thing (for me, at least): The keyboard.
|
| I have yet to see a good keyboard on a modern laptop, and I use
| a lot of different ones. Some people do not care, but I do.
| There's some keyboards that are "still decent", but all of them
| are progressively getting worse. Well, they say that Mac
| keyboards are getting better again, but I don't like their
| zero-keytravel style in the first place, not even in the ones
| that were considered good.
|
| Thinkpad T400 roundabout was a good keyboard in my view.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Have you tried the ones with mechanical keyboards like the
| TUXEDO Stellaris 15?
| zhdc1 wrote:
| Keyboard + reliability (they almost never break) + price
| (200 USD vs 1.8K EUR).
|
| I've since switched to an M1 Macbook, but until last year,
| I spend a good four-five years working from an x220t and
| x220. As long as the battery is in decent shape, there
| still really isn't a better value proposition than the old
| T420-T430 era Thinkpads.
| Joeri wrote:
| As an m1 macbook owner I would say the new mac keyboard is
| good for a low travel keyboard, but not good when compared to
| thinkpad keyboards, especially the older 1.8mm and up key
| travel keyboards. There is only so much you can do to
| compensate for a lack of key travel.
| eb0la wrote:
| If it is _just_ for the Keyboard, Lenovo sells bluetooth
| Thinkpad keyboards. I 've just checked and the microUSB ones
| were under 50EUR.
| mhb wrote:
| They also sell Thinkpad keyboards on new Thinkpads, but
| they're not impressive.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that there were several different
| OEMs for those older Thinkpads, and unfortunately the typing
| experience depends a lot on which one you have.
|
| The NMB manufactured keyboards are excellent. The others can
| be hit or miss.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > The keyboard
|
| But what about the keyboard /layout/? My rant at [0]
|
| To clarify it somewhat, currently I have a laptop with two Fn
| keys. I rarely use the right one, but it feels very organic
| when I do.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29807256
| zwaps wrote:
| I know this was a big issue for Thinkpads throughout the
| years, but as much as I care about the feel of a keyboard,
| I have never cared about the layout.
|
| I guess we all have our pet peeves.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I agree that the Thinkpad keyboard is pretty much unbeatable
| in terms of laptop keyboards. But the ergonomics of laptops
| are inherently terrible no matter how good the keyboard is.
| It is simply impossible to have both keyboard and screen at
| the correct heights when they are physically connected
| together in notebook form.
|
| For prolonged use, you really should have a separate keyboard
| and monitor, properly adjusted to your individual height and
| posture. Your back and neck will thank you for it.
| boneitis wrote:
| > I'm all for frugality but that seems like a lot of
| compromises for what is this person's main work laptop. Cool
| that it works; but why have a slow workhorse like that?
|
| That's exactly what it was in my case. Maybe it isn't so bad
| with Ivy bridge, but my previous laptop that I upgraded from
| was an i7 Sandy bridge T420s. It has the 1600x900 display, and
| I decked it out a long time ago with 16GB and a solid state.
|
| But still, it totally choked on youtube/twitch 60fps feeds if
| they weren't piped through streamlink+VLC. I'm pretty self-
| satisfied with how long I was able to stick it out, but when I
| got my first tech job last year, it just choked on video calls,
| necessitating an upgrade to something more reasonably specced.
| iamevn wrote:
| A couple months ago I pulled my x220 that I hadn't used in 3
| years out of the closet and got it all updated to do some hobby
| programming while visiting parents. My only other laptops were a
| work machine (X1 Carbon, I want to say from 2019) that I didn't
| want to travel with and a Surface Go that I didn't want to
| wrangle into having a decent dev environment.
|
| When I booted it up, I checked the most recent entry in pacman's
| logs: $ tail /var/log/pacman.log -n1
| [2018-08-24 12:40] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -R aur/ino'
|
| Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything. It just
| took a bit of finagling in the form of looking through any
| packages that gave errors (errors like cyclic dependency stuff
| and conflicts from bad use of pip) and uninstalling those that I
| didn't see a need for or switching them to the package manager
| instead of pip. About an hour of babysitting it and I had a
| completely updated and working Arch setup.
|
| Using it was surprisingly pleasant, I think the most painful
| thing was initial builds for some large Haskell projects were
| slow but subsequent builds were tolerable. Also the original
| screen, while nicely visible with the matte surface, has a
| painfully low resolution of 1366x768 and so few websites are
| happy with half of that width now that everything has huge
| margins.
|
| Probably the most important thing was that it was mine (even
| though I haven't done the sorts of mods in TFA) in a way that my
| work laptop and the windows machines I'd been using outside of
| work could never be.
