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ThinkPad X1 Carbon

www3.lenovo.com

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Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#341

Post by mattlevan »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #302
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I want to be excited by a good non-Apple laptop. But they're all just so terribly designed. They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere. I had a T530 for a few years at my first job and just hated it. It had fantastic specs but it felt awful and unreliable and like I had to babysit it. I got a 2015 MBP to replace it after IT damag…

I've had the new MacBook Pro 15" with Touch Bar for several days now. I'm returning it. The Lenovo is what I really wanted, but it doesn't run MacOS. This Touch Bar is the worlds worst idea. I literally now have to look at the keyboard to type again, like I'm 10 years old. I haven't looked at a keyboard in decades. The machine is going back this week. What a disaster. And, don't tell me to learn to use Caps Lock for…

Agreed. It's really disappointing they didn't simply offer the TB as an option on the 15".

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#342

Post by hedora »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #134
mactunes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just recently bought a ASUS ZenBook UX360UAK with a 7th gen i7, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. It's made out of aluminium, has a glass touchpad and costs around half of what a similarly priced MacBook pro costs in Germany. It's my first non-Mac after 20 years. I've owned it for a good week and so far I'm very happy. It has superb battery life, great build quality and is fast. Only 1 minor con: the fan always runs, but i…

I took a look at the ZenBook range. The range looks decent, but the 15'' has a hard drive (!) (no option to choose SSD only, apparently), a numeric keypad (!!) and the highest-performing model is a dual-core i7 with 16GB RAM — so aside from the price, not a good alternative to a MBP. (I find the shiny brushed aluminium look to be embarrassingly tacky, though not quite as bad as the rose gold model.)

I bought one of the first gen zenbooks. The trackpad was completely unusable due to terrible windows drivers (dragging didn't work right). I vaguely remember failing to install linux on it.

They had two models of ssd, but one laptop sku. One model went to review websites, the other's performance degraded to actually be noticably slower than a hard disk. You could replace the ssd, but it was a non-standard form factor, so you needed to buy an expensive m.2 converter.

The keyboard dropped keystrokes.

The screen was meh for the time.

This was their flagship laptop that year.

After it has been a full decade, I might consider buying another asus laptop.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#343

Post by gonzo »

old-gregg wrote: post #155
josteink wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy The Carbon X1 is made from carbon fiber. It super-robust and light-weight at the same time. It feels light years ahead of the super-heavy aluminium-nonsense Apple is trying to peddle. Count me happy my laptop doesn't double as a bench-press.

When we got accepted into YCombinator back in 2011 (Mailgun), I remember PG looking at our Thinkpads running Linux and asking something along the lines of "what's wrong with you?" , with almost [1] all YC teams using Macbooks. I wonder if it's the Valley culture? There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can f…

> the swappable batteries

the Carbon X1 doesn't have swappable batteries.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#344

Post by munchbunny »

masklinn wrote: post #221
munchbunny wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Linux is a bit finicky on it? I use a Surface Book as my main computer and it's absolutely wonderful. I get a PC in tablet form with a pressure-sensitive stylus when I want a tablet and I get a moderately beefy laptop with a dedicated GPU when I want a laptop.

> I use a Surface Book as my main computer I've heard that it's fantastic hardware but had lots of software and driver teething problem, what's your experience with that?

They worked out the software and driver issues, so now it's pretty much fantastic hardware design with moderately good performance specs.

The only two (small) downsides that I run into regularly:

1. Some important software doesn't handle high DPI mode in Windows 10 well. Specifically Adobe offerings. Visual Studio 2015 has some small issues too.

2. The 3000x2000 pixel screen makes gaming a bit finicky. Games rarely support 3:2 ratios other than the native 3000x2000. The dedicated GPU is pretty capable, but not always 3000x2000 capable, so you're often stuck with 16:10 ratios that approximate 1500x1000.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#345

Post by gonzo »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #160
old-gregg wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we got accepted into YCombinator back in 2011 (Mailgun), I remember PG looking at our Thinkpads running Linux and asking something along the lines of "what's wrong with you?" , with almost [1] all YC teams using Macbooks. I wonder if it's the Valley culture? There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can f…

