11–20 of 492 posts
> Lenovo is famous for their TrackPoint (that little red thing on the keyboard), but I am not sure if I’ll take the time to learn using it. Who's still using this? I removed the red rubber because it was leaving residue on my screen.
For developers, going with Intel only (no Nvidia discrete card) is the most sensible choice. I have P15 and it's riddled with issues - not that they are not solvable, but it needs workarounds, restarts of X (logout/login), or running discrete only (which eats battery). The problem is they don't make the larger workstation laptops with Intel only.
Actually, one is an X1 Extreme Gen 3, and the other is a P1 Gen 3. Same machine with different GPUs.
My work provided me with the X1E with Ubuntu preinstalled (that is our standard dev environment). But I found the hardware support very unsatisfactory.
I use a specific display configuration. Three monitors in total: the ThinkPad's 4K display, with a 24" 4K display above it, and a second 24" 4K display to the left in portrait mode.
With Linux on the ThinkPad, I never got that to work. The best I could do was a single external monitor, not both of my external monitors plus the internal.
And I never got any of my Bluetooth headsets to work at all: Apple AirPods, Plantronics, and a couple of no-name brands. They all paired fine as headphones, but the microphones never worked.
I noticed that this work ThinkPad had a Windows license sticker on the bottom, so I figured what the heck, let's see what happens if I reinstall Windows.
The triple monitor config worked with no hitches. The AirPods worked fine.
So I set up a VMware virtual machine and run our dev environment inside that. Now everything works great! (I also tried VirtualBox but found the display responsiveness much better in VMware.)
Once this was sorted out, I was so happy with the machine that I bought a matching P1 for my new personal machine. (Regarding P1 vs. X1 Extreme, I just went with availability: Lenovo was out of stock on the X1E's but had a nicely configured P1 ready to ship.)
> Lenovo is famous for their TrackPoint (that little red thing on the keyboard), but I am not sure if I’ll take the time to learn using it. Who's still using this? I removed the red rubber because it was leaving residue on my screen.
> 7-9 hours of typing, browsing and some programming. > 3-4 hours of video/audio conferencing or other CPU intensive tasks. This is one of the primary reasons I can't even consider moving away from an M1 Mac. I used to love ThinkPads but not being able to use the machine for 10+ hours without charger is a dealbreaker in 2022.
> Lenovo is famous for their TrackPoint (that little red thing on the keyboard), but I am not sure if I’ll take the time to learn using it. Who's still using this? I removed the red rubber because it was leaving residue on my screen.
> 7-9 hours of typing, browsing and some programming. > 3-4 hours of video/audio conferencing or other CPU intensive tasks. This is one of the primary reasons I can't even consider moving away from an M1 Mac. I used to love ThinkPads but not being able to use the machine for 10+ hours without charger is a dealbreaker in 2022.
> 7-9 hours of typing, browsing and some programming. > 3-4 hours of video/audio conferencing or other CPU intensive tasks. This is one of the primary reasons I can't even consider moving away from an M1 Mac. I used to love ThinkPads but not being able to use the machine for 10+ hours without charger is a dealbreaker in 2022.
For developers, going with Intel only (no Nvidia discrete card) is the most sensible choice. I have P15 and it's riddled with issues - not that they are not solvable, but it needs workarounds, restarts of X (logout/login), or running discrete only (which eats battery). The problem is they don't make the larger workstation laptops with Intel only.
> Lenovo is famous for their TrackPoint (that little red thing on the keyboard), but I am not sure if I’ll take the time to learn using it. Who's still using this? I removed the red rubber because it was leaving residue on my screen.
And yes, I have a MacBook M1 (I didn't realize how poor the support was for Linux by the time the return window closed).