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Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

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Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#191

Post by implements »

swyx wrote: post #48
scandox wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take the remark more benignly. I think it's meant in an affectionate manner.

yes, with this post sitting comfortably on #1 on the king neckbeard forum, it is as certainly getting head turns from us as it is certain never to become more than a passing bemusement *neckbeard used affectionately as an equal opportunity mindset that has evolved from its origins like many words have; there are women neckbeards too, as are neckbeards with no beards or for that matter no neck

> there are women neckbeards too, …

Colloquially known as legbeards …

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=legbeard

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#192

Post by Snoozus »

michaelt wrote: post #80
kuschku wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> screen quality > battery life > speakers > trackpad All things you can replace with the T480. Which I've done, and can just recommend. There's much better options than the ones shipped by default, including trackpads rivalling the M1, a screen that beats the M1, and a battery that has 20h+ capacity and can be swapped with a second one to double the capacity in seconds.

Right, but "If you upgrade the screen, batteries, trackpad, speakers, RAM and SSD and then it's a pretty good laptop" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. A 38-horsepower 1980s Mini 1000 is a fast car, if you install the engine and drivetrain from a Toyota Celica GT-Four.

Binky!

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#193

Post by goosedragons »

mort96 wrote: post #166
goosedragons wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T480 weighs 3.6lb vs. 3.5 for a 14" M1. I'm surprised you noticed. MBP doesn't have a trackpoint. Still can't run Linux as well, lacks USB A so still requires constant dongles despite improved port selection. I moved from a 2018 15" MBP to a P14s Gen 2 AMD. The speakers, screen, trackpad are worse. But I don't care. I'm not stuck using a horrible OS with miniscule amounts of storage to keep the price down. The machin…

Is the trackpoint really that important when you have a trackpad which doesn't suck with associated drivers and software which doesn't suck? I've never been using a Mac trackpad and felt the need for something trackpoint-like. I understand the desire for a trackpoint on laptops with non-Apple trackpads though.

Yes? You don't need to move from the keyboard at all, you get physical buttons too. Your wrist is never misinterpreted as a mouse movement either.

It's just better unless your workflow heavily involves the use of 3+ finger gestures. Which I don't personally care about but seems like a necessity to not go insane on macOS.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#194

Post by kuschku »

danielbln wrote: post #97
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #76

I also do all of my development on various ThinkPads I've owned throughout my life: T480, T490, P51.. I like cheap, upgradeable laptops over Macs since: * I can put what I want in them. I don't want to pay Apple 200 euros for 8GB of RAM. * It's not a treasure. I take care of it because it would be annoying to have to replace it, but my wallet wouldn't cry over a cheap second-hand machine * They run Linux well * My P5…

The main advantage is the CPU. The M1/M2 are blazingly fast, and basically never get even warm. I have to _really_ crunch the machine to even hear the faintest hum of the fan. Battery lasts for ever, it's like a phone, charge once a day if that.

In an ideal market, you could buy a T480 with an M2 CPU. Which would be a much better laptop, for a much better price. It's only due to market distortions due to big players trying to be anticompetitive that we're stuck with this choice.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#195

Post by Reason077 »

> "I once spilled an entire can of beer onto a Thinkpad X220. The fix involved a screwdriver, a sponge, a $50 replacement keyboard"

I once spilled half a glass of red wine all over my M1 MacBook Air keyboard. The fix involved quickly turning it upside down, sponging it off, and letting it dry out. OK, some of the affected keys were rather sticky afterwards and required popping off the keycaps and cleaning underneath. Some of them are still not perfect and I need to have another go with some isopropyl alcohol. But it certainly didn't require buying a replacement keyboard!

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#196

Post by ShrimpHawk »

nicbou wrote: post #128
sschueller wrote: post #74

The biggest contrast here and what we should be concerned about is the fact that this old Thinkpad can be upgraded and still be used vs an old macbook that if speced too low is now useless and ends up on a landfill. Not even considering that new macbooks if locked are unusable on the secondary market and get tossed even if the hardware is perfectly fine. It's as if we have given up on "solving" climate change in favo…

In practice old MacBooks tend to have a much longer useful life in my experience. I'm working on a 12" Macbook and I love it. It's still decently fast for.the lowest specced Macbook from 6 years ago. It supplements a 2017 Macbook Pro that's still overkill in 2022. Both have excellent battery life. If it wasn't for the nearly free upgrade I got in 2017, I'd probably still rock a 2012 model.