I don't understand it either, the thing that always gets me is most developers setting up vagrant on their Mac just to get a working environment. Cut the bullshit and just run Linux on the bare metal, your program will run faster, and your laptop battery life won't be halved. You will have to claw my x201 out of my cold dead hands, I've not found a single notebook (even the newer ThinkPads) that are as comfortable to…

> You will have to claw my x201 out of my cold dead hands, I've not found a single notebook (even the newer ThinkPads) that are as comfortable to use. I've got no crummy trackpad wasting space and a 16:10 display that's designed for work, and not watching cat videos.

the X201 has a trackpad. The X1 carbon (and several other models) have 2560x1440 displays.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#346

Post by kylebenzle »

I spent a year waiting for the Yoga x260 thinking I had found the perfect machine, after 11 months I am getting ready to send it in for the 3rd time for a "freezing" trackpad, remedied only by plugging in an external mouse. Also, lack of Linux support is insane for a company selling a working man's machine like this, going back to Dell after this :(

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#347

Post by throwaway188 »

cletus wrote: post #300
_JamesA_ wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never hear anyone mention the Razer Blade's and yet they seem to be the best looking and spec'd non-Apple notebooks by far. They are almost too good to be true. What's the catch? Have you had any issues running Linux on them?

As a gaming laptop they're not great. The reason is that, for example, one model had a GTX 970M, which sounds good but the thermal performance is such that the GPU is near constantly throttled resulting in questionably worse performance than similarly sized and specked machines with a 960M part. That's just poor thermal design. You know you just don't get that with MacBooks (you don't get a 970M either of course). Pe…

I'm sorry, but you are just wrong on this. I own one of those 970M model Razer Blades and I can tell you personally that throttling is not an issue on my machine. At all.

https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/razer-blade-...

Razer has superb thermal design.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#348

Post by dlgeek »

s_kilk wrote: post #229
tannhaeuser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I bought my notebook back in february, I went to a shop (cyberport) that had both the (then current) X1 carbon and the XPS 13 on display, which I figured were the only ones acceptable for developers. The X1's keyboard was larger, had more key travel and all, but was subjectively somewhat less comfortable to type on (matter of get using to, I suppose, but still). The X1 had a much worse display, and was overall b…

Any issues with Ubuntu? or did it all just work out of the box? I'm really interested in the XPS 13/15, but don't want to end up with a brick.

You can buy the XPS 13 with Ubuntu pre-loaded on it by Dell. It used to be branded the "Developer Edition" but now it's just part of the normal lineup (but you have to buy from the SOHO-branded storefront because wow is Dell's site a mess).

I wiped their Ubuntu install and put on Debian and that's been working fine for me.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#349

Post by hedora »

ageofwant wrote: post #311
s_kilk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It runs Linux very well. I've been researching into the XPS series, and online there are plenty of reports of problems with Linux. Can anyone here confirm first-hand that they have an XPS 13/15 that's running Linux flawlessly?

I have the XPS 13 9350 (dmidecode c&p). The only issue is the BCM4350 Wifi card, and its a biggie. Do not buy the BCM, get the Intel Wifi card fitted. Or replace it yourself with this one: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Generation-Wireless-Computer-No... , they cost about $15. I also had suspend/resume issues occasionally, a recent bios upgrade fixed that, I think. Apart from the original WiFi, I'm very happy with the…

Slightly off topic, but has anyone had luck with a (preferably intel) 3x3 wifi adaptor? I want one for a desktop. The linked one is 2x2, and amazon has a m.2->pcie wifi adaptor for $17.

I have a 3x3 broadcom now, but it occasionally disassociates with the access point (and the box suffers from undiagnosed kernel hangs whether I plug an nvidia or amd video card into it...)

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#350

Post by corn13read »

masklinn wrote: post #208
old-gregg wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we got accepted into YCombinator back in 2011 (Mailgun), I remember PG looking at our Thinkpads running Linux and asking something along the lines of "what's wrong with you?" , with almost [1] all YC teams using Macbooks. I wonder if it's the Valley culture? There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can f…

> There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad Your criticisms are pretty almost all a matter of taste, and we're in disagreement just about throughout. > I wonder if it's the Valley culture? I'm not in the valley. I've never found any non-apple laptop with a good (or even decent) trackpad, and I like that OSX has a community of indie developers who actually care. > the keyboard I don't enjoy thinkpad…

You've never used a business thinkpad for more than 15 minutes
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