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Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

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Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#71

Post by djsumdog »

bbtn wrote: post #61

I have Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. At first, I thought I am buying an almost IBM quality laptop. Craftmanship is not good, it looks cheap, screen is flickering and there is a constant 20 kHz hiss from cpu fan. Battery does not long last as it was promised (they had ads: battery life longer than macbook air's). Touchpad is not very responsive. And finally: another new type of usb-size adapter port, I have not seen anyw…

I should finish my post on the 1st Gen X1 carbon I got used. I was able to run FreeBSD on it, but after a while it just started crashing randomly and I got an error when trying to update the bios.

I did buy it used so it could have just been a problem inherited from its previous owners. It worked well for the short time it did work.

I got another one when I switched teams at work, but the last guy had taken it with him on a boat and it got wet. The touchpad didn't work and the lower left screen was discoloured. I didn't use it very much.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#72

Post by pella »

cornedor wrote: post #7

This week at CES the T470 will be announced. So if you're thinking about buying one you might want to wait for that

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10940/lenovo-updates-the-think...

see ThinkPad T470

"The T470 is one of the new models to feature an optional Intel Optane 16 GB cache drive, and it also will have a touch fingerprint reader and Windows Hello camera option. Thunderbolt 3 is also here on the 14-inch laptop, along with a GeForce 940MX GPU and up to 32 GB of DDR4. It continues to feature the split battery, with a 23 Wh in the front and a removable 48 Wh or 73 Wh battery in the rear. It will be available in February starting at $914"

ThinkPad T470s

"The ThinkPad T470s continues to get slimmer and lighter. What was once a slightly lighter T series is now a 14-inch notebook that is under three pounds, with the latest version just 2.9 lbs. It can be had with up to 24 GB of memory, with 8 GB soldered on and a single DIMM available for another 16 GB. It still features Ethernet, along with Thunderbolt 3 and up to 1 TB of PCIe SSD. The thinner T series is also available in silver, with availability in February starting at $1099."

ThinkPad T470p "The p model is for performance, with 45-Watt CPUs instead of the U series found in the slimmer and lighter notebooks. This is combined with the GeForce 940MX, and up to 32 GB of DDR4. The T470p is also available with the 16 GB Intel Optane caching drive, and split batteries with up to 12 hours of battery life with the larger 72 Wh battery in the rear. The T470p will be available in March starting at $1049."

ThinkPad 13

"The ThinkPad 13 is Lenovo’s value offering, and it will be available in January for a starting price of $674. For less than $700, it will feature Intel Kaby Lake processors, with up to 32 GB of DDR4 with 2 DIMM slots, and up to 512 GB of PCIe storage. The display is a FHD 1920x1080 touch version, and it features 3 USB 3.0 ports, USB-C which doubles as a charging port, dTPM 2.0, and a SD card reader. It’s 19.1mm thick and weighs 3.17 lbs. It will also be offered in black or silver."

ThinkPad L470

"The L series is positioned as the mainstream business value lineup, and they slot in for a bit less money than the T series. The L470 is a 14-inch FHD IPS model, and it also features optional Intel Optane caching, and 2 DIMMS for up to 32 GB of RAM. It keeps the split batteries as well, offering up to 95.5 Wh of battery capacity. In addition, it adds a discrete GPU in the Radeon R5 M430. It will be available in March starting from $799."

ThinkPad X270

"This 12.5-inch ThinkPad has been around for quite a while now, and the latest version adds USB-C for power, display, and data. RAM options are 4 to 16 GB of DDR4, and storage is up to 2 TB of HDD or 512 GB PCIe SSD. It offers the ThinkPad split battery with 23 Wh in the front and 48 or 72 Wh in the rear. With the largest battery, Lenovo claims up to 21.4 hours of battery life. It comes in at 2.9 lbs, with availability in March from $909"

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#73

Post by eltoozero »

cel1ne wrote: post #59
aiur3la wrote: post #35

> ... I find the boot time compelling enough (~23sec until login, plus 2sec to open the browser) that I do not need this. I think something is slowing down your boot, I get faster boot on a 2008 thinkpad running the same OS. OT: systemd was supposed to improve boot performance but it has actually become much worse. Upstart on a weak chromebook boots in under 2 sec, why shouldn't your current generation thinkpad with…

I find it curious that you care about boot-times. I use macbooks and just close and reopen the lid. Waking from this sleep takes less than a second usually. My average uptime is about 22 days until I reboot for an update or something. I used Linux for years, and I understood that in 2008 sleep/resume on notebooks didn't properly work, but now we have 2017 - 9 years later!

Mac is my daily driver for this very reason, I'm a consultant and I need to frequently grab and go.

I've had Linux on mobile for ages and have yet to have reliable sleep/wake behavior on a dozen machines over the years.

Sleep on Linux works reliably if you run it inside a Mac VM though, FWIW! ;)

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#74

Post by cryptarch »

endgame wrote: post #37

Lenovo are on my personal shitlist after superfish and abusing the windows platform binary table. When my current laptop dies (a thinkpad T440p that I'm reasonably happy with), I may have to suck up the performance hit and go to minifree for a machine I can actually trust.

I'd recommend going with another vendor than Ministry of Freedom (by Leah Rowe). I ordered a laptop from there and it took months to get the payment processed and the laptop shipped, with barely any contact in between. I thought it was very unprofessional and it definitely was the worst online shopping experience I've had so far.

