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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

#381

Post by userbinator »

gocartStatue wrote: post #260
userbinator wrote: post #232

The Intel CPU-s had throttling issues that made them unusable for basic things like calls over Google Meet as they would throttle to 400 MHz. That seems to be a common theme with the newer laptops. Look up "Intel DPTF" and power limits. They are severely throttled by firmware/drivers, long before they actually hit their (thermal) limits. There are various tweaks to unlock the full potential of the CPU, the easiest of…

We hit the 400Mhz problem as well, on corporate high-end 14" Dells. Disabling thermald did not help much, as the laptop almost melted. But we discovered a "magic" spell involving rmmod/modprobe. It sparked a kind of a custom: - guys, my laptop is throttling hard (...) - here, run this untrusted code snippet as root - yaay, it worked!

Disabling thermald did not help much, as the laptop almost melted.

They'll throttle and hard-shutdown long before permanent damage occurs. Recent laptop CPUs have maximum temperatures of ~100C and are perfectly fine to stay at that temperature 24/7.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#382

Post by jhgb »

maccard wrote: post #140
jbverschoor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not that they're good replacement for many workflows. This is just flat out not true. it is a good replacement for many. It might not be the fastest of all, but that doesn't mean it's not a good replacement It's faster single threaded, and will be faster until you fully saturate more than around 14 threads. Couldn't find a linux compilation benchmark, but here a comparison with the M1 on compilation performance: ht…

It looks like this is basically a serial benchmark, so yeah of course the higher raw clock speed will win out. The run is also less than a minute, so most laptops will happily burst for that long, however what happens if you throw a 5/10/15 minute compile at it? > Does It Scale Well With Increasing Cores? > No, based on the automated analysis of the collected public benchmark data, this test / test settings does not…

One interesting thing would be to know how much of the performance improvement in some of the compile tests is due to the high-bandwidth memory interface on the M1 chip. Since the M1 chip has both different cores AND a quintuple memory bandwidth compared to Ryzen's/Threadripper's off-chip memory, if you consider things like cache misses, one has to wonder what's the contribution of both to the performance increases.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#383

Post by catdog »

Those 10 year old Thinkpads are still surprisingly capable. I still didn't completely stop using my X220 (also with some HW upgrades like 16GB RAM and ac Wifi) although I bought a Thinkpad P14s Gen 2 (AMD) this year.

Some remarks for running Linux on the P14s:

> On AMD models, performance was less than stellar for my workloads and not a significant jump over a laptop from 2018.

Might be that you need to bump up some power management settings to get full performance via e.g. [1] or [2]. There is also /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile but this is broken currently for T14/P14s Gen2 AMD and maybe other models [3].

> Wi-Fi/Bluetooth would not work on one of the laptops, even when I was using an up-to-date Linux distro. Likely related to the type of adapter used (not Intel).

Lenovo switched to using a Realtek adapter for some models (due to chip shortage according to their Linux support team). Linux 5.16 includes the driver now, there is also a backport [2] for older kernel versions available.

[1] https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj [2] https://github.com/xsmile/ryzen-ppd [3] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215177 [4] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#384

Post by spapas82 »

Recently I bought a T420 for 120 euros. I updated it to 8gb ram and 250 ssd for 100 more euros. Total cost 220 euros for a laptop that covers most of my needs as a developer. It runs Windows 10 and manjaro Linux on two partitions flawlessly!

I don't think that there's a better value for money laptop anybody could buy. If somebody believers otherwise I'd really like to see what's the other options.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#385

Post by pdimitar »

idealmedtech wrote: post #295
pdimitar wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what's your media center setup?

The physical setup is very simple: just the laptop wired through miniDP to the TV, laptop sits behind the TV on a little wardrobe and has its screen turned off. I have various handbraked movies (not for distribution, only my personal usage) and shows that I view in VLC, plus a gigabit Ethernet connection that is more than enough for HD streaming. I keep it simple, just have a standard desktop install of Arch with Pla…

Same reasoning here, my back is not well and even though I am starting physiotherapy in a few days, I am looking for a setup I can actively practice from a couch-like position. Even bought a very nice and sturdy (and comfy) folding bed. And will soon order a lap desk.

Makes me a bit salty because the Steelcase Gesture is an absolutely EXCELLENT chair and I paid a lot for it but... health is more important. Hopefully I will be using it more in the future if my physiotherapy progresses well.

