Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've got a 2016 model and things work pretty well with Ubuntu 16.10. Only gripe I have is bluetooth audio isn't working out-of-the-box.
What about inexpensive USB plug-in Bluetooth adapters?
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ThinkPad X1 Carbon
481–490 of 540 posts
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've got a 2016 model and things work pretty well with Ubuntu 16.10. Only gripe I have is bluetooth audio isn't working out-of-the-box.
What about inexpensive USB plug-in Bluetooth adapters?
There are some that just show up as an audio USB device, which is pretty nice. I have this one, been using it with Ubuntu 14.04 on my W520 Thinkpad:
https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-BTD-500-Bluetooth-Dongle/d...
It does voice too, but looking at the reviews it seems that some other people have headphone compatibility issues. Definitely try before you buy.
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> 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. Is this really a serious reason to buy a laptop, or not, the design? You buy a computer because of its performance, not its appearance- which is something completely subjective in the first pl…
I think you're focusing too much on the aesthetic aspect of the word "design," and not enough on the functional aspect. I buy a laptop to use, and if I have to use a spongy keyboard, a stupid pointing nipple, a subpar trackpad, or deal with a creaking, bendy case, then the 8 to 10 hours I spend in front of that damn thing every day are not going to be very pleasant for me, and I cannot stress the importance of that e…
I understood that the OP mostly meant design as in aesthetics:
They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere.
The "flimsy and bendy" feel is more than just aesthetics, but owning two generations of the Carbon, it really doesn't apply to it. For the second gen. the term "brick shithouse" comes to mind. The fourth gen. has more plastic on the lid (which though feels "smooth as a baby's butt" according to a colleague) but its innards are tough as nails and knowing that's enough for me.
In any case, like I say what I need from a computer is performance: fast processor, as much RAM as you can fit on a laptop and plenty of storage. If I really cared about durability and toughness that much, I'd get a Toughbook [1].
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[1] http://business.panasonic.co.uk/computer-product/products-an...
I've come very clost to buying one, several times. I just like the idea of a computer I can take with me on the beach and use to browse the 'nets while lying on an inflatable mattress in the sea. That'd be cool and it'd border on "design" trumping specs even in my book. On the other hand, I'd look a bit of a pillock so I've never gotten round to it.
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Design is part and parcel of a laptop's usability and usage, and impacts its effective lifespan (you can get mileage out of a laptop while it's falling to pieces but that's not an enjoyable experience). I don't think that's a fair characterization of the thinkpad experiance. I own one, and every other owner I know, hasn't had these things crap out. Also, if they do crap out there are guides telling you exactly what…
> A computer is a tool. Would you buy a shovel if it was very bad at shoveling and had a pre-determined lifespan just because it was colored to match your khakis? In that sense, a car is just a tool to get you from A to B. So buying a Porsche would be completely pointless. Clothes are just tools for keeping you warm. It's pointless to take pride in how you present yourself. So many of my engineering friends think thi…
>> So many of my engineering friends think this way. Too many. In fact, most of Sweden thinks this way about cars, and most of Germany thinks this way about clothes.
Are we talking cars and clothes now? I'm Greek and I don't drive, but I certainly like my Italian fashion as much as the next fashion victim. Brains just don't come into it. But a computer is a computer and a coat is a coat- you can't think the same way about both.
Even so, in fashion too there's a lot to be said about building stuff to last, even as you make them look and feel good. Terry Pratchett has a bit about this in a couple of the Discworld novels, where he notes how cheap shoes end up being more expensive because you have to buy a new pair every year whereas expensive ones are made to last for decades, so you may pay a premium once, but it turns out cheaper on the long run (and I think he goes on to comment how this is another way rich people keep their money etc).
I think you'll find that the most highly valued (and therefore, most expensive) fashion tends to be made according to this ideal, of beauty that lasts.
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an X1 (Yoga). Tiny almost weightless (feels lighter than current-gen Macbook Air) laptop, and it runs between 10 to 11 hours on the battery when doing normal work (programming, mail, web, spreadsheets etc..) on wifi with pleasant screen brightness ... Linux power management is fine today on modern hardware... (Powertop reports 5.2-5.5 watts)
Is there anything you need to do / configure, as I am not getting that sort of battery out of my X1 Carbon running Mint. (I realize I usually leave bluetooth on, and the screen at mid to high brightness and have about 20-30 tabs open in firefox but I would still be lucky to get 5 hours out of it.)
Current/modern kernel (I run Arch), disable unneeded radios (bluetooth and lte for me), slightly lower (but still nice) brigtness on the screen and agressive tuning by powertop..
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#486Earlier 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…
Neal Stephenson summed all this up in In the Beginning Was the Command Line.
Macs are beautiful, hermetically sealed devices that work perfectly until they explode.
Linux (or thinkpads) are like M1 Abrams tanks you can service yourself, run forever on a nuclear battery, and people think you're weird if you have one.
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty happy with this one: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Noteboo... Especially because it is aluminium an Linux just works on it.
What flavor do you use? any driver trouble?
Just the plain one with max ram, or did you mean distro? Arch Linux. No driver problems at all. In fact i just took the SSD out of my Thinkpad and put it in into this without reinstalling anything everything just worked.
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for alerting me to these, I've kept looking at the proper 10keyless keyboards like Topre [0] thinking "Really? Is it worth that much?". Be good to try something cheaper, though the single-height enter key would drive me CRAZY. [0] http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/realforce-88ub-45g-key-bl... . £192!!
Something is only worth how much you will use it. If you will use your keyboard every day from now until the cataracts and arthritis gets you then you'll probably find it worth the money to invest in good tooling. My keyboard was is actually and open boz/broken from manufacturer version of an OK one, I paid 37$. Worth twice that for how easy it makes typing and these are bad switches mind you.
I agree, but until I have tried one (never having used mechanical keys) I don't know how much it's worth to me :)
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (...) most developers setting up vagrant on their Mac just to get a working environment. What kind of working environment requires setting up Vagrant on OSX? It's a Unix-based OS, if you're doing any web development you can do it on the host system.
Isolation and reproduction. For one thing, you want the development environment to be as similar to production as possible – same OS version, same webserver version, same DB version, same dependencies, no unwanted extras that differ between environments. For another thing, you don't want to have to solve conflicts between project A and completely unrelated project T if you need to work on them both.
If you care about isolation and reproduction then you're using a VM anyway and the host OS is completely irrelevant.
Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon
#490Please support the idea of building a better planet for our children and do not buy laptops where you can not replace the battery - managers in companies that build these kind of products have to learn that they are acting against human interests and need to change their way of thinking. Of course this applies to all Laptops where you can not change battery. Thanks and have a better 2017!
Interesting. I hadn't heard of this before. Can you share some references about this?