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Thinkpad X210

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Thinkpad X210

#231

Post by josteink »

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,…

My Carbon X1 has a smaller-than—14” screen, but due to the small bezel effectively has the same screen-size as a bigger, actual 14” laptop.

And I use it for coding.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#232

Post by ggreer »

leiroigh wrote: post #222

I am a happy owner of an x62. This article almost convinced me to buy an x210 next. Minor gripes: (1) The dispayport-hdmi thing, (2) the mainboard is split (sound + rhs usb are on a separate board) and the small part has pretty flimsy attachement inside the case, (3) the CPU (i5 broadwell engineering sample) is pretty lackluster but perfect for development (no turbo, no throttling, no surprises), (4) finding an ok sc…

I'm not sure what screen you got off Alibaba but if you want something better, you might want to try the daylight LED mod.[1] You won't get better color gamut, but you will get insane brightness and better battery life.

I did that mod to my X62 and it made the screen actually usable.

1. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml

Re: Thinkpad X210

#233

Post by rattray »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #118
lelf wrote: post #10

> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack . That’s intensive. And sad.

I don't get why people don't just use Slack on Chrome. Everything people rant about when using the Electron-app doesn't happen in Chrome.

I do this (I have it as a pinned tab next to Inbox) and love it.

Much more resource efficient, faster to close/open, and easier to have (gasp) a tabbed browsing experience to keep an eye on an important channel.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#234

Post by xiphmont »

Echoing Geoff's article, I'm a big fan of the 51nb mobos from the X62 on. The X62 was very very good, and the T70 and X210 are even better. Can't wait for the X63. One reason I'm taking time off from making X62 backlight kits is to make some new mods for the latest machines-- a 13" 3k screen and internal battery. I've gotten both running, but it takes time to work kinks out of production. It's also why I've been working on my microscope. :-)

Re: Thinkpad X210

#235

Post by hedora »

mavhc wrote: post #106
ekianjo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Modern intel (and probably most other) boards use hardware scramblers for other reasons (storing all zeros or all ones causes signal integrity issues / current spikes), and secure the scrambling routine with a different code at each boot.

So, unless I’m mistaken, cooling the ram and moving to another doesn’t work any more.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#236

Post by camgunz »

ahstilde wrote: post #81

Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine? Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?

You don't buy the new ones. You buy at latest an X230 and put Linux or BSD on it. All the excitement around 51nb is that you can upgrade to modern hardware if you think the X220 is the last good notebook ever commercially produced. A lot of people (disclaimer: including me) think that, which is why you see them as targets for things like OpenBSD and Libreboot.

But you're right, I would never buy a "modern" Lenovo though. But in fairness, I don't know that I'd buy a modern notebook at all.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#237

Post by eropple »

smnplk wrote: post #220
askafriend wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Pros not being user serviceable at every component level doesn’t mean they’re not environmentally friendly - not by a long shot. In fact, building a device like that might even shorten lifespan in a laptop form-factor, not to mention no one wants to carry around a heavy, clunky machine so it likely wouldn’t sell anyway. Here’s an example report that mostly has to do with the production and recycling aspects:…

Apparently you haven't seen any of Louis Rossmann videos on Youtube. Let's say your grandma's MacBook stops working because of blown fuse on the motherboard. Something like that would take Louis 5 min to repair, but Apple store would just replace the whole motherboard and charge $$$. How is that environmentally friendly.

One: shout out your favorite YouTubist, I guess, but a repair Apple makes is a repair Apple has to support.

Two: it's much, much harder to support a repair done on-site with a soldering iron than it is to replace a part. These repairs are much more likely to fail under both normal and unconventional use and then will come back for more repairs--which are themselves, still, expensive to provide.

Three: waste concerns have to factor in what Apple does with the part after they do the swap. (I have no insight into what they do, but your comment ignores this.)

Re: Thinkpad X210

#238

Post by eitland »

ggreer wrote: post #207
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…

I don't lie about battery life numbers. People like to say, "I get 9 hours of battery life." when they mean that they get 9 hours if they do doing nothing but let their computer idle with the brightness at minimum. 4 hours with a 55Wh battery is an average consumption of 13 watts. That's because my typical workflow involves running a VM containing cassandra & postrgres (among other services) and recompiling go and ja…

> My fan comment was a joke about Slack's efficiency.

It's less of a joke and probably just a statement.

Seriously: even something as small as someone adding an animated emoji makes slack eat CPU :-/

Re: Thinkpad X210

#239

Post by eikenberry »

ahstilde wrote: post #81

Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine? Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?

Those are both issues with running Windows on Thinkpads. The article's author is running Linux. Besides, there are very few options for decently built laptops with good keyboards.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#240

Post by userbinator »

alkonaut wrote: post #191
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…

Some parts such as batteries, storage, ram etc should at least be a standardized. Manufacturers probably don’t want to standardize on the remaining motherboard/graphics/chassis/cooling because a laptop isn’t like an atx computer where you get modularity at the expense of wasted space. A laptop is basically a 3D puzzle with thermal components. Few consumers would buy a laptop with even a little wasted volume or weight…

Batteries (or rather, individual cells) do have a standard: 18650. Unfortunately too thick for the ultra-thin laptops, but the older Thinkpads use them. I suspect safety is the reason why no one makes replacement laptop battery "empty shells" that take 18650s and have the appropriate balancing/protection circuitry to interface with a laptop, but then again you see mobile phone powerbanks being sold this way... go figure:

https://megaeshop.pk/5v-dual-usb-power-bank-box-diy-shell-ca...

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