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Thinkpad X210

geoff.greer.fm

101–110 of 490 posts

Re: Thinkpad X210

#101

This reminds me of just how much I hate whoever came up with chiclet keyboards and ruined laptops forever.

Probably the same person who came up with the idea of using widescreens on laptops. At least with keyboards, if you have enough money, you can buy a brand new laptop with mechanical keyboard. Nobody is even making 4:3 monitors anymore, laptops or not.

Not quite the same, but Eizo have made a 27" 1:1 (1920x1920) monitor. Looks fantastic.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#102

> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7 hours with the extended battery (80Wh). Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. > Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know…

That's because it's a random chinese board that attempts to provide up to date performance but not focused on up-to-date thermals/efficiency.

If a modern 13.3 screamer with battery life is what you are looking for however, check out the just released Thinkpad x390. It's even more modern and the battery life is a staggering 17-18 hours.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#103
post #17

I have a Lenovo T430u running Kali, and it is rock solid. I love the keyboard, and I use the TrackPoint for CAD work in FreeCAD. I never feel like it is going to slip from my hands when I pull it from my backpack. It is so easy to open up, that I open it twice or more a year to clean out the fans, which are usually clean anyway; I like seeing the internals like a car mechanic who likes to check under the hood ;) I co…

I've as well always been happy with Lenovos. I'm currently using an X1 Carbon (4th gen, FHD screen, ~6-7hrs battery) and a P71 (4k screen, in-built nVidia disabled, ~4-6hrs battery) and their fans run only when I'm stressing the CPU (e.g. compiling) and even then I only hear the flow of the air.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#104
I am happy to read this review a couple of days after I saw a video of this Unboxing guy evangelizing the use of other Thinkpads. Lenovo is definitely making nice machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k

"Unbox Therapy

After many years using MacBook variants I've made the switch to Windows. I've used every version of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that have been released. My current laptop of choice is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon / Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme.Turns out switching from Mac to Windows isn't as painful as I expected."

Re: Thinkpad X210

#106
post #64

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the…

> A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades We don't even have to go that far. Just ensuring that laptops can be serviced by their own users would go a long way to reduce e-waste. i.e. not soldering RAM chips to the motherboard, making it feasible to remove every single part (not gluing the keyboard to the MB for example), etc... instead of pursuing an ever thinner laptop design, whi…

Soldering ram is helpful for preventing people cooling the ram and removing it to attempt to copy private encryption keys

Re: Thinkpad X210

#107
post #64

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the…

> A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades We don't even have to go that far. Just ensuring that laptops can be serviced by their own users would go a long way to reduce e-waste. i.e. not soldering RAM chips to the motherboard, making it feasible to remove every single part (not gluing the keyboard to the MB for example), etc... instead of pursuing an ever thinner laptop design, whi…

There’re upgrade-friendly laptops on the market. I’ve replaced RAM, disks, keyboard, LCD, CPU, wireless cards in my laptops. Soldered CPUs are unfortunately inevitable on modern ones, but many other components are still replaceable if you pay attention at the time of purchase. Usually voids warranty but I don’t care too much.

As a nice bonus it sometimes saves money. I’ve only picked my netbook for CPU (i3-6157U, 64MB L4 cache), GPU (Iris 550, 0.8 TFlops) and display (13.3” FullHD IPS). Upgraded to adequate amount of RAM (16GB) and larger and faster M.2 SSD. Both were too low out of the box, and even today there’re not many small laptops with 16GB RAM.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#108
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is that you don't need to, you can make any distro work. "Working out of the box" for Linux doesn't have the same meaning as for Windows. If you're a buying a custom motherboard for an old notebook that's nothing.

I love linux but damn, way to shift the goalposts. edit: Does any one else feel that redefining "working out of the box" to mean the opposite "just for linux", hurts linux's reputation more than just saying something non-hyperbolic, like it "works with a surprisingly minimal amount of driver treasure-hunt"? As a tangent, I wonder if this applies to other things. if BMW users tell you "when talking about BMWs the term…

Linux isn't just one thing. In a parallel universe he used a different distro and didn't have any issues. That says nothing about whether or not this piece of hardware is a good purchase or how good it is supported in general.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#109

This reminds me of just how much I hate whoever came up with chiclet keyboards and ruined laptops forever.

Of course, with opinionated things like keyboards there will be people who love the exact thing you hate. Me, for example.

Choice is good. Lack of choice breeds resentment.

I resent the new keyboards. I also resent soldered memory, soldered storage and the lack of ethernet jacks.

I vote with my wallet where I can but the keyboards are ubiquitous; you can't vote with your wallet if there is no choice.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#110
post #86

These are awesome. For a long time I’ve thought a 13.3 X thinkpad like the 2X0 series (a proper successor to the x300/x301) would be the best thing ever. You take the x2X0 chassis, renowned for portabiltiy, battery life, and repair ability and shove a 13.3 inch screen in. Just like how the 13 inch class chassis on the x1 has a 14 inch screen. Well it’s happened: the x390 now exists. Maybe ever better would be a thick…

The x390 screen is only 1080p.
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