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Thinkpad X210

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Re: Thinkpad X210

#161

Post by eggy »

cyberpunk wrote: post #66
eggy wrote: 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…

You use kali as a daily driver? Wow. Do you use a non-root account?

It's not my daily driver. See my detailed response above.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#162

Post by Const-me »

amenod wrote: post #136
Const-me wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, 64M…

Agreed. > Soldered CPUs are unfortunately inevitable on modern ones... To be fair, even on desktop replacing a CPU on the same motherboard is a pretty niche thing in my experience. Not to say people don't do this, but most of the people I know upgrade both at the same time, either because of incompatiblity or because of substantial gains with the newer MB. So soldering the two together is not as bad as glueing keyboa…

In some cases, upgrading a CPU prolongs useful life of the device.

The desktop I’m using now had i5-4460 at the time of purchase, eventually upgraded to Xeon E3-1230v3. Only going to upgrade motherboard after AMD releases Zen 2 desktop CPUs.

A family member uses a laptop that initially had i3-3110M. I’ve put i7-3612QM there, it’s comparable to modern ones performance-wise despite 6 years difference, e.g. cpubenchmark.net rates i7-3612QM at 6820 points, i5-8265U at 8212 points (because 35W versus 15).

I agree about glued keyboards. Keyboards are exposed to outside world and also subject to mechanical wear. The only thing worse than that is soldered SSDs. Makes data recovery very hard, and also rate of innovations is still fast for them, SSDs that will become available couple years in the future will be both much faster and much larger, upgrading them regularly makes sense for UX.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#163

Post by reaperducer »

shasheene wrote: post #48

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…

For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end gaming PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU.

And that's great, if you're into generic beige boxes.

It's been years since I put together my own IBM compatible computers. But in the time since then, I haven't really seen any innovation in desktops.

Yes, for a while the processor numbers ticked up, but then plateaued. Graphics cards push the limits, but that has zero to do with the ATX standard, and more to do with using GPUs for non-graphics computation.

The laptop and mobile sectors seem to be what is driving SSD adoption, high DPI displays, power-conscious design, advanced cooling, smaller components, improved imaging input, reliable fingerprint reading, face recognition for security, smaller interchangeable ports, the move from spinning media to solid state or streaming, and probably other things that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Even if you think Apple's touchbar was a disaster, it's the kind of risk that wouldn't be taken in the Wintel desktop industry.

All we've gotten from the desktop side in the last 20 years is more elaborate giant plastic enclosures, LED lights inside the computer, and...? I'm not sure. Even liquid cooling was in laptops in the early part of this century.

Again, I haven't built a desktop in a long time, so if I'm off base I'd like to hear a list of desktop innovations enabled by the ATX standard. But my observation is that ATX is a pickup truck, and laptops are a Tesla.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#164

Post by alfonsodev »

shasheene wrote: post #48

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…

At least for phones there is Phoneblocks[1] they are now part of Google's project Ara.

Maybe it could evolve to a laptop experience if blocks get powerful enough and somebody develops compatible chasis.

*update: The project Ara was cancelled in 2016 [2].

[1] https://phonebloks.com

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/2/12775922/google-project-ar...

Re: Thinkpad X210

#165

Post by eggy »

zepearl wrote: post #103
eggy wrote: 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.

I would like to try an X1, but I think the P71 is more my speed. I wish they offered an X1 with the same rubbery feel as the T430u I am using now. I am not a fan of low-frictive surfaces, since my nerves are shot in my left hand, and my right is very insenstive, which has lead to me dropping things lately.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#166

Post by tbrock »

syntaxing wrote: post #43
saagarjha wrote: post #6

> 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…

You should see my X62, the battery is so bad. I even bought a "brand new" battery and it last about 2 hours. We don't notice it but battery technology has really pushed forward since a decade ago.

Would be awesome for the retro thinkpad scene if someone started making new batteries for the old stuff.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#167

Post by shinryuu »

alfonsodev wrote: post #164
shasheene wrote: post #48

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…

At least for phones there is Phoneblocks[1] they are now part of Google's project Ara. Maybe it could evolve to a laptop experience if blocks get powerful enough and somebody develops compatible chasis. *update: The project Ara was cancelled in 2016 [2]. [1] https://phonebloks.com [2] https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/2/12775922/google-project-ar...

Project Ara is no more...

Re: Thinkpad X210

#168

Post by GordonS »

chronogram wrote: post #123
GordonS wrote: post #119

Is anyone happy coding on such a small screen, even if it is high-res? I have a 2016 13" MBP, and find the screen too small for coding. It's high-res, but that means everything is super-small unless you increase the scaling, which of course reduces the available screen real estate. The screen is annoyingly reflective too, but that's another problem entirely. My daily driver is a 15" HP Zbook G3 with a 1080p display,…

I use an external screen on my 12" laptop. Obviously not useful for coding on the train, but for those short periods the 12" is fine.

I also use external monitors during the day (27" QHD in landscape as the main one, 24" FHD in portrait as secondary), but when travelling, and in the evenings where I try to be more sociable that shutting myself away, I find the lack of screen real estate a real PITA.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#169

Post by alfonsodev »

shinryuu wrote: post #167
alfonsodev wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for phones there is Phoneblocks[1] they are now part of Google's project Ara. Maybe it could evolve to a laptop experience if blocks get powerful enough and somebody develops compatible chasis. *update: The project Ara was cancelled in 2016 [2]. [1] https://phonebloks.com [2] https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/2/12775922/google-project-ar...

Project Ara is no more...

:( exactly I was coming to update my comment https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/2/12775922/google-project-ar... Seems they cancelled it.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#170

Post by jchw »

reaperducer wrote: post #163
shasheene wrote: post #48

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…

For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end gaming PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. And that's great, if you're into generic beige boxes. It's been years since I put together my own IBM compatible computers. But in the time since then, I haven't really seen any innovation in desktops. Yes, for a while the processor numbers ticked up, but then plateaued…

>And that's great, if you're into generic beige boxes.

>All we've gotten from the desktop side in the last 20 years is more elaborate giant plastic enclosures, LED lights inside the computer, and...?

Have you ever built an ATX computer? I assure you, there are plenty of different standard form factor cases out there. The beige box thing was in vogue in the 90s, but today the big trends are sleek black with tempered glass.

And standard form factor desktop does not equal giant tower. You could also do a mini ITX build, a standard that's been around since 2001 for what it's worth.

High DPI displays? This implies high end displays weren't available to desktops first (they were.) A decent CRT could produce much higher DPI than LCDs could (in that era.) Part of the reason why Windows DPI independence sucks is because Microsoft implemented it super early in, without all of the insights Apple had to do it right, and now there's like 4 different DPI mechanisms in Windows.

All in all I'm not sure what really needs "innovating" so badly with desktop form factor. Do we need to solder our RAM to the main board, is that "innovation?"

You kind of say it yourself:

>that has zero to do with the ATX standard,

So would be the case for any form factor standard. It only dictates how things interoperate.

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