[HN Gopher] ThinkNext Design
___________________________________________________________________
ThinkNext Design
Author : __patchbit__
Score : 218 points
Date : 2026-01-18 06:27 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thinknextdesign.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thinknextdesign.com)
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| I don't think I'd consider getting any laptop that isn't a used
| thinkpad at this point. I use my old ones as servers, which I
| affectionately refer to as the ThinkStack.
| TheRoque wrote:
| The thing that turns me off is that they are 14 inches for most
| of them. I personally cannot use my laptop in a serious way if
| it's below 16 inches
| esseph wrote:
| How would you even use that in a standard airline seat?
| Mashimo wrote:
| Not everyone travels with their laptop on an airline.
| Mashimo wrote:
| T16 and E16 are 16"
|
| It's t14 that are 14", it's in the name.
| TheRoque wrote:
| I was referring more to the classic T4XX line, like T480,
| T490 etc. I don't know what the new T14 or T16 are worth,
| but if they have equal quality I'm highly interested !
| Mashimo wrote:
| The name changed from t4xx to t14 GenX.
|
| I really like my T14.. Gen2? Some Intel 11th Gen cpu from
| a few years back. Still getting driver and firmware
| updates through regular windows updates, which is neat.
|
| Well, you can't have a t4xx or t14 with 16" display. It's
| like saying you want a apple pie, but you really don't
| like apple, and want banana.
| wpm wrote:
| The classic T4xx line had a larger brother that was
| 15.6", the T5xx.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| Make sure you get an AMD T16, the intel ones fuck up and
| get too hot and lag for me. That's up to T14 Gen 2, by
| the way, I have no intel knowledge after that.
| ilvez wrote:
| My family has ThinkPad T series from my past work laptops or
| used bought ones as well.
| lnfromx wrote:
| Oh yes I see that. I got my first ThinkPad last year and the
| only one that wasn't loaded with "AI" nonsense was a P1.
| Despite the enormous size and weight it's a similar experience
| than old ones gave me when I tried them. I guess thats the
| option for me as long as possible. At some point we have to
| switch to something newer anyway...
| kev009 wrote:
| He gives some interviews on this YouTube channel
| https://www.youtube.com/c/LaptopRetrospective that are
| interesting to hear about the backstory on some iconic ThinkPads.
|
| I had no idea David did the swooping mid-1990s AS/400s, I have a
| couple of those in my system collection and they definitely have
| an aesthetic.
| arendtio wrote:
| While I love the Laptops, I still wonder why the 'Precision
| Wireless Travel Mouse' has the attribute 'Precision' in its name.
|
| I never owned another mouse as laggy and imprecise. Its design is
| good, but its basic mouse functionality is just very bad.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Also, this is the most basic two-button mouse design, the same
| as all cheapo mice since the 90s, what is so innovative about
| it?
| arendtio wrote:
| A few positives from the design:
|
| - You can easily remove the upper part which is hold by
| magnets - It is very easy to clean that way - You can store
| the receiver inside the mouse, very handy for transport - It
| runs on AA batteries, which hold for a while, and you can
| easily replace them if you need to
|
| So the design definitely has some positives, but it isn't
| worth much if the mouse is laggy and imprecise (independent
| of the surface you use it on). And I am not talking about
| games or other real-time stuff, just too laggy for office
| work.
| abdulhaq wrote:
| When she was 4 my daughter managed to shove one of those trackpad
| caps up her nose. At first she was going for the clown look but
| ended up in frantic tears and a visit to A&E at 2am
| dandelionv1bes wrote:
| i'm sorry this really made me laugh - I hope she's ok!
| abdulhaq wrote:
| Yes she's fine thanks, one of the docs kindly dragged himself
| to the unit and plucked the thing out with some forceps :-)
| Haemm0r wrote:
| I like the Thinkpads design. it's just timeless. However the
| bright red Lenovo logo flashing up while booting is very
| unaesthetic.
| ezst wrote:
| My ThinkPad (T480s) is turning 8 this year, and only got its
| first battery replacement last month. I've been carrying it with
| me everywhere, on every single trip (office or holidays alike),
| on all continents. In that same timespan, I used up 3 backpacks
| and 2 suitcases along the same routes. All I want for its
| replacement is not to cost an insane amount of money because of
| the made-up by AI components shortage, and maybe now that I'm
| older I would prefer a smaller form factor like the X1.
| tasuki wrote:
| I've had a X1 since 2017. The CPU is pretty weak, but it's
| still solid overall. Still on the original battery too (yes the
| capacity has gone down from 57 Wh to 25 Wh). I've gotten other
| computers through work since, but the X1 is still my favourite
| laptop! In fact I'm typing on it now.
| nirui wrote:
| I'm curious how much slowdown a "weak" CPU can cause for
| real-life programming task, assuming the CPU is at least gen
| 4 Intel.
