ThinkPad X1 Carbon • Hacker News Board

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#371

Post by snuxoll » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:40 AM UTC

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…

Eh, different strokes.

Personally, I have a ThinkPad W540 for work and while it weighs like a brick man is it easy to work with. The UltraNav isn't as nice as the trackpad on my XPS 13, but I usually work with the TrackPoint on ThinkPad's anyway (killer feature for me to be honest, even Apple's awesome trackpad disappointments in comparison to a good ol' TrackPoint in my opinion) - upgrading the RAM and SSD required a couple screws for the appropriate bays in the base cover instead of needing to take the whole thing off like my old 2012 MBP. Also, while USB Type-C and ThunderBolt 3 "work" for a dock, being able to plop by ThinkPad down on my desk at home and have it start charging and connect all of my peripherals is still easier than plugging in a cable (even if it's just one cable).

Also, as far as Linux support I guess that all really depends on the individual. Most of my workflow is heavily dependent on Linux (Java/Python dev in JetBrains products, ansible stuff, administering a couple dozen Linux VM's) with the exception of our .Net apps (where I run Visual Studio in a Windows VM) - there's not a whole lot of benefit to me running macOS, and in fact, I'd really rather run Fedora (call me an oddball I guess) since anything not getting deployed to a Windows server goes to a CentOS VM, makes moving from development to production a lot easier.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#372

Post by joatmon-snoo » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #274

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unfortunate consequence of the ridiculous markups on hardware add-ons, but if you're willing to apply a little elbow grease and look at resellers, it's not too hard to get what you're looking for for 1000$. New: * 818$: cheapest T460 on the website * +270$ for i3-6100u => i7-6600u * +390$ for 500GB HDD => 512GB SSD upgrade * +470$ for 4GB RAM => 32GB RAM Here's your 1000$ build: * 700$ for a T460 with an i5 o…

If you're a more on-the-go person who needs a small laptop that needs to do it all, and do it all day then you might consider also checking out the x220T laptop. They have a model with an i7, sometimes they have 3G sim readers, and has a touchscreen + touchpen (you can disable one, or both of these in software). These are great for taking notes, more then enough power to survive a day of real programming.

I've actually got an x220 with the original 6-cell and a slice battery, which puts me at 6 hours unplugged. It's not very impressive tbh, but it's been worth what I paid for it.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#373

Post by snuxoll » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

copperx wrote: post #172

djsumdog wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of developers love their Macs and I don't get it. For me OSX 10.6 was the last decent one. Mission Control is garbage compared to Expose. I got so frustrated with it that I started running Linux in a VM on my Mac as my primary system. I also got into tiling window managers, which killed every going back to Mac/Windows. Today's Dell and Lenovo laptops are good Linux dev machines. I've never had a problem with pu…

Decent machines indeed as long as you are close to a wall socket. Linux power management has a lot of growing up to do.

It certainly does, but my XPS 13 lasts ~7 hours running Fedora 25 and my work-issued W540 gets around the same (this is a stupid beast of the machine that only gets that much running Windows, a 40W quad-core i7 in a laptop isn't power sipping when I'm building something in Visual Studio or IntelliJ). It's getting a lot better as long as you're not running a Skylake chip, Haswell/Broadwell and below have pretty decent support these days.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#374

Post by nerdwaller » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:44 AM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #224

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…

Errr.... T530 had titanium cover and endoskeleton chassis. My friend routinely walks over his while it's powered on, as a demonstration. How is it possibly an example of a "plastic, flimsy, bendy" laptop? Yes it has screw holes and grills... it's a working-person's laptop :). The new ones don't, because they're becoming more like apple - which means I cannot as easily replace battery, hard drive, memory, etc as I do…

I'd agree with others that it (t530) feels flimsy, it creaks and moans when I moved it. However it did fly off a car (in a backpack) at 85mph in the middle of Nebraska and survived with only minor damage. I was sold on the build quality, regardless of the sound it made. What killed me and eventually drove me to buy a mac was the size, weight and battery. I'd love to not be on mac, but still nothing else has been a compelling enough option. I hope this changes by time I am ready for something new.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#375

Post by snuxoll » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:44 AM UTC

discordance wrote: post #251

djsumdog wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of developers love their Macs and I don't get it. For me OSX 10.6 was the last decent one. Mission Control is garbage compared to Expose. I got so frustrated with it that I started running Linux in a VM on my Mac as my primary system. I also got into tiling window managers, which killed every going back to Mac/Windows. Today's Dell and Lenovo laptops are good Linux dev machines. I've never had a problem with pu…

Mac OS X 10.6 was great. I remember when Apple released it saying, 'no new features'. Just bug fixes and speed improvements. We need one of those again.

