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Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#281

Post by martinve »

htk wrote: post #136
markvdb wrote: post #9

2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly. I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary edition. My only problem with it is the battery, I bought a new one but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours. If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a cou…

Same here. I use T480 and T420 in parallel and in comparison to the newer model the T420 feels virtually bombproof.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#282

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

htk wrote: post #136
markvdb wrote: post #9

2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly. I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary edition. My only problem with it is the battery, I bought a new one but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours. If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a cou…

I replaced the terrible 1366x768 panel in my ThinkPad E530 with a FHD panel from a W530. Easy swap and it all "just worked". So even in the Lenovo era they're very easy machines to work on.

Edit to add: Obviously this is an i5 laptop from 2012, much newer than some of the other machines in this thread. Although it's not my daily driver anymore I do still use it for music production.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#283

Post by bluedino »

chx wrote: post #251
bluedino wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're much faster. 50-60% on the single core stuff and 300% faster on multi-core tests. Not to mention they cruise along on things that use the newer extensions for things like video playback, plus the integrated graphics hardware is much much faster

> They're much faster. 50-60% on the single core stuff and 300% faster on multi-core tests. [citation needed] 50-60% is absurdly large for single core, the reality is 20%, and 300% is crazy. The T480 uses a 15W quad core on the same 14nm process as the 15W chip in the T470 and because it's slightly more power efficient there's a little gain, about 25-30%. So the difference between the Sandy Bridge T420 to Kaby Lake R…

I'm just going on Cinebench scores I've done on my own machines.

    T480S i5 141
    T460S i5 105
    X220  i5 100
Not much of a jump in the 4 generations from the X220 to the T460S but quite a jump going to the T480S.

Double the score of the X220 and quadruple the score of the T480 and you're going to end up about 575 to 205 for multicore, which is almost 3X as fast.

This doesn't even bring GPU or SSD performance into the picture. Just raw CPU.

I love my X220 but Windows 10 will regularly bring it to it's knees, even with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. And that's not even doing anything, I'm not sure if it's updating or what. Not to mention it's not exactly a thin machine, the 1366x768 screen is mediocre...The 1080/2K IPS screens coming to the Thinkpad line finally made them usable, IMO. Even the old IPS screens in the X220 tablets were still dim, low-resolution, etc.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#284

Post by davewasthere »

My 8 year old Samsung Series 9 Ultraportable. I still far prefer it to my much newer ASUS. Best laptop I've ever owned. (essentially a macbook pro spec machine... and beautifully designed)

It'd be my regular travel lappy if I could bother getting a new battery for it. Still great to code on, and the screen is far far better than the ASUS. Lighter too. (although no discrete graphics)

But battery life is a killer. ASUS lasts up to ten hours, and the Samsung barely does 2 hours now. With a power point, that's not an issue, but it's nice to have something with a bit more go.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#285

Post by murraybhenson »

I have my parents (in their early 70's) using a 2008 MBP 15". Mostly for importing and organizing photos, email, and a bit of web stuff. They upgraded it to El Capitan - the latest MacOS it would take - without any difficulties. They'll likely use it for another couple of years until I donate my 2015 13" MBP to them.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#286

Post by MivLives »

ozzyman700 wrote: post #4

/tpg/ on /g/ is probably my favorite aspect of 4chan besides /prog/ Thinkpads are wonderful machines with lots of upgrade options. A T61 with an SSD and ram upgrade is quite usable for most everything except high quality video playback .Performance on win10 is ram dependent but with i3 and debian installed ram usage at idle is so so so low (sub gig)

I wish my T420 wasn't in such bad shape. It works... mostly. But the physical case is beat to all hell because it came through college with me, spent every day in a bag, survived a few high falls to concrete. It'd still be a viable machine if I put in a new battery, SSD, and found a few replacement keys.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#287

Post by chx »

bluedino wrote: post #283
chx wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're much faster. 50-60% on the single core stuff and 300% faster on multi-core tests. [citation needed] 50-60% is absurdly large for single core, the reality is 20%, and 300% is crazy. The T480 uses a 15W quad core on the same 14nm process as the 15W chip in the T470 and because it's slightly more power efficient there's a little gain, about 25-30%. So the difference between the Sandy Bridge T420 to Kaby Lake R…

I'm just going on Cinebench scores I've done on my own machines. T480S i5 141 T460S i5 105 X220 i5 100 Not much of a jump in the 4 generations from the X220 to the T460S but quite a jump going to the T480S. Double the score of the X220 and quadruple the score of the T480 and you're going to end up about 575 to 205 for multicore, which is almost 3X as fast. This doesn't even bring GPU or SSD performance into the pictu…

Isn't Cinebench multicore? This is in line with what I would expect for multicore results...

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#288

Post by alchemism »

markvdb wrote: post #9

2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly. I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

Lets see...my x201 still works, my t520 still works (gorgeous screen), t420 still works, my t60 works, my t40 still works, my t23s still works, my very first, a t600[1], _might_ still work.

Solid machines indeed!

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_600

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#289

Post by bluedino »

chx wrote: post #287
bluedino wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going on Cinebench scores I've done on my own machines. T480S i5 141 T460S i5 105 X220 i5 100 Not much of a jump in the 4 generations from the X220 to the T460S but quite a jump going to the T480S. Double the score of the X220 and quadruple the score of the T480 and you're going to end up about 575 to 205 for multicore, which is almost 3X as fast. This doesn't even bring GPU or SSD performance into the pictu…

Isn't Cinebench multicore? This is in line with what I would expect for multicore results...

You can run it either way. Those are single-core results

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#290

Post by vlg »

Gotta love my 2.5kg W520. Once I get the spare dosh to replace the ram and maybe HD, it'll be good for another 4 years, and I got it secondhand in pristine condition. My old X60, which was second hand, got used 3-4 years, and got resold, yet again! These machines aren't beasts, they're leviathans before which apples cower to their core, shedding their to-some-shiny, -seductive red skin.
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