|
| I never used a mobile/power-efficient CPU myself, but I do
| use old CPUs. For example, this I5-4210M on my T440p, it's
| obviously not fast compare to newer ones, but when writing
| code on it (Go and a bit of Rust), I don't really feel a day-
| or-night level difference. Sure, it's slower, but not
| unbearably, in fact for most cases I barely notice it.
| nehal3m wrote:
| My boss used to have an apt sticker on his ThinkPad that
| said 'My other computer is a data center'. In my case
| that's also true; I just use local I/O for KVM but the heft
| is in whatever I'm SSH'd into.
|
| I daily a T480 at home and an X280 on the road. Swapped the
| batteries for fresh ones last week, they do around 6 hours
| on a charge for my use case and they run Linux so
| personally I don't see any reason to upgrade any time soon.
| nirui wrote:
| I don't remember the T480 I had was any slow, except of
| course when running games. So I do agree that the machine
| is still capable for most use cases today.
|
| But I also saw people (usually X series users)
| complaining on YouTube saying something like their
| "mobile" CPU is trash etc. My thinking is, if the
| slowdown is actually insignificant for real-life use
| cases, then I rather have longer battery life than better
| performance.
| physicles wrote:
| Desktop CPUs have a lot more punch than their equivalent
| mobile parts.
|
| My current dev machine is an X1 carbon from 2019. Compiling
| go code is slower than I'd like, some JavaScript-heavy
| websites like Jira take a couple extra seconds to load, and
| the GPU can drive a 4k monitor but it isn't snappy.
|
| Still, the form factor is perfect, and my next upgrade will
| be exactly the same machine but more powerful and with a
| brighter display with the same 2.5k resolution.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Put it this way, I only retired my 2013 T530 last year. I
| think 3rd gen i5 2C4T.
|
| The main limitation for my daily development was simply
| RAM. The system topped out at 2x8GB. Otherwise, I could run
| android studio and all my modern JetBrains stuff pretty
| well. Slow, but good enough.
|
| Compile times were of course terrible, but most of what I
| do is small embedded firmware type stuff so it never took
| _too_ long.
|
| But as siblings mention, for anything super heavy it was
| just an ssh terminal into a beefy server. At a certain
| point, two real cores is just not enough.
|
| I did upgrade it to the top-spec 4c8t processor right at
| the end, but it ran way too hot. Between keeping the system
| on the edge of thermal throttling and the _halved_ battery
| life, it was not worth the money :(
| dgxyz wrote:
| I went from a T490 to a T14 gen 3 (Intel). Was a nice upgrade.
| The GPU sucks, which I don't need or care about, but the rest
| is fine. I got a NOS one for a reasonable amount of money.
|
| The X1 looks nice but colleagues had thermal issues with theirs
| and the CPU is a bit limp so I skipped that particular problem.
| ezst wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like the perfect device for me would be a X1
| with current gen's AMD!
| vkazanov wrote:
| I wouldn't suggest going for a recent X1 as there are some
| driver issues on Linux.
|
| My current one is a Thinkpad 14s AMD. As somebody who had
| most smaller Thinkpads and Dells in the last 15 years, this
| is my favourite machine so far: great battery, a decent
| GPU, still a Thinkpad, perfect Linux support.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Which generation is that T14s? I am in the market for a
| new one.
| vkazanov wrote:
| I bought whatever was recent in may 2025: Thinkpad 14s
| AMD 64GB. My collegue bought one a month ago so it seems
| to be the latest one still.
| kombine wrote:
| I have T14s Gen 3 AMD for almost 2 years now, Linux
| support is great and it's the best laptop I've ever
| owned. It wasn't the latest model at the time of
| purchase, I got it off Ebay sale.
| nullhole wrote:
| Where did you get the battery?
|
| Lenovo no longer sells T480 batteries afaict, and 3rd party
| vendors are a (dangerous) crapshoot.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| I got an extended battery at Microcenter on clearance for $5
| last year. Best Microcenter find ever.
|
| My previous one came from ebay. As long as you don't buy one
| that's suspiciously cheap you should be good. Spend more than
| you think it's worth.
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| I guess you spent x000's on your thinkpad but not anywhere near
| the same amount on luggage.
|
| You can absolutely get 'buy it for life' backpacks and luggage
| for a few $000
|
| https://www.briggs-riley.com/collections/carry-on-luggage still
| have a great repair and warranty deal for example.
| leipie wrote:
| I have gone through quite a few over the years. The oldest I
| still have are a W530 and X230 Tablet. The former I just
| reinstalled with Gentoo for one of my kids. Still very usable.
| The keyboard and trackpoint is very enjoyable, better than
| later ones. My latest are an AMD X13 gen 4 and a ThinkPad
| TrackPoint Keyboard II for the other devices with inferior
| keyboards ;)
| jas39 wrote:
| Had my lenovo thinkpad bricked by sleep mode in linux. Never
| again. Seriously overrated stuff. Get a laptop with 3:2 display
| instead.
| sokz wrote:
| It still has issues with sleep still. It just borks the wi-fi
| now. Need a restart to use the internet again.
| Mashimo wrote:
| How did that happen?