|
| (I do love how sturdy it is. Especially with the slice battery
| that almost doubles the thickness and gives it enough juice for
| hours)
| mgdv wrote:
| I love my X220. Also running arch with dwm. Initially, it was
| more for tinkering and just to play with but it's getting more
| day to day use. The keyboard is great and I'm not as worried if
| it drops or the kids get their hands on it. I also love the
| light placement rather than the keyboard being back-lit
|
| Been pushing it to do Java development and, while a little
| slow, it's holding up fine
| unixhero wrote:
| Well of course you fixed your arch install in a matter of an
| hour, you're a Haskell developer.
| laumars wrote:
| I'm not a Haskell developer and Arch is my goto Linux
| precisely because it's on the of easiest distros to fix when
| things go wrong.
|
| YMMV but the snide remark is definitely unjustified.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| That's been my experience with Arch as well. I've only seen
| a handful of actual breakages in my time (using
| consistently since 2016), and there's _always_ a good
| discussion with a manual fix available within a few hours,
| or a few days if you want to stick to official update
| channels.
|
| Plus KDE Plasma has become such a joy to use! I repurposed
| my T530 as a media center with a wireless keyboard and it's
| been a fantastic experience
| pdimitar wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what's your media center setup?
| idealmedtech wrote:
| The physical setup is very simple: just the laptop wired
| through miniDP to the TV, laptop sits behind the TV on a
| little wardrobe and has its screen turned off. I have
| various handbraked movies (not for distribution, only my
| personal usage) and shows that I view in VLC, plus a
| gigabit Ethernet connection that is more than enough for
| HD streaming.
|
| I keep it simple, just have a standard desktop install of
| Arch with Plasma. Lets me also do work on the machine,
| writing code here and there, checking emails etc. The
| living room setup is much easier on my back for extended
| work sessions as compared to my office chair.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Same reasoning here, my back is not well and even though
| I am starting physiotherapy in a few days, I am looking
| for a setup I can actively practice from a couch-like
| position. Even bought a very nice and sturdy (and comfy)
| folding bed. And will soon order a lap desk.
|
| Makes me a bit salty because the Steelcase Gesture is an
| absolutely EXCELLENT chair and I paid a lot for it but...
| health is more important. Hopefully I will be using it
| more in the future if my physiotherapy progresses well.
|
| Thank you for the anecdote. I am pondering Manjaro with
| XFCE but might look at KDE Plasma as well; a lot of
| people praise it.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Anecdote: I use Manjaro on my home server and on a laptop and
| it's rock-solid. Not sure why people look down on Arch, I
| only had good experiences and I'm very far from a seasoned
| sysadmin.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I used an x220 as my primary machine for a long time. The low
| resolution screen and the unusually crappy touchpad are what
| got me to upgrade.
|
| The touchpad in particular was horrible because it had
| different resolutions in X and Y. In one of those (I don't
| remember which) it was lower than the screen. So I found myself
| frequently unable to get to the 1 pixel wide handles to resize
| windows without the wigglestick.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| I'm not sure which DE you're using, but many have a simple
| shortcut (in XFCE it's something like Alt+click) to resize
| windows with the keyboard. Becomes very natural to use and
| much less fiddly than the touchpad alone.
| jkepler wrote:
| I turned the touchpad off on my x220 and simply used the
| track point.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I've always enjoyed being multimodal. There were
| workarounds but I didn't like not having access to a useful
| touchpad. It seemed like a clear hardware problem because I
| had the same problem in Windows as in all desktop
| environments in Linux.
| 0x38B wrote:
| I have a Surface Go 2 running Arch. Great for dev work, aside
| from the low amount of storage (128 GB).
|
| Its portability is hard to beat for trips; Patagonia's lovely
| Atom 8L sling bag is big enough for the tablet with some room
| left over.
| thecrumb wrote:
| Still use my T420. No upgrades - just running a lightweight Linux
| distro. And that keyboard is sublime.
| kellengreen wrote:
| Agreed, that T420 keyboard is simply perfection.
| kombine wrote:
| I started in a new job a year ago, and they got me the new Dell
| XPS 15. The experience has been dreadful so far, given that I've
| been a happy user of a Dell laptop for the past 5 years. Seems
| the quality consistently deteriorated.
| imiric wrote:
| The T430 was the machine that hooked me on to ThinkPads almost 20
| years ago. Having tried many newer models since then, including
| the X1 Extreme I use for work nowadays, I agree that they just
| don't make them as they used to.