Thank you for the anecdote. I am pondering Manjaro with XFCE but might look at KDE Plasma as well; a lot of people praise it.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#386

Post by UncleSlacky »

perth wrote: post #251
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…

Pro Tip: get Dells business models like the latitude series The business Dell laptops blow anything lenovo has ever made out of the water in terms of specs, build quality, and serviceability. Also Dell’s bios is way better and easier to do stuff in. I’ve had a t420 and I thought it was crap compared to the Dell business laptops. The cooling, plastic casing material, and serviceability just isn’t there. On the T420 my…

Yep - Latitudes are always cheaper than their Thinkpad equivalents (example, my e6220 was about 2/3rds the cost of an x220 (this was about 5 years ago).

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#387

Post by bjarneh »

necovek wrote: post #248
bjarneh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corner cutting seems to have started the moment IBM sold ThinkPad to Lenovo. The fact that ThinkPad used to sell laptop keyboards for desktop use, says it all: http://www.notebookreview.com/picture/?f=48072 It didn't take more than a couple of years before Lenovo discontinued this gem either; in favor of a cheaper alternative (in terms of production cost).

They still make and sell a T-based laptop keyboard in the form of https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb... They always had silly, hard-to-search-for names (it seems the variants I have are called "Thinkpad Compact USB Keyboard with Trackpoint" and "Thinkpad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with Trackpoint"): https://support.lenovo.com/nl/en/solutions/pd026745 , https://support.lenovo.com/de/en/soluti…

Yes, but they really shouldn't have touched the original design; it was just right. I haven't seen those later models in person, but when I worked as a consultant 16 years ago in Oslo, we had 2 guys in my company that lugged that original ThinkPad keyboard around to every assignment they got.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#388

Post by [deleted] »

speed_spread wrote: post #377
wyre wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment is thrown out a lot but Apple has some of the best LTS on their hardware in the business. 6 year old iPhones are still getting updates. Someone in this thread mentioned their laptop that Apple describes as vintage is still getting updates. Apple is still selling a 4 year old smart watch as new. I feel much better spending my money on Apple products trusting it will be supported for a long time than spe…

It's not Apple, it's any closed-source hardware. The moment the vendor no longer supports it, it's dead. Not counting those few rare cases where fanatics reverse engineer it.

[deleted]

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#389

Post by Kadin »

cobaltoxide wrote: post #344
emptybottle wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's hilarious to me is that Apple considers their own computers of this era to be "vintage" No joke, that's the real term https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 "About vintage products. -- Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago." Well, not much has changed on the intel side in that timeframe. My 2013 laptop is still getting OS updates a…

Planned obsolescence is Apple's bread and butter.

Seems arguable -- but if that's the case, they are one of the lesser offenders in the market right now.

The lifespan of much of Apple's hardware is considerably longer than most competitors' products. This is especially true with phones. I'm using an iPhone 7 right now, which was first released in Sept 2016. So, five full years and counting, and it's still running the latest iOS version. Not just "still gets security updates" on an old OS, but actually runs the latest release.

For hardware in 2022, that's not bad.

Personally, I think it's kind of a low bar, and we really ought to be able to do better. (I think a 5-year lifespan for a phone or a laptop, and 10 for a desktop, should be a starting point.)

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#390

Post by Kadin »

perth wrote: post #251
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…

Pro Tip: get Dells business models like the latitude series The business Dell laptops blow anything lenovo has ever made out of the water in terms of specs, build quality, and serviceability. Also Dell’s bios is way better and easier to do stuff in. I’ve had a t420 and I thought it was crap compared to the Dell business laptops. The cooling, plastic casing material, and serviceability just isn’t there. On the T420 my…

I've used several Dell business laptops, most from the Latitude Exxx series, and they are great machines.

From what I can tell, they were made to compete directly with the IBM/Lenovo T-series Thinkpads. Similar form factor, ability to use docking stations, good keyboards, even the Trackpoint-like pointing device in addition to a traditional trackpad.

Although I haven't used a recent Lenovo T-series for any length of time, the Dells appear to compare very favorably. More metal construction, so they dent rather than cracking. Docking stations seem to be less expensive. Displays are on par. Similar battery life.

I wouldn't turn down a T-series if somebody handed me one, but many of the points the author makes in TFA about his T-series are true of the E-series Dells also.

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