[HN Gopher] Ten Years of ThinkPadding
___________________________________________________________________
Ten Years of ThinkPadding
Author : koiueo
Score : 323 points
Date : 2022-02-07 08:43 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (127001.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (127001.me)
| odiroot wrote:
| The part about power usage is interesting. I work on a T14 AMD
| and yes, I had the annoying wake-ups when closing the lid. But
| this was fixed by the firmware upgrade.
|
| I cannot relate to battery drain when sleeping. I can leave the
| laptop asleep for 4+ days and it still retains enough battery to
| use it (maybe 20-30%).
| tiku wrote:
| Excellent memeing in the picture. +1
| dm319 wrote:
| oh dear just got it.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| The battery drain while lid closed and the firmware brick issues
| are totally unacceptable.
|
| Also, it seems as if AMD based laptops in general have been
| crippled compared to Intel based ones. I wouldn't be surprised if
| Intel forces the laptop makers to cripple AMD based laptops, with
| the choice of discrete GPU, screen sizes, quality or resolution.
|
| I'm happy to move to ARM Macbook M1 Pro, leaving AMD and Intel
| behind.
| neogodless wrote:
| This has been improving greatly. I never owned an AMD based
| laptop before 2020, but when Ryzen 4000 came out, I got
| excited. Then I waited... and waited.
|
| In that first year, discrete GPU maxed out at RTX 2060 while
| Intel laptops would get RTX 2080 (mobile, of course.) Screens
| were all 1080p while Intel laptops paired with 4K, and they
| were often lower refresh rate (i.e. the 240Hz gaming ones were
| all Intel). Brightness was often 250-300 nit with any AMD
| laptop, but Intel offered some with 500 nits. Keyboards were
| lucky to be backlit, let alone per-key RGB! Those were some of
| the most recognizable differences (specific to my shopping),
| but others were here and there.
|
| In 2021, things shifted. The highest end gaming laptops were
| often available with the AMD CPU (APU), with 300Hz screens,
| higher brightness, etc.
|
| Intel still makes Thunderbolt an effective Intel-exclusive,
| even though it's technically feasible on AMD laptops. But
| laptop OEMs have started taking AMD much more seriously in the
| past couple of years.
|
| (Eventually I got a Lenovo Legion 5 - just over $1k with a
| Ryzen 4800H, 16GB, 512GB, 144Hz 300-nit 1080p screen, RTX 2060
| 6GB. Of course the options are a lot higher end now, but also a
| lot more expensive!)
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I've tried many times to get something else, but I stick with
| thinkpads because they're easy to service, and the trackpoint.
| The trackpoint is a big deal for me.
| hughrr wrote:
| The more recent ones without the battery slots are pretty
| horrendous to service. They are a complete mishmash of
| absolutely standard laptop design the same as all the other
| vendors. Screws yes, but then a layer of fragile clips on the
| chassis. Then tape. Lots of tape. I'm not a fan.
|
| The best part of the thinkpads is the sheer amount of corporate
| corpses on the market which keeps the parts available and
| cheap.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I still have a x260, but yes, I believe that's the trend. If
| frame.work manages to get a decent keyboard with trackpoint,
| I'm probably in. I don't know about the build quality yet.
| Fnoord wrote:
| I went from a ThinkPad (T61) to MBP and have used these
| ever since (except I bought a second hand T61 a couple of
| years ago, still liked the trackpoint but hardware too slow
| and 32 bit). The Apple Magic Trackpad 2 (not the big one
| though it might also be great) is an amazing trackpad (on
| macOS). It made me not miss the trackpoint (which is very
| useful given its size, indeed). If frame.work's touchpad
| comes close to it, it'd be my main concern for non-Macbook
| laptops.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I travel semi frequently with my laptop by Train, and use
| it often in outdoors. I can use a trackpad, but honestly
| the trackpoint is a bless in such situations. It's way
| more smooth experience, even though that trackpoint has
| its buggy stuff.
|
| The times I tried other laptops it felt so much different
| and difficult, I carried a wireless mini-mouse for that.
| mireq2 wrote:
| Clips are not so fragile. I have disassembled my P14s gen 2
| wtih AMD on first day because i wanted Intel AX210 wifi
| instead of realtek. Two fingernails broken, because i don't
| have tools, but with plastic tools it should be easy (here is
| video https://youtu.be/K_lJcciszsw).
|
| Big problem for me is USB-C. I don't like small, fragile
| connectors directly soldered on motherboard. USB-A is on
| separate board. I don't know why USB-C has no separate board.
|
| Trackpoint on AMD models has terrible in linux support.
| Sample rate of trackpoint is max 40Hz, because it's in
| fallback mode (PS/2 protocol). Touchpad can't be disabled in
| BIOS and low rate is because is muxed with trackpoint to
| single PS/2 interface.
|
| S0ix don't work. No opportunistic sleep. Minimal power usage
| on battery with AMD-5850u, LCD at minimum brightness (4k
| panel) is 3W. Standard power usage while i am working is
| 3.5-4.5W.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Unless other brands adopt something similar to trackpoint,
| they're all useless laptops to me. I even use a trackpoint
| keyboard for my desktop setup.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| ohazi wrote:
| The S3 / S0ix sleep state power consumption fiasco is completely
| unacceptable. I have two T480 laptops with usable S3 that I
| regularly put to sleep for a week.
|
| I will not be upgrading them until after I can confirm that this
| mess has been fixed.
|
| I no longer care whether blame lies with Lenovo or with Intel's
| reference platform. The product is so broken that it is
| fundamentally unfit for my use case.
| traspler wrote:
| Nice, just last week I got my x200 out of the closet. Now I have
| to replace the CMOS battery and probably repaste the CPU to get
| it back into a somewhat working condition, it seems like my SSD
| died as well in the meantime. It's always been my "oh shit I need
| a linux laptop to fix my network" laptop, really handy :)
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| I still have X301 somewhere. I think this is probably the last
| machine in the house with a working DVD drive.
|
| Funny enough Windows 10 on it runs just fine while CentOS is
| slow as molasses. On SSD. Go figure.
| mcv wrote:
| I'm not a long-time Thinkpad user at all; but used a 2011 Macbook
| before I bought my X1 Extreme g2 a few years ago. Mostly because
| I've heard so many people rave about the excellent build quality
| of Thinkpads. After reading the article, I want to share some of
| my experiences:
|
| By far the biggest advantage of Thinkpads, not mentioned at all
| in this article, is their spill-resistant keyboards. When I just
| had my X1E, I accidentally spilled an entire mug on tea over it.
| I turned it off, watched the tea spill out of the bottom, let it
| rest for a while just to be on the safe side, opened it the next
| day to check it and dry it off, and when I turned it on,
| everything worked fine as if nothing had happened. I suspect I
| could just have continued working with the tea in the keyboard,
| but I'm not taking that risk.
|
| A kid once spilled lemonade over my Macbook, and that was an
| expensive new motherboard.
|
| The battery life of my X1E is absolutely terrible. There are
| probably good reasons for that: it's a very powerful laptop in a
| very thin body, so little room for battery, lots of power, which
| also needs to be cooled. And on top of that, I've got a 4K OLED
| screen that probably eats a ton of power. 4K on a laptop is a
| mistake. Too much power in a thin laptop is also a mistake; it's
| either noisy, overheats, or throttles.
|
| My battery life really seems to be just 2 hours. I can take it
| places, but I have to plug it in if I want to do anything at all.
|
| About screens, the article says:
|
| > However, 1920x1080 of their recent 13-inch display model yields
| a lousy 170 PPI. It's enough for me, but it is just an average
| offering even for 2020 when it was released. What's terrible
| about this is that Lenovo does not offer better options.
|
| I don't know about 13 inch models, but Lenovo definitely does
| offer much higher resolution for the 15" X1E. But 4K is way
| overkill. For 13 inch, HD should be plenty.
|
| My biggest frustration with my X1E, however, is my laggy mouse. I
| think it's tied to the hybrid graphics (it can switch between
| builtin graphics and an nVidia GPU, and is supposed to do so
| cleverly, though I question that). Screen sometimes (but rarely)
| flickers rapidly between cooler bluish whites and warmer reddish
| whites. Switching graphics modes is done automatically and turns
| my screen black for a second. It does this when I plug/unplug
| power, for example.
|
| Lenovo's onsite support has already replaced the motherboard for
| this, but that didn't fix it.
|
| The mic is also often too quiet, but I think that's Windows. I
| keep finding weird mic settings in Windows (that are always hard
| to find) that keep turning down my mic to 20% or so for no good
| reason. Windows 10 mic support clearly sucks and should be much
| easier to find.
| exceptione wrote:
| > For 13 inch, HD should be plenty.
|
| I think you mean Full HD? HD should be declared illegal on any
| device, if you would ask me.
| mcv wrote:
| I mean 1900x1080. Although personally I'd prefer a bit more
| height than that.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| The high power intel chips prior to Alder Lake are unable to be
| sufficiently cooled in a laptop of 2kgs or less. The result is
| excessive throttling, terrible battery, and heat.
|
| The Ryzen 4x/5x chips handle these chassis nicely however and
| I'm unsure about new Alder Lake ones.
| mcv wrote:
| Mine is probably pre-Alder Lake, so this certainly fits my
| experience.
|
| For my son, I got a Thinkpad E495 with a Ryzen 3700. It can
| go forever on a battery charge, but it lacks the spill-
| resistant keyboard as far as I can tell.
| rei_ayanami wrote:
| I love my x270.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| Same, I've been getting on really well with mine after
| upgrading from an X201T last year.
|
| I do think this is going to be my last ThinkPad though, user-
| replicable RAM has been jettisoned on all subsequent X series
| machines, and the loss of the SD card reader is another kick in
| the teeth.
|
| The new keyboard layout is garbage too, I miss the 7 row
| keyboard a lot. At the very least, I just wish I had my page
| back/forward keys back.
| rei_ayanami wrote:
| I wish I had insert keys on my x270.
| Besticle wrote:
| I brought a T450 and the screen hinge snapped off after 2 years
| literally a week after the warranty was up.
|
| I missed the heyday of IBM Thinkpads but the apparent blind brand
| loyalty and cult like following they have now is unneeded and
| allows Lenovo to get away with crazy things like 1368p screens is
| crazy.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| It was my second decade and definitely worse then the first one.
| They went from being able to use those machines long after the
| three-year cycle to them barely lasting those 3 years. The cherry
| on top was me not being able to replace a faulty keybord due to
| the zif connector breaking on a light touch.
|
| This is not entirelly lenovo's fault though - the latest T-series
| are eyeing 1 kg and with the laws of physics not having changed,
| it is impossible to deliver the same sturdiness. My next one is
| going to be a P-series. Let's hope it still has some quality.
| michaelerule wrote:
| I've been working on a P50 since 2016; It is holding up.
|
| Flaws:
|
| - There is cosmetic degradation
|
| - The laptop is gradually losing hassle-free hardware support
| from the latest popular Linux distributions. (Trackpoint
| crashes randomly in Ubuntu; Sleep/power management has never
| worked properly).
|
| - I had to replace the keyboard after 3 years (the keys
| mechanically wore out and became loose). I had difficulty
| finding new replacement keyboards recently (although this is
| more an indictment of the UK's trade situation).
|
| - The buttons on the main touchpad are slowly failing; Near as
| I can tell it isn't possible to replace these without replacing
| the entire "top case". I use an external mouse to slow the
| decline.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > The laptop is gradually losing hassle-free hardware support
| from the latest popular Linux distributions.
|
| That's disappointing. How well do Debian and Fedora hold up
| from that POV? Even if support has also regressed there,
| those are probably the distributions where tracing and
| reporting that regression would be easiest.
| geenew wrote:
| Fwiw I've used a P50s and dislike the keyboard and track point
| greatly. The keyboard isn't as stiff, and the track point feels
| imprecise. There is much more flex in the frame than older
| (t450, t500, x61) thinkpads that I've used, as well. This is
| only one datapoint, though, and that particular machine was a
| hand me down that could have been a lemon.
|
| I'm much happier with the t450.
| tomcat27 wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better, I am facing EXACTLY the same
| battery drain issue n macOS since last three years and found no
| solution or support from Apple who pretend the issue doesn't
| exist in the first place despite forums shouting loud.
