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ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

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Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#41

Post by geoka9 »

JimmyL wrote: post #31

In an office full of Retina MacBooks, I love my ThinkPad X220 (and this is my fourth ThinkPad in a row, spanning both Lenovo and IBM eras). It's not a flashy machine, but it's got a bunch of non-mainstream features that are devoted to getting things done, at which they excel: - Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 h…

Another happy ThinkPad user here :)

I agree with all your points. The bricks are pretty much universally interchangeable, except for W models (powerful workstation series, they have a large heavy brick with a higher current rating, which you cannot use with other series).

Repair manuals are fantastic. Two weeks ago the fan in my mother's T500 has become noisy. The laptop had been running non-stop for 3 years and the fan needed more lubrication. Using a repair manual that I downloaded from lenovo.com, I could do this in an afternoon, having had no prior experience of opening up (let alone fixing) a laptop of any kind (although I do have an experience of building my own desktops).

The knob and the thinklight are the best things since sliced bread.

BTW, you can turn off the trackpad completely in the BIOS setup utility. That's what I did on my X220 :)

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#42

Post by arlog »

JimmyL wrote: post #31

In an office full of Retina MacBooks, I love my ThinkPad X220 (and this is my fourth ThinkPad in a row, spanning both Lenovo and IBM eras). It's not a flashy machine, but it's got a bunch of non-mainstream features that are devoted to getting things done, at which they excel: - Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 h…

If you're making MBP vs. ThinkPad comparison, the screen is a complete game-changer. The MBP screen is in an entirely different league.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#43

Post by leeoniya »

i had to add some ram to my t400, it wasnt difficult but i was surprised that it lives under the touchpad and requires more disassembly than say, just popping off a panel on the bottom side. it's been my workhorse with an x-25m ssd for over 4 years. only complaint is with extended 9-cell battery it's def a bulky thing. i've also had some issues using the reduced-size awkwardly-offset up/down/left/right keys - at least 3 times a day i will hit page-left or page-right by accident, causing tab switching. http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/e82f8ee408.jpg

a huge win in all situations is having the cooling vents on the sides rather than bottom and keyboard drain/spill tray.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#44

Post by JimmyL »

arlog wrote: post #42
JimmyL wrote: post #31

In an office full of Retina MacBooks, I love my ThinkPad X220 (and this is my fourth ThinkPad in a row, spanning both Lenovo and IBM eras). It's not a flashy machine, but it's got a bunch of non-mainstream features that are devoted to getting things done, at which they excel: - Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 h…

If you're making MBP vs. ThinkPad comparison, the screen is a complete game-changer. The MBP screen is in an entirely different league.

I'm with you that the screen on a Retina MBP is a leap ahead, but I don't think I'd call it a game-changer.

For one, I do 80% of extended work sessions when I'm at one of two desks. At both those desks, I've got an aforementioned docking station sitting there, and plugged into each docking station is a pair of beautiful Dell 24" IPS panels. That's more screen real estate, and in a more organized and usable way, that I'll get on an MBP Retina. If I did most of my work without these external displays/setups I may feel differently, but for now, they come with my main use-cases.

When I'm not at one of those two desks, would a Retina display be nicer than what I've got? Sure. But I wouldn't trade it for the control nub, the user-fixability, the ability to send a hundred bucks to Crucial and get 16GB of RAM at a time of my choosing or order a second battery if I'm going to be off the grid for a weekend, the docking station, or the keyboard light.

Neither machine will be the ultimate machine for every person. For the way I work, the X200 is in a league above the MBP - the better screen doesn't make up for the machine's other failings. If you work differently, your mileage may vary.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#45

Post by paulgb »

linuxhansl wrote: post #7

I have privately been using ThinkPads exclusively for many years now. These are the best laptops I ever used (and I am being supplied with work laptops that ranged from MacBook to Dells). The part I relate the most with in the presentation is that ThinkPads are not trendy or flashy. No they are not, they are not gadgets or things you show off, they are functional tools that just work.

