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The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

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Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#91

Post by mindslight »

buro9 wrote: post #34

I still love mine, and I love the replaceable battery and the fact that you can still get batteries. but best laptop in the World? I do use mine, occasionally, it's a great work horse around the house for network things as it has an ethernet port. but TBH I use my X1 laptops more, the ability to USB-C charge is near critical now, and the X220 lack of USB-C as well as low res screen really does mean it's not a machine…

For your other gripe: I modded two of my X230 to 1080p screens using a small-run add-on board and the right LCD panel from eBay. The board I got was made and sold by someone in Russia (by the name nitrocaster), so I don't know the availability with the war now (or for that matter, if he's been shipped off to the meat grinder to die pointlessly. fuck putin)

Also I personally think the keyboard topic is totally oversold. I'm quite content with the stock X230 keyboard, and I would swap in a heartbeat if I wanted to (it's two screws). And my previous laptops were T22/T60/T61, so I do know the difference.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#92

Post by phil21 »

jll29 wrote: post #87

> The X220 (like most of Lenovo's older X/T models) is built like a tank. Although the inner pieces are sourced from mostly plastic, the device is still better equipped to handle drops and mishandling compared to that of more fragile devices (such as the MacBook Air or Framework). The poster is right, I dropped both an X220 and a MacBookAir (from similarly high desks), and the ThinkPad had no scratch despite being pl…

I was a 100% Thinkpad fanboy up until the T410S finally pissed me off enough with battery life and keyboard changes to move to Apple.

The T series was built like a tank - a WWII era tank that could take a beating, have bits and pieces crack and break, but chug along until you could get the (cheap!) replacement part shipped. I have a stack of T60 series laptops I think I could keep going for another 50 years just by robbing parts from donor laptops as needed.

The repairability just was second to none. Both in parts availability and design of the laptop itself. A cracked bezel happened, but was a 10 minute and $20 repair.

I started my first real "professional" job in tech, and while packing/moving for said job I somehow had an entire gallon of windshield wiper fluid spill directly into the (running) fan port of my work-issued T42 I had left on the floor of my minivan. I pulled the battery in a panic, but after taking everything apart and drying it all out - it worked fine for at least a decade. I was hooked on the series ever since.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#93

Post by csdvrx »

capl wrote: post #75

> The battery life on my own X220 is fantastic. I have a brand-new 9-cell that lasts for roughly 5-6 hours of daily work. Obviously these numbers don't come close to the incredible battery life of Apple's M1/M2 chip devices, but it's still quite competitive against other "newer" laptops on the market. Oh okay, so it’s the best sub-tier laptop on the market. MacBooks still on top, got it.

> MacBooks still on top, got it.

What I care about:

- OLED screenshortcut

- ECC RAM (min 32G, ideally 128G)

- having a touchscreen

- having a trackpoint

- having physical page up and page down keys

An internal 4G LTE module is nice to have, but not required. The ability to remove the M2 storage to quickly transplant it into something else if needed is nice too, but if there's a switch to turn the laptop into a giant thumbdrive even if the OS/screen/keyboard is dead, that'd be ok too

On every single metric, the MacBook is bottom tier for me: it's only offering battery life, which I don't care about.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#94

Post by bronikowski »

jll29 wrote: post #89
bronikowski wrote: post #50

I sit here, using X61s, compiling stuff, listening to music, writing code and articles, no care in the world, comfy as a kitten. I think being comfortable with less is my superpower.

Oh, how I loved that keyboard and form factor - only the 2 GB RAM limit was a little too tight for technical work, but a great office laptop at the time!

I think it goes up to for (two 2GiB sticks), I have 3 in mine.

~: free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 2946 1736 101 271 1575 1210

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#95

Post by josephcsible »

chpatrick wrote: post #67
buro9 wrote: post #34

I still love mine, and I love the replaceable battery and the fact that you can still get batteries. but best laptop in the World? I do use mine, occasionally, it's a great work horse around the house for network things as it has an ethernet port. but TBH I use my X1 laptops more, the ability to USB-C charge is near critical now, and the X220 lack of USB-C as well as low res screen really does mean it's not a machine…

You can get a USB-C to classic laptop adapter for a few dollars on AliExpress.

Such adapters are a dangerous violation of the USB spec.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#96

Post by eunice »

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…

went from mx brown to topre and can never go back

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#97

Post by jules22 »

I got mine for $100, about 4-5 years ago. Only 1 USB port seems to work. Great keyboard, only 720p screen, did not upgrade the HDD. Works great as a secondary machine. I expect to use it for at least another 5 years, likely more. I love old machines and how repairable they were.

I wish they would not make the new laptops that tight and thin. I like low weight, but would not mind a little thickness, if I can open it and clean it easily, change the paste, upgrade easily, have external battery, more room for venting and so on. These are very practical features.

On a related note, I just don't understand the madness of having battery inside the laptop in gaming laptops these days. The heat kills them. These are mostly portable desktops and I can't find any new gaming laptops that have external batteries anymore so that I can use them on just external power. In the rare occasion, it ends up as a very premium feature. These things were basic features in the past.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#98

Post by accrual »

njaguardsheep wrote: post #65
buro9 wrote: post #34

I still love mine, and I love the replaceable battery and the fact that you can still get batteries. but best laptop in the World? I do use mine, occasionally, it's a great work horse around the house for network things as it has an ethernet port. but TBH I use my X1 laptops more, the ability to USB-C charge is near critical now, and the X220 lack of USB-C as well as low res screen really does mean it's not a machine…

I replaced the charging port in my X230 with this mod[1], which allows charging using USB-PD chargers. https://www.tindie.com/products/mikepdiy/lenovo-charging-por...

I wanted to go this route but they were always out of stock when I went to order one a year or two ago. Instead, I bought a pigtail-style adapter from Amazon that converts the barrel jack to female USB-C PD. I like it a lot, and I can still use the stock adapter if needed. I also put a little USB-C power monitor inline with the cable, it's neat to "watch" the power going into the laptop.

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#99

Post by accrual »

chpatrick wrote: post #68
baz00 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can complain but if the inefficient sites work fine on 95% of modern computers it doesn't make business sense to optimize them. You can't run the most minimal current Linux kernel on a 30 year old laptop either.

> You can't run the most minimal current Linux kernel on a 30 year old laptop either.

Not exactly the same, but I was able to run a fairly recent version of OpenBSD (6.x) on a 486 DX2-66 with 32MB of RAM this year. Not bad for a CPU from 1992 (32 years ago).

Re: The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop

#100

Post by jpgvm »

What I really want is a modern laptop with the old style Thinkpad aesthetics and pragmatisms. i.e ports, replaceable components, magnesium alloy chassis with plastic and rubber armor (i.e tanky AF), good keyboard with real travel, hot swap batteries, 3.5mm jack, card readers, OOTB Linux support, hw kill switches for radios, webcams and mic.

Then for modernisation: 4k OLED, USB-C charging + docking, actually decent webcam and mic.

Ideally in X220 and T400-esq form-factors to choose from.

Instead I have a MBP M2 because Thinkpad just ain't Thinkpad anymore and that is sad.

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