| cardanome wrote:
| I wish there would still be a left company making laptops for
| professionals.
|
| I would throw decent money to anyone not subscribing to the
| current form over function trend. I want thick, sturdy, long
| battery live, proper palm rest, good old LAN port. Is that too
| much to ask for a modern laptop?
| hughrr wrote:
| Have a look at the Fujitsu Lifebook series. I'll stick with my
| MBA though.
| illegalmemory wrote:
| I am also looking for a similar robust laptop with Lan Port,
| headphone jack, good battery life and decently competitive CPU.
| I have been using multiple Macbooks from past 10-12 years and
| have seen the machine degrade over time both in term of
| software and hardware (with the exception of latest M1 series)
| zzt123 wrote:
| What makes the lan port so critical that the M1 max macs are
| out of the question despite their surpassing performance in
| your other listed metrics?
| zokier wrote:
| The bigger workstation class laptops mostly fulfill your needs,
| something like Thinkpad P15 or Dell Precision 3561 (or 7560)
| might work.
| fernowens wrote:
| I have seen a gaming laptop that fits your description, I don't
| remember the details properly but it's a decent in terms of
| ergonomics.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I don't really understand the fuss about lan port. If you are
| using a cable, you are probably not anymore in a mobile
| situation and most of the time you connected the laptop to a
| usb-c docking station as you also want to plug a screen,
| keyboard, external pointer, etc.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| A lot of ethernet port use is diagnosing/configuring devices
| in the field - servers, networking equipment, etc or just
| plugging in occasionally when you have to download a big
| file.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I wouldn't call that "a lot". It is more niche use nowadays
| and for these kind of use one usually prefer a dedicated
| tool. Nowadays the datacenter guys would favor a mini
| laptop like the GPD Micro PC (which also comes with serial
| port by the way) for example, people working in the field
| would rather use Panasonic Toughbook lines that also kept
| serial ports and ethernet. It would be nice if Lenovo still
| had one or two sturdiers models available with similar I/Os
| but it makes no sense to have them on all models.
|
| For us occasionnal users just having one of those 5 in 1
| adapters in the laptop bag is enough. The thinner/lighter
| form factor is more comfortable most of the time and said
| adapter can be shared accross different devices. If I do
| the count I have 5 laptops in my own, 2 personnal, 1
| professionnal, the other 2 are used by my partner and kids.
| I am very unlikely to need to hook a RJ45 cable on all
| these laptops at the same time.
| wtrewt654 wrote:
| I'm currently firmly in the same club as you. I have a
| 13' work laptop with two USB 3.0, plus one USB-C, but the
| thing weight is just about 2 pounds (1 kg). Booting SSD +
| not so much ram, but the thing flies even starting from
| hibernation.
|
| Sometimes I miss having the damn LAN port, but you're
| right, for datacenter and field work, heavy hardware is a
| no go. I do know a number of people in the field using
| macbooks air for the work.
| walterbell wrote:
| Framework's modular laptop has been well received. They are
| working on a LAN module, https://community.frame.work/t/what-
| about-an-rj45-ethernet-p... & https://frame.work
|
| Another option is to upgrade the motherboard and/or LCD in an
| older Thinkpad chassis.
|
| Right-to-repair legislation is slowly progressing in the US.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The Framework ticks many boxes for me but still no matte
| option for displays.
|
| Glossy screens literally give me headaches, they only work in
| pitch dark ambient light.
| walterbell wrote:
| Looks like people are using matte screen protectors,
| https://community.frame.work/search?q=matte
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Looks good! If only there was a pleasant desktop operating
| system besides macOS...
| walterbell wrote:
| Hmm, what would be needed for a Framework hackintosh
| config?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| With the move to ARM, I feel the time has come and gone
| for hackintoshes. The x86 versions will die, and then
| what use is a laptop with swappable components if I end
| up having to emulate ARM code in a VM?
| AndroidKitKat wrote:
| I bought a Framework laptop hoping to get macOS running
| on it, and it "works." Other users on the Framework
| Community forums and myself have found that you can get
| macOS booting, but all the things one might expect to
| have from a laptop just don't work [0][1].
|
| Primarily, graphics acceleration doesn't work. Since
| Apple has never made a computer that uses Intel 11th Gen
| CPUs, the integrated graphics are borked. I suppose a
| tremendous effort to reverse engineer and inject a
| working driver /could/ work, it's probably not feasible.
|
| [0]: https://community.frame.work/t/macos-on-framework-
| laptop/295...
|
| [1]: https://community.frame.work/t/macos-on-framework-
| laptop/295...
| wtrewt654 wrote:
| actually, any half decent gaming laptops nowadays, matches the
| old standard for "professional laptop", usually required ports
| and bays, decent battery life (4-6 hours for 13-14' models even
| with nvidia), superb displays (not that big in brightness /
| nits maybe - 300 at least - but 120 mhz is almost a standard).
|
| Most gaming laptops nowadays also, sport a sober look (full
| black gaming laptops ala Thinkpad are usual), not the
| previously common "RGB-everywhere".
|
| The lost upgradability in Thinkpads is even fully available in
| many gaming laptops, even some 14' ones have one-two RAM slots
| available.
|
| The performance required for a professional laptop is fully
| there too, fast processors, lots of ram, several internal
| storage devices (in 15' gaming laptop is quite common one
| -upgradable - SSD plus a 2.5 bay sporting a much bigger HDD,
| accouting for several TBs in internal storage, almost
| unthinkable in most current "professional" laptops, specially
| if you want NOT to pay U$S 2000+).
|
| And the guarantees usually span 2 years.
|
| I think my future work laptop will be one of those amazing
| machines.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The lack of brightness is a problem for me personally. I had
| a G15 Zephyrus for a bit, and its screen was great (1440p
| 144hz IPS) except its brightness was low, which made it less
| than pleasant to use in a well-naturally-lit room even with
| the light being indirect. I ended up returning that laptop
| for other reasons (mainly, finicky GPU driver behavior and
| its nosiness compared to a desktop), but its screen's
| brightness didn't help matters.
|
| My X1 Nano and M1 Pro MBP are vastly better in those
| departments, hitting 450 and 500 nits brightness (with the
| larger going all the way to 1600nits for HDR content) which
| is usable in a much better range of environments. You'd have
| to be sitting in direct noon sunlight to really have a
| problem.
|
| I wish the minimum bar for screen brightness would increase,
| 200-300 nits really just doesn't cut it with fewer of us
| working in artificially lit offices with almost no sunlight.
| bityard wrote:
| Are there any gaming laptop manufacturers that you could
| recommend?
|
| My only concerns would be:
|
| 1. Paying the "gamer" tax. I assume these are going to be
| higher priced because they're targeting a culture big on edgy
| aesthetics and with plenty of disposable income.
|
| 2. Do the GPUs on these come on discrete cards that can be
| removed? I have no need for a gaming GPU... On my current
| laptop, I removed the nVidia GPU it came with and just run
| the laptop on the integrated Intel graphics. Zero problems
| with it ever.
| wtrewt654 wrote:
| (another disposable account), I see a lot of MSI and Asus
| gaming laptops with good specs and reasonable pricing. The
| Asus TUF series has some of those cheap but good laptops.
| Also, Gigabyte gaming laptops have good specs, pricing.
|
| Regarding the discrete GPU, I actually don't know if you
| can remove it from budget gaming laptops, I'd think you
| usually can't, but there are some expensive Alienware
| gaming laptops which I think could allow this.
|
| As it was mentioned, the brightness could be a pain point,
| I'd double check about it in notebookcheck (the site).
| dangus wrote:
| What's funny is that you're describing the latest MacBook Pro
| models aside from the LAN port.
|
| It's thicker than the previous generation with more ports, with
| batshit crazy 20 hour battery life.
|
| Or, if you're my cable installer, you can still buy Panasonic
| Toughbook and similar jobsite laptops that have those features,
| but they're a niche.
|
| What do you need a physical LAN port for? In my experience that
| need is incredibly occasional, especially when compared to the
| need to actually go somewhere (these are laptops after all).
|
| Modern Wi-Fi speeds are so fast and reliable there truly isn't
| a need to use a wired connection regularly even if you are
| "professional."
|
| There are Wi-Fi routers that will beat 1Gb speed and maintain
| close to 1Gb even 75 feet away:
| https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/how-fast-is-wi-fi-6/
|
| You want long battery life and a dedicated LAN port but why do
| you need long battery life if you're just gonna sit connected
| to the wall?
|
| We used to lug around laptops that had empty space inside just
| in case you wanted to pop in a PCMCIA card, which seems pretty
| insane when you think about it from a modern perspective. Empty
| space in a _portable_ device for the _chance_ that you _might_
| want to add an expansion card. Obviously, USB has long since
| decimated the need for something so, dare I say, _crazy_!
|
| I think what you want is to go back in time for nostalgia's
| sake. These old school features are gone because they've been
| supplanted, not because some big bad evil laptop OEM removed it
| to save a buck.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The biggest issue for me (and many others) is that it's not
| an x86 machine. This is fine if your entire workflow revolves
| around delivering web experiences or performing platform-
| agnostic media-encoding, but the moment you step into things
| like Docker management, cross-compilation, 32-bit library
| support... the premise just falls apart entirely. Apple is
| doing their own thing now, and I think it's fine if they want
| to segregate their market so they can focus on what they do
| well, but I frankly fail to see how an M1 Mac would do
| anything but bring more headache to my current position where
| I deploy to and maintain x86 machines.
| [deleted]
| dangus wrote:
| Sure, but the MacBook Pro is only an example. There are
| plenty of x86 laptops that can do well over 10 hours of
| battery life.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I would love for companies to spend money on desktops and
| permanent work spaces - at home and / or at the office.
|
| But they don't want to do that, because leaving hardware at the
| office translates to much higher insurance costs and makes them
| a bigger target for theft.
|
| But like, 32 core, 64-128GB workstation with all the ports and
| storage you'll ever need is very possible and attainable on a
| fixed workspace, along with 4K 120Hz matte color-calibrated
| displays and the best keyboards money can buy.
|
| Laptops are an unfortunate compromise. I get it, and I can work
| with it, but I'd rather have a desktop.
| bityard wrote:
| I get where you're coming from. But my company issues laptops
| because that's what developers want. I personally like being
| able to pick up my laptop and go work in a common area, or a
| cafe, or take the thing home with me and work from home
| whenever I want.
|
| > because leaving hardware at the office translates to much
| higher insurance costs and makes them a bigger target for
| theft.
|
| Not sure I buy that. Laptop loss and thefts resulting from
| being out in public must be way higher than the incidence of
| thieves breaking into locked and alarmed commercial office
| buildings just to steal computers.
| rathboma wrote:
| Still working on an X1 carbon 5th. Screen isn't very good and the
| processor feels pretty slow. But it sleeps properly and the
| battery life is great (Ubuntu 20.04).
|
| Holding out until Framework gen 2 comes out, either with AMD or
| Intel 12th gen.
|
| Feels to me like framework is going to take all the Linux users.
| Wouldn't be surprised if they release a keyboard with a track
| point too.
|
| Hope they put attention into proper S3 sleep. What a massive
| industry regression in the last 5 years.
| stakkur wrote:
| > _Most of the ThinkPads ' unique features, as I've realized upon
| writing this article, are long gone._
|
| It's painful to admit, but I came to the same conclusion for
| similar reasons.
|
| I've owned ThinkPads off and on since 2000, most recently an
| x280. I still have a rock solid T400 in my workshop, and a modded
| T440s (added trackpad buttons), but I've sold off all the rest
| and am now pondering whether to buy some version of the X1
| Carbon. I've given up collecting old gems like the x230 because,
| despite all the wonderful features, the screen and battery just
| don't cut it for me anymore.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| > Most of the ThinkPads' unique features, as I've realized upon
| writing this article, are long gone.
|
| I was always under the impression that Thinkpad fans specifically
| sought out the older laptops (obviously people do buy the newer
| ones, but people who are specifically fans of Thinkpads rather
| than it just being another laptop). I know thats certainly the
| case for me. I never even considered that someone who considers
| themselves a thinkpad fan, or even collector, would rush out to
| buy the latest one.
| ajit283 wrote:
| Recently bought a X270 to take on travels and I love it. It's a
| breath of fresh air compared to the modern laptop world. All the
| ports you need, exchangeable battery and indestructible.