The one thing I don't like about ThinkPad is that like pretty much every PC maker they insist on bundling their own software (in their case, ThinkVantage). I wish PC makers would start shipping PCs with Windows, any necessary hardware drivers, and nothing else. This, more than anything, is what makes me dread buying another PC.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#46

Post by miahi »

leeoniya wrote: post #43

i had to add some ram to my t400, it wasnt difficult but i was surprised that it lives under the touchpad and requires more disassembly than say, just popping off a panel on the bottom side. it's been my workhorse with an x-25m ssd for over 4 years. only complaint is with extended 9-cell battery it's def a bulky thing. i've also had some issues using the reduced-size awkwardly-offset up/down/left/right keys - at leas…

What I find great is that, at least for the business models, they offer service manuals that describe everything you have to do to change any part (from RAM to CPU).

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#47

Post by mng2 »

geoka9 wrote: post #41
JimmyL wrote: post #31

In an office full of Retina MacBooks, I love my ThinkPad X220 (and this is my fourth ThinkPad in a row, spanning both Lenovo and IBM eras). It's not a flashy machine, but it's got a bunch of non-mainstream features that are devoted to getting things done, at which they excel: - Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 h…

Another happy ThinkPad user here :) I agree with all your points. The bricks are pretty much universally interchangeable, except for W models (powerful workstation series, they have a large heavy brick with a higher current rating, which you cannot use with other series). Repair manuals are fantastic. Two weeks ago the fan in my mother's T500 has become noisy. The laptop had been running non-stop for 3 years and the…

I have an X200s without a trackpad. It invariably blows people's minds when they try to use my laptop and there's nothing where the trackpad would usually be.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#48

Post by cpeterso »

sedachv wrote: post #36
acabal wrote: post #6

I can't believe I'm reading an article touting the design smarts of the Thinkpad designers... honestly I've always thought that the standard black Thinkpads were unspeakably ugly. And I'm not even a design snob. Usable yes, but aesthetic? No way.

You're confusing design with visual appeal. Steve Jobs loved to rant about design and longetivity, but Apple laptops only seem to excel on visual appeal (and this is a recent phenomenon - just look at the first PowerBook G4s). Design has to be functional, and this is where Apple always makes sacrifices. Bringing chiclet-style keyboards back into vogue (to the point where even Lenovo now puts them on Thinkpads) shows…

I've always thought the ThinkPad's keyboard is one of its worst attributes. The keyboard's layout is very cramped. The keys feel flimsy and loose. Their edges are sharp and exposed when you type.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#49

Post by leeoniya »

miahi wrote: post #46
leeoniya wrote: post #43

i had to add some ram to my t400, it wasnt difficult but i was surprised that it lives under the touchpad and requires more disassembly than say, just popping off a panel on the bottom side. it's been my workhorse with an x-25m ssd for over 4 years. only complaint is with extended 9-cell battery it's def a bulky thing. i've also had some issues using the reduced-size awkwardly-offset up/down/left/right keys - at leas…

What I find great is that, at least for the business models, they offer service manuals that describe everything you have to do to change any part (from RAM to CPU).

I used to do routers/networking for a shop that was an Apple certified service center. The amount of teeny screws the techs had standing up on the magnetic bases was simply dumbfounding. With just the cases off, there was already a forest of these things similar to this: http://img.alibaba.com/img/pb/469/933/263/1282659625153_hz-c...

A couple of times someone knocked over one of those things and it was a disaster of crawling around on the floor for 60 minutes.

I can probably service my whole ThinkPad notebook with < 30 screws and 30% of the time.

Re: ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

#50

Post by miahi »

dfc wrote: post #38
acabal wrote: post #6

I can't believe I'm reading an article touting the design smarts of the Thinkpad designers... honestly I've always thought that the standard black Thinkpads were unspeakably ugly. And I'm not even a design snob. Usable yes, but aesthetic? No way.

Aesthetics: the creation and appreciation of beauty In my opinion there is nothing more beautiful on a laptop than the thinkpads hardened steel hinges.

I found the hard way (repairing a T60 broken hinge) that the steel hinges are strong, but the part that links the hinge to the display frame is thin and made of magnesium alloy. It was so thin and small that I ended up fixing it in place with epoxy.
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