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Which Thinkpad model is that?
|
| A quick Web search shows examples from more recent models with
| any OS.
| imran0 wrote:
| Doubt it was the thinkpad's fault. Sleep and bluetooth is still
| a shitshow on linux.
| microtonal wrote:
| Unlikely that it is actually bricked. I had an issue with the
| T14 Gen 1 AMD that if the battery was fully drained by S3
| sleep, I couldn't charge it with the Lenovo charger anymore.
| However, using a MacBook charger it charged fine.
| dgxyz wrote:
| I rather liked the T-series (had quite a few!). But Lenovo are
| really running out of good will as far as I am concerned. They're
| riding the brand to destruction. Had some serious problems
| recently including one brick and one out of warranty battery
| turning up completely dead. The latter was an absolute nightmare
| to sort out resulting in a chargeback in the end.
|
| I've taken to just buying multiple 2-3 year old "tested" units
| again (plenty of NOS ones out there) and keeping them alive via
| ebay which is what I was doing around the X201 era. Same with the
| desktops - mine is a 2019 M720T ThinkCentre that cost me $150
| equiv a couple of months back (before the RAM pricing went
| mental)
|
| I had a brief affair with Apple, culminating in a fairly nice M4
| MacBook Pro, but quite frankly it scares me carrying that around
| and I really do not like Tahoe (Sequoia was fine). Back to Debian
| stable on the T14 gen 3 it is...
| kombine wrote:
| I also have T14s Gen 3 (AMD) and to me this is a pinnacle of
| laptop design. Latest Fedora KDE edition runs buttery smooth on
| it.
| flurb wrote:
| As much as I love the old thinkpads, the T540p was my last. The
| case being entirely plastic means it will eventually start
| warping, motherboard included, in short order turning your
| expensive device into a paper weight.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Why do plastic case laptops warp in short order? I have never
| seen or heard about that.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| It is not so much 'plastic' but 'flexible plastic' and the
| lack of a stiffening internal frame which causes problems.
|
| I've seen a few 'consumer' laptops - HP DV6000, several Acers
| - go bad this way with parts on the board loosening. What
| these models had in common was that none of them had a stiff
| inside frame but consisted of a plastic bottom on which the
| guts were screwed down and onto the back of which the screen
| hinges were mounted with 2-3 screws each. This was capped
| with a plastic top into which the keyboard was mounted. With
| all parts removed the top and bottom shell are quite flimsy
| so any stiffness in the finished product depends on all parts
| being screwed down tightly. Now add those screwed-down hinges
| on the back which make the thing flex every time the screen
| is opened and closed, lift the thing using one hand every now
| and then which causes it to flex as well and you have a
| recipe for loosening parts - especially BGA components - on
| the mainboard.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > HP DV6000, several Acers
|
| Yes, I also have seen it on laptop from that area. Often
| the hinges.
|
| Never on thinkpads though. Also not on modern "plastic"
| thinkpads, people in the office walk around with them only
| holding at the screen.
| captain_coffee wrote:
| Has any of the newer ThinkPad models been upgraded to use a metal
| case or they are still made out of plastic? Asking as that is the
| main deal-breaker for me
| jeswin wrote:
| I've been a ThinkPad user forever, and I wouldn't buy another
| one if they "upgraded" to metal like everyone else. If I were
| to guess, most serious ThinkPad users would want the current
| shell, the dated appearance, and the keyboard to not change
| much or at all.
| captain_coffee wrote:
| Any particular reason for avoiding the metal cases? I was
| under the impression that a metal case - making the laptops
| more durable and resistant to potential damage - would be a
| desirable thing.
| jeswin wrote:
| Personally I think hard plastic (like on ThinkPads) is more
| resistant to damage than metal cases. Also, the textured
| surface is less slippery. And - ThinkPad repair (especially
| old models) is usually cheaper because businesses by so
| many of them.
| mft_ wrote:
| It's common that the _right_ plastic can be more durable
| and resistant to damage (up to a point) than metal - the
| right plastic doesn't show small marks as clearly as metal,
| and for larger impacts (again, within reason) plastic
| flexes, absorbs energy, and returns to its original shape,
| while metal dents and bends.
| zwaps wrote:
| The internal structure has been metal since a long time
| afaik
|
| The outside is a very durable rubber material. Certainly
| more durable than my Macbook Pro
| wpm wrote:
| Imagine you drop your laptop from a standing height onto a
| hard surface.