| Performance isn't great, but alright for light development work.
| My biggest gripe is probably the screen, that definitely shows
| its age.
| smm11 wrote:
| Oh, yeah?
|
| 365, and X1 Carbon.
| Loic wrote:
| Allowing myself a slightly off-topic question: For the people
| having _old_ Thinkpads (X220 for example), where do you buy
| replacement batteries?
|
| Are you buying many from different providers hoping to land one
| good in the pack? How can you have a kind of minimal confidence
| that it will not be a security hazard?
| MisterSandman wrote:
| I wonder the same thing, with the added asterisk of "...in
| Canada?"
|
| I think the answer is that many don't, including me. I don't
| really need to use my laptop on the go as much, so I just carry
| around that giant ass power brick.
| paulmd wrote:
| Lenovo is quite good at supporting their products, as
| manufacturers go, so you might still be able to find an OEM
| pack that is not too stale.
|
| Past that, I think the next best answer is you crack open the
| pack and you replace the cells yourself. The aftermarket packs
| are total garbage.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| GreenCell and Luxnote, but I'm in the EU.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| I can absolutely vouch for GreenCell, they've kept my X201's
| going for years, and they're not naff reconditioned cells
| inside.
| Loic wrote:
| Thanks a lot both of you for recommending GreenCell. I just
| ordered a new battery for my X220 :-)
| GEBBL wrote:
| I still have a backup x220 that I run with 16GB ram to run
| various containers, vm images and other x86 workloads that I
| can't with my M1 Mac.
|
| It's an excellent low power second option.
| robk wrote:
| The x210 is awesome if you want to get the old ThinkPad feel but
| modern processor https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/
| jll29 wrote:
| My favorite form factor ThinkPad was the small square x61 with
| the most amazing keyboard of any laptop I have every touched.
|
| My overall favorite was the x230, whereas the x240 was unusable
| due to an erratic touch pad (the cursor would jump around while
| typing code).
|
| Nowadays I use an X1 at home and a MacBook (M1) at work, and the
| Mac wins regarding weight, speed, interoperability (WiFi, sound),
| battery and raw computer power, but the x1 wins with respect to
| keyboard, Linux support. I think the MacBook makes the better
| travel companion but the x1 makes the better dev machine (Linux
| is a "less odd" UNIX than MacOS X, speaking of paths, command
| names etc. memorized from varies Unices over the years). I would
| be keen to try out the X1 Nano, but the 1st generation is too
| similar to my existing box to consider an upgrade.
|
| BTW, whatever happened to the "ThinkPad Classic"?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| My daily driver is an X230. I bought my offspring an x240 a
| while ago, and it was terrible: the trackpoint buttons are
| built into the trackpad, rather than being separate physical
| buttons, and they're very unreliable. Thankfully, they broke
| the screen a few weeks ago, and we replaced it with an X270. In
| terms of the hackability and repairability ThinkPads are known
| for, it seems like the x230 was the last good one, but at least
| the ergonomics of the x270 are pretty good.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, I'm slowly amassing good-condition X230s... I've got
| two X230 and two X230T ... great machines IMO, even if they
| aren't perfect they're pretty close! I got a few since I know
| they won't last forever, but the longer I can avoid using new
| machines the better. Not a fan of "everything is one single
| tiny PCB and you can't repair anything" trend of today's
| systems.
| ct0 wrote:
| There was a "reboot" by a modder called the x62. He brought he
| specs up to a more modern era and increased the resolution. I
| was lucky enough to hop on the pre-built line and snag one for
| a good price. Add it to you watchlist on ebay because sometimes
| someone will post one.
| https://www.notebookcheck.net/X62-Laptop-Review.211598.0.htm...
| major505 wrote:
| I never liked the Thinkpads touch, and for some reason if I'm
| running my x250 in windows it just stops working after a few
| minutes (runs fine in linux, so ok), but in the end, I hate the
| concept of a trackpad and always carry a wireless mouse with
| me.
| bouncing wrote:
| By ThinkPad Classic, you mean, the ThinkPad 25 Retro
| Anniversary Edition? I think it was kind of popular, but for
| $2,000, it just wasn't very competitive even with other
| ThinkPads. You were essentially paying a premium for a 7-row
| keyboard.
| p_l wrote:
| If you mean the anniversary model, aka T25, it was T470 with
| "large delete" keyboard attached and configured in EC, and was
| done as one off anniversary model.
|
| No future plans for "classic" appear to be on the roadmap.
| LeonM wrote:
| After reading a lot of praise on Thinkpads on HN, especially by
| Linux users, I decided to but a Lenovo X1-Extreme (gen 1) for
| work. Specs basically maxed out.
|
| Here is my experience with the X1E:
|
| # Business use & warranty:
|
| For business use, Lenovo offers on-site repair. Lenovo will come
| to you and repair or replace a broken device. At a reasonable
| cost (~300 eur) you can extend this to a 3 year contract.
| Compared to Apple (who have zero options for on-site repairs, and
| zero extended warranty options for small business) this is
| infinitely better for professional use. Regardless of how many
| 'pro' titles Apple slap on their products, you basically get 0
| service from them, even if you pay.
|
| # Hardware:
|
| - Coil whine. So. Much. Coil whine :-(
|
| - Laptop comes with 2 M.2 slots, one occupied by the factory SSD.
| This allowed me to install a second SSD for a Linux/Windows dual
| boot. RAM is also user upgradable.
|
| - Fans are noisy and ramp-up is very aggressive, might be able to
| tweak this.
|
| - 4K display is gorgeous, though I am kind of bummed that there
| was no matte finish option when I ordered my gen 1 (matte OLED
| became available in gen 3).
|
| - Keyboard is really good.
|
| - Audio (speakers) are quite bad compared to a Macbook of any
| generation.
|
| - After first month of use, the display started showing signs of
| damage (not just dirty) by keyboard imprints, even with careful
| use.
|
| - Ethernet uses proprietary connector, you must buy a Lenovo
| dongle (though they are inexpensive IIRC)
|
| - Charger has proprietary connector, X1E cannot charge via USB-C
|
| # Linux support:
|
| - WiFi, webcam and function keys work out of the box. Fingerprint
| reader does not, but have not made any effort to use it.
|
| - Audio output switching often leaves driver for internal
| speakers in a weird state, causing a weird delayed
| noise/crackling effect during playback.
|
| - The (insanely expensive) Thunderbolt dock (AN40) is unreliable
| under Linux. Most notably when laptop goes into standby. Hot-
| plugging almost never works. Even after all the firmware updates
| (which require a windows only utility btw). With an external
| display attached (DP, via TB3 dock) and the laptop in stand-by,
| the dock starts emitting some stray interrupt that will eat 100%
| CPU, ramping the fans up to maximum.
|
| - The Linux ACPI driver is quite bad. Battery status is almost
| always 'unknown'. If battery status does display 'full', it
| usually reports $random percentage between 60 and 80%. Wake-up
| after stand-by has endless other problems.
|
| - USB ports (internal, or on TB dock) regularly become
| unresponsive after stand-by. May be related to ACPI issues.
|
| - The dual GPU (Intel + nVidia) situation remains a nightmare
| under Linux, though this is not Lenovos fault obviously.
|
| # Windows:
|
| - Lots and lots of bloatware out of the box
|
| - Laptop regularly wakes up from sleep while in my backpack,
| burning 100% of the battery of you don't notice it.
|
| - Otherwise works fine under Windows.
|
| # Conclusion
|
| So, concluding, my first-time experience is mediocre. Linux
| support isn't great, though the laptop mostly works as promised
| under Windows. The service and support of Lenovo is (in my
| experience) on-par with Dell, and light years ahead of Apple.
|
| Due to the praise for Lenovo here on HN, I had high hopes for
| proper Linux support, but that was disappointing.
|
| In 2019, when I bought the X1E, the offering by Apple was really
| bad, which made me look for other brand laptops. But if I was to
| buy a new laptop today, I'll probably go back to Apple. With M1
| support shaping up (thanks Marcan!), it might even become a good
| Linux machine.
| dm319 wrote:
| Yes I've had some real issues with my dock (autocorrect there
| was not good). It's an AMD machine (so no thunderbolt), but had
| some real issues with an external monitor. Ethernet flaky at
| times and asymmetric connection speeds. I have no desire to
| trouble shoot it - it kinda works enough for me, but the older
| docks seemed far more reliable.
| mrslave wrote:
| Had a 220. Looooved it. It probably even had the substandard
| screen.
|
| But my X1 Carbon Gen4 (I don't upgrade too often) was terrible. I
| never thought I would be one to say this: it was probably the
| keyboard I disliked the most.
|
| Now rocking a Dell XPS 13 (7390) and it's great. The light
| keyboard is fine. I've tried colleagues Apples of varying styles
| and never like the keyboard or trackpad. (Included because I
| consider the Dell design to be superficially similar, or at least
| both are in contrast to the IBM/Lenovo nice keyboard philosophy
| of yesteryear).
|
| I hear more negative reports about more recent XPS 13s than mine
| but I'm still not going back to Lenovo.
| eecc wrote:
| I bought a T14s to bridge the MacBook Pro gap before the M1. I
| expected more and am frankly looking forward to return to Apple,
| as soon as they sort out their supply-chain backlog.
|
| It could have been better: firmware issues (as mentioned in the
| article and other posts, power management is a joke), very poor
| Windows performance (UI lag during network streaming due to the
| NT kernel only hammering CORE0), embarrassing Linux desktop
| experience (after so many years it's still such a massive train-
| wreck).
|
| I just don't have the time to deal with all this, all while
| attempting to get some work done.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Is it just me, or did old laptops have better keyboards that the
| new ones have today?
|
| My first laptop was Acer Aspire One (this one [0]). I still have
| it and I still use it, it's currently running Debian with Xfce.
| And the keyboard is still the best I've ever used, I genuinely
| prefer this keyboard over any desktop keyboards that I've tried
| and I've tried many mechanical including Cherry Brown switches. I
| get that the very low profile keyboards on modern laptops look
| nice, but I personally don't use the keyboard for its looks. Not
| to mention that my cat stepped on the "Enter" key of one of the
| newer laptops (Acer CB3-431) and she broke the butterfly shaped
| keycap stabilisation thingy making the button feel very
| inconsistent. I can't the replacement for just the bit that
| broke, I have to buy an entire new keyboard for it (~55EUR). The
| cat wasn't fat and she has walked over pretty much every keyboard
| that I've used, but that was the first one that broke...
|
| It is this line of thinking that I personally think is the reason
| why a good number of people like and still use ThinkPads today.
|
| [0] https://www.globalmediapro.com/dp/A25LT9/Acer-Aspire-One-
| AOA...
| ksec wrote:
| I am guessing that is the old 2.5mm key travel Keyboard. Which
| is practically speaking extinct. Even 1.8mm is on the verge of
| disappearing. Most now ship with 1.5mm or 1.3mm. But some
| people somehow liked the butterfly keyboard with only 0.7mm but
| later reverted back to 1mm.
|
| Personally 1.2mm was the minimum amount of key travel I could
| handle before a pain signal constantly sent to the back of my
| brain.
|
| But the world loves to follow Apple, rightly or not. Hence we
| are getting thinner keyboard.
| toyg wrote:
| It's not just looks - newer keys likely use less plastic,
| because the market is inevitably obsessed with cost-shaving.
| Less plastic -> increased fragility -> more faults.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The market is even more obsessed with shaving _thickness_ ,
| and the keyboard must typically sit above the mainboard,
| heatsinks, speakers etc. which leads to ultra-thin designs
| for that part. There's no way to make that properly
| ergonomic, the best you can do is let users cope with a "low
| travel" design that still provides some feedback to the
| fingers.
| Joeri wrote:
| I had a 2015 thinkpad, and even on that model the keycaps
| were so thin that two keys split in half due to normal use
| after 5 years. They were so thin that I couldn't glue them
| together, and lenovo as it turns out will not sell you
| replacement keycaps, only replacement keyboards. Luckily
| there are third parties which sell the keycaps.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| This guy Archs (btw).