|
| Ever since the Lenovo acquisition in particular, quality has gone
| down substantially, to the point where they don't feel special at
| all, and are on par with other Chinese mass produced brands. For
| the exorbitant prices it still retails for, you'd think that coil
| whine wouldn't be an issue, and that TrackPoint drift would be
| fixed after all these years.
| imiric wrote:
| > The T430 was the machine that hooked me on to ThinkPads
| almost 20 years ago.
|
| Ah, I misremembered... It was actually the T42. The T430 was
| still a pretty good machine.
| _shantaram wrote:
| > you'd think that coil whine wouldn't be an issue, and that
| TrackPoint drift would be fixed after all these years.
|
| To be fair, trackpoint drift (atleast as I understand it) is a
| byproduct of the technology, ie the trackpoint driver
| constantly recalibrating itself.
|
| I agree with you that the quality has gone down drastically
| though - I miss my X220t still after upgrading to a T480 last
| year. I've had my keyboard replaced twice under warranty and
| the third one is exhibiting the same issues now that the other
| two did (backspace key keeps popping out).
| imiric wrote:
| > To be fair, trackpoint drift (atleast as I understand it)
| is a byproduct of the technology, ie the trackpoint driver
| constantly recalibrating itself.
|
| Possibly. It would be interesting to know if other
| implementations (some HP laptops, UHK, etc.) have the same
| issue. I haven't used it on any other hardware besides the
| USB ThinkPad keyboard, but it's disappointing that little to
| no investment was done in R&D to perfect the technology over
| the years and avoid this very common issue. Unsurprising
| though given the overall drop in quality since Lenovo took
| over.
| zwaps wrote:
| I miss my Thinkpad T400-420s
|
| I especially miss the keyboard and that particular pointstick
| (with those buttons).
|
| It is really weird that since then, keyboards just have been
| getting worse. Build quality otherwise has improved, especially
| on the lower end. But when it comes to keyboards, it seems no one
| has found a good solution except ye olde IBM engineers.
| ziotom78 wrote:
| I did something similar by switching back to my old Lenovo after
| a poor experience with a HP computer. I tell here my story for
| those interested in cases like the one described in the article.
|
| Three years ago, I was feeling that my Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 540
| (2014) was a bit outdated, and since I just won a grant and had
| some money for this, I looked for a new laptop. At the time, my
| employer encouraged all the staff to buy laptops from HP; the
| discount was not significant, but for those that accepted to
| follow that route, the amount of bureaucracy was significantly
| less (I work in a public university in Italy, and the bureaucracy
| for even the simplest tasks can be daunting!). The model I chose
| was a HP ProBook G450, and I bought an extended warranty too.
|
| After less than one year, one of the small plastic clips holding
| each key in place on the keyboard got loose, and after having put
| it again in place a few times, after a couple of weeks broke. I
| contacted the assistance, asking for a replacement of the pin.
| Well, they told me that my extended warranty did not cover
| <<external peripherals>> like the keyboard (wtf, is the keyboard
| in a _laptop_ an external perhiperal?!). The person at the phone
| was clearly embarassed in telling me that HP 's policy prevented
| them from sending these paper clips by email, and he instead told
| me that the only solution was to substitute the whole keyboard
| for ~340EUR. Obviously I refused. I started looking for
| replacement pins on eBay (which were sold for <1EUR each), but in
| the meantime another key pin broke, followed by another one, and
| another one... In a few months, I had a dozen of keys with broken
| pins! (Before suggesting that I should type with less force, let
| me say that I have a soft touch, and that no other laptop I owned
| had this kind of problem.)
|
| I decided to buy a replacement keyboard on eBay, after I quickly
| checked on YouTube that there were videos showing how to make the
| replacement step by step. Once I got the keyboard by email, I
| started tearing apart the laptop as described in these videos,
| but at the end I found that some glue was keeping the keyboard
| attached to the frame, and that I should have used some solvent
| to remove it and then glue it again. (It would have been better
| for me to view the video in its entirety before ordering the
| replacement!)
|
| I was scared by the idea of doing this kind of work, as I never
| did something similar before, so I decided that I would have
| instead removed the pins from the new keyboard and used them in
| the laptop. I put together every piece of the laptop again, but I
| probably broke some wire or misplaced some component, because
| once assembled the computer refused to start! Out of frustration,
| instead of debugging the problem, I took my old Lenovo Thinkpad
| out of the shelf and upgraded its OS, putting the two-year-old HP
| back in a drawer.
|
| It has been my workhorse again since six months, and despite not
| being as performant as the other one, at least it works! In
| particular, now I am really appreciating the sturdy keyboard,
| which is still working fine after 8 years. To think that I
| disliked it when I typed on it for the first time!
