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

I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

pilledtexts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 595 posts

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#101

Post by HexPhantom »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #6

I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…

I really hope they get there though. The idea of a modern, repairable, modular laptop that doesn't lock you into a walled garden is incredibly appealing

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#102

Post by globular-toast »

This is why I've always preferred full size PCs. But if I were to get a laptop it sounds like it would be a 17 year old ThinkPad. Are the newer ones the same? This wasn't clear in the article.

My PC is ten years old now. It's always run GNU/Linux and feels noticeably snappier than more recent machines with their bloated software. I've maxed out the CPU and RAM on it, overclocked it, added a nice AMD workstation GPU so I could run two 4k screens. I guess the thing is it really feels like I own it. I don't feel the same about phones and tablets.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#103

Post by ivraatiems »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #60
ivraatiems wrote: post #48

I love these old ThinkPads. I refurbish and sell them all the time. Just moments before writing this, I finished fixing up a T580; earlier today I did a heatsink replacement on a W510 which is going strong with an SSD and 20GB RAM. The older they are, the better they are, but even the modern ones are still pretty good. Like the OP mentions, the market for parts is strong and it's easy to get what you need. Then when…

>The older they are, the better they are Everyone agrees the build quality used to be better (my grandpa already said this about appliances from his youth). But one thing I almost never see discussed is the power consumption of these old devices. Older CPUs often double as room heaters. Modern ones, especially the Apple M-series, have become a lot more efficient. So while I agree that modern laptops suck in many ways…

It just isn't really a measurable impact against an overall picture.

At maximum, a T580 can draw 44 watts. 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, at 50 cents a kWh (quite expensive for the US), that's $65 a year. That's a several-year-old computer already.

The W520 can draw a much higher (but still low relative to a desktop) 150 watts. The cost per year to run it would then be around $220/year - but again, that's assuming maximum power draw for much of the day every day. Your home refrigerator uses more than twice that.

For most people, I don't see this cost increase as a problem.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#106

Post by bigpeopleareold »

pengaru wrote: post #40
frfl wrote: post #31

Where does one find a replacement battery for a thinkpad that doesn't die after 6 months? I spent $100 on what I thought was a legit and reputable local middleman for laptop batteries (of course they just buy from China), but even then first battery was half dead on arrival, and second free replacement was dead in around just under a year with rapid capacity decline after 6 months.

kingsener batteries from aliexpress have been highly recommended in the past, but I haven't bought any yet.

I bought a few. Only one was decent and still use it. For one of them I had, it never calibrated correctly and I think it was surging the motherboard (backlight on my screen just stopped working one day, but the computer just would keep turning off with it, leading to a lot of 'hold the power button down to clear the capacitors') ... the other one just doesn't charge past 65% anymore. Maybe that's a calibration issue; it sat awhile.

I am going to look at another vendor. Maybe GreenCell?

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#107

Post by globular-toast »

quailfarmer wrote: post #79

The tightness of hardware integration isn't a bug, it's genuinely a feature; In fact, it's the defining feature that makes Apple hardware great. Socketed RAM, CPU, and Storage just weren't worth the tradeoffs, namely size, weight, cost, and performance. Including those modular interfaces just wasn't worth it when the internal interfaces would be obsolete within 5 years, and the average user was replacing sub-componen…

Sad but true. Most people don't do much with the things they own, even if they can. Cars get serviced when they are told to, by someone else. No modifications are done. It's a weird thing to me because you get the downsides of ownership (liability for servicing and repairs) but none of the upsides.

I wish more people took direct control over their lives. But many are just happy to not think and put up with whatever they get.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#109

Post by zenolijo »

quailfarmer wrote: post #79

The tightness of hardware integration isn't a bug, it's genuinely a feature; In fact, it's the defining feature that makes Apple hardware great. Socketed RAM, CPU, and Storage just weren't worth the tradeoffs, namely size, weight, cost, and performance. Including those modular interfaces just wasn't worth it when the internal interfaces would be obsolete within 5 years, and the average user was replacing sub-componen…

> A professional can still replace almost any component of a modern laptop, with a few thousand $ of specialized tools, and the battery, the only component with a fixed lifetime, can be easily replaced at home.

Even if a professional can fix it, that expertise to be able to use those tools worth "a few thousand dollars" costs a lot too, likely pushing the price high enough that its worth thinking about buying a new device instead.

While the battery might be the only thing with a fixed lifetime, other components often also break. I was unlucky and owned a ThinkPad with one soldered on RAM module and one socketed slot to be able to upgrade the RAM, but that didn't help the day that the soldered on RAM died on me.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#110

Post by kombine »

jbaiter wrote: post #97
kombine wrote: post #85

I am daily driving ThinkPad T14s Gen3 AMD that I bought off Ebay a year ago. It was opened but new with warranty until 2026 and I only paid for 600 British pounds for it. It is not as repairable as their other models but it has a premium quality build, a modern CPU and full Linux compatibility. It is also the first generation of T14 when they returned 16:10 screens, this aspect ratio is a must for coding. ThinkPads a…

I have the same, and I'll probably use it until it's dead. I love the screen for the same reason you mention. It's a damn shame that they put the ugly reverse webcam notch on the newer ThinkPads, it ruins the complete look :-/

Yeah, same, mine has 32G RAM so it will last me 10 years or so, and hopefully Lenovo will remove the webcam notch by then :)
Post reply on HN