| koiueo wrote:
| transitioning to NixOS (btw) :)
| zinxq wrote:
| with Nix .. there is no "transition" .. only "do"
| mkesper wrote:
| If your last try with Debian was about 10 years ago, maybe
| give it another try? I find Debian stable exactly that: rock
| stable. Support for older HW is also great, offering enough
| Desktop choice.
| gkhartman wrote:
| I'll second Debian. I toggled between Ubuntu and Fedora for
| 10 yrs. Too many dodgy updates on Fedora, too much "is that
| package a deb or a snap" on Ubuntu. After working in RHEL
| based companies for many years, I switched to Centos and
| fought the out of date packages (sometimes building stuff
| from source) until the IBM takeover. Debian has been a good
| middle ground with newish packages that I rarely have to
| fight to get my work done.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Not OP, but for a desktop, the AUR makes every single other
| Linux distro objectively hard to use. Also dpkg is slow and
| breaks more than I would like.
|
| I should also mention I do in fact use Arch btw.
| hestefisk wrote:
| I have been using ThinkPads for 20+ years. By far, my favourite
| is the X23 (IBM, not Lenovo), such had a 4:3 display and an
| excellent keyboard with proper home/pg up/pg down/arrow keys. It
| was a wonderful machine.
| kogepathic wrote:
| _> My X13 AMD, for example, has a powerful 32-core AMD APU, 32GiB
| of RAM, and a superfast 1TiB NVMe SSD._
|
| The X13 does not have a 32-core APU. The highest spec available
| is the 4750U with 8C/16T.
|
| _> By the way, the latest MacBook Pro comes with an Ethernet
| port. We loved the jokes about iDongle; how about ThinkDongle?_
|
| The latest MacBook Pro _does not_ come with an Ethernet port. It
| is however very annoying that Lenovo requires a proprietary
| dongle to use the built-in Ethernet controller.
|
| _> The removal of the SD cards slot and Ethernet port has made
| recent ThinkPads a suboptimal choice for traveling photographers
| and some IT professionals._
|
| The removal of the SD card reader on the X13 AMD Gen 2 is
| bizarre, but they can and do still offer Ethernet via a dongle.
|
| _> would you read about the update procedure after you've done
| multiple BIOS updates for the same machine already? Even if you
| would, would you pay much attention to the Notes section?_
|
| Yes, but I'm probably weird because I like to know what the
| vendor fixed and whether the firmware update might remove
| features that I use (shakes fist at Dell).
|
| I own an X13 AMD Gen 2 (20XH), and I think it's a great laptop
| with some small caveats.
|
| Pro:
|
| - 1600p matte display looks amazing
|
| - proper support for S3, very low S3 power consumption
|
| - super quiet, I never hear the fan and the laptop is never
| uncomfortably hot (even doing heavy things like compiling
| buildroot)
|
| - amazing performance for a laptop (5850U)
|
| Con:
|
| - no SD card reader (seriously, why?)
|
| - proprietary dongle for Ethernet
|
| - Ethernet is only GigE
|
| - Came with MediaTek 7961 WiFi, which while supported by mainline
| Linux, the performance is trash (~30MBit on 802.11ac). Luckily
| it's only M.2 so you can replace it with something like the AX201
| GordonS wrote:
| > Ethernet is only GigE
|
| Erm... "only"?! I've never seen anything faster than 1GB
| ethernet in a laptop before, or even in a consumer
| desktop/tower.
|
| Am I missing something?
| simcop2387 wrote:
| These days 2.5GbE is becoming much more common, as is 5G and
| 10G to a lesser extent. A bigger driver of it is actually
| Wifi 6 and newer that actually need better than 1G to be able
| to give full theoretical speed over wifi.
| hexo wrote:
| There are 2.5/5GbE network adapters already present on
| higher-end mobos for quite some time. Some are even 10GbE.
| GordonS wrote:
| You ever seen one of these in a laptop? (genuinely curious)
| Youden wrote:
| 2.5GbE is relatively common in gaming laptops:
| https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN25g
|
| I own a GPD Pocket 3 which has it:
| https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3
|
| And 10GbE is basically limited to the MSI Katana:
| https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN10g
| paulmd wrote:
| There has been a sea change on this in the last year or so.
| 2.5gbe is really starting to hit the market in a big way,
| multi-gig has gone from "why would you need that" to "in
| systems by default", and it did it all of a sudden. I did a
| mITX build on a B550 board last summer (so, not the super
| premium high-end boards) and all of the options I was looking
| at had 2.5gbe ethernet.
|
| Going forward, both AMD and Intel have built 2.5 gbe
| controllers into their cpus and chipsets, so if partners want
| to use it, it's there. As such you will see it start to be
| rolled out even in consumer products over the next couple
| years. The initial rollout was hampered by a few "light
| errata" with intel's controller implementation (basically it
| didn't work at 2.5 gbit speeds at all, oops) but we're a
| couple gens into it now and it's going forward. AMD has one
| on their chips as well (if not faster, I want to say AMD has
| 10gbe in their dies for Ryzen Embedded usage).
|
| (expecting it in a 2020-era product, however, is perhaps not
| reasonable, like I said this is something that has changed
| mostly in the last year or so. Although granted a Thinkpad is
| not a consumer product so maybe it should have been ahead of
| the curve. But I don't think multigig had penetrated even
| professional spaces that well in 2020, except perhaps 10gbe
| in certain high-end segments.)
|
| The gotcha with multi-gig has always been switches, very few
| cheap switches existed and the ones that did were mostly SFP+
| and not 10GBase-T (i.e. you either need new wiring anyway, or
| you pay $50 a set for SFP+ adapters). This is somewhat better
| with 2.5gbe, there are now some 8-port switches under $200,
| but it's still a long way from 1gbe where you can get a nice
| 8-port for like $25. Hopefully it is a matter of volume and
| prices come down over time.
|
| I'm a little miffed that 10gbe got passed over - 2.5gbe seems
| like a half-measure, and the wiring argument isn't very
| compelling to me. If they implemented 10gbe you could always
| allow fallback to 2.5gbe if that's what the signal quality
| can support (many <10 meter Cat5e runs are good enough for
| full 10gbe anyway) and it's a much more significant step than
| 1->2.5gbit. And the economy of scale here is significant, if
| consumer stuff goes 2.5 then that's what gets made and 10gbit
| remains expensive.
|
| Anyway currently I am eyeballing the Netgear MS510TXM - this
| does pretty much what I want in terms of giving me a few SFP
| ports for fiber links (or server usage - SFP does have lower
| latency), a few 10gbase-T links for consumer PCs with
| Aquantia 10gbit nics, and a few 2.5 gbit ports for consumer
| junk. At $500 it would be nice if it was a 12-port, but it
| checks most of the boxes at least.
| GordonS wrote:
| I had know idea it was _finally_ starting to appear on the
| scene - with even some WiFi adapters pushing past 1Gb, it
| 's about time!
|
| Still, as much as I'd like it myself, I can't imagine there
| is any push at all from consumers, and very little from
| prosumers. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing.
| paulmd wrote:
| Yeah, to put it another way, consumers aren't going to
| notice the difference, and prosumers probably would
| rather have had 10gbe. 2.5gbe is an awkward compromise
| imo, where the only real argument for it is strict
| observance of the cat5e rating over very long runs (that
| aren't super likely in consumer usage anyway, and could
| be accommodated by 5gb/2.5gb fallback speeds).
|
| It's not every day you need multi-gig, but it is very
| nice when you do end up doing something big that hammers
| your network hard. You do need to be serving from a SSD
| or a NAS, neither of which are particularly unusual
| anymore, but I guess for most consumers they don't really
| work with "their media" at all anymore, everything has
| transitioned to the cloud for average consumer.
| Everything is streamed, and if you want to back up a
| steam game or something, you just delete it and re-
| download it if you want it later.
|
| Bet that kinda sucks for people in Canada or australia on
| super limited data caps though, it's kind of a weird US-
| and euro-centric perspective.
|
| As a prosumer, it's a bit of a mentality change, but for
| things like photo or video editing, you don't need to
| have tons and tons of fast storage on your local machine,
| you can push it off to to your NAS and just manage it
| like the rest of your data, which is a huge convenience
| thing (in terms of backups, and in terms of capacity).
| 4-drive or 8-drive NAS can push a ton of data even if
| random isn't quite as fast as a SSD (and that's why files
| get cached in RAM anyway).
| aceofspades19 wrote:
| > Bet that kinda sucks for people in Canada or australia
| on super limited data caps though, it's kind of a weird
| US- and euro-centric perspective.
|
| What?!? I live in Canada and have not had a data cap in
| over 10 years. They might exist for some ISPs but they
| are generally high enough that I've never heard anyone
| complain or get charged.
| zokier wrote:
| I wonder how practical it would be to have SFP+ slot in a
| laptop. I guess they are bulky comparatively, but you'd get
| great flexibility wrt. 10gbe. Power consumption might be
| bit of a problem though?
| koiueo wrote:
| > The X13 does not have a 32-core APU. The highest spec
| available is the 4750U with 8C/16T.
|
| > The latest MacBook Pro does not come with an Ethernet port.
|
| Thank you for catching all this. Fixed.
|
| > - 1600p matte display looks amazing
|
| I agree, matte display is great. And as I said, I calibrated
| mine.
|
| > - proper support for S3, very low S3 power consumption
|
| Strange, I've seen reports on the Lenovo support forums that
| Gen 2 laptops are also susceptible to the battery drain in S3.
| Was it always like this? Or was it fixed with some firmware
| update?
| kogepathic wrote:
| _> Strange, I 've seen reports on the Lenovo support forums
| that Gen 2 laptops are also susceptible to the battery drain
| in S3. Was it always like this? Or was it fixed with some
| firmware update?_
|
| I am not sure. The first thing I did when I received my X13
| AMD Gen 2 (20XH) was update the firmware to the latest
| available version at the time (1.14) and I haven't had any
| issues.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > matte display is great
|
| I thought we moved past whatever technical limitation it was
| that required matte surfaces on flat displays? It's like
| having Vaseline smeared on the screen, diffusing all the
| colour - why would you actively want that?
| bityard wrote:
| There never was a technical limitation, matte coatings were
| a deliberate design choice and continue to be. Maybe some
| people like the "pop" of a glossy display but the rest of
| us don't like to suffer from glare and reflections while we
| work.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| It's the other way around, I think, there are technological
| challenges to using Matt coatings
|
| The issue is, like you said, the smearing and contrast,
| which was a bigger issue with newer, high DPI displays.
|
| That being said, I do believe there are solutions - I have
| used 4k Matt displays that don't have the aforementioned
| issue, I think most glossy displays are there for there as
| a form over function thing.
|
| Glossy displays are still annoyingly reflective and good
| antiglare coatings are exceedingly easy to damage
| sgt wrote:
| I disagree with that. Take a look at MacBooks for example
| - excellent screens that are glossy but not very
| reflective. Never seen anything better on a laptop.
| tjoff wrote:
| The only technical limitation we have is that matte
| displays collect dust etc. so they are not suitable for
| touch-devices.
|
| Why some manufacturers would want to use glossy on any non-
| touch device is beyond me.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Why some manufacturers would want to use glossy on any
| non-touch device is beyond me.
|
| Colour vibrancy and sharpness. A matte screen is
| literally a defuser between you and the actual content.
| tjoff wrote:
| And unless you are i a pitch-black room that is exactly
| what you want.
|
| And displays arent high-resolution enough for it to be a
| big deal anyway.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Exactly what I wanted was a MBP2015 13/15 inch with
| "retina display" ie. 2560x1600 px glossy with anti
| reflective coating (the first iterations would have the
| coating get loose but I was able to get free replacement
| on both). Not matte. Its what I got (both 13" and 15"),
| though they're showing their age. With brightness on
| full, there's barely any reflection (I get easily
| distracted and I don't notice it). If Mac ecosystem is a
| must, the spiritual successor would be a M1-based laptop.
| These have, on paper, even better screens.
| Kehvarl wrote:
| For me, I prefer to keep my screen brightness at 50% or
| so. In that case a glossy screen is just a distracting
| mass of reflections, where a matte display is pleasantly
| usable. Color accuracy isn't an issue for anything I deal
| with, so the more comfortable appearance of the matte
| display is a clear winner.
|
| For my digital-artist friends, they do prefer the over-
| bright glossy displays since it's actually a critical
| need for their process.
| tjoff wrote:
| Glossy with anti-reflective coating is in my experience
| just a poor after-market matte filter.
| Fnoord wrote:
| All recent MBPs have this, and these are known for their
| fantastic screens. Nothing Windows (nor Linux) comes
| close to it. But of course, you are entitled to your
| informed opinion. Please share with us, which specific
| laptop screens you prefer.
| tjoff wrote:
| Yeah, MBPs have always had a terrific reputation. Even
| when they were using TN panels...
|
| Utter garbage in my opinion.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| MBP is on 7th place or so?
|
| https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Best-Notebooks-with-
| the-Be...
|
| I mean it is great and all top places are pretty similar,
| but "nothing comes close" is just completely wrong.
| amluto wrote:
| As someone who wears glasses, I can attest that wear-
| resistant AR coatings are a mature technology. They can
| be applied to plastic and to glass. I suspect the only
| problem is that they're not particularly cheap, and an
| extra $30 BOM cost is a big deal.
