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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

#391

Post by croutonwagon »

mad182 wrote: post #167

I'm using X220 from 2011, it has i7, 8GB RAM and SSD, running Debian Linux. I don't even feel the need to upgrade. It's in ideal condition, I love the keyboard and form factor, and for my daily tasks mostly involving terminal, text editor and web browser if feels snappier than many modern machines I have worked with. I bought a new Dell laptop for my wife a year ago, and while the CPU and GPU are obviously way more c…

I just got off my X200s from like....2008.

the 1.8 Ghz dual core was getting long in the tooth. But it had upgrades otherwise (newer ssd, though i had a factory ssd from day 1), and upgraded to 8GB of ram. Ran multiple linux distros on it great, including debian with awesomewm and even ElementaryOS.

I will not admit what i bought to replace it, but im happy for the time being and it replaced by desktop and laptop in one (but wasnt cheap). I know theres no way it has the longevity i got out of that x200s.

Technically the x200s is still in service though. I let my daughter use to get better with mouse/hand-eye coordination and do some reading/website work on it.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#392

Post by musicale »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #372
cobaltoxide wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planned obsolescence is Apple's bread and butter.

no, it's not; continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is. (disclaimer: was an engineer with a great rank inside Apple for several years)

> continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is

Apple seems overly aggressive about breaking compatibility on iOS; as a result tons of apps break every year. This imposes an ongoing burden of maintenance costs onto developers, and many games and apps are simply abandoned. It seems to me that saving Apple time and money at the expense of developers and users may be the wrong trade-off in the long run.

And that's not even counting the 32-bit apocalypse which broke most games on iOS and macOS. "This app needs to be updated" but of course it never will be... Many of them have been pulled from the app store as well.

Windows does fairly well in terms of ongoing compatibility on the desktop, and (non-phone) gaming handhelds rarely break compatibility with old software (consider the 3DS which went through 5 or more hardware revisions and many firmware updates with negligible game/app breakage.) The few things that tend to break over time are online multiplayer games when they pull the plug on the servers, or streaming apps like Youtube or Netflix.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#393

Post by iak8god »

selectodude wrote: post #326
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…

Vintage is a technical term for "we don't stock parts to repair these anymore" not "they're unusable and you should throw it out".

Right, Apple specifically calls those "obsolete":

> About obsolete products

> Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#394

Post by ssl232 »

orang2tang wrote: post #202
mhb wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also using an X220. I bought an X1 as a potential replacement but the trackpoint is unusable and the keyboard is a big step down. The X220 battery only lasts about 15 minutes though, so I need to keep it plugged in. I'd like to find a replacement battery but am not enthusiastic about prying the housing apart to install new cells or buying a knockoff from a faraway land which might start a fire.

The easiest way to tell the difference between a real and fake is by the white "recycle" sticker https://preview.redd.it/83f0fqegasa11.jpg?width=1263&format=... fake batteries have a poorly printed, "fat" looking battery on the recycle sticker and the real ones have a slender properly printed one. For context in the image the bottom one is fake.

I've stared at the image for 3 minutes and still can't figure out the difference. Where exactly is the "fat looking battery" you refer to?

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#395

Post by JALTU »

Reading this on my 2012 15" Retina MBP w/ 16GB and 2.3 GHz Core i7 running High Sierra.

Don't know what those CPU numbers mean since everything still "just works!" ;^)

Okay, actually Adobe cloud software tanked years ago, and my Tweetdeck is a bit slow to load, and my iPhone 11 Pro's photo features don't work consistently, but otherwise, I figure I can wait for the M2 MBP.

p.s., Thanks goes to my employer for the 2020 MBP in case I truly need something recent, like the Touchbar. No, just kidding! ;^)

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#396

Post by jorvi »

terafo wrote: post #343
devwastaken wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ryzen 5600X is the gaming CPU of this gen outside of the lower budget Intel chips. Ryzen didn't just win on core count they won in single thread too because competing Intel chips are 120W, which limits their performance on stock cooling. The 5600X is 76W actual.

It was. Now there's 12400F which offers just slightly lower performance(few percent slower) at almost half of the price. And there's 12600k which at the same price offers slightly better performance in gaming than 5600x, but in multithreaded workloads often outperforms 5800x.

A 12400F is slower than a 5600X in games?

That's really weird because a 11400F has better performance..

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#397

Post by jjtheblunt »

musicale wrote: post #392
jjtheblunt wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it's not; continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is. (disclaimer: was an engineer with a great rank inside Apple for several years)

> continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is Apple seems overly aggressive about breaking compatibility on iOS; as a result tons of apps break every year. This imposes an ongoing burden of maintenance costs onto developers, and many games and apps are simply abandoned. It seems to me that saving Apple time and money at the expense of developers and users may be the wrong trade-off in the long run. And that…

to your point, i wonder how many of the "needs to be upgraded" apps just need a recompilation with current Xcode, then resubmission, and I don't know the answer.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#398

Post by throwaway81523 »

mindslight wrote: post #293
throwaway81523 wrote: post #59

I'm using an X220 which is even older than the T430. It is on its last legs and its keyboard doesn't work at all (using an external) but I feel that it is fast enough in terms of cpu, storage, etc. I do some programming on it but it is not a hardcore dev box. I use remote servers for that. I don't feel like I need multiple disk drives: if I want to back up on the same machine, 1TB microsdxc cards are a thing (in fact…

The X230 and X220 keyboards are compatible. You could get a new X220 keyboard to solve your immediate problem, and then after you find a suitable X230, swap in the keyboard.

Thanks, that's nice to know about the swappability. I don't know if my X220 keyboard issue is with the keyboard itself or on the motherboard side. I inspected the tiny ribbon cable connector pretty carefully and didn't see any problems with it. The symptom was that a few of the keys stopped working, then more of them, and finally it seems all of them. Maybe I can try temporarily swapping in another keyboard. I think I have one that I can try.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#399

Post by neilv »

I'm typing this on my daily driver, a T500 (manufactured May 2009), and it's fine for Linux development workstation after a few tweaks.

The tweaks are to install SSD, max out RAM at 8 GB, swap in the second-fastest P-series CPU, and install an older and better T60 keyboard. The T500 is hopeless for anything GPU-heavy, but I have a GPU server for compute jobs.

Before moving from T60 to T500, I bought and tried a few newer models, but decided the T500 was the best balance for lines of code and laptop ergonomics (sadly, the T520 was just too wide and heavy to be comfortable using in all the laptop ways).

About the only compute-bound thing that's painful right now is a very small number Web sites that are doing grossly-inefficient JavaScript to secretly spy intimately on my browsing behavior, yet are not yet blocked by the uBlock Origin ruleset I maintain.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#400

Post by peterfield »

0x38B wrote: post #60
iamevn wrote: post #19

A couple months ago I pulled my x220 that I hadn't used in 3 years out of the closet and got it all updated to do some hobby programming while visiting parents. My only other laptops were a work machine (X1 Carbon, I want to say from 2019) that I didn't want to travel with and a Surface Go that I didn't want to wrangle into having a decent dev environment. When I booted it up, I checked the most recent entry in pacma…

I have a Surface Go 2 running Arch. Great for dev work, aside from the low amount of storage (128 GB). Its portability is hard to beat for trips; Patagonia’s lovely Atom 8L sling bag is big enough for the tablet with some room left over.

Love my X220, although it has been really struggling lately. Chromium, Opera, Brave or Firefox all cause my CPU/fan to crank up as soon as I have a couple of tabs open :(
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