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Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

arstechnica.com

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Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#191

Post by kawsper »

ungamed wrote: post #173
kawsper wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be some discrepancies in this area, this is the CPU in my T480s (with 40GB RAM): https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/124967/... Even Intel says it can maximally have 32 GB of RAM.

Intel has been absolutely incorrect on this a few times. Quite often there is a conflict in ranges that the ACPI spec included in the system firmware can't deal with, but if an operating system is clever enough it can work around the problem. It may require some ACPI trickery, but it absolutely is doable. If the firmware guys are super lazy it may just work without ACPI trickery. Check out an example here: https://ww…

That link was an amazing read, thank you for sharing, I will not admit that I understand all of it, but it was a nice adventure to read through.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#192

Post by smoldesu »

Maxburn wrote: post #162
schipplock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Thinkpad E14 Gen3 is quiet most of the time. My T470p is boiling my hands and the fan is constantly whirring (I still like it :)). But I agree, Apples MacBook is of a different kind. The only time I heard the fan was when playing Metro Exodus and when I ran cinebench :). My MacBook Pro outperforms every other computer in my possession. But I'm still interested in this Thinkpad, because I'm not too happy with macOS…

I've got a 6th gen X1 carbon and under windows the thing has the fan on high all the time. Switched to Linux (mint) and I went a couple months before I heard the fan, doing all the same things. I don't know what windows is doing these days but it isn't doing it for me, the end user.

T460s user here, on Windows (and Hackintosh, for the sake of bad comparison), my system idled ~40-45c and the fans also ran constantly. Put Linux on it, add auto-cpufreq, and then it idles ~27c (30c with external display). No fans unless I launch games, have heavy network usage for >5 minutes, or compile something.

I'd probably give the Macbooks (or this new Thinkpad) a closer look if I didn't work with Docker constantly. As it stands though, ARM and x86 are still not like comparisons, and still not even remotely capable of the same workloads. I have high hopes for the future of RISC arches, but we're undeniably trapped in an age of x86 dominance.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#193

Post by [deleted] »

AnssiH wrote: post #74
ihateolives wrote: post #7

Interesting. I was recently looking to upgrade my personal T480s which I use for development, but didn't see anything in Lenovo lineup that were reasonably light/powerful/quiet/cool enough to make put in the order. I've grown so sick of laptops constantly hissing at me when I do something more complicated than browsing the web. My work issued Dell is basically unusable in a quiet room without headphones. So as an imp…

FWIW, I switched from X270 to X13 Gen2 AMD (5850U, 32GB) recently and the difference has been night-and-day - even just web browsing on X270 caused audible noise, while X13G2A is practically completely silent unless I do something very demanding. So maybe look into T14s Gen2 AMD (which may be pretty similar to X13 Gen2 since they share the HW maintenance manual). But YMMV of course, and I have no experience of M1.

[deleted]

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#194

Post by blibble »

pjmlp wrote: post #190
sofixa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think they aren't? There's a massive gaming on Linux movement which is only going up, and Chromebooks are outselling Apple Macs. Most main OEMs sell Linux-compatible devices, that come with Linux preinstalled.

20 years for 1% increase, sooo massive. Chromebooks aren't Linux, the userspace runs on the Web Platform, and Crostini is no different from WSL 2.

> Chromebooks aren't Linux

pretty certain they are

let me guess... Android phones aren't Linux either?

or the millions of Dell/HP servers running nginx/Java/Postgres/...?

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#195

Post by pinephoneguy »

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #174
pinephoneguy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped buying Qualcomm smartphones years ago. There's no way I'd by a laptop with one of their chips. What an unfortunate choice by Lenovo.

Sadly, I don't think Qualcomm is even any worse than average. I don't think for example MediaTek, Samsung or Nvidia are doing any better. I think even the Pinephones with their Allwinners and Rockchips aren't perfect, with both models being based on I believe older SoCs (although the Rockchip in the Pro has been modified, afaik).

I'll happily take worse hardware with good community support over fresh off the line stuff that's up to its eyeballs in broken corporate crap.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#196

Post by rsynnott »

ksec wrote: post #48

>The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099 This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default. Otherwise it is a machine that cost about the same as MacBook Air M2, with lower Display Res, slower CPU and GPU and No Touch ID. This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price. With the scale of iPhone and iPad, Apple is now at a point where the whole PC industry…

> This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price.

Eh, honestly the baseline MacBook Air has often been pretty good value in the past relative to the competition.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#197

Post by pdenton »

sandGorgon wrote: post #152
pdenton wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Fedora or any aarch64 distro? I thought aarch64 meant raspberries.

well generally i recommend Fedora as being rock solid and also includes cutting edge (but not bleeding edge) linux infra. but i suppose any aarch64 distro

Thank you for recommending Fedora. However, I'm on Void for the past 7 years now (whew time flies!). I'm not planning on switching to any distro that has systemd.

I suppose I could still use the live environment as a Linux bootstrap for installing my favorite distro, though.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#198

Post by mixedCase »

pjmlp wrote: post #188
mixedCase wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got zero problems on a T490. All I did was grab the nixos-hardware module for it and off I went. Maybe don't buy hardware that other people haven't tested first? Some vendors pre-install or announce Linux support but don't actually have anywhere near proper support.

Like the Linux problems on Dell XPS models?

Yes, IIRC that was some of the models shipping with a non-Intel network card, not all were affected. Same with the Framework and its power states not working.

Unfortunately Linux "support" means little, you have to go by other people's experiences with the specific laptop or at least the specific hardware pieces used by it. But if you check before you buy, which is a pretty trivial affair for anyone tech-savvy enough to manage their own Linux install, or if you're careless and lucky, things go swimmingly.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#200

Post by numpad0 »

nuodag wrote: post #109
bubblethink wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with lenovo is that advertise inflated prices. Everything is 50% off in a few months around black friday. The list price is only for press releases. Besides, thinkpads are sold primarily in bulk to companies who also get the discounted rate.

Not in this market. We're usually buying thinkads in bunches of 20 every few months, and are struggling to get any (decent ones), never mind 50% off.

no the MSRP is simply doubled in regions they do that, and effective prices are exactly the same as elsewhere. Like a midrange model might be listed as $4999.99 stricken with an "up to 65% off launch celebration offer" and a "bonus" 15% off auto-applying coupons, and all combined the price might line up into e.g. a $1045.69 for an i5/16GB. That sort of BS. It's actually one of aspects that had improved about ThinkPads since the Lenovo handover.
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