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Luckily it's only M.2 so you can replace it with something
| like the AX201
|
| Do you still have to hack the firmware to bypass thee wifi
| whitelist? Whitelisting hardware is an engineering offense
| punishable by death in my book.
| AnssiH wrote:
| I have the same X13 Gen 2 AMD 5850U w/ 32GB RAM, and generally
| agree it is a great laptop. Much quieter than my previous X270
| where I even had custom fan curves.
|
| > - Came with MediaTek 7961 WiFi, which while supported by
| mainline Linux, the performance is trash (~30MBit on 802.11ac).
|
| It works perfectly for me on Fedora 35 (kernel 5.15), with
| consistent speeds around 800-900Mbps. The AP is an ASUS RT-
| AX86U.
|
| Also somewhat surprisingly, while Intel AX200/201 is faster as
| it supports 160MHz (I had it before), the MT7961 has been more
| stable for me, both speed-wise and bug-wise, so far anyway. But
| YMMV.
|
| > Luckily it's only M.2 so you can replace it with something
| like the AX201
|
| I believe X13 Gen 2 has soldered WiFi, not M.2.
| kogepathic wrote:
| _> I believe X13 Gen 2 has soldered WiFi, not M.2._
|
| According to the hardware maintenance manual: "Wireless LAN
| card (for selected AMD models)" [1]
|
| I can confirm from the internal photos I have of my X13 AMD
| Gen 2 (I swapped the stock SSD for a SK Hynix P31 Gold 1TB)
| that the WiFi is indeed M.2 socketed.
|
| [1] https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t14s_gen2_
| x13...
| AnssiH wrote:
| Huh, you are absolutely right, my MT7961 is M.2 too. I too
| have swapped my SSD but I guess I didn't look at the WiFi
| chip at the time because I "knew" it was soldered.
|
| I was originally looking to buy one of the X13 Gen 2 Intel
| models that have it soldered, I must've thought it applied
| to AMD as well.
|
| I guess I'll try out Intel AX210 then, to see which one
| actually works better for me.
| leeoniya wrote:
| the AX210 is better by far (i swapped out my M2 mediatek,
| which had bizarre hardware issues)
| vbernat wrote:
| Lenovo is famous for whitelisting wifi cards in the BIOS. Dunno
| if it is the case for the X13 G2, but I would expect it to be.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| In newer models they stopped doing that (xx50 and up, I
| thing). Must have been relaxing of some FCC requirements or
| something.
|
| Previously I've read that this whitelisting was due to the
| fact FCC would certify the laptop with the particular adapter
| as a whole, and replacing the wifi/wwan adapter, or adding
| WWAN where there wasn't one, would make the whole device
| "uncertified".
| cure wrote:
| I would even say "infamous".
| leeoniya wrote:
| i dont think they do it on these models. i have an AMD Ryzen
| Pro Gen2 P14s and replaced the wifi+bluetooth M2 card with an
| AX210.
|
| the mediatek card was garbage; not just slow (ping times were
| 3x normal), but caused my machine to insta-reboot under git
| clone of a large repo in Windows 10, and simply dropped the
| wifi link in Manjaro during same op, so it's unlikely to be
| driver related.
|
| kinda bizarre that they don't offer this card as an option on
| AMD builds and force mediatek upon you. the AX210 is a great
| card which supports monitor mode & packet injection.
| minimaul wrote:
| The new MBPs do come with a SD reader though - maybe that was
| the source of the confusion?
| gnufied wrote:
| > - proper support for S3, very low S3 power consumption
|
| Can you measure it for those of us, who are interested in
| finding exact numbers? You can use script -
| https://github.com/savchenko/powerdrain
|
| For example on Fedora35-Linux 5.16(T14s AMD Gen1), I get
| following numbers:
|
| Feb 07 12:13:22 weathertop systemd-sleep[5438]: [INFO]
| Discharge rate: 0.94741 W/h.
|
| So basically a fully charged laptop will discharge itself when
| left in sleep for 2 days or so.
| kogepathic wrote:
| _> Can you measure it for those of us, who are interested in
| finding exact numbers? You can use script -
| https://github.com/savchenko/powerdrain_
|
| Do you have a script that doesn't rely on systemd? I run a
| distro without systemd (Artix) so I am unable to use the
| script you linked.
|
| From my casual observations S3 seems to use around 8% per
| 24h.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The Framework laptop has the best idea, IMHO. It just gives you
| a bunch of USB-C ports, and enhanced "dongles" that are
| designed to be physically secured to the case rather than
| dangling from it - hence avoiding wear on the ports themselves.
| causi wrote:
| I'm hoping the second iteration of the Framework has more
| options. If I'm going to buy a laptop that's all about
| hardware customization I'm not going to settle for a chiclet
| keyboard and no mouse buttons.
| LNSY wrote:
| I've been debating getting an MNT Reform:
| https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-
| more-p...
|
| It's got about the same specs as my main webdev laptop --
| which is a Thinkpad X200t -- with a modern GPU.
|
| It's got a mechanical keyboard and a trackball!
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Love it! I've really, really wanted one of those for a
| couple years now but it would be a huge break from my
| policy of buying used machines after the depreciation
| curve flattens out. With the limited market and designed
| longevity of the Reform I'm not expecting to find them on
| the used market any time soon. (Plus I'd really love to
| get the kit and put it together myself!)
| amatecha wrote:
| I'll probably get an MNT Reform when the LS1028A SoM is
| available[0]. Though I mean, it's tempting regardless. I
| picked up a couple super-cheap old ThinkPads in the
| meantime to tide me over, especially to "plan ahead" for
| my MNT Reform setup haha :)
|
| [0] https://source.mnt.re/reform/mnt-reform-layerscape-
| ls1028a-s...
| slim wrote:
| it's an arm based motherboard
| zeagle wrote:
| I like the keyboard, but my hope is they will just have an
| alternative keyboard one can swap in.
| paulmd wrote:
| given the target market, and the ubiquity of the thinkpad
| supply chain, it's a somewhat baffling decision not to use
| one of the models of thinkpad keyboards. Given they're
| already in production I'm sure if you went to one of the
| factories and said "we want 100k keyboards for the X230" or
| something that you'd get turned down. It's not like
| Framework is going to sell 100 million laptops anyway, I'm
| sure it's something that could be accommodated.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| You can't just go to a factory or manufacturer contracted
| to build ThinkPad keyboards and ask them to build some of
| those for you, as that's proprietary Lenovo IP which
| can't be sold to third parties without their permission.
|
| Same how you can't go to TSMC and be like "hey, you guys
| are making millions of M1 chips for Apple, ca you sell us
| some of those pls?"
| paulmd wrote:
| I don't particularly think all the random chinese
| factories producing aftermarket Thinkpad parts are
| licensed to do so, but you might be correct that
| designing a product based on them might be a bridge too
| far.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Just because some shady factories are managing to fly
| under the radar building a handful of unlicensed ThinkPad
| keyboard clones without approval from Lenovo, doesn't
| mean it's something that Framework, or any other
| reputable HW maker who wishes to not get sued into
| bankruptcy, will want to touch with a 10ft pole for their
| own sake.
|
| Or how did you imagine such a scenario would play out for
| Framework?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Great idea, but the cost in space and weight is not
| insignificant. I really hope that future Frameworks package
| things a bit better, I would even forgoe the USB-C connector
| for a smaller proprietary connector (I feel disgusting saying
| that) as the modules are not meant to be used elsewhere. They
| could still use USB-C signalling under the hood.
|
| Is there any movement for a smaller standardized connector?
| Even small phones could benefit.
| Steltek wrote:
| USB-C is a standard and would be better understood by 3rd
| parties than a custom connector developed in-house. I hope
| the physical form factor for Framework's modules/adapters
| becomes a standard in itself because I think it would
| essentially solve the dongle problem for everyone.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| USB-C goes to great lengths already to minimize "space and
| weight" costs. The easiest way to address those would be
| introducing "modules" that provide multiple ports when
| practical in the space that's designed for a single
| connector. Smaller designs though would inherently be more
| fragile.
| Fnoord wrote:
| They recently started selling in some EU countries, but not
| yet in the one I reside (NL). It contains an Intel 11xxx,
| while 12xxx (Alder Lake) is vastly more superior and also
| there's no AMD option (5 nm ARM like M1 would also be very
| power efficient). That said, it is a great first iteration. I
| wonder if it could pass QubesOS certification?
| zeagle wrote:
| Another vote for this. I purchased a framework to replace a
| surface product and have been really happy with it running
| windows 10 ltsc. My only beef is that it lost a lot of
| battery life while in suspend. For a regular consumer this
| would be unacceptable, I tinkered and eventually just gave up
| and have it hibernate with the lid closed. Also the surface
| dock with it's magnetic connector spoiled me.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I'll use one as my daily driver the second they get a decent
| refresh-rate and video card on top of the already awesome
| specs. An OLED panel would probably also suck me in without
| those additions.
| causi wrote:
| _Yes, but I 'm probably weird because I like to know what the
| vendor fixed and whether the firmware update might remove
| features that I use (shakes fist at Dell)._
|
| I learned to very carefully examine and in most cases wait for
| community feedback on BIOS updates after an HP update (that
| could not be rolled back) introduced a massive touchscreen
| delay on their 608 G1 tablet rendering mine effectively
| useless.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > Came with MediaTek 7961 WiFi, which while supported by
| mainline Linux, the performance is trash (~30MBit on 802.11ac).
| Luckily it's only M.2 so you can replace it with something like
| the AX201
|
| yep, those mediatek cards aren't just slow, they's complete
| trash (see my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30248380). i swapped it
| out for an Intel AX210 on my P14s Gen2 (Ryzen 7 Pro).
|
| on linux you need Kernel 5.15.13+ for AX210 since the bluetooth
| side (connected over M2's usb bus) fails to come back up after
| waking from sleep or soft reboots. i dont think that patch was
| in 5.16.0 when i tried.
|
| https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-bluetooth/msg96194.html
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Until Lenovo sold me a lemon -- ThinkPad X13 AMD.
|
| Lenovo has sold us lemons in the X series since they started
| fucking up their keyboards after the X220. The X230 is still
| usable, but - X240 and later - not really. The poster does note
| this fact, but still claims the thinning of the chassis over the
| years is a good thing... Wrong :-( This sentence:
|
| > it's easy to argue that the X220's design from the top picture
| is the least practical.
|
| is the opposite of the truth. For a decent keyboard you need key
| travel, and for key travel you need travel height. Now, could you
| save a bit of height by battery improvements or rearrangements?
| Or by display thinning? Sure, but the Lenovo killed the keyboard
| for an extra 6mm or so.
|
| > X270 ... just looks so much more pleasing to my eye
|
| Come on. Really? Are you a fashion model?
|
| > Proprietary charging port
|
| It's true that the switch to USB-C allows for more flexibility.
| However - I personally liked how the port was round, and thick,
| so you could very easily get your plug in without having to lean
| in and take a closer look. But can't really complain about that I
| suppose.
|
| > Touchpad
|
| This may be the most controversial take I have on Thinkpads, but
| personally, for me, this is mostly and annoyance and something I
| tap by mistake. And something which takes space away from the
| keyboard... I'm perfectly fine with my trackpoint.
| ho_schi wrote:
| With Linux 5.17 S0ix maybe works:
|
| https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/Linux-S...
