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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
Where did you get the battery?
Lenovo no longer sells T480 batteries afaict, and 3rd party vendors are a (dangerous) crapshoot.
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.
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 ;)
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.
Yeah, it seems like the perfect device for me would be a X1 with current gen's AMD!
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.
Which generation is that T14s? I am in the market for a new one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
i’m sorry this really made me laugh - I hope she’s ok!
Yes she's fine thanks, one of the docs kindly dragged himself to the unit and plucked the thing out with some forceps :-)
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)....
>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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
I have not met a ThinkPad I didn't want to chisel the PgUp and PgDn keys off
Kind of on topic, but how is Thinkpad with Linux compares to macOS? Battery life, driver support, performance, security, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a framework desktop with a ThinkPad TrackPoint II keyboard ;)
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.
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.
> (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?
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.
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.
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
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
If those guys cared, we'd still have the great x220 keyboard.
the post 220 keyboards aren't bad imo, i loved the old style for sure
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bet you could upgrade the screen if you wanted to. I put a modern-ish 1440p IPS into my T420, looks fantastic.
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.
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.
My family has ThinkPad T series from my past work laptops or used bought ones as well.
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...
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
T16 and E16 are 16"
It's t14 that are 14", it's in the name.
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 !
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.
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.
The classic T4xx line had a larger brother that was 15.6", the T5xx.
How would you even use that in a standard airline seat?
Not everyone travels with their laptop on an airline.
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.
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.
> 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.)
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.
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.
Why do plastic case laptops warp in short order? I have never seen or heard about that.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I've never had a shell/case break. Why would I want to spend more?
6th gen X1 Yoga user here. My laptop has a full aluminum chassis (and I bought it three years ago).
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.
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.
the site really needs something like
img { max-height: 100vh !important; width: auto !important; object-fit: contain !important; }
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.
> 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.
Is this satire? A thinkpad light is somehow peak innovation?
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.
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
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.
I like the Thinkpads design. it's just timeless. However the bright red Lenovo logo flashing up while booting is very unaesthetic.
Had my lenovo thinkpad bricked by sleep mode in linux. Never again. Seriously overrated stuff. Get a laptop with 3:2 display instead.
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.
Which Thinkpad model is that?
A quick Web search shows examples from more recent models with any OS.
It still has issues with sleep still. It just borks the wi-fi now. Need a restart to use the internet again.
Doubt it was the thinkpad's fault. Sleep and bluetooth is still a shitshow on linux.
How did that happen?