Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

bt.ht

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 148 posts

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#41

Post by Kaibeezy »

I stuck stubbornly to X220, mainly for travel, until a few months ago. I just could no longer tolerate the dim/low-res screen and sluggish processor. It seemed like every time I used it, it struggled with network connections and got stuck downloading a bunch of updates. I replaced it with a Surface Pro 8, which is slim, bright and perky.

But how to replace the X220 keyboard? I tried a Nuphy Air60, which has great mechanical action, but weird cheap feet that peel off and get lost, and weighs a relative ton in a backpack. Replaced that with a flimsy $10, 100g bluetooth keyboard to replicate the MacBook/XPS typing experience instead, and it’s… good enough. Literally weighs nothing, I like that.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#43

Post by danw1979 »

The trackpad and “nipple” on thinkpads are awful to use. Maybe if you run full screen emacs all day and everything is a keyboard shortcut then this might seem like the best laptop in the world…

.. but I’ll die on Apple hill, clutching my 2012 aluminium i7 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard, with it’s glorious glassy trackpad, 1000BaseT cable still connected.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#44

Post by KennyBlanken »

boomskats wrote: post #37

The work by the LCDFans community, specifically the X2100 mod motherboard [0], was one of those moments that made me do the nodding guy meme IRL the fist time I saw it. Both the level of enthusiast engineering, and electronics manufacturing services available to enthusiast communities, totally blew my mind. I love mine - I have 64gb of ddr4, a 10th gen intel i7, NVMe SSD, an incredible keyboard, a nice screen, and th…

US$1400 plus ram, plus ssd, plus battery for...

...a bulky, heavy 13" laptop with a horrendously noisy fan, an outdated processor, no bluetooth, no camera when everything is done over video, shitty speakers, shitty 18080p 13" TN 4:3 screen, 6 hours of battery life vs 12-18 in current laptops, and so on.

Fool, money, etc.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#45

Post by OskarS »

baz00 wrote: post #10

Was. Despite owning one, I'd rather use my 14" M1 MBP thanks. Hell if I had to have a PC I've got a much much nicer Lenovo T14 gen 3 here! For the MBP in comparison: Better screen, performance, battery life, OS that actually mostly works, connectivity, sound. The keyboard isn't that bad either... As for ports, I don't need 'em. Last thing I want to do is drag a fucking drunken octopus around with me. Even as a ThinkP…

Not to mention the best touchpad in existence.

One of my friends loathes everything Apple does (on principle, basically) and has tried several times to convince me that the ThinkPad X-series is just as good (or better) than an M-series MacBook Pro. Testing it out for a bit, there’s just no comparison. Even leaving the software aside, the hardware is just leaps and bounds better from Apple.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#46

Post by Moldoteck »

still waiting for apple to release a 11-12 inch macbook with an M processor, nice screen,keyboard and touchpad. I mean something the size of a surface go. It's not for everyday use for sure (maybe only if you use a bigger display). But too often I want to bring a laptop with me and even the M1 MBA feels too heavy compared to my Surface Go 2. Even with a slower processor, I would take the surface just because it's so light, eventually I can take a dongle/hub from anker/other brands to have both a lite 'laptop' and a ton of ports

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#47

Post by tmtvl »

Aardwolf wrote: post #20

All very nice, but not with such dated CPU and memory. I also have a thinkpad with archlinux, but a 10 year newer model (T14). The CPU is fine. But it also has 16GB of RAM, and I wish there was more, it doesn't even take that many firefox+chrome tabs to fill it all up.

Aren't you exaggerating a little? My main PC has 16 GB and the only way I ever run into the upper bound is when I run a heavyweight Minecraft modpack.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#48

Post by baz00 »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #31

Like the author, I've found the perfect old ThinkPad for me and it works brilliantly. I have a nice efficient GNU/Linux install, all my local software runs smoothly and I've used it for my day job for 9 years. But the damn worldwide web keeps marching on their mission to make the most bloated software in the universe. I should be able to keep using the machine forever with unchanged software, but the web demands more…

I blame JavaScript and the deficient culture of insanity around it. The only things that are slow on any of my computers are honking great stacks of shit built on top of browsers with JavaScript. Sometimes I have three different fucking browser engines running these stacks of shit.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#49

Post by BSDobelix »

baz00 wrote: post #17
asystole wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it Stockholm syndrome but IMO modern MacBooks have some of the nicest laptop keyboards around. And I'm the kind of guy who uses a custom mechanical keyboard at his desk and turns his nose up at Cherry MX switches.

Pre-post edit: excuse the keyboard rant. They're not bad. Definitely better than the soggy ass Dell and Lenovo keyboards at least. But I would still rather have a proper keyboard with some travel. But the whole laptop experience is a compromise generally so I'm willing to live with it. My daily driver keyboard is an Apple Magic Keyboard on my Mac mini and that's fine as well. I only use it so I don't have switch back…

You should never go into politics's, now you made two main-group's mad, the Thinkpad lover's AND the Cherry "lovers", you now have only one minor group left who is not salty and that is the Plan9-Front who exclusively works with a 3-buttom mouse and drawterm ;)
Post reply on HN