|
| With Linux 5.17 AMD should provided also something similar to
| pstate, which should improve the things further:
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-P-St...
|
| But Lenovo is still struggling:
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lenovo-A...
|
| I love ThinkPads. We've four in the family. Reasons:
| * Haptic feedback of keyboard * TrackPoint *
| Maintenance Manual and spare part available for at least five
| years (ten would be better) * Linux Support and
| Certification
|
| Sadly the blog reflects some of my findings, I'm using myself an
| X220 with Linux. I want to buy a new one but Lenovo makes it
| hard. The old seven row keyboard has a better layout, RJ45 is
| available, a nice palmrest, the battery is replaceable and the
| main-memory not soldered. Right when four core CPUs where
| available, Lenovo decided to remove the card-slot on the side and
| the RJ45. Luckily there are some improvements, they put a gap
| between [HOME, END, INSERT, DELETE] on the six row keyboard, X13
| Gen2 finally provides a 16:10 display again (Wohoo!) and it is
| more sturdy then the X220. And finally decent AMD-Models are
| available.
|
| Lenovo seems to follow the bad industry pratices from other
| manufacturers instead of looking closely why ThinkPads are
| superior. Internal batteries, solder main-memory, awkwardly
| placed card-slots, missing RJ45 are problems. They keyboard is
| still the top of the industry and more comfortable than many
| desktop keyboards, because of the precise haptic feedback and
| concave shaped key-caps. The substandard keyboard from Apple on
| the other side does provides only flat (cheap?) key-caps, no
| TrackPoint and has a lot of longstanding quality issues.
|
| I'm also happily using and ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 AMD here with
| Linux. But from systems certificed for usage with Linux I expect
| more. I therefore also blame the lax requirements of Red Had and
| Lenovo. IBM (Red Hat), how about enforcing actual good support by
| Lenovo? I'm aware that all of that awkward, specially patched
| drivers on Windows are actually workarounds. And Microsoft
| enforce the sticker/label program. Maybe the complete industry
| should question there quality standards. I think most of power-
| management shall not be the duty of the operating-system but the
| firmware. Broken ACPI-Tables should thing of the past.
|
| I've some Lenovo representative is reading. Most customers wont'
| tell you why the bought your product. But in long term the will
| notice the things. The will buy again if it was good. They won't
| tell you "keyboard has feature x" and "card-slot is placed
| nicely", they will just like it or not. And the server stats of
| ThinkVantage will most of the time not tell you anything about
| the Linux-Users. Most of the time not even for Windows within
| company networks. It is quality what make a company running for
| decades and not hoping on the the next industry trend.
| 24t wrote:
| It might be worth looking into the 51nb motherboard
| replacements if you're up for some enthusiast tinkering.
|
| I picked up an X2100 from Xue Yao last year and it's great to
| have modern components with the classic keyboard and chassis
| guilhas wrote:
| I was quite happy with the x230, but the x270 just couldn't take
| it. The keyboard key press would click but not type, unless you
| press harder
| cehrlich wrote:
| Some of the classic ThinkPad features just aren't relevant
| anymore today. For example hot-swappable batteries feel outdated
| to me in the age of USB-C PD power banks, as those are easier to
| recharge and not tied to a specific laptop model.
|
| Other features such as user-replaceable RAM and storage, and a
| great keyboard, are dearly missed and make me feel like we've
| gone in the wrong direction. I love my M1 MacBook Air, but not
| _because_ of the thinness and the things that have been
| sacrificed to achieve it.
| tsm wrote:
| Hot-swappable batteries may be less relevant, but easily-user-
| replaceable batteries are sorely missed. I still do some work
| on a T60 (from 2006, I think) whose battery was obviously
| toast. It took $15 on eBay and ten seconds to pop the old one
| out and get a brand new one in. Meanwhile my wife's MBP's
| battery is also about dead and figuring out how to replace it
| is just enough effort that we haven't made it happen yet.
|
| While I'm here: other features I miss include the Thinklight,
| literally everything about the keyboard (layout, not being
| chiclet, key depth), dedicated trackpad buttons, the lid latch,
| ...
| paulmd wrote:
| aftermarket batteries are AWFUL though, I played that game
| with my Thinkpad for a number of years before sucking it up
| and buying an OEM replacement. I was lucky to get six months
| out of an aftermarket battery and sometimes they were out of
| balance and dying within a matter of weeks. And once the OEM
| supply is truly gone (or aged out of existence) you're done
| anyway, unless you crack open the pack and replace the cells
| yourself.
|
| The way you replace a MBP battery is you take it to apple and
| have them do it for you. It makes absolutely no sense to pay
| to have it cracked open and serviced and then put a $30 ebay
| shit battery in it that will fail in 3 months - which if
| you're not going to an apple service center, is probably what
| you're getting. $200 isn't cheap but a genuine lenovo OEM
| battery (one which even still may have been sitting on a
| shelf for years and the cells are no longer at their best)
| will cost you about $125 from a legitimate source. $200 for a
| fresh battery with installation isn't really all that bad.
| For something with a 3-5 year lifespan, that's just the cost
| of using the device, same as a phone.
|
| I like serviceable devices too, and I think the parts should
| have to be made available to the market, but batteries and
| screens are two areas where I "get it" in terms of the
| protectionism around parts supply. There's a huge difference
| between the OEM and the aftermarket parts in these areas, and
| customers are going to want to know why YOUR device is
| draining THEIR battery in 30 minutes all of a sudden. Don't
| you know they just had the battery replaced last month!? It's
| YOUR fault! Regardless of whether it actually is, you've got
| a lot of extra service work and a lot of upset customers.
| Louis Rossman is a cool guy and I'm sure he personally is
| careful to only use legitimate parts (or at least be upfront
| that it's not an OEM part) but he's only presenting his half
| of the story there.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Absolutely. I replaced the battery on a 2015 MacBook Pro
| 15" myself with one I bought from iFixit, who I thought
| were a reputable dealer, and one year / 150 cycles in it
| was swelling to the point where I felt it was dangerous to
| continue using the computer with the battery inside. I had
| a similarly bad experience with third party batteries on my
| iPhone 6S.
|
| I'm all for keeping things as user replaceable as possible,
| but personally I'm only using OEM batteries from now on.
| whatusername wrote:
| The hot swappable CD drive / HD bay / extra battery was pretty
| awesome in my memory. But I agree I'd be unlikely to use it
| now.
|
| I haven't used a thinkpad in the last 8 or so years -- but I do
| miss the keyboard on some of my early models (eg: t40p)
| Koshkin wrote:
| Running Slackware 15 on an old-ish Thinkpad. Everything just
| works. Life is good.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > The removal of the SD cards slot and Ethernet port has made
| recent ThinkPads a suboptimal choice for traveling photographers
| and some IT professionals.
|
| This might be true of the x series, but the T series still has an
| RJ45 and a microSD
| MayeulC wrote:
| Regarding the micro SD card reader, is that really a micro SD
| card slot?
|
| I think it's more likely a SIM card slot. Lenovo has included
| these for quite some time (under the battery in the T460, for
| instance). That's not something you change every day, so needing
| a pin to open it makes sense (plus, it prevents against theft
| somewhat). Also, a lot of modems do not like you removing it
| while they are powered on, so having the lid prevent its opening
| sounds like a feature.
| ylyn wrote:
| Apparently Lenovo has now made this a combination microSD and
| SIM card slot.
|
| Pretty ridiculous.
| snsr wrote:
| I thought this was sarcasm but it's true! Amazing design and
| not in a good way.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| X1 Extreme (atleast Gen 2) has a full size SD card slot.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| My 5th or 6th gen X1 Carbon has a microsd tray just like that
| in that same spot. I actually use it so I know it definitely is
| microsd.
|
| The utterly inconvenient access makes me think it must not have
| been intended for frequent swapping.
|
| IE, it's probably not there to support photographers or drone
| pilots or any other activity that involves frequently swapping
| cards, and so it's not _quite_ right to criticise it for being
| terrible at that. About like complaining that the trackpoint is
| terrible for CAD.
|
| I have no idea what it's intended function IS though either. I
| just put a big card in there just because I could, and used it
| as shared space that both linux and widows could both access.
| It wasn't necessary nor the best way to do that. That can't be
| what it was meant for either.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > it must not have been intended for frequent swapping
|
| Don't attribute to intent what can be adequately explained
| with LSD laced vodka enemas. For the last decade the design
| language of ThinkPads is an atrocious [and successful]
| process of making their users suffer.
| [deleted]
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| I also have an X220. An X220 Tablet though. An all-around
| embarrassing device. Sure, the form factor was correct, but
| everything else was not. Should've just returned it. The keyboard
| is not firmly seated inside and bounces around, resulting in
| audible vibrations. When switching to tablet mode, TrackPoint no
| longer deactivates. The screen moves it, moving the cursor in
| turn. 3G card was mediocre at best. The pen digitizer does not
| work properly at screen edges no matter how much I calibrate.
|
| Add to this all the general ThinkPad problems like locked-down
| Wi-Fi card slots, mediocre battery life and fans that are running
| all the time.
|
| I'm not sorry at all I jumped ship back then. I still use the
| Late 2013 MacBook Pro now. It's certainly not perfect but just so
| much better. But that's just for me.
| titzer wrote:
| I switched briefly to a Thinkpad from Macbook for about a year.
| It was all fine until the RAM started failing. No problem, just
| pop it open and find what kind of SIMMs it takes...oh, RAM
| soldered in. And now it's a brick.
| post_break wrote:
| I bet the screen protector on the X270 can be removed. I removed
| it on my X250 because of the stupid scratches.
|
| https://imgur.com/ZuK360I
|
| https://imgur.com/FNC1fhO
|
| https://imgur.com/wbJZKxQ
| asddubs wrote:
| I recently bought an E14, and it still does have an ethernet
| port. I've been happy with it, although I'm not too fussy about
| the keyboard compared to the old ones.
|
| >Keeping something as it is may not seem such a significant
| achievement. Still, under marketers' pressure backed by various
| polls and data (I imagine), Lenovo kept the signature part of the
| ThinkPad line. And I celebrated this decision of theirs with
| every model they released over these years.
|
| I am also very glad they kept the trackpoint, although I never
| use it, because I love having physical mouse buttons, and
| especially a middle mouse button for opening new tabs, which I
| use constantly (despite more and more fancy SPAs thinking that
| opening things in a new tab is not a necessary functionality for
| a website to have). I hate tap-to-click and drag and drop
| operations are also just a million times nicer with physical
| buttons
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| Every couple of weeks these come up. I am glad they do and eat
| them all up. :)
|
| Maybe the market research from posts like these are anecdotal,
| but it still screams that there is a market for old ThinkPad-
| style designs. Is this request too niche? I am not sure, but I
| would love to think that manufacturers should just see from these
| that good, old designs work well for people and people will want
| to buy those designs. I would and I would be excited over that.
| LNSY wrote:
| https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p...
|
| I've been thinking about getting this laptop. I am a little
| hesitant because it is far more of a project than other
| laptops, but it seems to give me that Thinkpad x200T vibe.
|
| I am a web dev, and I've been considering pairing this with an
| Apple Ipad as a sort of second screen / browser.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I have had the same thought when it comes to the case where I
| will need something for the future. The price is not a
| surprise for the amount of production for this. I am
| personally waiting to see what comes of the SoM being worked
| on to support 16gb.
| koiueo wrote:
| ThinkPad fan reflecting on a decade of his loyalty to the brand
| hughrr wrote:
| I've run at least one Thinkpad in parallel with a MacBook for the
| last 15 years.
|
| In 2020 I sold my last Thinkpad, an AMD T495s. The M1 MBA
| destroyed my tolerance for another Intel laptop entirely.
| taubek wrote:
| For me T460 is still the king. I like my new T15, but I miss
| things like two batteries.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Im on my t460 right now :) With Ubuntu I honestly don't see
| much drama. It kinda a bummer in some regards. It just keeps
| working so I have no good excuse after 5 years to get another
| laptop.
|
| I've broken it a few times dropping it. And being able to
| download the manual, order parts and then repair at home has
| been really nice. I hope lenovo understands that this is a big
| feature of thinkpads.
