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ThinkPad T420

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31–40 of 50 posts

Re: ThinkPad T420

#31
Not wild about it, since it lacks the major innovation which gave the series its name, a stylus --- see the book, _ThinkPad: A Different Shade of Blue_ for the backstory.

That said, I'm hoping that the dual-screen Lenovo Yogabook 9i does well in the market, so that Samsung finally does a dual-screen Windows tablet w/ an S-Pen.

Re: ThinkPad T420

#33

Are there any guides to repurposing the removable "Serial UltraBay" which houses the CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives? I have a T430s, and I've been wanting to stick an SDR in that bay for years. But I'm not sure where to start, and I don't see many technical details about how it connects to the mobo on this wiki (admitted I didn't look too hard).

It's essentially just SATA with some extra proprietary bits for adding a second battery there instead and a thingy to make it easier to pop out.

Re: ThinkPad T420

#35

Are there any guides to repurposing the removable "Serial UltraBay" which houses the CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives? I have a T430s, and I've been wanting to stick an SDR in that bay for years. But I'm not sure where to start, and I don't see many technical details about how it connects to the mobo on this wiki (admitted I didn't look too hard).

It's essentially just SATA with some extra proprietary bits for adding a second battery there instead and a thingy to make it easier to pop out.

Oh cool, I didn't realize they made battery packs to fit in there. Have you ever seen a pinout listed anywhere?

Re: ThinkPad T420

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's essentially just SATA with some extra proprietary bits for adding a second battery there instead and a thingy to make it easier to pop out.

Oh cool, I didn't realize they made battery packs to fit in there. Have you ever seen a pinout listed anywhere?

For the battery portion I have no idea. For the SATA portion it's just literally the same connection as a SATA laptop optical drive.

Re: ThinkPad T420

#37

I just bought a second hand T480 last week and installed Fedora in it. I'm loving it but the resolution 1336x768 is underwhelming.

I ended up going with a second hand T580 last year myself. It was a hard choice between the T480 or the T580, but I've been extremely happy with my decision. It's now maxed out with 64GB ram, and a second SSD in the WWAN slot. I'm running Debian Sid with ZFS root on it.

Cool, I chose a brand-new T580 from the factory in 2018. I had nowhere near the resource demands that you have, so I am happy to be chugging along with the i5, 128GB SSD, 16GiB RAM. Two upgrades I probably didn't even need are a touchscreen and a medium-size second battery, but otherwise, it's perfect.

Initially I put CentOS on it, which was really broken, so I swapped in Fedora which worked great. The T580 is RHEL-certified (other models are Ubuntu-certified, so it's interesting you chose Debian for yours.) Eventually I reverted to Windows 10 and upgraded to Pro.

It's now my only home computer and daily driver, for work and personal both, for the time being.

Re: ThinkPad T420

#38

The best thing is about travelling with a second-hand cheap Thinkpad is no one wants to steal them. Also it's a nice fuck you to consumerism IMHO.

Good points. My only gripe with the thinkpads are the speakers.

My go to disposable laptop is now 2013-2017 macbook airs, they share the same MB/Battery/16:10 LCD and can parts swap any years to your heart's content.

Re: ThinkPad T420

#39
Does anybody have a recommendation to a source of consistently good replacement batteries for the X230? The last (/first) time I tried buying an aftermarket battery, the thing lasted perhaps 6-12 months and then turned into trash. I've got it in my head to do some DIY cell swaps some day, but it's so far down on the list I'd settle for an off the shelf answer if I knew I could avoid fraud.

Re: ThinkPad T420

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh cool, I didn't realize they made battery packs to fit in there. Have you ever seen a pinout listed anywhere?

For the battery portion I have no idea. For the SATA portion it's just literally the same connection as a SATA laptop optical drive.

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