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Thinkpad X210

geoff.greer.fm

311–320 of 490 posts

Re: Thinkpad X210

#311

> 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 (almost) always work where I can plugin - so the "battery" I treat more like an internal UPS. 30 minutes would be fine :)

Re: Thinkpad X210

#312

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 tho…

I have an x220 on a shelf somewhere. You've convinced me to give it another look - or to sell it someone that would want to.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#313
post #220

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.

He’s cringe at best, just as bad as the rest of them at worst. He’s playing for the camera, the audience. I wouldn’t take much of what he says seriously, but that’s just me I guess.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#314
post #98
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…

Consumers prefer super-thin soldered machines, sadly. The proof is in the shopping.

No, because such options are almost completely gone from the market. And I can't honestly believe that there is "no market" for it. It's an anomaly because most PC manufacturers are just trying to imitate Apple.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#315
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…

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…

> There’re upgrade-friendly laptops on the market.

yes, but very few, and going fewer and fewer as we speak. Even Lenovo which was famous for that ends up soldering RAM in their recent models and making the battery a hassle to replace while it used to be on the outside before.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#316
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-/

I used to wonder why my ThinkPad sometimes ran for 12 hours and sometimes 5. Turns out that Google Docs has an animated cursor that doesn't just blink, it fades in and out using javascript. Animation cost several W on average. UX guys love animations because I dunno they are just psychos.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#317
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By far the best onscreen „hacking“ I know of. He does use Linux Mint as daily driver though...

Definitely going to binge watch soon. I have thought of using Redox and writing my own tools. An obsucre OS, but still running across interent/ethernet...oh, wait, spawn a drone node on a Windows machine using MOSREF/Wasp Lisp in Rust or Shen (shout out to doublec/sdunlop!) [1,2] [1] https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/02/19/spawning-windows-comman... [2] https://github.com/doublec/shen-wasp/releases/tag/v0.8

And what have you found to be the issue(s) with running Redox as your OS?

Re: Thinkpad X210

#318

If you can still find one on then used market, I'll put in a plug for the Lenovo X1C 4th Gen (2016 model) as an ideal Linux laptop. It's what I switched to after the x220, and I describe it here: https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux Fan never turns on, matte display, awesome connectivity, great battery life, and everything on Linux just works.

Have you tried the Dell XPS Developer Editions? They seem to get pretty good reviews as well.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#319
post #20
post #2

>Linux worked out of the box. I had to install non-free drivers for the Broadcom wireless card, then tweak a few module options to get better power saving. This is not, for the record, "working out of the box".

> then tweak a few module options to get better power saving What, what these options are? Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get power management working on a Linux laptop?".

I haven't been using a Linux laptop for about 3 years now (Ended up with a Mac at my current job, which 3 years in I still don't really like all that much). Back when I did, I found the package laptop-mode-tools to be quite effective. It tunes a bunch of things when you're off A/C, and can be adjusted to control a number of other things. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+package/laptop-mode-too...

On my mac, I've got HammerSpoon configured to change a bunch of things depending on power levels, sleep state etc, including killing off Slack.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#320
post #303
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Long lasting battery is the feature I appreciate most from a laptop. My T430 with the extended slice battery gives me 7-10 hours, and could probably get another 3+ if I swapped out the CD drive for the Power Bridge battery. Long live the ThinkPad. Edit: This is with mostly casual use on an Arch Linux setup. I think the next killer feature I want/look for in a laptop is the ability to see the screen in bright sunlight…

> I would mind spending a few hours by the waterfront coding.

I do this with an OLPC XO. I also have a Cr-48 with Lubuntu. There's a tradeoff: the XO has a brighter screen but a smaller keyboard.

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