| papito wrote:
| I upgraded my 2008 HP with an SSD and max amount of memory. That
| thing was ahead of its time - a Macbook-style touch strip where
| you can control volume and other things (albeit much less fancy),
| and fingerprint login.
|
| It's a beautiful machine, but unfortunately your biggest
| bottleneck is the CPU. The modern Internet is ridiculously
| inefficient, and the laptop struggles to do even casual browsing.
| And video service streaming also maxes the poor guy out.
|
| Overall, it was a satisfying experience to resurrect it. I call
| it Lazarus.
| jarenmf wrote:
| I thought about doing the same for my T430 but found out it'll
| cost me ~400$ and several hours so I ended up buying a second
| hand t470s for 300$. I like my T430 but it is really heavy and
| bulky and the display quality is awful (really bad viewing
| angles).
| gsliepen wrote:
| My experience with laptops is that the most usable ones have a
| low TDP CPU with integrated graphics. This avoids overheating as
| much as possible, which means you get full CPU power for much
| longer, as well as having a longer battery life. To make sure it
| doesn't feel sluggish, get one with a lot of RAM and (NVMe) SSDs.
|
| I dislike the lack of ports nowadays, but USB-C makes up for it.
| You can get USB-C dongles that provide Ethernet,
| HDMI/DisplayPort, some more USB ports and USB-PD passthrough all
| at the same time, so they replace a complete docking station, but
| they still fit in your hand. That and the fact that I can use the
| same charger or powerbank for the laptop, phone and the latest
| Raspberry Pies is great.
| tryptophan wrote:
| About the heat-> I agree so much.
|
| I found that disabling turbo boost caused an imperceptible drop
| in performance, but a very noticeable decrease in heat and fan
| usage.
|
| I also used to undervolt the CPU after doing this. Shame that
| intel blocked this ability on 11th gen+ chips.
| nilpunning wrote:
| Good points. Recent high end laptops suffer from terrible heat
| throttling. Recently I've resorted to buying a cheap old server
| to do most my work on. The old machine is significantly faster
| than my company issued 2019 Macbook Pro due to having great big
| fans and heat sinks, despite being 1/6 the price. Next laptop I
| purchase will have a lower TDP CPU like you mention and
| basically just be a terminal to the server.
| catdog wrote:
| Those 10 year old Thinkpads are still surprisingly capable. I
| still didn't completely stop using my X220 (also with some HW
| upgrades like 16GB RAM and ac Wifi) although I bought a Thinkpad
| P14s Gen 2 (AMD) this year.
|
| Some remarks for running Linux on the P14s:
|
| > On AMD models, performance was less than stellar for my
| workloads and not a significant jump over a laptop from 2018.
|
| Might be that you need to bump up some power management settings
| to get full performance via e.g. [1] or [2]. There is also
| /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile but this is broken currently
| for T14/P14s Gen2 AMD and maybe other models [3].
|
| > Wi-Fi/Bluetooth would not work on one of the laptops, even when
| I was using an up-to-date Linux distro. Likely related to the
| type of adapter used (not Intel).
|
| Lenovo switched to using a Realtek adapter for some models (due
| to chip shortage according to their Linux support team). Linux
| 5.16 includes the driver now, there is also a backport [2] for
| older kernel versions available.
|
| [1] https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj [2]
| https://github.com/xsmile/ryzen-ppd [3]
| https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215177 [4]
| https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89
| josefrichter wrote:
| I do miss the track point controller. It's kinda like hardware
| vim: difficult to learn to work with, so majority of people
| don't. But once you do, it's an absolute killer.
| djtango wrote:
| This might be blasphemous but after being thinkpad exclusively
| for the past 13 years (and my first thinkpad was in 98) but I
| find myself using the touchpad more and more when I'm not on my
| external trackpoint keyboard.
|
| Not quite sure why, might be due to slightly dodgy Linux
| experiences (x240 dodgy buttons and then now my sensitivity on
| X1 gen 9 is a bit touch and go)
|
| That said for regular point and click the touchpad is good
| enough. Tho when working there is no substitute for not leaving
| the homerow
| josefrichter wrote:
| It might be multi-finger gestures maybe? I use those a LOT on
| touchpad for scrolling, panning and dragging. Back when I was
| using Touchpoint, the trackpads weren't capable of this, if I
| remember correctly. And they were like 2x3 cm in size anyway.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Oh, a ThinkPad T400 series, one of those models was actually my
| first laptop at work in my current company (joined about 4 years
| ago)! Albeit it was a bit dated even then, it was still a
| pleasure to use and i never really felt like i needed to switch
| to something newer, maybe just for more RAM. Though my current
| ThinkPad has a larger screen, which is nice too! That said, 24 GB
| felt enough for me throughout 2021, even for enterprise Java
| projects.
