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I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

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Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#81

Post by jbverschoor »

maccard wrote: post #28
bungle wrote: post #15

> The CPU innovation stagnation between 2012-2017 has resulted in 4 cores still being an acceptable low-end CPU in early 2022 I recently got M1 Max MacBook, and I was expecting a huge jump from my 2010 Mac Pro, but on my day-to-day work. It is barely noticeable, despite the raving reviews of M1. Perhaps for me it is not about things getting obsolete, but more of that my own needs on CPU/GPU performance were pretty mu…

> I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high This isn't true for all programmers. I'm a programmer, and until 3 years ago a good chunk of my day was spent waiting for compiles to finish. > Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe. Not even remotely close. I have an AMD threadrippe…

I dunno man.. You're comparing a CPU which costs as much as the complete machine (or two M1 airs). It's not portable has a TDP of 280W. Still it's 30% slower single threaded. For multithreaded it's 2.7x as fast. So yeah, maybe for rendering it's faster, but it won't be as snappy as the M1.

Then again, if you wanna use it for rendering, just buy 4 M1 macminis for the price of one CPU. Or 6 minis if you add all the other stuff you need.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#82

Post by yokoprime »

I have a T430 from late 2011 which is still in use. I've replaced the battery and upgraded the RAM. One glaring issue this author only mentions in passing is the screen, which in my opinion is a complete dealbreaker for using this laptop for any sort of daily driver tasks like media consumption and web browsing. Even for its day the screen was poor. I'm not talking about the resolution, but color rendition and contrast. Its a complete pig. I run arch (btw) on mine and use it as a troubleshooting machine which i can carry with me and throw around without worrying too much, but i would not use it as my main computer.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#83

Post by Kessler83 »

For any laptop, I want at least full hd 15 inch screen, the very best keyboard (centered, without numpad) and a trackpoint. If it comes without dedicated graphics, that's a bonus. This means a thinkpad, afaik.

So unless I wanna spend a fortune on the new Thinkpad P1 (I don't!), I think the best option is a modded T530. I installed a 1920x1080 screen with great color, upgraded RAM to 16G, put in two SSDs and retrofitted a T420 keyboard (you need some scotch, a nail clipper and a BIOS hack). This is enough for my purposes---for now.

But you can also replace the heat sink and the processor using parts from a W530. Reportedly, this might also let you upgrade to 32G ram. So I'm confident that I'll be able to use this machine until I can either afford a P1, or lenovo puts out something even better.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#84

Post by maccard »

ribit wrote: post #79
maccard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high This isn't true for all programmers. I'm a programmer, and until 3 years ago a good chunk of my day was spent waiting for compiles to finish. > Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe. Not even remotely close. I have an AMD threadrippe…

What about real world tests for you specific workflows? My M1 Max runs my daily bread and butter R scripts approximately 4x faster compared to a top of the line Intel Coffee Lake. For me it's a huge improvement. Having over 100GB/s RAM bandwidth per core and a huge cache are a big thing for many latency-sensitive workloads.

I don't actually own an M1 Max, so I can't do a straight up comparison right now sorry. I upgraded from an 8700k to a 3970x, and for compilation the speadups were pretty much on paper gains. Each individual compilation task is ~10% slower, but the parallelism of 32 cores means that overall it's a 5x speedup over my previous CPU.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#85

Post by fhe »

bungle wrote: post #15

> The CPU innovation stagnation between 2012-2017 has resulted in 4 cores still being an acceptable low-end CPU in early 2022 I recently got M1 Max MacBook, and I was expecting a huge jump from my 2010 Mac Pro, but on my day-to-day work. It is barely noticeable, despite the raving reviews of M1. Perhaps for me it is not about things getting obsolete, but more of that my own needs on CPU/GPU performance were pretty mu…

I use the M1 Mac Air for office work. It replaced my 2017 MBP, and the difference is very noticeable -- with some 3 dozen tabs open on my browser (not the best of browsing habit) the M1 can take it without breaking a sweat. Yet for entertainment and hobby programming I revert back to my (really) old 2011 iMac that runs High Sierra -- I have invested much time fine-tuning that machine. I tried to migrate the setup to the M1, but a bunch of dependencies were broken. I'd stay with the iMac for as long as the hardware can hold out.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#86

Post by zibzab »

microtonal wrote: post #13
hddherman wrote: post #9

In case my internet connection fails, here's a Wayback Machine snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20220110074515/https://ounapuu.e... I really appreciate your feedback, thoughts and own experiences that relate to this post!