|
| Metal will bend and deform. Dent.
|
| Plastic will yield, then crack.
|
| You can then replace the cracked component, because the
| plastic took the vast majority of the force so the metal
| frame on the inside that holds everything together is fine.
| Same way you have squishy muscle to absorb impacts that
| might break your bones. Same way cars have crumple zones.
|
| I've been a Mac user primarily for 20 years. I've had or
| used extensively every generation of PowerBook and MacBook
| since the G4. I have two Thinkpads (T420, A485) and they
| both feel as solid as anything I've had from Apple, except
| when my MacBook Air slid off my couch onto its back corner,
| it misaligned the lid permanently, and my Thinkpads
| bounced.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| My aluminum X13 has taken that sort of fall, all that
| happened was it got a small abrasion on the corner it
| landed on. I know of a T14 which took a similar fall and
| did not survive. I think with either plastic or metal,
| that sort of accident is a matter of luck, exactly how it
| hits the ground, and if it was open or closed.
| esseph wrote:
| I've never had a shell/case break. Why would I want to
| spend more?
| ofalkaed wrote:
| They have some metal cased models, I am currently on an
| aluminum cased X13. There are a few others (or atleast were)
| but don't recall which.
| teknopaul wrote:
| I read somewhere that in Shenzhen you can get metal thinkpad
| clones with any modern hardware you like, made to order, one at
| a time for a resonable price.
|
| Not sure if it still exists
| LorenDB wrote:
| 6th gen X1 Yoga user here. My laptop has a full aluminum
| chassis (and I bought it three years ago).
| _blk wrote:
| Me too, don't like it though. The x1 carbon felt sturdier.
| The keyboard is average and I already had to replace the
| touchscreen twice on warranty. Just went out while sitting on
| the desk.. Battery is OK even after 5 years of almost daily
| use (I keep it at 80%). The flip feature is cool but I
| honestly haven't used it as much as I thought I would.
| Probably used the pen more to sign stuff. As a coder, the x
| series is probably the better choice. I've owned X and T
| series laptops over the years and one HP that was somewhere
| in the middle of the X range happiness wise.
| leipie wrote:
| I have had generations of ThinkPad, since the x30 series. And
| the older older all had a very stiff metal (magnesium) frame as
| a core and usually a metal lid. Nowadays they went to very
| stiff plastic and carbon to save weight and thickness I guess.
| But they are much more portable because of this. I think Apple
| patented the "unibody design" at the time btw. The current
| company macbook pro I use for work is very heavy compared to
| other devices, because of all the metal and glass. It is quite
| a lot to carry around.
| Bridged7756 wrote:
| I don't think there's a sexier laptop design than the Thinkpad'.
| I've tried other manufacturers, a M2 Mac, Dell, HP, yet something
| always pulls me back to ThinkPads, even if the recent versions
| aren't the powerhouse the 4xx versions were. The black and orange
| combination just has something so alluring. That and also the
| flexibility of the warranty/support if you buy used. I've
| probably owned over 7 ThinkPads so far, which is a lot to me, I'm
| not that old. Many of these were sold or died, but I still keep
| my old T530 which is now a media server and it's a plan replacing
| my Latitude with a T14.
| 7bit wrote:
| Lenovo is dead to me. I have nothing but issues and I'm not
| alone. We have a fleet of around 3000 X1E, X1C and T480s. The USB
| port regularly craps out not sending the display signal to the
| monitor so my co-workers regularly have to restart their Lenovo
| after they go to standby. This is super disruptive, especially
| for our developers. In some cases, connecting a display even
| causes blue screens. (All our monitors are Lenovo Think visions,
| too...)
|
| I reported this issue to Lenovo and was stuck in the typical
| service desk loop of hell. Once I escalated the issue with our
| Lenovo representative the issue got some traction, but there
| wasn't any real progress for months and the troubleshooting
| remained nothing but superficial. Not a single expert got in
| touch with us to get some _real_ and _in-depth_ hardware
| debugging logs or whatever you need to truly analyse the hardware
| faults.
|
| Ultimately, my employer decided to stop follow up on that with
| Lenovo and to just deal with it. We continue to buy these crappy
| laptops and monitors despite all the issues they cause us and
| shove the money down Lenovo throats, like any real company would.
| /s
| nehal3m wrote:
| I managed some 200 ThinkPad branded laptops around 2018-2020
| and that era had issues with Thunderbolt firmware. I believe
| something wrote to it's memory that was meant as WORM storage,
| breaking things eventually. I went around all the T480's to
| update the firmware. In my experience the docks were
| craptacular but the laptops were pretty solid.
| arianvanp wrote:
| I used my ThinkPad T430s for 12 years. I got it second hand from
| a developer I looked up to when I was in college and it carried
| me through a large part of my career. Loved that machine to
| death.
