461–470 of 492 posts
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If you've ever taken apart a ThinkPad, you would notice that inside is a metal frame to support the entire laptop body. It's not plastic. Plus, this ThinkPad (and the newer ThinkPads in general) have a metal exterior
All plastic laptop bodies have a metal frame which tells you how much they have faith in their body construction.
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I’ve used them quite a bit. They were standard issue at a certain place named after a hat. It is NOT a fantastic feature to have your mouse move when you type which I found happened constantly when using a ThinkPad. 1) the eraser mouse “track point” was novel in 1994, not anymore. It’s in the way. Likewise with the physical mouse buttons on the trackpad. It’s 2022. We have touch screens with gestures and stuff. Why d…
How did you use the trackpoint? Your fingers are not on the trackpoint when you type. The mouse pointer doesn't move when you use the keyboard. Also, the three trackpoint buttons are right under your thumb - your hand literally doesn't have to move away from the keyboard. No touch screen necessary. That would be even worse having to move from keyboard to screen. It really sounds like you've not used the trackpoint co…
I recently bought my first thinkpad, a second hand Gen 5 X1 carbon, and I really like it.
I haven't yet invested the effort in learning to use the trackpoint.
I guess you use your index finger on the trackpoint, and thumb on the mouse buttons? For scrolling it seems you hold the middle button with the thumb and then scroll with the trackpoint?
Do you normally disable the trackpad?
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> become e-trash in a couple of years, while these "plastic" laptops can last a decade before being discarded as junk. My experiences different, I'd still be rocking a 2014 MBP had it not suffered massive liquid damage. All Macs and MacBooks I or relatives have crossed or are going to cross the decade threshold with aplomb.
> a 2014 MBP Great example. macOS Monterey minimum requirements: "MacBook Pro: Early 2015 and newer" So Apple forces that device to be e-trash, regardless of your desires.
When they go out of security support these machines work quite well under Linux (as I could test myself, I recycled a bunch already).
Generally great machines for Linux. Just a PSA from a X1E gen2 owner: Do NOT get the NVidia GPU, do NOT get the fastest CPU and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen. With 1080p and Intel GPU it is a good, even great laptop with ok battery life (if you can look over the touchpad). Wonderful keyboard, good Linux support (even fingerprint reader works). But just as with the last Intel macbook, the GPU, 10th ge…
> and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen Good advice for any laptop purchase. You will burn through battery driving that and the pixel density is much higher than necessary. Yes, 1920x1080/1200 is slightly too low when it comes to pixel density at 15", but it's still very reasonable and with decent eyesight you won't have to worry about any of the mess of DPI scaling.
Even after using a 27 inch 4K display with an abhorrent 163 PPI , I can't imagine using a display with lesser PPI. No matter what tricks (anti aliasing) you use, the fonts will look like shit compared to fonts on a retina display.
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> become e-trash in a couple of years, while these "plastic" laptops can last a decade before being discarded as junk. My experiences different, I'd still be rocking a 2014 MBP had it not suffered massive liquid damage. All Macs and MacBooks I or relatives have crossed or are going to cross the decade threshold with aplomb.
> All Macs and MacBooks I or relatives have crossed or are going to cross the decade threshold with aplomb. I too own a couple of 10+ years old Mac laptops. They are perfect as doorstop. Once the RAM is soldiered or one of the main components gets out of production it's all about luck while it is simply a matter of repairing it or upgrading it in the case of an actually repairable "plastic" one.
8GB of RAM is plenty fine for me. I just don't have a thousand tabs opened (I never do anyway, whatever the RAM amount), which is mostly the usual problem but the state of the web platform and its runaway resource usage is another debate entirely.
> one of the main components gets out of production it's all about luck
You make it sound like it never happens with non-Apple hardware. With the flurry of devices that are put out every other month by a lot of hardware vendors, "out of production" often means a couple years, barely enough to cover warranty claims, and then they coast on stocked spare parts.