10.6 was great for the time, I was actually really pissed after 10.7 and many releases afterward fucked up Expose during the Mission Control debacle (I think there's now a way to turn off the window grouping, but this was what ended up making me sell my 2012 MBP and switch to Fedora since GNOME 3 manages to have all the comfort features I liked from macOS).

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#376

Post by scott_karana » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:45 AM UTC

arcaster wrote: post #179

I absolutely adore my ThinkPad X201, if there was any way to purchase a pristine new-in-box X201 I would. However, I recently picked up a 3rd gen x1 carbon and absolutely love it compared to my rMBP '15. Sure, it's not quite as fast and the screen isn't quite as good, but I can run a true tiling window manager (not the garbage that is KWM on OSX) and have a unfettered dev platform. I run Fedora, I like it more than U…

Can you not run Fedora on a MBP? And if you can/could, how would the comparison still stack up?

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#377

Post by snuxoll » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:46 AM UTC

emidln wrote: post #206

rayiner wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fly around the world with a x260 + spare battery), a nice docking station Keyboard and UltraNav are more taste than anything else. I have a T450s for work and a 15" rMBP and vastly prefer the keyboard/touchpad on the latter. It doesn't help that Lenovo's QA is sh…

Lenovo is infamous for shipping shitty RAM / Disk options. You often can't buy appropriately maxed out hardware from them. A few years ago, I was procuring a few Thinkpad W520 for a new team and at no point did they offer a 500gb or larger SSD. The 384GB drive they had was an extra grand. I bought the machines in max cpu/graphics config and ordered ram and disks separately. Nobody on the team had an issue using a scr…

Thankfully the W500 series is super easy to upgrade aftermarket like you said, we've never bothered ordering ours with anything but maxed out CPU's - RAM and SSD's are cheap and easy DIY upgrades and everybody on our team can swap them out in a minute or two.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#378

Post by Agathos » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:49 AM UTC

deathanatos wrote: post #366

zzleeper wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, being an owner of the 2015 version, I don't know what the fuck are you talking about: - The brick is tiny. Sure, not as tiny as the 50 gram mac one, but is very small compared to most laptop bricks. - It's huge? Some peope want more screen real estate, and 14in is good for that. - Battery life is 6+ hours; less if I spend them watching youtube of course - Never had a problem with WiFi The only thing I agree is…

> - The brick is tiny. I and my family have owned several Thinkpads. I just bought a Thinkpad this past cyber Monday, and the power brick it came with is significantly larger than prior Thinkpad models' bricks. So much so that I was a little disheartened when I saw it. Since you mention you have a slightly older model, I suspect that your adapter is tiny, as you say, on par w/ MBPs'. But the current models from Lenov…

I bought a new X1 Carbon six weeks ago. It came with the smaller brick in your picture.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#379

Post by snuxoll » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:50 AM UTC

muro wrote: post #240

j7ake wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hinted at it in the end: MacBooks have good software that works. No troubles connecting to peripherals like printers and projectors. No worries about laptop sucking battery when I close the lid and forget to sleep. And MacBooks have the best touchpad of all laptops.

The only software I miss is "Preview" on Mac OS. It's amazing for editing pdfs - merge, split etc.

Preview.app is one of the few things I miss when working on Windows or Linux systems, we just had to buy a Foxit PhantomPDF license to do basic PDF editing like this and I was thinking "why the hell is this not just a standard feature like it is on macOS?".

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#380

Post by babyrainbow » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 5:57 AM UTC

mactunes wrote: post #64

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 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…

According to this page, the asus laptop costs around 2500USD. If you buy a MBP (Mid 2012 non retina), it would cost around 900USD and then you swap out hdd for ssd and max out RAM at 16 GB so the total price would be something around 1250 USD.

Can't beat that.

[1] http://www.amazon.in/ZenBook-UX360CA-13-3-inch-Touchscreen-W...