171–180 of 490 posts
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…
T480?
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 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…
Lenovo/Thinkpad + Kali sounds like a match made in heaven. May I ask what wifi chipset is on board? 'lspci | grep Network' should show it. The product page just says a/b/g/n which isn't terribly useful.
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…
Here’s an example report that mostly has to do with the production and recycling aspects: https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/15-...
When people are done with their MacBooks they don’t just throw them out - they sell them or hand them down to their relatives/kids because they still work well enough, are supported by the manufacturer, are durable and have very high resale value in secondary markets.
Robust engineering, longevity, support, and resale markets do more for the environment than making components user-replaceable.
My old 2011 MacBook Air is still going strong and being used by my mother. If anything goes wrong, she can take it to the Apple store and get help promptly. She still gets software updates, and that thing can STILL be sold for ~$250-300 on eBay, Swappa or Nextdoor. If the machine breaks completely, she can take it into the Apple store to get it properly recycled in almost any part of the world.
That’s what minding the environment looks like. You have to look at the entire lifecycle of the product from the moment the raw materials are sourced all the way to making it easy to recycle when a product is end-of-life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is going to do this, because good components are a competitive advantage. I can’t see any good manufacturer wanting their good {trackpad, keyboard, case} either being put in a computer that undercuts them or being forced to dumb down their computer to fit the “lowest common denominator”.
To successfully define a laptop standard, it would have taken a consortium of companies. Likely companies which aren't necessarily in the business of selling integrated laptops themselves, but would benefit from the existence of a laptop standard. It's likely companies like Microsoft (pre-Surface), peripheral manufacturers (eg, Logitech) and motherboard manufacturers (eg, Gigabyte) would have gladly got on board in t…
> 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…
> One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know really shouldn’t be. I have lived and worked with people for whom having their fan randomly turn on for no reason is completely normal, and I just can’t understand how they can bear it. Yeah, but try standing in their shoes: they too are probably wondering how you can bear getting worked up over such small things such as fans g…
Fans spinning up is an indicator of something. Usually an indicator that the machine is under heavy load and you need to watch out for the things that come with machines under heavy load: slower performance, overheating, graphical artifacts, potential crashing, etc.
If my fans spun up when I was not aware my computer was under heavy load, I would believe something was wrong with my computer. If I spent any amount of time researching why my computer was under heavy load and my conclusion was that it was not under heavy load and that the fans just spun up for no reason, I think I'd be rightfully irritated.
Imagine a doorbell that rings randomly even if no one is at the door. In the grand scheme of things it's minor. But it shouldn't be happening, and every time it does I have to get up and walk to the window to see if someone is actually there. Every time the doorbell rings and no one is there, I'm going to get more and more irritated.
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…
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…
The LG Gram teardown on iFixit was amazing. It's "moderately difficult" to remove almost everything including the trackpad and parts I forgot existed. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/LG+Gram+15-Inch+Repairability+A...