|
| Honestly, as far as laptops go, it feels to me that the various
| types of ThinkPad laptops are some of the best out there - they
| feel sturdy, the build quality is good, the driver support is
| generally pretty good (only had problems with display drivers
| once in a newer model) and the keyboards are the best that i've
| tried in any laptop to date (outside of Apple devices, i guess).
|
| I've also been meaning to look into the Fujitsu Lifebook series
| of laptops for personal devices, but currently can't really
| afford them. Are there any other sturdy but powerful laptops that
| the people here would like to recommend?
| spapas82 wrote:
| Recently I bought a T420 for 120 euros. I updated it to 8gb ram
| and 250 ssd for 100 more euros. Total cost 220 euros for a laptop
| that covers most of my needs as a developer. It runs Windows 10
| and manjaro Linux on two partitions flawlessly!
|
| I don't think that there's a better value for money laptop
| anybody could buy. If somebody believers otherwise I'd really
| like to see what's the other options.
| turkeytail wrote:
| I am also currently using a ThinkPad from around 2015 running
| Fedora. Fedora and Linux support in general has increased so much
| in the past few years. Every function you would expect works out
| of the box, including Bluetooth, brightness, volume and all of
| the keys associated with that are functioning.
| ranqet wrote:
| I had a 2011 MacBook Air that I used as a casual "couch laptop"
| up until a month ago. I probably could have continued using it if
| it wasn't for both the battery and the power supply becoming
| unreliable. It surprises me that with a dual core i5 and 4GB of
| RAM, it was more than adequate for all but the most demanding
| tasks.
| dangus wrote:
| The author should be made aware that the 11th-gen Intel products
| are a no-buy, and should be shopping for 12th gen models that are
| around the corner, which are quite a leap forward and similar to
| the Apple M1 in their level of impressiveness.
|
| I'd say overall this article is a curmudgeon-ish view of modern
| laptops. The author tried _two_ brands of laptops, from two
| manufacturers who are not even close at the top of the market in
| terms of level of innovation.
|
| Dell and Lenovo are two brands that businesses automatically
| purchase like zombies, even though they often represent some of
| the worst choices available.
|
| There are some truly amazing pieces of tech out there that will
| stomp all over a 2012 ThinkPad in both performance and innovative
| features.
|
| Here's an example video showing off the latest upcoming models
| from ASUS, just from one OEM. I know these laptops are all
| gaming-oriented, but a lot of them are packed with some _really_
| cool and clever features and form factor innovation:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdBTkgtnTsw
| herodoturtle wrote:
| There are exactly 220 comments on here as I write this one.
|
| On a post about ThinkPads, this makes me happy.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Self Selecting though; it would be surprising if nerdy sites
| like HN "didn't" have love for the nerdy Thinkpads
| jokoon wrote:
| Same thing, I bought a low quality L-series thinkpad, without a
| GPU.
|
| GPUs need a lot of cooldown, and thus a lot of space, and laptops
| can't be well cooled.
|
| I upgraded to a SSD, I can still add some RAM if I want.
|
| Laptops can't be war machines, unless you have deep pockets, and
| it will be difficult to cool it down.
| sealthedeal wrote:
| hahahaha when I saw that picture I immediately realized that this
| was just that a project but not real world use. Side note, I do
| love how much flexibility laptops that are not Mac have. Ive been
| using System76 laptops/desktops for a while, and I LOVE them and
| the options and upgrades you can make (I do not work for System)
| lol.
| graycat wrote:
| A _laptop_ for software development or ANY _serious_ work? No
| thanks.
|
| Instead I want a better keyboard, video display, and processor
| and want room for several disk drives, provision for more
| peripheral devices, etc.
|
| And I'm currently rushing back to the last update of Windows 7
| Professional, a copy of Office 2016 (the 2013 version is fine
| except for Outlook that needs an update for a change in SMTP
| email standards), and an old version of Firefox. For Firefox, I
| have been using it to view my 6000+ HTML files of software
| documentation via a simple macro in the editor KEDIT, but now
| each time I want Firefox to display such a file I get an absurd
| delay and three popup windows, one to decline an update, one
| asking me to make Firefox my _default_ Web browser, and one to
| announce that there is an update to Firefox. So, I 'm just trying
| desperately to do MY work, and just from a simple attempt to use
| Firefox I get jabbed in the ribs about updates twice.
|
| I've specified both to Firefox and Windows some hundreds of
| times, maybe thousands, dozens in the last week, that Firefox IS
| my default Web browser. Somehow Windows and/or Firefox interact
| in some way to refuse to accept that Firefox is my default Web
| browser.