| taubek wrote:
| I was also looking bor replacement, but I just couldn't
| justify it to myself. With 16 gigs of RAM and 512G SSD it
| works like a charm. I think that the fan will be the first
| thing that I'll need to replace...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| My only complaint about the T460 is they have already
| discontinued replacement batteries.
|
| They are still available in the channel but it's hard to know
| whether you are getting the real thing or not.
| taubek wrote:
| In my country Green Cell batteries are pretty popular as
| replacement batteries. I can see that they still have T460
| batteries (https://greencell.global/en/search?controller=sear
| ch&orderby...).
| BeefWellington wrote:
| T470 was a beast for me with the 9-cell battery.
|
| I really wish manufacturers still understood there are people
| out there who don't mind a bit of extra weight or adjusted form
| factor for more battery. Sure, with new charging standards I
| can just use an external backup battery to charge the laptop
| but it's annoying to have another extra separate thing to carry
| around when it used to just be an optional part of the system.
| karussell wrote:
| I still like my T460 too, especially because Ubuntu works
| completely flawlessly.
|
| Also as I was able to buy a warranty for over 5 years where
| they came in my office and replaced stuff without shipping and
| long waiting :) Had to use this once after a year when the
| mainboard broke (cpu freezed)
|
| Battery time is still ~6h (bought the extra large second
| battery and was ~12h initially)
|
| The keyboard + display are great (the display is now after >5
| years a bit white in certain spots but nothing critical). The
| CPU speed isn't that great but ok. The sound is really really
| bad :)
| bluedino wrote:
| Loved my T460S but my T480 is a level above with the 4-core
| CPU, greater memory capacity, much improved screen
| dredmorbius wrote:
| For anyone who's _not_ watched the Louis Rossman rant (2014) on
| how Lenovo screwed the pooch on Thinkapds, _do_.
|
| https://yewtu.be/watch?v=doEZMNXz1JY
|
| Caution: harsh language and harder truths. All completely
| justified.
|
| I'd _love_ to know how this was received at Lenovo, because this
| should be part of every new hire 's onboarding.
| synergy20 wrote:
| Lenovo X1 Carbon is my favorite with Ethernet and Wifi and 14"
| screen, super light and battery lasts, good for travel and local
| development.
| petepete wrote:
| Mine too. Everything just worked perfectly with Fedora out of
| the box.
|
| I got the 4k one which in retrospect I'd switch for the 1440p
| (for battery life), but either way it's a pleasure to use.
| dynamohk wrote:
| Personally felt the quality go down. Had one around 2010 was
| great. Maybe should look into dells.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Wow that intro meme ha.
|
| I used to obsess over the Carbon X1 when it was new. I have a
| smaller Carbon now but man nice computers. I also like that I can
| take it apart pretty easily to replace stuff. The keyboard is
| nice too.
|
| Never got into the red mouse thing though.
| dynamic_sausage wrote:
| Some of the issues in the article seem to have been caused by the
| push to make laptops smaller: internal battery, fewer ports. A
| natural solution would be to change the series you use to a
| larger one -- e.g., go from X to T, etc.
|
| I owned T440s (note the "s" for slim version), but later switched
| to T490 exactly for this reason. The non-slim T490 is actually
| thinner than the T440s was, because of the miniaturization trend,
| and has all the right ports (alas, still no external battery).
| Absolutely no power, suspend, etc issues at all under Arch.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| One major complaint (of mine) is the small size if the arrow
| keys. Macbook pro is even worse with up/down keys smaller than
| left/right. I don't know why but they all keep a huge right shift
| key that I never use. They should cut it to half and give more
| spaces to the arrow keys.
|
| Sadly the new Macbook pro keeps the design. I'm getting sick of
| hitting page up/down accidentally when navigating code.
| cassandratt wrote:
| Pick up some Vim skills, your future self will thank you. Vim
| bindings are available in every editor worth using. You'll
| never touch your arrows again.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| I'd recommend you check again. Apple doesn't sell a laptop
| without an inverse-T arrow key layout.
| 5- wrote:
| the preference of older thinkpads is strong and common enough
| that there is even a cottage industry of custom motherboards with
| newer components made to fit older chassis, see e.g.
| https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/
|
| it looks like framework managed to do a fine macbook clone; what
| would it take them (or someone else) to clone thinkpad next?
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I hope so. I think there's plenty of people waiting for that,
| including me. A modern x220? Good keyboard, trackpoint, decent
| screen with good outdoors brightness, backlit keyboard, and
| good linux compatibility? I'm just dreaming, I know.
| caditinpiscinam wrote:
| I tried out a new thinkpad recently. I had heard, here and on
| other sites, that they're the best laptops for running linux, but
| I experienced a number of issues when trying to run recent
| versions of ubuntu and pop os, including:
|
| - Hotkeys, like brightness adjustment, not working on some
| versions
|
| - Wifi not working (I found a driver on github that I wasn't able
| to get working)
|
| - Really short battery life, even after fiddling with sleep mode
| in the bios
|
| - Choppy touchpad controls
|
| I might have had better luck with an intel model (this one was
| AMD), or with a slightly older model that's had more time to be
| tested and supported, but it definitely wasn't the "just works"
| experience I was hoping for
| fegu wrote:
| ThinkPadding for 22 years. From the A21p or A31p (I think that
| was my first, but it has been a while) to the Nano now. Thinkpads
| are not the same any longer. My nano spontaneously overheats and
| shuts down out of nowhere when Windows runs the built in
| antivirus scan for too long. I got the motherboard replaced but
| it did not fix the issue. But what else is out there if you need
| a stable solid workhorse? My only requirements these days is
| 16GB, 1TB and a beautiful display (waiting for affordable OLEDs).
| m_st wrote:
| Didn't read it all, but regarding the battery and sleep issue: I
| can totally relate to such issues with my Dell XPS 15 9550 (2015)
| and 9510 (2021).
|
| Windows has this setting "When I close the lid" which is set to
| "Sleep". In fact it should be renamed as "Drain the battery and
| heat the bag".
|
| Being a happy MacBook user since they were called PowerBook, I
| never ever had any such issue with an Apple laptop. Not even,
| when they were using the same Intel CPUs.
|
| Worse, some months ago I even found a Dell support forum post
| where they said, to not use sleep mode when putting your laptop
| away.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> I never ever had any such issue with an Apple laptop._
|
| There is just such an issue right now with macOS 12.2:
| https://www.macworld.com/article/610175/macos-monterey-12-2-...
|
| I currently have to shut down my Mac mini every night instead
| of putting it to sleep because it routinely crashes and reboots
| in the middle of the night, lighting up the room
| Robinxd wrote:
| Ironically, I have had the same experience with MacBook Pro
| 2017 model. It's got some other funky bugs too, but it's not my
| main driver either.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| With the current ACPI S0 implementation ("modern standby" in
| Microsoft parlance) there are a huge set of devices and events
| which can cause the system to wake. This is in theory a good
| thing, because it allows the system to perform a lot of
| background tasks while sleeping and allows "instant" resume in
| response to user input. It can cause a lot of frustration with
| "mystery wakes" though. I haven't found this to be especially
| common on my ThinkPads running Windows although it does happen
| from time to time, which I eventually tracked down to the
| Bluetooth controller causing a wake whenever my wireless
| earbuds connected. Under Linux it's been much more of a
| problem, presumably due to the Linux drivers having a
| poorer/less validated understanding of what various device
| events mean. A frustration is that Linux does not offer as good
| of tools to diagnose this as Windows does (powercfg). That said
| you can do a lot of tweaking of the Linux behavior using the
| acpi sysfs, and on my X1 running Fedora I ended up blacklisting
| just about every device from causing wake because the USB
| controller seemed to be generating almost constant mystery wake
| events.
|
| The short story is this: many devices are now active in a low-
| power state during sleep and can generate a huge variety of
| events that the OS is expected to receive and make a decision
| on. Sometimes the OS doesn't understand the event or there's a
| requirements issue (implementers did not understand/foresee the
| use case) and these can both result in the system waking for
| seemingly no good reason. For example, my issue with Linux
| seems to be the USB controller generating an event the driver
| did not understand or handle correctly. My issue with Windows
| seems to be more that a well-intentioned decision (newly
| connecting Bluetooth devices should wake up the system, which
| tends to make sense in the case of a mouse/keyboard) had an
| irritating implication in real-world use (BT headset that
| connects to multiple devices simultaneously would connect to
| and wake up my laptop when I was using it with my phone).
| Unfortunately the way events are implemented on Linux and I
| assume on Windows as well, there isn't really any support for
| "if the lid is still closed the system should stay asleep" and
| so once the system wakes up for an event, and there's no
| handler that causes it to go back to suspend, it tends to just
| sit there awake even though the lid is closed. There's no "new
| event" for the OS to handle since the lid state remains the
| same. I'm not sure if it's practical for the system to check
| the lid state in real-time instead of waiting for ACPI events
| about it.
|
| For what it's worth I'd say my touchbar MacBook Pro does this
| more often than my Windows ThinkPads do, to the extent that
| pulling it out of my bag and discovering that the battery has
| gone completely flat overnight is probably a weekly experience.
| I haven't put much effort into diagnosing this so I don't know
| if it's a result of some odd software I'm using or something.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Windows has this setting "When I close the lid" which is set
| to "Sleep". In fact it should be renamed as "Drain the battery
| and heat the bag".
|
| That's _still_ a thing? I thought they would have sorted that
| out a decade ago; my laptop from my first job (regular dell
| thing, I don 't remember) was cooking in the bag and that's
| been over ten years ago.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| As an elder, I can attest that 2.5 decades ago it all worked
| like a charm. Then millennials arrived.
| ps wrote:
| >> Being a happy MacBook user since they were called PowerBook,
| I never ever had any such issue with an Apple laptop.
|
| My early 2020 16inch required lots of tweaking to prevent
| complete discharge every night and battery is sub 7500mAh now.
| It still happens several times a year and I am not sure why. I
| am probably not paying over 4000 EUR next time. User since the
| 2006 MB Pro.
| mholm wrote:
| FWIW, I haven't seen this issue at all on M1 Macbooks. Used
| to happen once on a month on my Intels.
| altbdoor wrote:
| +1, received a Dell XPS 15 9500 for work, and it is horrible.
| Countless complains in the Dell forums, and still so many
| issues after all the updates.
|
| The whole situation really corrodes my trust in Dell.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Dell quality control is russian roulette but with half the
| bullets loaded.
|
| They consider an actually working laptop to be a premium
| feature reserved for the latitude business line.
| Octabrain wrote:
| I bought an XPS 17 9710 for my GF on Xmass. Horrible
| experience and definitely the last Dell laptop I get. From
| now on I will stick to MacBook pro's and Lenovo Thinkpads.
| canbus wrote:
| Don't get me started with the 9550...
| m_st wrote:
| Oh the 9510 also has its surprises. First the Microsoft
| bluetooth mouse constantly went sleeping for about 500ms when
| not moving it. This annoyed the hell out of me. After lots of
| research I found some guys recommending to disable all sleep
| features on all the drivers in the device manager. This sure
| fixed it. But now, I have the exact same issue with the
| internal track pad, when running on battery power!
|
| Meanwhile the MacBook Air M1 just works. For each and every
| feature.
|
| It's sad, but as a Windows Dev, the XPS15 still is a great
| machine. You just have to know and adapt to its bad parts.
| mcv wrote:
| I still don't understand how Windows could possibly have become
| so bad at sleeping. Both desktops and laptops have a tendency
| to wake up at weird times and then never go to sleep. This
| stuff used to work. What happened?
| hughrr wrote:
| Microsoft replaced QA with telemetry.
| pizza234 wrote:
| This is possibly the so-called "Connected Standby"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstantGo), an infamous
| Windows anti-feature.
|
| I believe, although I'm not 100% sure, that in addition to
| turning on the computer without the user consent, it also
| puts the machine in a strange state where it's neither on nor
| off.
|
| According to the spec:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstantGo, it's allowed to suck
| up to 7.5% of battery every day. As a matter of fact, my
| Surface device would lose more than 5% every day, and I'd
| find odd periods of wakeup in the sleep log (when the machine
| was supposedly fully shutdown).
