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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

#521

Post by toastgrave »

browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

I disagree. My office have me 15 year old Lenovo E440s when COVID hit and we all worked from home. Some of them are going on close to 20 years and I've had few problems other than slowness. A few had WiFi fail but other than that ran strong

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#522

Post by 12345hn6789 »

kuschku wrote: post #188
messe wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a screen that beats the M1 By what metrics?

By whatever metrics you want, you can choose which panel to install.

Is it even possible to buy a panel with higher ppi than the mac pros? Genuinely asking here. I guess if you value 240hz you could run with that.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#523

Post by bigpeopleareold »

ho_schi wrote: post #144
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…

Using still an ThinkPad X220 here with Archlinux. There two important things in any laptop, the built-in keyboard and the built-in screen. This is the I/O-Interface! Customers often do the mistake and doesn't invest in the best available screen. You cannot make this mistake with Apple, because they offer no options for the screen. Regarding keyboards, selecting a ThinkPad is always safe. I had to buy the X220 from a…

I wanted to like the x220s I found and then upgraded (well only the best one). I think the keyboard is great. I stuck an IPS screen into it (no nitrocaster).

The good one ended up having the power port die on me and while struggling to pull the thing a part to get to it (of course it is possible, but it's tested my patience :) ) the top case basically crumbled apart. I swapped the good parts to the other one, but it sits idle now. I just don't feel like I can be productive with a small 768 screen. I can't avoid the fact 1080 is my minimum.

I think my T430s is really good (with 1080 adapter and the keyboard is fantastic), but it can end up having the same issues with the top case with small cracks in the top case.

The TP I was able to keep from my last job has none of the problems. It is a T470p. Maybe there was some effort into material quality over the years, but it survived a really hard fall with some minor damage on the top and bottom case. It also is much easier to service :) It's the 470 that's the better overall one I have had, with the 430 being the one with the better keyboard.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#524

Post by squarefoot »

browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

> Dell (they couldn't repair 2 brand new machines that were shipped to us with broken WiFi and took so long to declare it unrepairable

Didn't they use socketed WiFi cards? On every non hair thin laptop I could crack open, I always found the WiFi card to be mounted on a MiniPCI or newer socket, so unless that problem was due to the mainboard, it was just a matter of replacing the WiFi card and install the relevant driver.

Also, if you know how to solder and have a really thin laptop with one available internal USB port, you can fit a small module such as this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/225197524670 Complete it with a small pcb antenna and you have a new WiFi card. Very useful also for small SBCs which beside the usual USB sockets usually have internal USB ports pins.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#525

Post by jeroenhd »

Ancapistani wrote: post #316
jeroenhd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that stops Windows 10 from showing popups? I get those every time I boot Windows on my 7700k. At first I thought they relaxed their requirements and clicked the ads to see what it'd do but then it would just tell me my machine is incompatible. I think they've fixed their detection recently but there are still references to Windows 11 all over the place.

Better still - I upgraded my gaming desktop with a new CPU the day Microsoft messed up the upgrade detection for Windows 11. The first time I booted it with the new CPU it showed me the "Upgrade to Windows 11" screen for the first time. I though "Oh, cool, my CPU must have been the bottleneck. Sure, go for it." Turns out, it was just coincidental timing and my desktop lacks TPM. It's still running Windows 11 and I've…

If you ever need to reinstall there are ways to disable those checks entirely and run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. No guarantees in terms of stability or security (who knows, Microsoft may just assume that certain modern instruction sets are available), but it's not entirely impossible.

I've fought Windows enough that I'm not going to upgrade to an OS Microsoft tells me won't run stable on my hardware, but plenty of others have tried and succeeded in ignoring the limitations without a hitch… for now, at least.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#526

Post by baq »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #426
browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

You know what they say. Windows for your gaming desktop, Mac for your laptop, and Linux for your servers.

I’m now using a Macbook Pro (3 months give or take) after being on windows HPs and the hardware is excellent but macOS itself… not great by any means. Windows+WSL2 is a better developer experience and I’m honestly surprised as I expected it to be the other way around. Granted to make windows usable I had to install tons of tools, but the same is true for the Mac!

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#527

Post by 12345hn6789 »

petepete wrote: post #78
junipertea wrote: post #8

I love thinkpads but the T480 is basically objectively worse in every single aspect except price and repairability. I don’t think I can go back from all day battery and quiet CPU during high loads. I could definitely use my T450 for however long I need and know I can replace parts, but I’d rather have macs for 5 years and upgrade for another performance bump. Some things are just nicer

> ...except price and repairability. And keyboard.

The last Thinkpad with a usable keyboard was a t420.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#528

Post by adverbly »

tristor wrote: post #442

My experience has been that there is only two reasonable ways to buy a laptop for personal use: 1. Buy an Apple device new. 2. Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude refurb/used via their outlet stores from their business line-ups With #2, you know exactly what you're getting, but you're getting it cheap, and the parts are possible to find (e.g. eBay) to fix it yourself. With #1, you know exactly what you're getting,…

Are you me?

I have 3 refurb linux laptops strewn around the house, and my last 3 workplaces have always provided a macbook of some sort.

One difference: For gaming/GPU heavy stuff, I still have the good old windows, full-tower desktop kicking around. Repairing/upgrading desktops is honestly easier than ever, so I've been happy to keep one in service for the odd game or two.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#529

Post by gofreddygo »

mwint wrote: post #452
tomxor wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop for my son These are not comparable. There are wildly different quality of laptops under the Lenovo brand. A ton of them are complete crap. Apple simply doesn't sell anything like that. The author is comparing to a Thinkpad specifically. Additionally, the 10 years old Apple that made your macbook is a very different company from today. Although they are still a premium brand, the rel…

I’ll give you the user-serviceability point, but not the longevity point. I would bet lots of money that my 2021 14” MBP will still be very usable in 2031. (Maybe not by me, but that’s only because I’ll succumb to the urge to buy something new and shiny and tax deductible in a few years.)

tax deductible ?

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#530

Post by vlod »

thoughtbag wrote: post #217
criddell wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MBP running Linux in a VM will probably give you the T480 experience - it will be relatively slow (but still fast enough) and use a lot more battery.

I can tell you now that 2022 was the year of Linux on the desktop with Apple+Parallels! :) I have a mini datacenter on my desk right now with 5 Debian machines running, 1 Windows 10, 1 OpenBSD machine as gateway for the others. No lag. Just now I fired up YouTube on 3 of these Debian machines in Firefox as well as one in the Windows 10 VM. All running full screen 1080p videos (a wide second display with 3 VM's, the m…

Would you mind sharing your machine spec please? Thanks!
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