my 2013 is Macbook is still working fine. I can still watch 1,5h movie on it. It's doing better than 2017 shite.
The laptop that won't die
181–190 of 344 posts
Re: The laptop that won't die
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
X220 for the compact version. With the 9 cell? Hnnnngg
I recommend getting the X230 over the X220, if anyone decides to play with these old Thinkpads. I have both machines, and I found heat dissipation has been significantly reduced on the X230 for otherwise the same performance, thanks to Ivy Bridge's die shrink over Sandy Bridge. Most components from both machines are interchangeable with the exception of their bottom covers and motherboards (an EC firmware hack is ava…
The only weak point of the x230 was the stock TN display was absolutely awful. I swapped it for an IPS.
One day I dropped it about a foot onto a carpet floor, and the metal chassis accordioned and bent in the corner. Was not impressed by that.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#183I was using a ~2011 x220 as my personal laptop until 2021 or so, when I replaced it with an X1 carbon. This lasted almost 2 years until it stopped charging, and Lenovo wanted more than the laptop was worth to repair it. I've since switched back to the x220. Whilst I miss the extra memory and CPU grunt, it gets the job done. When this one finally dies I'm not sure what will replace it, but it certainly won't be anothe…
I used an x1 carbon for about 9 years, and it is still running without issues.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wife uses a mid-2013 Macbook Air as a daily driver still after >10 years, works in academia. What happened is simply that CPU stopped being the thing that made stuff slow, so a mid-2010s upper midrange can still hold its own today, ssd was already good then, and memory plateaued around 8gb for entry level machines some 5 years ago. So as long as your thermals don't suck, your ssd doesn't smoke out, and your keyboard…
Even more so with desktops. I am running a 2014 CPU i7 4790k with 32GB RAM and a 1070ti. Due to it being a desktop w noctua cooler the temps never get high. Keyboard and mouse you just replace when worn out. This year I am thinking about upgrading. But my 2019 Thinkpad already feels slow... so I never got laptops for long use. They suck.
I also have a 4790k chugging along! I had to upgrade due to max RAM of 32GB, so I got a Dell Precision Mobile laptop with 128GB. I normally hate laptops, but with remote working meaning the occasional commute it was unavoidable.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s only started to happening in the last few years. Before 2015 laptops had good manners - when they were told to shut down, they kept being shut down.
I thought I was alone with that problem. Do you know what the culprit is? What keeps randomly waking up modern laptops? It's so stupid, too. There is exactly one single case when I want my laptop to wake up with the lid closed: when I plug in the dock. Every single other case where it wakes up with the lid closed is a bug in my eyes.
Its the removal of S3 sleep states from the BIOS/ACPI tables.
Now the processor is kept powered on (in a low power state) but any poorly written driver or software can jolt the machine back into a higher power state and superheat your backpack.
Intel's rationale is that PC's should function like smartphones and you should be able to stay connected and receive notifications while asleep. I'm not convinced.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#186I have a back-in-the-day (2011) maxed out Thinkpad X201, that was somewhere around $1.5k (whooping max 8GB RAM, etc... :) In the intervening 12 years: - I've replaced the disk at least 2x (going to SSD, and replacing a failed one with a current 1TB this year) - Replaced the cooling fan (1x? 2x? I don't remember) - Replaced the motherboard (that was fun: https://gergely.imreh.net/blog/2022/07/an-open-heart-motherb...…
I patched out the BIOS whitelist from my X201 and ran the image through me_cleaner.
All that stopped working was automatic fan control, I needed a daemon running constantly to set the fan speed.
That thing has been catching dust for about 2 years now since I upgraded to an X270, which is a faster machine but is nowhere near as nice.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#187This is another Thinkpad festival post? Let me just cold you down a bit by telling you that a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have this DELL Studio laptop released back in September, 2009, and it can still kick very well too if I decide to recruit it back to my "workforce". I retired it just 3~4 years ago because I got a T480. Heck, some of my code (old versions) for the same project that…
> a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have a 20yro TiBook. Both the RTC and the main battery are dead, and there's a tiny screen defect, but the machine is otherwise perfectly usable (if relatively slow). And by usable, I mean the desktop experience of Mac OS X 10.5 often feels more polished than that of some of the modern OS's... The big bummer is that the modern web keeps raising a wall t…
If modern encryption is that big of a performance drag, would using a proxy that deals with the encryption sidestep that issue?
With hardware that old and power-hungry, I'd expect a proxy hosted on a modern single-board computer in the local network to be essentially a rounding error on the electricity bill in comparison.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#188>Create an account to read the full story. The author made this story available to Medium members only. If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.
I enjoy reading posts about second hand Thinkpads outliving modern laptops but it is ironic to put a blog post on lo-tech frugality behind a paywall.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#189https://archive.today/QJyfs
I get stuck in a captcha redirect flow.
If you’re using Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) that’ll be why: https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
Re: The laptop that won't die
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have a 20yro TiBook. Both the RTC and the main battery are dead, and there's a tiny screen defect, but the machine is otherwise perfectly usable (if relatively slow). And by usable, I mean the desktop experience of Mac OS X 10.5 often feels more polished than that of some of the modern OS's... The big bummer is that the modern web keeps raising a wall t…
This —- I really don’t care if my blog with no user registration or comments gets accessed over HTTP/1.1 without an SSL cert. Further, I find the way Chrome handles HSTS pretty gross, as some of us actually tinker with stuff that REALLY doesn’t need encryption, like little dev boards and projects running locally. Chrome makes those exceedingly difficult to use, thus the need for extremely convoluted workarounds like…
I do care. I don't want to have my name attached to any advertisements that shady airport routers may insert into the html for instance. TLS is a very good thing and we should have more of it, not less. Sorry that your unupgradable software comes from an era where security was not important.