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Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

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Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#12
I've owned Thinkpads in the past and almost bought the T460 last month, then I discovered the Dell XPS / Precision line and fell in love. I picked up a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 on eBay and wound up swapping in a Dell Precision E3-1505M motherboard I stumbled across.

The line has Intel quad core CPUs, minimal bezel (my 15" is almost the same size as the 14" System 76 Galago Ultra Pro it's replacing), reasonably slim for a quad core, 84Wh battery, 10+ hours of low power dev (baseline power is about 5.25W on my 8GB + 1080p + Xeon E3-1505M machine) in (Arch) Linux? YES.

Oh yeah, and for nerd points the Dell Precision M5510 has the option for Intel Xeon and Ubuntu stock for people doing CPU intensive Linux work (in my case Linux embedded system builds that grind for tens of minutes to two hours).

To add icing on the cake, you can easily get parts (batteries, motherboards, etc) on eBay if you ever need to fix it yourself which is a sharp contrast to the non-existent System76 Galago Ultra Pro I picked up a few years ago after I ditched my last Thinkpad.

I keep looking at the Thinkpads, but they seem a generation behind.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#15
post #12

I've owned Thinkpads in the past and almost bought the T460 last month, then I discovered the Dell XPS / Precision line and fell in love. I picked up a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 on eBay and wound up swapping in a Dell Precision E3-1505M motherboard I stumbled across. The line has Intel quad core CPUs, minimal bezel (my 15" is almost the same size as the 14" System 76 Galago Ultra Pro it's replacing), reasonably…

With discovered you mean you bought one? What about the noise and battery time under normal and high work load?

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#18
post #3

Ive went with a T420 recently, mostly because of the keyboard. But also because $400 for laptop + battery + Samsung SSD + 16GB hyperX Ram sounded so cheap i could not resist. And honestly even after a 2015 MBP it feels perfect for all my needs. In fact due to the superior RAM and SSD it feels often way faster than the MBP for 5 times that price felt. Plus it has way better battery life. Seriously Thinkpads are the be…

What about the T-series keyboards changed recently that bothers you?

If it's actually the touchpad changes, they reverted them on the xx50 and up (or made them optional, I forget which).

(Typing this from a T430 I'm using while my W550s is being repaired, and I can't recall any drastic keyboard changes that had me in an uproar in the last while.)

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#19
post #5

Did they make a 460s version of the 460 this time around?

They have 'workhorse' 460p (less mobile but stronger CPUs IMO) and a more expensive 'ultra book' 460s, plus the X1 Carbon. For the Carbon there seems to be a recent version released (in the US): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13286150 (maybe they plan to substitude the 460s?)

Another poster upstream commented the T470 is being announced this upcoming week, so I would imagine that the X1c that was announced is from the same logical "generation", and we might see a T470s/p as well.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#20
post #3

Ive went with a T420 recently, mostly because of the keyboard. But also because $400 for laptop + battery + Samsung SSD + 16GB hyperX Ram sounded so cheap i could not resist. And honestly even after a 2015 MBP it feels perfect for all my needs. In fact due to the superior RAM and SSD it feels often way faster than the MBP for 5 times that price felt. Plus it has way better battery life. Seriously Thinkpads are the be…

Have their trackpads improved at all during the last five years?
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