How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#121

Post by mcv » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

modernerd wrote: post #28

It's pretty amazing what you can put them through too. As a MacBook owner Lenovo's dust tests have me wincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hazDhYq8YOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO5LGICeOuk And the waterproofing is kind of incredible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig3xI8dUdm0&t=1650s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmdcutSxmn0 Now that they make a solid, thin, repairable, upgradeable 15" laptop for creativ…

ThinkPads have always been known for their extreme reliability. Not officially ruggedised, but close enough for most people.

MacOS isn't as good as it used to be, in my opinion. I currently have a 2011 Macbook Pro, but I'm pretty sure my next laptop is not going to be a Macbook. I'll use this one until it wear out, but after that, ThinkPad is definitely high on the list. I'm just looking for a Linux distro that does basically what OS X does. Or did. I'm not happy with Apple's direction lately.

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#122

Post by lqet » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:11 AM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #118

lqet wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the display, I bought an LED conversion kit (mainly for the reduced power consumption) and have no complaints regarding the results. But if you are used to modern screens, the display may indeed appear a bit grainy. It doesn't bother me, though. Regarding the problems with the chassis: 1) Yes, this is absolutely true. The used X61 I bought on eBay already had this issue in a very early stage. However, as the conv…

What are you doing for batteries? How's the battery life on your X62 in linux, and how many cells? I did appreciate the improved battery life with the LED conversion, but my complaints are more along the lines of colors being off and a visible pattern of the LED strip at the bottom of the display. It's non-trivial to get the LED strip perfectly aligned in the CCFL gutter, and in my last attempt there were some other…

Yes, it took me some hours to adjust the LED strip to minimize the effect, but the LED artifacts s are still faintly recognizable in the bottom 5mm of the screen if I'm in a dark room and the screen is mainly white in this area. However, I usually use this laptop as my daily coding workhorse within a terminal with a dark background, where the effect is not present.

Regarding the battery, I use this one: https://www.laptopbatteryexpress.com/Lenovo-long-life-ThinkP...

Battery life is around 7-8 hours when I am coding with 100% screen brightness, using a basically vanilla Ubuntu 16.04. It was close to 9 hours when the battery was new.

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#123

Post by justbaker » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

abledon wrote: post #106

drakonka wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My X1 Carbon is only three years old and already looks really crappy. I take it everywhere with me and it's been through a lot - I'm not exactly gentle. To be honest I kind of like how dinged up it is, shows the nice history of planes and coffee shops we've had together and yet it keeps chugging along.

Just like designer jeans , people will be buying laptops with factory made scuffs and wear and tear in 20 years. Mark my words . There will maybe even be apple iPhones with designer scuffs in the year 2035

“Excuse me but this Apple already has a bite taken out of it!”

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#124

Post by syntaxing » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

lqet wrote: post #61

Last year, I decided to build an X62 (Thinkpad X61 or X60 with custom hardware) after reading about it here [1]. Shipment of the modification kit (some plastic parts + a new mainboard) took 2 months from China to Germany. It took me a while to find a brand-new screen as a replacement for the original 1024x786 screen (which has to be modified, including some minor metal-working). After roughly a year of heavy daily us…

Same! I built my X62 after reading his post. How did you do your replacement screen? I have the HD version but I cracked something internally when I was replacing the bulb to LED :/. Works great besides some light leakage on the corner. I just cover it with some tap to stop it from blinding me.

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#125

Post by mcv » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 12:33 PM UTC

organsnyder wrote: post #64

rainhacker wrote: post #53

Any recommendations of Thinkpad model to buy in 2018 ? I can wait if anything promising is coming in 2019.

For me, the "vanilla" T-series is the best compromise for weight, build quality, and repairability. My personal laptop is a T480, and it's an excellent machine. Very portable, screamingly fast, very good screen (I have the high-res IPS variant). If you want a bit more premium feel and lighter weight, the Txxxs (e.g. T480s) is a bit thinner than the regular T-series, and feels a bit sturdier (so I've heard, anyways; m…

I'm looking for a portable workstation, so I guess that would be the P-series for me. They're a bit heavier than my current Macbook, though; my 2011 17" MBP weights about 3 kg, while the 17" P71 and P72 start at 3.4 kg.

People already complain my laptop is too heavy. Maybe I should start looking at smaller screen sizes after all.

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#126

Post by modernerd » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 12:34 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #121

modernerd wrote: post #28

It's pretty amazing what you can put them through too. As a MacBook owner Lenovo's dust tests have me wincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hazDhYq8YOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO5LGICeOuk And the waterproofing is kind of incredible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig3xI8dUdm0&t=1650s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmdcutSxmn0 Now that they make a solid, thin, repairable, upgradeable 15" laptop for creativ…

ThinkPads have always been known for their extreme reliability. Not officially ruggedised, but close enough for most people. MacOS isn't as good as it used to be, in my opinion. I currently have a 2011 Macbook Pro, but I'm pretty sure my next laptop is not going to be a Macbook. I'll use this one until it wear out, but after that, ThinkPad is definitely high on the list. I'm just looking for a Linux distro that does…

I intend to slug it out with Windows 10 if I switch from MacBook to ThinkPad.

