Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thinkpad X210

geoff.greer.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 490 posts

Re: Thinkpad X210

#471

Post by smorrow »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #316
eitland wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've always appreciated Windows's animations for minimise and restore. I hate animations that don't do anything for you, though.

Brian Kernighan's COS333 page links to a goodui.org that recommends animations (in moderation) but also a bunch of horrible stuff.

So there's that.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#472

Post by newnewpdro »

syntaxing wrote: post #423
newnewpdro wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh? I've tried this before, the battery charge/fuel gauge circuit entered a permanent fault state and none of the tricks I found online worked. It was an x61 battery.

I would love to learn how you did this!

How I failed to rebuild a thinkpad battery?

Re: Thinkpad X210

#473

Post by darkmighty »

Riada wrote: post #126
canuckintime wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only buy fanless laptops now.

Do you have a list of fanless laptops that you might recommend? (I only know of the Huawei MateBook X and the Xiaomi Mi Air.) I have to bear with my laptop's loud fan, but I would like to replace it with a fanless one in the future.

I've had good experiences with some chinese manufacturers (first hand experience, Jumper and Alldocube, heard of Chuwi and Xiaomi), they're putting out good quality very cheap products. I'd just go for metal/aluminum body if you can find it.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#474

Post by vesche »

veryworried wrote: post #76
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…

Why in God’s name are you using Kali as a daily driver? Anyone who does this has no idea what they’re doing. Kali is made exclusively for pentesting, with a modified and insecure kernel specifically for running certain pentesting apps better.

AFAIK the Kali kernel is Debian unstable modified to allow wireless tools like aircrack-ng suite to do injection and other fun things. So it's just as insecure as any bleeding edge nix, the risk factor really depends on what packages you install and services you run. I wouldn't really recommend it as a daily driver either, but I also wouldn't frown on someone who does.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#475

Post by jarcane »

mbrumlow wrote: post #246
ggreer wrote: 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…

I get about 9 hours of battery life on my T450s and about 6 on my x220 under load, youtube, vms, coding. That is under load. My idle times, browsing something like HN, or sitting in #emacs I get near 20 hours on my t450s and about 13 on my x220. I think low low low idle power consumption is key to long infrequent charges. This is because the second you are not using your computer then it should also not be using powe…

At my previous job I had a T460p with the full-sized double battery setup, and I routinely got 12 hours actual use with room to spare, and this was on a more or less stock Fedora install without even bothering to do any real power consumption optimizations.

Modern T-series still have amazing damn battery life, and I’ve never found anyone else who comes close except Apple, or Android ARM hybrids like the old ASUS Transformer Prime with the double batteries.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#476

Post by eggy »

zepearl wrote: post #336
eggy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just some small warnings: the P71 is very bulky (somehow more than how it looks in the pictures) and its case feels a bit cheap (the case is "real" plastic and if you tap on it below the keyboard it really makes the sound of an empty plastic case) => personally I expected a bit more as it's not cheap (the components I chose are basically the cheapest ones with the exception of the 4k panel and the backlit keyboard).…

Thanks a lot. I really prefer the solid feel of my T430u, so I will probably go with trying an X1 for once, or the smaller P51 I believe.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#477

Post by eggy »

therein wrote: post #408
evjim wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you learn freecad? I really want to switch to it from auto desk inventor but have spent hours messing around and can't even make a cube. The YouTube videos I was watching assumed I knew too much.

Same here, glad I am not alone. I wasn't sure if I had a bad build or something so I built it from source but even then I couldn't get it to work.

I use Autodesk Fusion 360, which if you are a startup or business making less than a certain amount of money is free to use, and it now includes what were once extras: analysis (FEA), machining, and other features. It really is amazing.

I use FreeCAD, since I have been familiar with it for years. It was once clunkier and had less features, but now it can be used for a lot of the things I need to do.

For a quick start in making a cube, make sure you are in the correct workbench Part or Part Design in the tutorial. The only two issues I have are that it is difficult to interface with clients that use Autodesk, Solidworks, or Rhino products. I have done FEA with the Calculix backend in FreeCAD, and used Paraview to create my FEA pictures for reports. If you know Python, you can even create a cube in the console below. Check out the scripting tutorials. I am not a fan of Python, but I use it in FreeCAD and Blender3D.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#478

Post by eggy »

kortilla wrote: post #217
eggy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 2013 T430u with an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 chip. It only supports 2.4 GHz, and not 5 GHz. I use a second, external USB WiFi dongle for Wireshark and other uses. It's six years old and great to use for more than I thought it would be.

What WiFi dongle do you recommend for good Linux wireshark support?

It depends on your needs and budget. I picked up a Netgear dongle years ago for $25 that still works fine. Just Google for your linux distro, netgear, and wireshark to find any gotchas.

It all depends too if you are in managed mode or monitor mode. See this: https://github.com/nmap/npcap/releases

Here's some more info. on modes and your capture setup: https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/WLAN/CaptureSetup/WL...

Re: Thinkpad X210

#479

Post by umvi »

ggreer wrote: post #405
umvi wrote: post #324

I noticed the author names his computers after elements (iron). I do that too! I was taken aback because I have a box named "iron" also (as well as cobalt, oxygen, and helium)

I name all of my computers after elements. I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc. I also tend to categorize machines by elemental classification. Servers are alkalai metals, laptops are nonmetals, consoles are halogens, etc. I didn't have any neat nonmetals left, so I j…

> I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc.

Ok, that's definitely a step farther than I've ever taken it. Ingenious though, I'm stealing that idea!

Re: Thinkpad X210

#480

Post by adiabatty »

mnemonic204 wrote: post #206
hopler wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is that why the sort-of upgradeable 2015 MBPs nowadays go for higher prices on ebay already than the absolutely non-upgradeable 2016/17s?

The 2015s don't have the "a single speck of dust gets in the keyboard and disables a key" problem. All later models do. I don't think upgradeability factors into it much.
Post reply on HN