Expect to wait at least three weeks for every time you send them an email.

The laptop is OK, though it was dirty when it arrived. It had a bunch of some kind of sticker glue on it.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#75

Post by aiur3la »

cel1ne wrote: post #59
aiur3la wrote: post #35

> ... I find the boot time compelling enough (~23sec until login, plus 2sec to open the browser) that I do not need this. I think something is slowing down your boot, I get faster boot on a 2008 thinkpad running the same OS. OT: systemd was supposed to improve boot performance but it has actually become much worse. Upstart on a weak chromebook boots in under 2 sec, why shouldn't your current generation thinkpad with…

I find it curious that you care about boot-times. I use macbooks and just close and reopen the lid. Waking from this sleep takes less than a second usually. My average uptime is about 22 days until I reboot for an update or something. I used Linux for years, and I understood that in 2008 sleep/resume on notebooks didn't properly work, but now we have 2017 - 9 years later!

I don't really care about boot times, but as a tech guy 23 seconds sounds like an error to me and I want to find it and fix it :)

Also, old laptops with dieing batteries (or new ones with always-on sensors such as fingerprint readers) have some leakage during sleep so it may be better to turn them off if you are not going to use them for a few days.

edit: resume/suspend in linux works just fine and has done so for many years (in response to eltoozero)

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#76

Post by 2bluesc »

kogepathic wrote: post #40
2bluesc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just more frequency and cache for me, but for enterprise there are more management features.

Maybe in the firmware Dell is shipping, but the CPUs are identical in their feature set as per the ark links I supplied. The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The specifications don't even list support for ECC RAM! [0] [0] http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheet...

> The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway.

The clock is faster, try the compare link[0].

And since I originally bought a XPS 15 with the i7-6700HQ then scored a deal on a Precision E3-1505M motherboard and frankensteined my laptop, I spent 30 seconds doing a benchmark[1]. The tl;dr is that for 6% faster clock, you actually get about 10% better performance, so the cache is contributing. Is it worth the Xeon mark-up? Probably not if I didn't come across a deal, but hey, this thing still costs way less then the local fruit farm alternative.

[0] http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88970,89608

[1] https://github.com/kylemanna/dell-xps-9550-precision-5510

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#77

Post by dom0 »

wfunction wrote: post #27
TobbenTM wrote: post #8

And one of the most awesome things about Thinkpads not mentioned; you can get every (most?) replacement part directly from Lenovo. You can actually look up the part number in the service manual, order it, and replace it yourself. For nerds like us, this is sooo nice sometimes, when you just wanna get it fixed quickly, from the comfort of your own home.

How much do parts cost though? Are they reasonably priced?

Usually they are.

A new keyboard is like 40-50 € for most models, for example. But don't expect to get a sparkling new system board for 200 €. New rubber feet are like 10 € (but it's the whole set for all rubber feet of the system). For the X20x there are still some parts available new from distributors. Which is like 6-7 years of parts supply.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#78

Post by dom0 »

2bluesc wrote: post #76
kogepathic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in the firmware Dell is shipping, but the CPUs are identical in their feature set as per the ark links I supplied. The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The specifications don't even list support for ECC RAM! [0] [0] http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheet...

> The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The clock is faster, try the compare link[0]. And since I originally bought a XPS 15 with the i7-6700HQ then scored a deal on a Precision E3-1505M motherboard and frankensteined my laptop, I spent 30 seconds doing a benchmark[1]. The tl;dr is that for 6% faster clock, you ac…

> The clock is faster, try the compare link[0].

Now the interesting question is of course whether that 3 % difference holds up when these are used in an actual laptop, ie. does it make a difference before all of them throttle anyway?

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#79

Post by dom0 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #67
karussell wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be nice to have a faster one, yes :) ... some recommendations? Just fyi: I measure boot time from the time I press the power button. The BIOS logo appears a staggering 8sec or something although the BIOS fast boot is enabled. (Maybe the sync with NSA or something ;))

8 seconds for the BIOS sounds ridiculous; that should take less than a second. Check that you've booted and shut down successfully on the prior boot; with those, the boot should take much less time. (On an improper shutdown, the BIOS may do some extra work that takes longer.) Also check that you don't have some option enabled to make it wait around a while for a keyboard key. For the Linux portion of your boot, try r…

Unsurprisingly UEFI didn't change much about vendor firmware shittiness. There's also still firmware around which just takes 5-10 seconds of black screen before doing shit.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#80

Post by jmnicolas »

karussell wrote: post #44
aiur3la wrote: post #35

> ... I find the boot time compelling enough (~23sec until login, plus 2sec to open the browser) that I do not need this. I think something is slowing down your boot, I get faster boot on a 2008 thinkpad running the same OS. OT: systemd was supposed to improve boot performance but it has actually become much worse. Upstart on a weak chromebook boots in under 2 sec, why shouldn't your current generation thinkpad with…

Would be nice to have a faster one, yes :) ... some recommendations? Just fyi: I measure boot time from the time I press the power button. The BIOS logo appears a staggering 8sec or something although the BIOS fast boot is enabled. (Maybe the sync with NSA or something ;))

Check that PXE boot is disabled.
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