|
| For an update to Firefox, I've declined that now likely over
| 10,000 times, maybe 20,000 times, including a few hundred in the
| last two weeks.
|
| It appears that Firefox does have old versions available. They
| worked MUCH better than the recent version I've tried to use, and
| the old versions didn't keep pestering me, interrupting my work,
| stopping, refusing to work, until I click NO to some pop-ups
| about updates. In the old days, when a horse or mule suddenly
| refused to move, it got whipped.
|
| Just now I've had to stop all my work to respond to these
| problems of Windows and Firefox that have recently and for no
| good reason sabotaged my work.
|
| I've also been having similar problems with Adobe's Acrobat PDF
| reader. E.g., somehow the location of Acrobat was changed from
|
| C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe
|
| to
|
| C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader
| DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe
|
| So, how that change was done, I don't know. To me, that sounds
| like a huge problem in computer security -- no such change should
| be possible. The change broke my KEDIT macro for starting Acrobat
| to read a line in KEDIT that has the tree name of a PDF file I
| want to read. Somehow, a bit amazing, the change was also made to
| my desktop icon for starting Acrobat -- the situation of LNK
| files for desktop icons now seems to be a complicated subject.
|
| With rare exceptions, I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and
| despise any and all updates to software that is working FINE.
|
| So, back to Windows 7 Professional and some old version of
| Firefox. Then find how to get Adobe Acrobat OUT of the Windows
| auto-start list and try HARD to get an old, stable version of
| Acrobat that does NOT try to do _updates_.
|
| These _updates_ are nothing less than massive external attacks
| and sabotage of my work that force me into a version of _mud
| wrestling_ that takes a huge fraction of my time.
|
| No, no, no, no, absolutely no, essentially always, I want NO
| updates or new versions.
|
| I want, close to screaming in frustration, to do MY work and
| avoid the system management disasters and sabotage of my work of
| absurd updates.
|
| Circumstances, long story, pushed me into a laptop instead of my
| desktop I plugged together around an AMD FX-8350 processor. By
| the way, that processor has a cooling fan but it is quiet, can't
| hear it.
|
| My three favorite pieces of software are Rexx, KEDIT, and TeX,
| and all are essentially perfect and none are subject to updates
| for at least some decades. These are three great tools, and I
| have great success and no problems with them.
|
| If my collection of hand tools worked this way, somehow I would
| discover that all my English dimension socket wrenches had been
| converted to metric. Then I would discover that my reversible
| electric drill had adopted a default of rotating counter
| clockwise and would not rotate clockwise without my pushing two
| buttons and holding them for three seconds each, for each use of
| the drill. And a new drill would have a video message window that
| frequently put up "Do you want to?" requiring that I stop my work
| and take out 20 seconds and push two buttons. Still worse will be
| a car with a pop-up window on a heads up display: To avoid a
| collision at 60 MPH, I try to slam on the brakes but nothing
| happens until I click on some icon to respond to some message "Do
| you want to do that? Using the brakes ..." CRASH.
|
| Wish me luck in defending myself from sabotaging updates and
| absurd pop-up windows.
| hpd wrote:
| For Firefox you should try a policy template to disable all
| together updates and the default browser check
| <https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates>
| graycat wrote:
| WOW! Thanks. Will try that.
| bachmeier wrote:
| My favorite laptop is an Acer I bought new in early 2009 for
| maybe $400. The only hardware change I made was to upgrade the
| RAM from 2 GB to max it out at 4 GB.
|
| There are a couple of advantages. First, it's a joy to type on
| something with a good keyboard. Part of it is that older laptops
| have more bulk to them, and that makes for a better typing
| experience for me. Second, modern displays are the wrong shape.
| It's hard to find a nearly-square screen these days. Performance
| is not an issue. It's the most responsive computer I own. I'm
| running AntiX, a distro that shows how to do lightweight right.
|
| Having said all of the above, one thing limits my usage. It has a
| 32-bit CPU. Among other things, that means no Electron apps, and
| one in particular is critical to my workflow.
| iammjm wrote:
| I own a T430 myself and have enjoyed using it for a couple of
| years already. Very durable, reliable and upgradable - plus its
| just fun to use. I removed the CD Rom and put an SSD in its
| place; upgraded to 8GB Ram; got a GTX 1050ti as an external GPU
| running and connected it together with an external monitor,
| keyboard and mouse to a docking station. That way I can use it on
| the go and then just put it on the docking station to have all
| the peripherals connected/disconnected easily. I could also
| update the processor but it would require spending more than
| 100EUR on the chip and an improved cooling which I dont think
| justifies a minor boost in performance.