I agree; used a 2015 Macbook Pro until last year when I purchased the M1. 7 years of life for a laptop is exceptional and I expect to get similar out of my current one. You'd be hard pressed to find laptops with that level of longevity.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#197

Post by Reason077 »

philipphutterer wrote: post #40
seszett wrote: post #26

I'm still not sure why. The section doesn't really answer the actual question. It's cheaper, good enough, replacement parts are cheap, and I understand that argument; I myself use alternatively some kind of very old Thinkpad (that I don't remember the specs of), a 2011 Macbook Air, or a recent Macbook M1 and for what I do with them (little more than running Firefox and ssh) the only difference that matters in practic…

It didn't say so in the post but I suspect 8GB RAM were just not enough and an upgrade was necessary anyway? And future upgrading was mentioned. In my opinion this is a valid point actually and should be very much considered when buying any of the modern all-fixed-no-upgrades machines, I mean its not just the Apple machines.

I've used an 8GB M1 Air for the past 2 years and it's totally fine. My brother got the 16GB and there is no noticable difference in performance for any of my usual apps.

Going from 8GB -> 16GB in an M1 just doesn't make much difference, except perhaps for a few specialised apps that require a ton of VRAM.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#198

Post by nicolas_t »

dijit wrote: post #183
nicolas_t wrote: post #56

The main reason I love my M1 is that it's cool to the touch after switching from an intel based mbp to an m1, I went from an average of 90 degrees Celsius (there was definitely an issue in the factory with thermal paste I think) to an average of 40-50 degrees Celsius. I can't imagine ever going back to an intel based laptop because of this (and in my experience, thinkpads don't run that cool for my uses with arch lin…

tbf it is a design consideration from intel: they openly consider that they are leaving performance on the table if they're not running close to 100C. Which, while great for a desktop, is very uncomfortable (and loud) on a laptop. So far I haven't seen a way to configure it, turbo boost is commonly not an option to disable in laptop bioses (at least not the Dell Precision I had).

Yes, I won't begrudge them that choice on desktop but given the fact that most of the consumer market as switched to laptops, it's not a great strategy...

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#199

Post by celsoazevedo »

danielbln wrote: post #97
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #76

I also do all of my development on various ThinkPads I've owned throughout my life: T480, T490, P51.. I like cheap, upgradeable laptops over Macs since: * I can put what I want in them. I don't want to pay Apple 200 euros for 8GB of RAM. * It's not a treasure. I take care of it because it would be annoying to have to replace it, but my wallet wouldn't cry over a cheap second-hand machine * They run Linux well * My P5…

The main advantage is the CPU. The M1/M2 are blazingly fast, and basically never get even warm. I have to _really_ crunch the machine to even hear the faintest hum of the fan. Battery lasts for ever, it's like a phone, charge once a day if that.

Before getting my 2021 16" MBP with a M1 Max, I'd read comments like yours and get the idea that I'd be able to encode video without it getting warm :-P This is not the case, at least not with the M1 Max.

It does get warm if we push it hard for a few minutes. This could be easily avoided if Apple started the fans at low speeds earlier, but instead they let the SoC run at 80-90ºC for 2 or 3 minutes before the fans kick in at low speeds and that heat needs to go somewhere. There are 3rd party apps that let you control fan speeds, which is what I do.

With this said, coming from a 2019 16" MBP (Intel) it was a huuuge improvement. The damn thing would get warm doing basic tasks. At full power, it would throttle even with the fans at 100% and because the Intel processor was allowed to use more than the 100W the computer could take, any very long tasks would drain the battery. M1/M2 macs are nothing like that.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#200

Post by Reason077 »

prmoustache wrote: post #105
ostenning wrote: post #20

I've owned an upgraded T480 since they were released, run archlinux on it. It was a decent computer, but despite having upgraded the battery to the largest possible configuration and using all the tricks in the book to maximize battery life in linux - it sucked. The reality is these Intel processors are just a big inefficient hot mess. I ended up upgrading to the 14" M1 Max, and there is literally no way you can make…

>, build quality, screen quality, weight, battery life, single core & parallel processing, speakers, trackpad - everything Strangely mac fanboys always make sure to carefully avoid the subject of their crappy keyboard. It is worth using a lenovo over a Mac for the keyboard only. Who cares about a trackpad one barely use on a decent desktop. Mac users overly rely on a good trackpad because their desktop is terribly us…

The crappy "butterfly" keyboard that Apple put on Mac laptops for years was indeed very crappy, but that ended when Apple redesigned the keyboard before the M1 came out. The current keyboard is great.
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