I am in the habit of trying to revive legacy hardware when people throw it away, and have a closet full of hardware barely older than 2-3 years that could not be repaired because of a broken part that should have been perfectly repairable were the part be available. Usually these get fixed by having two broken machines and doing a transplant, not by sourcing original parts from manufacturers. Batteries are loads of fun, even just one year after a product release it might be impossible to source an original one, either because they have additional import legislation so they're outright not distributed overseas, or because they're deemed consumables when they're field-swappable, and thus often not covered by warranties (and thus vendors don't make any effort stocking them), so you're left with buying third-party ones of obscure origins which can be either duds or fire hazards waiting to happen with a non-negligible probability. At least Apple puts forward some hard numbers so I know what I can rely on†.
Hell, just last year I restored a PoS system that had 1GB of RAM and a 8GB SSD, put some lightweight Linux on it, recovered a couple of ESC/POS thermal printers, hacked some bridge in Ruby between the PoS software and the printers, and the device chugged along for a solid year before finally giving up for good, which saved the store owner from shelling out stupid amounts of money and helped them bootstrap their business.
With hundreds of machines from various vendors that went through my hands I feel I have enough statistically significant data to extract trends and draw my own conclusions. These don't support that Apple devices become e-waste in short order, but I respect that your experience and opinion might be different, even though I don't adhere to it.
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I hope the P14s Gen 2 is better than Gen 1, because that's the worst device I've ever owned (by a very wide margin). It constantly overheats, the CPU throttles down, and it becomes slower than my now ancient x230 ...
Are you referring to an AMD-based model? I had a Yoga Slim 7 with 4700U and P14s Gen 2 with 5850U and both were flawless in terms of performance, thermals and noise
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If you've ever taken apart a ThinkPad, you would notice that inside is a metal frame to support the entire laptop body. It's not plastic. Plus, this ThinkPad (and the newer ThinkPads in general) have a metal exterior
All plastic laptop bodies have a metal frame which tells you how much they have faith in their body construction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you use the trackpoint? Your fingers are not on the trackpoint when you type. The mouse pointer doesn't move when you use the keyboard. Also, the three trackpoint buttons are right under your thumb - your hand literally doesn't have to move away from the keyboard. No touch screen necessary. That would be even worse having to move from keyboard to screen. It really sounds like you've not used the trackpoint co…
Can I ask how are you supposed to use a trackpoint? I recently bought my first thinkpad, a second hand Gen 5 X1 carbon, and I really like it. I haven't yet invested the effort in learning to use the trackpoint. I guess you use your index finger on the trackpoint, and thumb on the mouse buttons? For scrolling it seems you hold the middle button with the thumb and then scroll with the trackpoint? Do you normally disabl…
- Use your index finger for the track point
- Thumb for the 3 buttons under the space bar
- Middle button is to enable scroll mode
You don't need to disable the track pad.
I did though and it can also help to force you to learn the track point.
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The ThinkPad TrackPoint
Generally great machines for Linux. Just a PSA from a X1E gen2 owner: Do NOT get the NVidia GPU, do NOT get the fastest CPU and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen. With 1080p and Intel GPU it is a good, even great laptop with ok battery life (if you can look over the touchpad). Wonderful keyboard, good Linux support (even fingerprint reader works). But just as with the last Intel macbook, the GPU, 10th ge…
Hmm... I have the model with the NVidia GPU. By default I have it turned off (using no extra power) and I have a simple script that I use to turn it on when I want to. ThinkFan works well to control the fans too. Lastly I found that the SD card reader prevented the CPU package from entering C10. With all that I find that in idle mode my laptop (X1E Gen2, almost identical to P1 Gen2) consumes 3.9w, which is pretty goo…
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Yea this is true I still love the old style keyboards - have they ever made a modern one with it? Last one (which I own and use still) that I know of is the T420
There was a one off 25th anniversary model (T25), which was a T470 with a T420 keyboard. If you bought a T470 + T25 parts, you could FrankenPad it: https://www.xyte.ch/mods/t25-frankenpad/