Live data from Hacker News

ThinkPad’s 30th Anniversary: An Insider’s Perspective

forbes.com

161–164 of 164 posts

Re: ThinkPad’s 30th Anniversary: An Insider’s Perspective

#161
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting thinner and lighter devices isn't some sort of weird desire only non-technical people want. Computers have gradually miniaturized from something that fits in a warehouse to something that fits into a room in your office into something that fits on people's desks into something that fits in your pocket. And subsequently, the skills required to repair said devices ends up changing. I won't say it's easier or ha…

Today thinnest laptops are much more than just miniaturization. It reminds me the time when Motorola issued a thinner and thinner razr models just because they didn't have any other innovative idea than "thin". The moment that all the brands started focusing only on who is the thinnest instead of who has more features that's the point that they just ran out of innovative ideas. Batteries are like car tires, they are…

> Today thinnest laptops are much more than just miniaturization.

So what? The market can bear having more than one kind of laptop and so exists many different kinds of laptops that come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes.

> The moment that all the brands started focusing only on who is the thinnest instead of who has more features that's the point that they just ran out of innovative ideas.

Except even if one brand focused only on that, there'd still be many others that did not.

> Batteries are like car tires, they are expected to need replacing. Why can't I replace them myself and instead have to send the laptop to the lab?

No laptop requires you sending it to a lab to replace your battery.

> Why can't I decide which brand of batteries I want just like in my car?

You mostly can. There's a whole lot of cheap replacement batteries you can buy for most laptop models.

> Maybe I want more powerful batteries or maybe I want lighter batteries.

In most cases this isn't really possible because of either 1) low market demand or 2) it's literally impossible to do so without modifying the chassis. A few thinkpads used to have this feature with a hot-swappable external battery that you could choose the capacity, though. You can still buy a T480 on ebay and go this route if you want.

> Another issue is that the unrepairabilty of these laptops harms the environment a lot.

I see this argument made a lot but I find it to be mostly made in bad faith. Most people use their laptop until it's not useful to them anymore and then get rid of it in some manner — selling it to someone else, handing it down to relatives, recycling it, and sometimes throwing it away.

> Lenovo sells now laptops with 8GB and maybe it's acceptable for some uses. But in a year or two, these laptops will have to be thrown to trash cause you can't upgrade the memory in any way.

People have been making that argument for at least 8 years now that 8gb wasn't going to be enough in a year or two, and yet it's still serviceable to plenty of people today. It's about as likely as the CPU that is soldered onto every laptop now (even the framework laptop) will stop being useful. Raspberry pis are at max sold with 8gb of RAM, are you really going to try and suggest that they won't be useful two year from now?

> As many mentioned here they have fully working laptops for 5 or even 10 years and that's laptops that saved from the need to buy new ones.

My 2013 Macbook Pro was working when I traded it into Apple to get a new laptop. I got a new laptop because I wanted something with more power, not because it strictly needed to be replaced. People that are able to will replace their laptop when they feel they need to and that threshold is different depending on the person. Throwing an ssd into an old laptop will only go so far.

Re: ThinkPad’s 30th Anniversary: An Insider’s Perspective

#162
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was snide, I apologise. I just found it weird to compare laptop keyboards to mechanical switches since they're never going to be in the same ballpark.

Why not? Why not laptops with mechanical keyboards again? It was basically 100% of laptops from the 1990s for a decade or two. Is choice a bad thing? We can choose OS, we can choose editors and desktops and so on... but if you want a portable computer with 1cm of key travel and a click: well, it sucks to be you, so GTFO and STFU. I detest chiclet keyboards. At some point soon all my decade-old Thinkpads will wear out…

I agree with you on most of those points. For keyboard though, by the time you shove a 1cm-high keybed in there, you may as well just carry a thin laptop and a keyboard together connected with USB.

Re: ThinkPad’s 30th Anniversary: An Insider’s Perspective

#163
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Why not laptops with mechanical keyboards again? It was basically 100% of laptops from the 1990s for a decade or two. Is choice a bad thing? We can choose OS, we can choose editors and desktops and so on... but if you want a portable computer with 1cm of key travel and a click: well, it sucks to be you, so GTFO and STFU. I detest chiclet keyboards. At some point soon all my decade-old Thinkpads will wear out…

I agree with you on most of those points. For keyboard though, by the time you shove a 1cm-high keybed in there, you may as well just carry a thin laptop and a keyboard together connected with USB.

Yeah, no.

Look at this story:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/04/you_cannot_buy_softwa...

Rewritten 10 days ago on an intercity coach on a 2009 Thinkpad X220. On its original battery which lasted for the whole trip.

Look at this story:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/05/rust_kernel_pull_requ...

Written entirely on a Gemini PDA waiting in a visa biometric testing office.

Neither of those are viable places to use an external keyboard.

This is not some kind of fantasy hardware. Kit like this was the norm in the 1990s -- full height full travel mechanical keyboards in BUDGET model laptops from good brands -- and it was still doable in Core i7 kit sold in the first decade of this century.

Keyboards matter. They are important.

Look at any "gamer's keyboard" from the mass market. Full size, full travel, mechanical switches, even backlit.

Gamers won't put up with the crappy slimline things that Apple sold and the rest of the PC industry copied, badly.

It's only weirdo editor fans who popularise these ridiculously tiny things that don't even have cursor keys. To h3ll with that absurdist obsessive rubbish.

Full size, full travel, or GTFO. It's not some weird made up thing; we had this stuff just 10-12 years ago, but the marketing lizards foisted ultraslim junk on us and we swallowed the kool-aid and now everyone thinks laptops were always like this.

Even maintainable ones like the Framework.

Re: ThinkPad’s 30th Anniversary: An Insider’s Perspective

#164
post #46
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an x220 in my line up of older machines. My newest is an X1 Carbon gen6 aka x1c6. I was surprised how quickly I was able to open the bottom of it up install a new wifi6 card. About 5 screws and the back is off and another screw holding in the wifi card. I dont think the x220 is that fast.

To replace the WLAN card in an X220, you must remove all the screws on the bottom of the case, the keyboard, and the palm rest. It's not trivial but anyone can do it. Unfortunately it would be largely pointless since the X220 has an allowlist for PCIe cards, and I'm sure it does not include any modern wifi devices.

The whitelist can be removed pretty easily.

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-REQUEST-Lenovo-X220-8...

Post reply on HN