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Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

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Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#61

Post by rvense »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #2

Apparently those Thinkpads are from 2011-2012, that's old. What do people do with such old devices that makes building a battery from scratch worthwhile?

I use an X200, which is the generation before this. It just does what I want for media/web consumption and the light development work I do in my spare time. (I have a more modern Thinkpad for work. I think I'd be able to do the work on the X200, but maybe not in the way that I do with Typescript incremental compiles etc. VSCode would probably also suck.)

The only time I notice performance problems is bad websites, like Twitter or Reddit. But I'm getting a little stubborn about it, TBH, I don't think I should replace a perfectly working computer in order to use a site meant for displaying 500 character messages which worked perfectly well in its old incarnation. (And some of those same sites also suck on new hardware.)

There are a number of things that I do in my day-to-day life which I don't expect to ever change, things like maintaining a journal, sending and receiving text messages via e-mail, IRC or Signal, backup and organize pictures of my family, listening to music from my MP3 collection, watch videos (in reasonable but not ludicrous resolutions for the 12" screen), etc. These are things that I've done on this computer since I got it in 2009, they are completely solved problems and I would be extremely happy to use this machine until I die.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#63

Post by tomcooks »

diminish wrote: post #60

I have a dream: A large company buys Thinkpad as a brand and launches a few shiny Linux Laptops

Instead of making bad Mac Air clones a company should make 1:1 replicas of sturdy, old school, ThinkPads (t420, x230, x220, etc)

There's a market for cheap, reliable, battle tested equipment

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#65

Post by spapas82 »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #2

Apparently those Thinkpads are from 2011-2012, that's old. What do people do with such old devices that makes building a battery from scratch worthwhile?

I have a refurbushed x230 (12.5'' screen) with a i5 3320M processor, 8 GB ram and an 250 GB SSD. I bought it before a year for around 200 euros. This is the best laptop I've ever owned. It can compete speed-wise with most laptops in the 700-800 euro range and although it has been abused by my 3yo and 1 yo kids (they steps on it, throw it around etc) it doesn't even have a scratch.

It runs Windows 10 and I can easily develop on it using python (big django projects), elixir/phoenix, even java and clojure using VSCode. I think that with some patience it could even be used with Jetbrains editors (Intellij Idea, Android Studio etc). What's even more astonishing is that I can get like 2 hours of medium usage from its 8 yo battery!

What else could anybody want?

After my experience with that laptop I am now in the look for a good deal on a refurbished T4xx (14'' screen).

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#66

Post by jmnicolas »

Waterfall wrote: post #58
captainmuon wrote: post #52

This is a cool project, and I love it when somebody "takes back" their hardware a little bit or keeps them useful through hacking instead of throwing it away. But it shows how irrationally our society is set up in some aspects. In an ideal world, you could just send the Lenovo engineer a mail and ask for the firmware source. But the incentives are such that they keep it secret, probably because they make a lot of mon…

What is irrational? These batteries have been cloned cheaply so they're already reverse engineered. You can find them all over eBay. If this works on the T430 and x230 it will be very impressive. I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked.

TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#67

Post by afroboy »

iam4722202468 wrote: post #46
unicornporn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can unfortunately not live with the crap display (I do image editing). What's the hassle like?

Pretty easy, but a bit expensive considering the laptop itself only costs around $150. A 1080p display + adaptor board for it costs about $100 and the 1440p display + adaptor is around $150. If you look up "T420 ips mod" you'll find lots of pictures and tutorials.

I just use another monitor, while the laptop display act like a second display.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#68

Post by jhanschoo »

jmnicolas wrote: post #66
Waterfall wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is irrational? These batteries have been cloned cheaply so they're already reverse engineered. You can find them all over eBay. If this works on the T430 and x230 it will be very impressive. I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked. TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

DRM on batteries of expensive electronics seems consumer-friendly to me. Most consumers' experience with battery replacement would be sending it for replacement by a technician. Battery DRM would make it difficult for the consumer to end up with an unsafe battery in their device and pockets.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#69

Post by dt3ft »

jmnicolas wrote: post #66
Waterfall wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is irrational? These batteries have been cloned cheaply so they're already reverse engineered. You can find them all over eBay. If this works on the T430 and x230 it will be very impressive. I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked. TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

Same here. What a wonderful world they've built for us, eh?

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#70

Post by 6510 »

dt3ft wrote: post #69
jmnicolas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked. TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

Same here. What a wonderful world they've built for us, eh?

While we sat here and watched. :P
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