|
| When I finally replaced it with a Framework a few years back I've
| regretted every second of it.
|
| The ThinkPad still lives. I refurbished the batteries and slapped
| ChromeOS Flex on it and donated it to a Ukrainian refugee who
| needed a Chromebook for school. It'll probably live another 10
| years.
|
| I loved that thing to death. And I'm just happy it is still being
| used.
| applied_heat wrote:
| I still have two 2013 era t430s, one with windows 7 and one
| with windows 10. When browsing the web they barely feel any
| slower than my corporate supplied t14 gen 2 or p1 gen 6 both
| with windows 11 now. I guess that's the price of security.
| netule wrote:
| I still use my old T420, though less than I used to.
| Coincidentally, the RAM died this week, but a $30 investment
| later, and it lives again. At this point, I think I've repaired
| or replaced every single swappable component aside from the
| display.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm using my ThinkPad T520 daily driver right now.
|
| With its non-chiclet keyboard, I type 12+ hours every day,
| never any discomfort.
|
| Last year, I bought a late-model ThinkPad, to experimentally
| try replacing the T520. So I could have some local GPU compute,
| and not have to stockpile dwindling rare high-spec replacement
| units, in my minimalism lifestyle. But I haven't yet felt
| motivated to try out the new one, and see whether I can move to
| a not-as-good keyboard layout and a suspicious key action.
| kiddico wrote:
| I went through an odd series of emotions reading this lol.
|
| ChromeOS made me throw up a bit but the recipient made me
| smile. May it serve them well.
| vinc wrote:
| I went from a X200 to work on my hobby OS 5 years ago, to a T440p
| with 16 GB of RAM for my daily computing, then upgraded to a T480
| that I could fit with 64GB of RAM, and I finally added a X270 for
| a more compact form when I'm outside.
|
| They were all very inexpensive due to their age (when RAM was
| still cheap) and I'm really happy about them, I work from a
| console and a browser, they are perfect for my usage. I wouldn't
| use any other kind of laptop.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| I've been using Thinkpads exclusively from 2005 or so. My first
| was a T40 I got from work. Then I got a T42 of my own. I used it
| heavily till the fan gave out. After that, I got an X200 which I
| used for a long time. The keyboard got damaged because of a
| spill. I replaced it but somehow, the motherboard got shorted out
| and it died. I then bought a second hand X240 (roughly 2013) and
| used it as my primary machines. Replaced the battery (twice),
| fan, hand rest. And it's still running. My kids use it to play
| some simple games. My main machine right now is an X1 carbon
| (which I'm not really happy with compared to the others but it's
| okay for now).
|
| I used a Macbook for about 2.5 years in between. Didn't like it
| (hardware was decent. Software was terrible). I also bought a
| Dell latitude (which was okay and is being used now as headless
| machine at my workplace for tinkering).
|
| But my primary machine is a Thinkpad and I don't expect to see
| that changing in the near future.
| keyle wrote:
| > (hardware was decent. Software was terrible)
|
| I'd be interested to hear which software was terrible on mac
| and what was the better alternative on your side of the fence?
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| Not original poster, but in my experience Excel on the Mac is
| a God-awful piece of software. It's like Excel-lite, and that
| just doesn't work for what I need. ymmv of course, depending
| on what _you_ need.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I appreciate all the innovations that him and his team brought to
| the ThinkPad, since this is my main set of laptops.
|
| Lenovo, on the other hand, has been a hit or miss for awhile. I
| had a T570, which was horrible; one problem after the next. It's
| just a source of parts now. There are some design issues with the
| T480 (no center screw in the front/bottom). Also with the T480
| is, what it seems to be, the slightly flaky USB-C connectors. The
| external keyboard (non-bluetooth), while very useful for 2 years,
| has always been a struggle with the flimsy micro-usb, leaving me
| to hack that. But now, I somehow now lost an important key on it,
| I just gave up and bought a nice Tex Shinobi. The only stable-ish
| one is the one I am on now, a T470p. It's not been perfect, but
| it's the best designed TP I had (my T430s is overall good, except
| for battery power, but the internals for those old machines are a
| chore to get through.) I have a P14s at work. It's OK, but
| nothing to write home about.
|
| If all these TPs die, and Framework has a trackpoint version +
| delivers to my country, I would like to get that instead.
| imiric wrote:
| IMO the ThinkPad brand died after IBM sold its PC division.
| Lenovo has kept it alive because it is a cash cow, but the
| machines have shoddy build quality and are ludicrously
| overpriced.
|
| My previous X1 Extreme Gen 1 (2018) had annoying coil whine and
| screen backlight bleed. One of the key caps broke off after a
| couple of years. Eventually I ended up doing a full keyboard
| and battery replacement.