I love Linux (Arch/KDE enthusiast) but there are benefits to Windows too: it generally has better support for gaming, gamedev (all the gamedev live streamers I follow seem to be perfectly productive with Windows), C# development, Adobe apps, and deeper hardware integration (biometrics/Windows Hello and touchscreen support). There still seems to be a huge stigma with using Windows in some developer communities, but I think I can live with that…

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#127

Post by mcv » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 12:41 PM UTC

modernerd wrote: post #126

mcv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ThinkPads have always been known for their extreme reliability. Not officially ruggedised, but close enough for most people. MacOS isn't as good as it used to be, in my opinion. I currently have a 2011 Macbook Pro, but I'm pretty sure my next laptop is not going to be a Macbook. I'll use this one until it wear out, but after that, ThinkPad is definitely high on the list. I'm just looking for a Linux distro that does…

I intend to slug it out with Windows 10 if I switch from MacBook to ThinkPad. I love Linux (Arch/KDE enthusiast) but there are benefits to Windows too: it generally has better support for gaming, gamedev (all the gamedev live streamers I follow seem to be perfectly productive with Windows), C# development, Adobe apps, and deeper hardware integration (biometrics/Windows Hello and touchscreen support). There still seem…

Does Windows come with a better command line shell yet? That's the big thing keeping me away. There's just so much unix-based tooling (works on both Linux and Mac) that I don't want to go without.

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#128

Post by modernerd » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 12:58 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #127

modernerd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I intend to slug it out with Windows 10 if I switch from MacBook to ThinkPad. I love Linux (Arch/KDE enthusiast) but there are benefits to Windows too: it generally has better support for gaming, gamedev (all the gamedev live streamers I follow seem to be perfectly productive with Windows), C# development, Adobe apps, and deeper hardware integration (biometrics/Windows Hello and touchscreen support). There still seem…

Does Windows come with a better command line shell yet? That's the big thing keeping me away. There's just so much unix-based tooling (works on both Linux and Mac) that I don't want to go without.

Yes, there is the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which is a compatibility layer for running Linux binaries natively on Windows:

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheYearOfLinuxOnTheWindowsDes...

https://github.com/sirredbeard/Awesome-WSL

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

I haven't switched to Windows 10 full-time yet, but WSL works remarkably well whenever I've tried it.

Cmder (http://cmder.net/) and ConEmu (https://conemu.github.io/) are pretty decent terminal emulators and Terminus (https://eugeny.github.io/terminus/#header ) looks promising too. (It's hard to beat iTerm, though.)

My other concern with Windows 10 was security and viruses. Last time I used Windows every day (~1999!) that was a huge concern, but it seems to be less of one now. Most seem to consider using the standard Windows-supplied virus checker just fine if you're not torrenting dodgy stuff and opening strange email attachments.

The following guide (from the @SwiftOnSecurity twitter author) was helpful:

https://decentsecurity.com/#/securing-your-computer/

It contains much the same advice for Windows that you'd expect to see for keeping macOS secure too — keep stuff up-to-date, encrypt your drives, don't try to disable User Account Control or Device Guard (like Gatekeeper on Mac).

I've found that chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/) is a great replacement for brew, Laragon (https://laragon.org/) is a good alternative to Valet, and Autohotkey (https://autohotkey.com/) is unrivaled for general system automation. (See Tom Scott waxing lyrical about Windows and AHK here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIFE7h3m40U ).

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#129

Post by Yetanfou » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

marpstar wrote: post #72

lqet wrote: post #61

Last year, I decided to build an X62 (Thinkpad X61 or X60 with custom hardware) after reading about it here [1]. Shipment of the modification kit (some plastic parts + a new mainboard) took 2 months from China to Germany. It took me a while to find a brand-new screen as a replacement for the original 1024x786 screen (which has to be modified, including some minor metal-working). After roughly a year of heavy daily us…

I bought an X60 for college in 2006. The only complaint I ever had was the 1024x768 display. No CD-ROM, I'm too lazy to build an X62 but I love that it is a thing.

I'm still using a number of T42p's with 1600x1200 4:3 screens for these reasons. The combination of the good screen, keyboard and the sturdy hardware weigh up to the disadvantage of the rather anaemic CPU (1.8GHz Pentium M) and the limited memory (2GB). An inline PATA-SATA adapter and a SSD make the things faster than they ever were in their heyday and they still run for hours on the extended battery.

It'd be worth a try to stuff a more modern board into its magnesium frame but only if that board could drive the screen.

Re: How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)

#130

Post by lqet » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #124

lqet wrote: post #61

Last year, I decided to build an X62 (Thinkpad X61 or X60 with custom hardware) after reading about it here [1]. Shipment of the modification kit (some plastic parts + a new mainboard) took 2 months from China to Germany. It took me a while to find a brand-new screen as a replacement for the original 1024x786 screen (which has to be modified, including some minor metal-working). After roughly a year of heavy daily us…

Same! I built my X62 after reading his post. How did you do your replacement screen? I have the HD version but I cracked something internally when I was replacing the bulb to LED :/. Works great besides some light leakage on the corner. I just cover it with some tap to stop it from blinding me.

For the metal work, I bought a cheap tool like this here [1] and a diamond separating disc. Replacing the screen was by far the most complicated part, but there are many tutorials still out there, because this was already a fairly common mod for the original X61. It is incredibly important that the screen fits _perfectly_ into the lid, otherwise it won't close properly and/or you will get strange patterns on the display after a while because of the stress. Inserting the LED strip was relatively easy. For the light leakage, I bought some very thin black tape at Obi (a German hardware store) which doesn't let any light through (I have forgotten which tape it was, it was suggested in some old tutorial in a German ThinkPad forum).

[1] https://www.amazon.de/Multifunktionswerkzeug-Mehrzweckschlei...