| kinow wrote:
| Does the external GPU works alright? I have a T530 with a
| NVidia that I use dual monitor. But it's old, and Blender
| doesn't use it for rendering. Been thinking about one of these
| little egpu adapters, but don't know anyone that used it
| actually.
| bubblethink wrote:
| The gpus from that generation are quite shit. Nonetheless,
| the igpu version is better for battery life and linux. I
| changed my motherboard from w530 to t530 (igpu version) to
| get rid of nvidia.
| smoyer wrote:
| One of the biggest reasons to keep an older laptop running is
| that they're likely to still support the S3 sleep state. I had a
| 2016 XPS15 which had good sleep characteristics, upgraded to a
| top-of-the-line 2020 XPS15 and it just sucks (battery) because it
| will only use S1 sleep.
| lifefeed wrote:
| I've had great experiences with Apple products lasting far longer
| than they should. I won a first gen iPad when it first came out,
| and six years later I would use it as an umbrella to run down the
| block to the coffee shop, and it would still work when I got
| there. My phone is a five year old iPhone SE, I've replaced the
| battery once and the screen once, and it's running great.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Even before reading the post itself, the answer was obvious:
|
| ---
|
| Keyboard, keyboard, and again keyboard.
|
| ---
|
| That is simply the most important feature of a laptop one uses
| for work involving writing: Correspondence, note taking and such.
| Also for people who don't like playing around with their mouse
| that much. Sadly, laptop manufacturers have degraded keyboards
| further and further over the years in the quest for thinner
| laptop heights. And while I can appreciate _some_ people need
| thinner laptops, many, and perhaps most of us - don't. It's a
| work instrument for us, not a fashion accessory. Why has it been
| 10 years since a laptop was last out with a decent keyboard?
| visiblink wrote:
| I haven't seen the ThinkPad L440 mentioned here.
|
| I bought one a few years ago because it has the same benefits as
| a T440p but the value hasn't been inflated. It's part of that
| last generation where the CPU is user replaceable. The screen can
| be upgraded to an IPS if you can find a good replacement.
|
| It's supposedly a lesser build quality, but the plastics seem
| great and mine's still going after my wife stepped on it. I have
| a bad habit of leaving it on the floor by my chair.
| uwagar wrote:
| the_only_law wrote:
| Any particular reason why? I've heard people complain about
| newer ThinkPads, but haven't heard much negative about older
| ones, such as the one in this article.
|
| They do seem to be very popular, and unfortunately for some
| operating systems they're one of the few "safe" options with
| hardware support.
|
| I personally haven't found any particular laptop brand or model
| I particularly loved.
| uwagar wrote:
| consp wrote:
| I've done the same only with a T440p.
|
| Upgraded everything (cpu to 4 core to 47w model, max ram, CD
| replaced for SATA bay, screen to 1080p, touchpad to T450
| version), even updated the bios to a modified version so I could
| set my own power curve parameters. Works great most of the time
| though the screen I got has deteriorated and needs replacement.
| I'm going to replace the fan as well as the bearing is giving out
| but it's not high speed on most of the time anyway.
|
| Had a T430 before that with the same upgrades but that
| motherboard died.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The most salient thing about this whole episode is that the
| author was even able to upgrade anything on the laptop.
|
| I would happily take a little bit chunkier case like we used to
| have if that meant that I could swap out parts without having to
| use a soldering iron.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The "unsexy" business or workstation laptops from basically
| every large computer manufacturer allows this.
| taubek wrote:
| I have T460. I like the fact that it has two batteries, good
| casing, great touchpad (unlike the one that I've had on T440s),
| holes for liquid drainage... When you put SSD into it, and have
| 16GB of RAM I don't see it lagging behind more modern ThinkPads.
| In my opinion, new is not always batter :) The only thing that I
| miss on my T460 is better graphic adapter. I have Intel HD but
| even with it I can play games up to Fry Cry 4, Call od Duty 4,
| etc.
| kuschku wrote:
| I've got the T470 (as it has the old docking + charging port
| PLUS thunderbolt), modded it with the N140HCG-GQ2 panel (1080p,
| 100% sRGB, 400 nits, 8bit), with a 2TB NVMe SSD, 32GB of
| DDR4-2400MHz RAM, etc. I've got two 75Wh batteries I can switch
| between.
|
| Overall I get great performance even for stuff like running
| IDEA and a spring web app in a docker container, and I get 13h+
| of battery life out of it (+10h if I switch the external
| battery to the second one I keep in my laptop bag).