| buran77 wrote:
| My old iMac was constantly waking from sleep for online
| tasks because of the (on by default) Power Nap feature
| introduced around the same time as InstantGo. By the time I
| paid any attention to it my HDD had ~500.000 head park
| cycles which also lead to its early demise. Ended up using
| it with an external SSD which was a massive boost in
| performance anyway.
| q3k wrote:
| The introduction of S0ix, a.k.a. pretend to sleep.
|
| Why? So that apps can communicate with the Internet while the
| machine is in sleep mode, or do periodic wakeups for other
| reasons. Another attempt to shoehorn the smartphone paradigm
| into desktops/laptops.
| walterbell wrote:
| The beatings will continue until telemetry and location
| data improve.
|
| Does S0ix-related heat increase or decrease when laptop is
| in a faraday bag?
| p_l wrote:
| "Modern Standby" requires that power draw (and thus
| thermals) is comparable or lower to S3.
|
| It's less about telemetry etc. (you could do it with age
| old ACPI timers), it's about people complaining laptop
| doesn't boot immediately from sleep when they open the
| lid - but also that on a system where power management
| support is heavily tested (read: not Linux) "Modern
| Standby" has less moving parts and is harder to break.
| p_l wrote:
| Modern Standby has less moving parts that S3 sleep (and
| IIRC also avoids certain security related issues)
| npteljes wrote:
| Microsoft is shifting to remotely managing your system. The
| technology itself works well, it's just what the software
| tells it to do.
| sundvor wrote:
| Windows desktop refuses to even let the monitors sleep if it
| detects eg game controllers such as Heusinveld Sprints
| (pedals).
|
| It's truly notoriously bad. I suppose it's designed that way
| to ensure a game won't black screen, but how hard would it be
| to make it a bit smarter? Ie when VSCODE or Terminal has
| focus, allow sleep.
| hollowdene wrote:
| I used to review laptops for a living and it's baffled me for
| a decade how Windows is still so bad at this. Last Windows
| laptop I had was an XPS 13 and I resorted to turning it off
| to avoid the "heat the bag" problem. M1 MacBook Air is
| basically the only laptop 95% of people should buy (assuming
| they can afford it)
| m_st wrote:
| I second the MacBook Air M1 and recommend it to about
| everyone that can run a Mac. What a great piece of
| hardware. Honestly it just works, is super fast and doesn't
| even have a fan.
| jseliger wrote:
| Long discussion of these issues here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952, but the short
| version appears to be that Intel removed "S3 Sleep" from
| recent chips, at Microsoft's behest, in favor of a mode that
| is supposed to be able to wake up while nominally sleeping in
| order to get emails, texts, and that sort of thing. Except
| this mode doesn't seem to work properly and instead seems
| implemented in such a way as to frustrate people into
| choosing AMD or Apple.
| smoyer wrote:
| We've got four X1 Carbon's in our house - the oldest is a gen2
| and the latest is a gen 9. They're all amazing but share the
| design quirk changes noted in by the OP. My biggest issue remains
| that the keyboard layouts are slightly different.
| loser777 wrote:
| A T420 was my daily driver through undergrad, and then collected
| dust during grad school when I was issued a Macbook. When I
| returned my Macbook I dusted it off and was surprised by how
| usable it was (and how usable and well-supported it was running
| Arch compared to debian in the early 2010s). I finally gave in
| and upgraded the memory (DDR3!) to 16 GiB recently, and am
| considering getting a third-party 9-cell battery, as my 9+ year
| old one has gotten long in the tooth (i3's battery "widget"
| reports ~70% fully charged).
|
| I dare say it's my most usable travel laptop outside of my work-
| issued Yoga, which it still trounces in terms of keyboard
| ergonomics. It absolutely dunks on the bargin-bin laptops I've
| tried out over the past few years, I think in part because of
| ergonomics but also because Arch on old (but well-supported)
| hardware feels snappier than Windows 10 on new (but low-cost)
| hardware.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| If you like t420 try the t420s. Same laptop but slimmer and
| makes it much more transportable. Still has ultra bay, great
| keyboard, and easy access to everything. I have 3 around the
| house for various family members and it works great :)
| zwog wrote:
| I t420s fell out of my opened backpack a couple of days ago.
| Not the first time it fell, once I even stepped on it - but
| after the last drop the display has some problems and i have
| to push on a certain point to get it working, which made me
| put it to it's well deserved retirement.[*]
|
| In need of an quick alternative I bought a Dell XPS 13 9343.
| I like this a lot - it has a way nicer display, the form
| factor is just great for my needs, build quality is good and
| even the keyboard feels right (missing a trackpoint tho).
| Unfortunately it supports Microsoft's "Modern Standy", which
| is a fancy name for s2idle - which just doesn't work using
| Linux, at least I couldn't get it to work . When in s2idle it
| looses power and does not reliably wake up, in s3 it goes to
| sleep but needs a hard reset to wake up.
|
| Waiting for my t470s now, as far as I know the latest
| Thinkpad generation stat supports classic s3 sleep.
|
| *: Actually it lives on as a small NAS/Homeserver. It even
| packs three disks (M2 SSD, HDD in the HDD slot and an
| Ultrabay-HDD adpter).
| paulmd wrote:
| haha, a number of years ago I stepped on my W510. It fell
| out of bed and under the covers without me noticing, it
| fell screen down and I stepped right on the display flat
| against the floor. I didn't put my full weight on it before
| I realized it was there, but I figured it was toast anyway,
| surprisingly it was fine!
|
| I really miss the Ultrabay as well. I did the same thing,
| used to use it for a second HDD for extra storage.
|
| Really though I miss the _old_ old days when you could get
| an ultrabay battery. What do I need in a laptop more than
| storage? Battery life. I had a Fujitsu Lifebook which had
| an "ultrabay" (their version of it, at least) and that was
| the feature I used most for it.
|
| It seemed to disappear all at once, I wonder if it was FAA
| regulations around flying with batteries that killed it or
| what.
| zwog wrote:
| > Really though I miss the old old days when you could
| get an ultrabay battery. What do I need in a laptop more
| than storage? Battery life. I had a Fujitsu Lifebook
| which had an "ultrabay" (their version of it, at least)
| and that was the feature I used most for it.
|
| Well, nowadays you can get a power bank with Power
| Delivery and charge your laptop via USB-C port
| petschge wrote:
| I have a X1 Carbon that is a few years old now.A couple
| of years ago I dropped it (lid closed) from about 2 feet
| up (70cm). And it hit the tiled floor, pointy corner
| first. I thought "welp here go $2000". But no! A 2x3 mm
| part of the black surface finish chipped of and I see the
| bare silvery metal now. Oh and the tile cracked.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Yoga, which it still trounces in terms of keyboard ergonomics
|
| As you seem to care about the keyboard, beware the T-14 laptops
| now. The keyboard looks like any other ThinkPad keyboard, but
| it is beyond cheap. The plastic feels paper thin, the
| keypresses are stiff then bottom out suddenly, and the keycaps
| wobble. I've seen better keyboards on Asus laptops.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Do your homework before ordering that battery, there is a ton
| of trash out there that is unsafe to use. Make sure there are
| quality cells in there (Samsung, Sanyo, LG) and that the
| original BMS is in there with all of the protections enabled.
| This is not something you want to take any chances with, and
| aftermarket counterfeit batteries with incredibly dangerous
| guts abound.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| A policy worth taking on anything handling electricity IMO.
| Cheap desktop PSUs and laptop/phone charging bricks are
| similarly dangerous, and although less commonly a problem
| cheap charging cables can be too. It's just not something
| that's a good idea to pinch pennies on.
| tharne wrote:
| Is there anywhere folks can find a list of vendors with
| decent aftermarket batteries?
| JamesAdir wrote:
| I've had good record with KingSener on AliExpress.
| ho_schi wrote:
| If the manufacturers only provide batteries for at least ten
| years, don't lock it with dongle chips and provide
| specification requirements for third parties.
|
| Well. Lenovo doesn't sell new batteries after fives years,
| uses dongle and doesn't provide any specs for third party
| manufacturers.
|
| It is not possible to get an battery for X220/230, T420/T430
| which is manufactured after 2017. At least I don't get anyone
| but Lenovo prints on the label "2020" :angrysmilie:
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've successfully refurbished batteries for items that were
| no longer supported, it's a bit of work but doable and dirt
| cheap ($5 / cell, and about an hour of work).
| metters wrote:
| How do you refurbish batteries? I mean, you are not only
| cleaning the outside, are you?
| jacquesm wrote:
| You open them up, carefully document how they are put
| together, remove the cells, put new cells in and then put
| the whole thing back together. I've done this now for
| laptops, cameras, a couple of drills and a vacuum cleaner
| and they all work 'better than new' because the new cells
| have far more capacity than the cells that were in there
| originally.
| deng wrote:
| > remove the cells
|
| I was under the impression that laptop batteries usually
| have on-board memory for holding charging parameters and
| such, and if you remove the cells, the memory contents
| gets lost and you cannot charge the battery anymore?
|
| EDIT: More questions: Do you need a spot-welder for this?
| And how do you get the battery pack open, since they are
| usually glued shut?
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I was under the impression that laptop batteries
| usually have on-board memory for holding charging
| parameters and such, and if you remove the cells, the
| memory contents gets lost and you cannot charge the
| battery anymore?
|
| Some do, most don't. I've yet to see one that was that
| tricky, though I would suppose there must be
| manufacturers paranoid enough to put that in.
|
| > Do you need a spot-welder for this?
|
| If you want you can buy cells with strips already spot
| welded on so not necessarily. But it certainly doesn't
| hurt, they're not expensive though. K-weld is one of the
| better ones.
|
| > And how do you get the battery pack open, since they
| are usually glued shut?
|
| That can be a bit tricky depending on the manufacturer
| they may have the whole rim glued shut or maybe only a
| few strategic spots. I've yet to find one that I could
| not open, but some do take a bit of patience. And once
| you know how a particular model works the next one
| usually goes ten times quicker.
|
| I realize that what is easy for me may be hard for
| others, but this being hacker news and the fact that
| there is a substantial intersection with the maker scene
| here I don't think such a subject is out of place.
| deng wrote:
| > I realize that what is easy for me may be hard for
| others, but this being hacker news and the fact that
| there is a substantial intersection with the maker scene
| here I don't think such a subject is out of place.
|
| Absolutely, your answers are much appreciated! I usually
| stay clear of fiddling with Li-Ion cells, as I have quite
| some respect for them, but I agree with you that
| replacing them yourself is probably safer than buying
| dubious clones.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| My X220 is like the grandpa's axe. Over the decade that I have
| owned it, I have replaced everything. What I like the most about
| that design is that it's easy to disassemble it to bits and
| reassemble it back non-destructively.
| Phenix88be wrote:
| Did you replace the screen somehow ? I have a X220, replaced a
| lot of stuff, but I barely use it today because the 1366x768
| screen is not enough anymore... At least a 1080p display is the
| bare minimum today.
| ct0 wrote:
| I use a dock to add a secondary display that goes directly
| above the laptop screen.
| post_break wrote:
| You can get a PEPE board and upgrade to a 1080p display. It's
| not super easy to solder on or source the screen though.
| snemvalts wrote:
| The biggest build quality problem on it (and x230) is the top
| bar made of plastic, at the top of the back of the lid, for
| antennas. It's held so weakly that even a 10-20cm drop will
| break the plastic clips.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Given it's housing the antennas, there's not much choice of
| what it can be made of. Cannot be very heavy too, so laptop
| wouldn't topple.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Probably storing them in near plastic of the screen frame.
| Newer thinkpads (x270 etc) don't have it. Nor do macbooks.
| blackaspen wrote:
| This is funny as I was just thinking to myself this morning, "My
| X13 is the worst Thinkpad I've ever owned". The S3/S5 issues
| aren't limited to Linux, they exist in Windows too. I've set my
| laptop to just hibernate whenever I close the display to get
| around the issue, though it's very annoying.
|
| I also made the mistake of optioning mine with the PrivacyGuard
| screen, but that's on me. I actually can't wait till I can
| justify upgrading.
|
| Performance is great on the "original" AMD one, 8 cores, 32GB of
| RAM!
| buovjaga wrote:
| We unbricked a Lenovo T570 once by flashing a working BIOS into
| the EEPROM chip. It was a rather nervewracking experience. I
| wrote down the steps in this Arch wiki article:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_ThinkPad_T570
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