I had similar experiences with the T14 AMD that I used for over half a year. On Linux the Trackpad would often not come back after sleep. Also, the battery would drain very quickly in S3 suspend. The laptop would take off during video calls (though the fan noise was definitely not as bad as with many Intel models). In the end it was really a thousand of paper cuts, especially with Linux, despite the laptop being cert…

Note that Linux certification applies only to specific distros/versions.

Ubuntu LTS works flawless on my thinkpad but some stuff break on Ubuntu 21.10.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#87

Post by maccard »

jbverschoor wrote: post #81
maccard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high This isn't true for all programmers. I'm a programmer, and until 3 years ago a good chunk of my day was spent waiting for compiles to finish. > Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe. Not even remotely close. I have an AMD threadrippe…

I dunno man.. You're comparing a CPU which costs as much as the complete machine (or two M1 airs). It's not portable has a TDP of 280W. Still it's 30% slower single threaded. For multithreaded it's 2.7x as fast. So yeah, maybe for rendering it's faster, but it won't be as snappy as the M1. Then again, if you wanna use it for rendering, just buy 4 M1 macminis for the price of one CPU. Or 6 minis if you add all the oth…

The claim was that laptops are on par with desktops, not that they're good replacement for many workflows. This is just flat out not true.

> It's not portable has a TDP of 280W

That doesn't bother me in the slightest for a workstation.

> So yeah, maybe for rendering it's faster, but it won't be as snappy as the M1.

Nobody who cares about performance is doing rendering on a CPU, it's all GPU accelerated. It's not about "snappiness", it's about suitability for work. I upgraded from an 8700k to this machine and saw a 5x speedup (my compiles dropped from 30m to about 6 minutes).

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#88

Post by javchz »

My main Laptop it's a T430, and from time to time I use a T440p. It's amazing how you can disassemble the whole thing with only one screwdriver and upgrade almost everything.

The T420 keyboard mod it's what's stopping me from upgrading to a newer model. Don't get me wrong it's not mechanical or anything, but has the comfiest layout I have tried on any laptop so far.

There are some drawbacks:

* New batteries are rare

* The display it's bad

* After Covid, it's expensive to get replacements parts like plastics bezels or motherboards.

* The GPU or iGPU it's bad. Gonna be a problem in a few years with how demanding web pages are. Forget about video editing or gaming beyond simple things.

* New Linux kernels could drop support for some of the drivers in the future. This thing's great, but it's old.

In any case, if I upgrade to anything in the future, it will probably be a framework laptop.

M1 Macbooks are probably the best cost-benefit laptop out there for a lot of people (battery, display, cpu power), and I kinda want to try one. But I don't feel comfortable voting with my wallet for Apple's practices, especially with how hostile they have been with the "right to repair" movement.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#89

Post by maccard »

openplatypus wrote: post #66
maccard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high This isn't true for all programmers. I'm a programmer, and until 3 years ago a good chunk of my day was spent waiting for compiles to finish. > Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe. Not even remotely close. I have an AMD threadrippe…

Oh, can you share more? What is your programming environment? I am debating a move to desktop/workstation with desktop CPU to support smoother Scala/lots-of-containers development experience. Pandemic made laptops less appealing. With digital nomadism being a question mark for some. Yes, I do know some still continue to practice this lifestyle. I can be only jealous :)

> Oh, can you share more? What is your programming environment?

I work in games and write C++. Compile times are long, and we deal with large amounts of assets (current project is ~50GB of textures, models, animations, sound. This is small. Last project was >500GB).

> With digital nomadism being a question mark for some.

Sure, if you want portability or being able to move around this sort of machine won't work for you, but I live with my partner in a nice city, work remotely and have a separate home office. I have almost 0 need for the portability of a laptop.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#90

Post by y4mi »

black_puppydog wrote: post #65

I find it funny how people seem to fixate so much on the fact that the author upgraded various components to say the title is misleading. As someone with apparently similar requirements, the take-away from this should be this: Even though significant work is required to keep these old machines working, some people prefer to do so. Crucially, they prefer it not because they love tinkering, but simply because the value…

There are upgradeable options though. The framework Laptop to name the most hyped current option for example.
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