|
| My current X1 Carbon Gen 13 is nice and light, has no coil
| whine, but it's still made from cheap plastic. Considering it's
| a $2k+ machine, it sure doesn't feel like it.
|
| In comparison, ThinkPads from the IBM era were built like
| tanks. Still plastic, sure, but they felt solid, and were
| reliable workhorses for years.
|
| At this point the only thing keeping me on ThinkPads is the
| TrackPoint, but since trackpads are decent on Linux nowadays, I
| think I'm ready to finally ditch the brand. Some of the new
| Dell and HP machines look interesting. Frameworks seem nice,
| but I've read many issues about their build quality, and
| they're not cheap either.
| esseph wrote:
| Thinkpad T or X series had always been the best Linux laptops
| I've ever had. All of the hardware has always Just Worked,
| they have a nice selection of bios-level security features,
| and the build quality has always been just fine. Cases /
| keyboards / track point / touchpads never failed after 6-8y
| of owning each.
|
| Very happy with them.
| leipie wrote:
| I have a framework desktop with a ThinkPad TrackPoint II
| keyboard ;)
| commandersaki wrote:
| Is this satire? A thinkpad light is somehow peak innovation?
| kev009 wrote:
| It's a portfolio, the guy did things that shipped in millions
| of units.
|
| It was a good design, in critical environments small goose-neck
| lights are typically used, even if the buttons and indicators
| are backlit. I still prefer it to backlit keyboards which, with
| decreasing thickness, increasingly compromise the quality of
| the keyboard (I have tested this with later chicklet models
| running through all available keyboards for a few era
| ThinkPads). Having a small amount of ambient light is easier on
| the eyes, especially the yellow-shift on the X40, and you can
| run the screen at minimal brightness to increase battery life
| and whatever health benefits this all has.
| egeozcan wrote:
| the site really needs something like
|
| img { max-height: 100vh !important; width: auto !important;
| object-fit: contain !important; }
| randoments wrote:
| I had a thinkpad x1 carbon. Amazing machine, i liked how sturdy
| and lightweight it was. Plus, i loved playing with the trackpad
| cap during boring meetings.
|
| Only downside was the cooling: the fan was constantly spinning
| and producing noise akin to a plane taking off.
| ost-ing wrote:
| I switched to a T480 from a crappy macbook pro 2017. I enjoyed
| the switch to use linux fulltime but ultimately I was let down by
| the Intel processor that would throttle very badly. Compiling
| code was a nightmare. Ive since switched back to the M1 macbook
| pro which I plan to keep as long as possible and probably switch
| to linux when macos inevitably decides my hardware is too old to
| support. I would love to have a non-apple future, though.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I have a x230 at hand, mainly to quickly diagnose my car. I
| bought it used some years ago, including the dock, and I still
| love it. Sure, resolution is limited, and so is the power. But it
| gets the job done, and also has this useful thinklight on top of
| the bezel, which helps reading printed stuff in the dark. I'll
| hold on to it as long as I can.
| wpm wrote:
| I bet you could upgrade the screen if you wanted to. I put a
| modern-ish 1440p IPS into my T420, looks fantastic.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Yes, there is a full-hd add-on available. Or, better, was,
| because it's out of stock. But the schematics are available,
| so I could design my own board.
| hopelite wrote:
| What this brought to mind for me is that you are quite literally
| at the mercy of a different company when you do not control your
| OS as a computer/server company. All the wonderful design makes
| no difference when you're at the mercy of the likes of
| Microsoft/Windows.
|
| Inversely, I am convinced that is largely what has made Apple so
| successfully at the core, controlling the OS did not limit them
| to all the technical reasons that, e.g., windows OS based
| scrolling and the track pads were/are so horrible, resolution
| limitations, and inconsistent design and styling of the OS that
| subordinated the value or beauty of any hardware design to the OS
| level that users interacted with... subordination to Microsoft.
|
| It's essentially unconscionable that they likes of IBM, Dell, HP,
| etc did not get together and at the very least develop their own
| OS and also aggressively counter the de facto monopoly
| stranglehold of Windows on government, which then caused the
| domination among corporations.
|
| Similarly unconscionable is also the European failure and
| subordination to the USA/Microsoft by not fostering at least an
| alternative to Windows that its corporations and governments can
| operate on. There has been nothing but talk and tiny little
| forays into adopting open source, but absolutely nothing that
| could even rise to being a real alternative to Windows or even
| MacOS.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > the European failure and subordination to the USA/Microsoft
| by not fostering at least an alternative to Windows that its
| corporations and governments can operate on. There has been
| nothing but talk and tiny little forays into adopting open
| source, but absolutely nothing that could even rise to being a
| real alternative to Windows or even MacOS.
|
| Yet. The current US 'situation', combined with US tech spying
| means those little forays are getting seriouser and seriouser.