|
| I'd wish the 30th anniversary thinkpad (coming this year) will
| be just an upgraded T25 with a modern ryzen processor but in
| every other way identical (I know, an unrealistic dream)
| taubek wrote:
| I have a Ultra dock for a long time now... And I know that if
| I ever upgrade from T460 to the T470 will be the last model
| for quite some time. This is the last one that fits onto my
| existing docking station. I must say that I prefer mechanical
| docks over USB/TB and other types.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| I have a similar story about my 2007(?) 17" MacBook Pro, back
| from when Apple made serviceable products. This MBP have had many
| owners before again circling back to me. I have opened it up more
| times than I can remember and replaced most replaceable things,
| like swapping the optical drive for a 2nd hard disk (and back
| again), and even replacing the entire screen plus assembly.
|
| "Old" hardware is totally usable for much of what I do today, but
| the number #1 thing that I would miss is the modern displays
| which are just so much kinder on my ailing eyes. Amusingly the
| keyboards are often better on my old devices, but the trackpads
| are not.
|
| EDIT: the processor is 64-bit. I was thinking of my ThinkPad T42p
| (another heavily serviced unit).
| [deleted]
| yokoprime wrote:
| I have a T430 from late 2011 which is still in use. I've replaced
| the battery and upgraded the RAM. One glaring issue this author
| only mentions in passing is the screen, which in my opinion is a
| complete dealbreaker for using this laptop for any sort of daily
| driver tasks like media consumption and web browsing. Even for
| its day the screen was poor. I'm not talking about the
| resolution, but color rendition and contrast. Its a complete pig.
| I run arch (btw) on mine and use it as a troubleshooting machine
| which i can carry with me and throw around without worrying too
| much, but i would not use it as my main computer.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| I've been hanging around on an X201t for almost a decade now, but
| finally upgraded to an X270 last October. Its the last X series
| machine they sold with non-soldered RAM. So far things have been
| pretty good, Fedora works almost perfectly out of the box, but
| there is a nasty issue where the third party 65Wh battery I have
| causes the laptops embedded controller to scream that the CPU is
| overheating. I've had to write a script to squelch that to stop
| the thing from throttling down to 400mhz all the time.
|
| I've had the thing in pieces, keyboard, trackpad, palmrest, lcd
| and RAM have all been replaced and the build quality really pales
| compared to the older machines, there is no magnesium midframe
| here, its plastic everywhere. But at least I can get a solid 10
| hours work out of the battery, and decent quality IPS panels are
| widely available.
|
| I'm not sure what to do once thing thing reaches the end of its
| life, all the replacement models are going to have every
| component soldered down, the batteries are all internal and not
| hot-swappable. Grim, I had might as well buy a Macbook.
| Kessler83 wrote:
| For any laptop, I want at least full hd 15 inch screen, the very
| best keyboard (centered, without numpad) and a trackpoint. If it
| comes without dedicated graphics, that's a bonus. This means a
| thinkpad, afaik.
|
| So unless I wanna spend a fortune on the new Thinkpad P1 (I
| don't!), I think the best option is a modded T530. I installed a
| 1920x1080 screen with great color, upgraded RAM to 16G, put in
| two SSDs and retrofitted a T420 keyboard (you need some scotch, a
| nail clipper and a BIOS hack). This is enough for my purposes---
| for now.
|
| But you can also replace the heat sink and the processor using
| parts from a W530. Reportedly, this might also let you upgrade to
| 32G ram. So I'm confident that I'll be able to use this machine
| until I can either afford a P1, or lenovo puts out something even
| better.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I'm using an X220 which is even older than the T430. It is on its
| last legs and its keyboard doesn't work at all (using an
| external) but I feel that it is fast enough in terms of cpu,
| storage, etc. I do some programming on it but it is not a
| hardcore dev box. I use remote servers for that. I don't feel
| like I need multiple disk drives: if I want to back up on the
| same machine, 1TB microsdxc cards are a thing (in fact I only
| need 256gb or so).
|
| I need to replace the X220 quite soon and there are way fewer
| used Thinkpads on Craigslist than there used to be (any vintage,
| not just that era). I don't know why that is. But I agree with
| the article that the newer stuff is way too crapified and that
| the 2012 era machines are about the best ones to use right now.
| Older ones were even more solidly constructed, but had DDR2
| memory, considerably slower processors, etc. So I will probably
| look for another X220. (X230 is similar and a little newer, but
| has the silly 6 row keyboard instead of the nicer old 7 row one).
| mindslight wrote:
| The X230 and X220 keyboards are compatible. You could get a new
| X220 keyboard to solve your immediate problem, and then after
| you find a suitable X230, swap in the keyboard.
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