I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad • Hacker News Board

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#151

Post by znpy » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:48 AM UTC

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…

> 51nb's "FrankenPads" especially breathe incredible new life into old IBM and Lenovo stock.

That's biased though. As soon as a 51nb motherboard dies or has any hardware failure you're back to 2008-era level of performance.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#152

Post by myaccountonhn » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:48 AM UTC

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…

I think it's an attitude worth challenging. The minerals required to build these laptops are limited, and one day we will have to realize this and care for what we own.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#153

Post by omnster » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:50 AM UTC

xnorswap wrote: post #130

shoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back LD, average distance between Earth and Moon = 384,399,000 m [1] C = circumference of moon = 10,917,000 m R := approximate round trip distance = 2LD + 0.5*C = 774,256,500 m n = total number of thinkpads on earth Alas, T / R, the ratio of total thinkpad distance T to our lunar round trip distance R, is at most about 0.11 . This is with…

It won't get you to the moon, but you can squeeze out a little more distance by arranging them corner to corner.

Exactly. We can also win a tiny bit of the distance by assuming the Moon in the perigee, where the distance to the Moon is about 363000 km. I also assume that these distances are measured between the centers, so we can perhaps subtract twice the Earth radius (about 2*6400 km).

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#154

Post by hkt » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:50 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #141

roywashere wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My new company of about 100 persons uses ThinkPads as their 'standard issue' laptops. Which I guess is great. I have a T480 privately. But modern ThinkPads are not as great as before, and I was just thinking about if the Framework might make a nice 'standard issue' laptop for the company. I guess it might be just fine!

When would you define as “before”? I’ve had a thinkpad on and off and I’d describe the quality as consistent. People talking about old Lenovos being good quality are often talking about in the pre-IBM days which is far more likely to be nostalgia at this point.

Not sure what GP means but I gather the x230 era (2012?) has a cult following. I picked one up a few years ago when a laptop died and I didn't have the cash for something new: it is still my daily driver and I'm not replacing it til it dies.

By contrast, I know someone who got a T480 second hand and it lasted six months. My guess is the 2012 era was when the change happened

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#155

Post by p2detar » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:50 AM UTC

Man, I knew it was going to be a T-series machine. I used to own T400s and T430. Just hardcore pieces of hardware. I fine-tuned my T430 so that it boots Archlinux in about 3-4 seconds. Loved tinkering with Linux, Xfce and coding on that machine. As I grew older I switched to a MacBook, like many others but I miss that machine.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#156

Post by notpushkin » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:53 AM UTC

john2x wrote: post #30

mrheosuper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Thinkpad T25 25th anniversary edition[1]. It has "modern" spec, while still having that traditional keyboard of t420 Also iirc there are projects that make Motherboard that fit in old thinkpad chassis. It has very impressive spec: 8 core Zen3 AMD cpu and 32gb ram. Some M2 slot etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_25th_anniversary_edit...

I currently have this T25. But it’s mostly a gimmick. Once the coolness wore off it’s just a midrange T470 under the hood. Still trucking after 7 years though. But I can’t upgrade it to Win 11 lol

You can combine it with a top-line T480 if you want! https://www.xyte.ch/mods/t25-frankenpad/

> But I can’t upgrade it to Win 11 lol

Nothing of value has been lost :^) (But if you really need Win 11, there are workarounds)

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#157

Post by linacica » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:53 AM UTC

My school recently (about 1.5 years ago) upgraded all their machines to ThinkPads(laptops & desktops)(11 gen Intel CPUs, desktops with A2000 GPUs), i seen other Thinkpad machines which try to copy Apple's design choices but these don't, they're big, thick, and have a lot of newer features, but also dropped some things which caused issues, for example: VGA port, there are quite few USB ports, if you know school environment you may know it's very rash environment we have HDMI to VGA adapters they constantly go bad because the cable is heavy & adapter too

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#158

Post by badgersnake » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:54 AM UTC

I still use my X1 carbon gen 1. 8gb ram is getting a little bit tight these days though. Sadly not upgradable.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#159

Post by ccppurcell » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:55 AM UTC

Mine's about 13. I just upgraded from Ubuntu 22 to 24 and I'm regretting it a bit. on 22 I could watch downloaded films on an external monitor but not stream video. I could live with that. But now it seems 24 uses just a little more memory and watching a downloaded video on the monitor makes it shudder... :(

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#160

Post by xtenduke » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 7:55 AM UTC

I too had a Thinkpad T400, in about 2013. Compiling my undergrad university course code made the music I was listening to skip. Modern software sucks, I can not imagine using a core2duo to do any task other than ssh/word processing