| It's going to be somewhat slower due to languages, and
| induvidual governments wanting 'their' version (of spying on
| their populations), but the beginnings are begun.
| worldsavior wrote:
| Kind of on topic, but how is Thinkpad with Linux compares to
| macOS? Battery life, driver support, performance, security, etc.
| echelon wrote:
| I miss the M-series silicon, but plain old Ubuntu runs like a
| charm on Thinkpads. I much prefer the Ubuntu UX and native
| Linux environment.
|
| Battery life is slightly worse, driver support is perfect -
| every peripheral I've tried is perfect, performance and
| security are top-notch.
|
| My two complaints are battery life and compiling Rust code
| taking a bit longer. But everything else is better on Thinkpad.
|
| I use a Thinkpad and MacBook Pro interchangeably.
|
| Note: I use an X1 Carbon, so that's more like a MacBook Air.
| They're not 1:1 and my complaints are partly due to my choice.
| megous wrote:
| Cheapish (~$1000) thinkpad E14 gen7 (AMD) variant has battery
| life of >24h (reading/typing in vim). At least according to
| power meter, not that I'd read or type that long.
|
| And everything works on it on Linux, even obscure things like
| fingerprint sensor, various bizarro Fn key combos, all the
| various HW accelerations (video encode/decode via vaapi), etc.
| I didn't find anything that would not work.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I have a personal T470 with linux and a Macbook for work.
| Battery life is worse on the Thinkpad, and I have a 5 year
| older CPU so performance is lower. Everything else is better. I
| feel like I did something really bad in my last life to be
| cursed to work with the MacOS UI everyday.
| schmichael wrote:
| Absolutely nothing beats the integration of Apple software and
| hardware. As it should be because they don't give you another
| option! You can't run Apple software on anything else (without
| hacks), and you can't run anything else on Apple hardware
| (without significant effort and sacrifice in functionality).
| This is Apple's whole design philosophy and value prop, and
| they are essentially unbeatable at systems integration.
|
| This deep software/hardware integration means Apple absolutely
| destroys everyone at battery life. No contest. If you want to
| optimize for battery life, Apple is the choice.
|
| The deep integration also makes Apple's security quite good.
| Obnoxiously so as they make even common operations like
| downloading software off the web take extra steps.
|
| That being said as soon as you stray outside of a pure Apple
| ecosystem, Linux wins in my experience. Plugging a Logitech
| mouse into my MacBook prompted me to install Logitech
| _keyboard_ drivers... Not only was the device type wrong but
| drivers?! ...for a simple input device?! I haven 't had to
| worry about printer, mouse, keyboard, webcam, usb mic, drawing
| pad, etc drivers in years. Simple devices almost universally
| Just Work in Linux without having to install or configure
| anything. It's mind boggling when I touch Windows or macOS and
| am greeted with _proprietary_ drivers for something like a
| basic laser printer.
|
| But there's plenty of counter-examples: Nvidia requires their
| proprietary driver to fully utilize their hardware, but the
| driver is much better than it used to be. My understanding is
| that no one on Windows really enjoys dealing with Nvidia
| drivers either, so it's probably a similar scenario.
|
| At the end of the day I use both Linux and macOS regularly and
| prefer Linux overall. My Macbook Air's battery life and lack of
| fans does make it unbeatable for actual lap-top computing, and
| when I want to look and sound good on a Zoom call I can always
| count on its builtin camera and mic. So I basically use my
| Macbook as a laptop form factor iPhone or iPad, which I think
| is Apple's intent and fills a niche for sure.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| When it comes to laptops, I've primarily used MacBooks but really
| miss the excellent keyboard and TrackPoint on ThinkPads. Nothing
| seems to comes close.
|
| My solution was to buy a Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II
| and pair it with my MacBook over Bluetooth. An added benefit is
| that I can keep the MacBook on a stand, avoiding the wobble you
| get when typing directly on it.
|
| I also use an Apple Trackpad alongside this setup, since I find
| it hard to beat for certain tasks.
| WillAdams wrote:
| For the real background here see:
|
| _Thinkpad: A Different Shade of Blue_ by Deborah A. Dell and J.
| Gerry Purdy
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad
|
| I've always regretted not getting one of the tablet Thinkpads,
| and it kills me that the Lenovo Yogabook 9i is two technologies
| away from being perfect for me (needs to have a Wacom EMR stylus,
| and to have a Trackpoint)....
| ofalkaed wrote:
| >Lenovo Yogabook 9i
|
| I am just waiting for linux to get sorted out on it and then I
| will buy. It might not be perfect but it looks pretty great. I
| mainly wish it had a headphone jack, bluetooth is not great for
| working on music.
| WillAdams wrote:
| The lack of a headphone jack is a good point --- I'll be sad
| when my dedicated MP3 player quits working and needs to be
| replaced.
| fr3772 wrote:
| I had 3 different Thinkpads... The first went down after 1 year
| with a headcrash. 1. HDD headcrash in my life. The second one was
| delivered with bad RAM. Support denied help because of wrong FRU
| Number. The whole thing went back to the dealer. The third one
| died in a loud bang of the power supply and died with it. About
| design: Placing the Ctrl key not on the outside drove me crazy.
| The trackcap was horribly to use - an example of bad design par
| excellence. The touchpad was bad in all 3 laptops.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| This reminds me of the time I went to a church dinner with my
| father.
|
| Everything was fine, but then each person was asked to stand
| and briefly mention something they were thankful for. About
| half way through one of the oldsters mentioned their health
| problems - "I'm thankful they aren't worse" - sigh. Every
| person after that had to list every health problem they had,
| and every health problem everyone in their family had. It took
| like an hour and we were waiting to eat.
| neilv wrote:
| > _The first went down after 1 year with a headcrash. 1. HDD
| headcrash in my life._
|
| What HDD make? ThinkPads of 2.5" HDD era usually have cushioned
| drive caddies, and (IIRC) some head-parking when the laptop
| detected shock.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1hp1cq6/active_pr...
|
| > _The second one was delivered with bad RAM. Support denied
| help because of wrong FRU Number. The whole thing went back to
| the dealer._
|
| Did you get it sealed from the Lenovo factory, or could your
| dealer have replaced the factory RAM? (That could also explain
| "wrong FRU number".)
|
| > _The third one died in a loud bang of the power supply and
| died with it._
|
| Bummer. Do you recall the model or design?
|
| I once had a Lenovo AC adapter eventually go bad (out of buying
| and using dozens of them), and fortunately didn't take the
| laptop with it.
|
| And I once ripped the laptop-side connector off an old one that
| I was abusing pretty hard, and then tripped over the cable (but
| laptop was fine).
|
| Other than that, the rest of them have worked great, even some
| 20 year-old ones I still have and use.
|
| > _The trackcap was horribly to use - an example of bad design
| par excellence._
|
| The TrackPoint? Could you say specific criticisms of the
| design?
|
| I consider it mostly a personal preference thing. A lot of
| people love TrackPoint, and consider it a hard requirement for
| any laptop they'll personally use. A lot of other people prefer
| trackpads, and have more options for laptop brands.
|
| (Disclosure: I know the inventor of TrackPoint, but that's not
| why I use it.)
| faxmeyourcode wrote:
| I ran a T450s all through college. My late grandmother gifted me
| the money after high school graduation to buy my first laptop.
| I'd learned to code on the old gateway pentium 4 (Windows XP)
| machine with 512 MB of RAM from the factory. I'd resurrected it
| as a teenager and completely gutted it. I scoured the web
| endlessly looking for something that was _not_ touchscreen (hard
| to find at the time), linux-compatible, and rugged enough for the
| neglect of a college student's backpack.
|
| It was a linux user's dream. I swapped out the spinny HDD with an
| SSD. It had hotswappable batteries, a spill resistant keyboard
| with a drain system, and I ran every linux distribution I could
| get my hands on, eventually settling on the xfce flavor of
| Ubuntu.
|
| I still have that machine, and will keep it for my son when he's
| older. I plan to replace the battery and SSD with something more
| reliable. These days I use an m2 macbook air for portability...
| but that thinkpad is still something I will treasure for years.
| roughly wrote:
| If this is spiking some nostalgia for anyone, there's a bit of a
| cottage industry in modernized motherboards for old thinkpads -
| eg, https://www.tpart.net/about-x210ai/
| agumonkey wrote:
| I used to be a thinkpad head, less so these days, but even good
| dell with trackpoint don't have the same feel. For people like me
| it does affect my use and joy. Also build quality is great, I
| don't think I threw out a single thinkpad in 20 years...
|
| If the thinkpad team and lenovo guys read this, keep it as long
| as possible
| mhb wrote:
| If those guys cared, we'd still have the great x220 keyboard.
| agumonkey wrote:
| the post 220 keyboards aren't bad imo, i loved the old style
| for sure
| binarygit wrote:
| I sold my camera to buy a used T750s for my first programming
| internship, I have it still and use it sometimes. I bought
| another one of those again used and use that as my homeserver.
|
| I can really tell the difference when I type on the mac and on my
| thinkpad. I think the thinkpad's keyboard is wayy better
| keytravel
| paul_h wrote:
| I have not met a ThinkPad I didn't want to chisel the PgUp and
| PgDn keys off
| arximboldi wrote:
| I moved to a Framework laptop a few months ago, but I do miss the
| design and keyboard of the X1 carbon that had been serving me
| since 2017...
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