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Thinkpad X210

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Thinkpad X210

#221

Post by caycep »

shasheene wrote: post #48

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the…

My experience has been limited by the fact that components increase at the same rate, and to get everything to place nice(r) with each other, you have to upgrade everything. "A new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU" is almost buying an entirely new computer. You save a few hundred bucks by keeping the PSU (or maybe change it too after 5 years) and casing, assuming the ports didn't change.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#222

Post by leiroigh »

I am a happy owner of an x62. This article almost convinced me to buy an x210 next.

Minor gripes: (1) The dispayport-hdmi thing, (2) the mainboard is split (sound + rhs usb are on a separate board) and the small part has pretty flimsy attachement inside the case, (3) the CPU (i5 broadwell engineering sample) is pretty lackluster but perfect for development (no turbo, no throttling, no surprises), (4) finding an ok screen is hard, (5) nobody told me that I have to buy a separate wifi card. There is a free mini-pci slot, but 51nb could have been clearer on their online description, (5) the old x60 speakers suck.

Overall, it is an awesome machine (trackpoint, ibm keyboard, beautiful rubberized metal case). And shockingly cheap: An x62 mainboard, plus an old x60 chassis from ebay and battery from amazon, plus screen from alibaba, plus SSD, wifi-card and ram comes at ~$600 (I think?), cheap enough to buy as an experiment. I can definitely recommend to anyone who is ok with a little tinkering and the small adventure of ordering this from China (best approach: have Chinese colleague).

edit: Linux drivers work perfectly. Really, the ram was the most expensive component of this build. To expand on the no-surprises advantage of the CPU: To me it is more important to effortlessly benchmark small code changes than to quickly compile large codebases. And the weird engineering sample CPU that the 51nb guys sourced somewhere is absolutely perfect for that: Timings reliably match up with Agner Fog's instruction tables / iaca, without anything getting into the way (after the kernel cpufreq manager adjusted).

Re: Thinkpad X210

#224

Post by manmal »

ggreer wrote: post #207
saagarjha wrote: post #6

> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7 hours with the extended battery (80Wh). Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. > Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know…

I don't lie about battery life numbers. People like to say, "I get 9 hours of battery life." when they mean that they get 9 hours if they do doing nothing but let their computer idle with the brightness at minimum. 4 hours with a 55Wh battery is an average consumption of 13 watts. That's because my typical workflow involves running a VM containing cassandra & postrgres (among other services) and recompiling go and ja…

Having a MacBook Pro Late 2016, I can only dream of 4h battery life with the workload you describe. It has a bigger screen though.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#225

Post by ssnistfajen »

shasheene wrote: post #48

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the…

Novel form factors are often how laptop manufacturers distinguish themselves from their competitors. There is enough space within a desktop PC case to formalize a standard. As laptops get thinner and thinner, however, many engineering/layout tweaks are used to fit stuff within a thin chasis. Standardizing across different device models would be asking OEMs to stop putting efforts into competing with each other. And I say this as someone who has just had a catastrophic motherboard failure on their 8-months-old laptop and had to do a replacement that would've cost me a new laptop if outside warranty.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#226

Post by sigil »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #71

If you can still find one on then used market, I'll put in a plug for the Lenovo X1C 4th Gen (2016 model) as an ideal Linux laptop. It's what I switched to after the x220, and I describe it here: https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux Fan never turns on, matte display, awesome connectivity, great battery life, and everything on Linux just works.

Seconded. I had an X1C2 and am currently on an X1C5. Everything works out of the box on linux and the performance is crazy for something so thin & light (2.8lbs).

Re: Thinkpad X210

#227

Post by Bud »

snazz wrote: post #201
askafriend wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requires significant trade-offs in durability, weight, and design. Not to mention you don’t want the typical user (forget the HN audience) to replace the components themselves. Most professional users are on corporate enterprise device plans and you don’t want employees or the IT department replacing components either. It’s far better and cheaper to get the employee back up and running with a new machine while t…

In many cases, a well-designed, durable product can be repairable. While the actual earbuds were not wonderfully well-reviewed, the Samsung Galaxy Buds were both tiny and legitimately repairable: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Teardown...

And they were a shit product. As you yourself admitted. It doesn't help if something is supposedly "repairable" (by the 0.5% of buyers who might be inclined to do such things) if the product is such crap that it gets thrown away after a few weeks.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#228

Post by squirrelicus »

reaperducer wrote: post #163
shasheene wrote: post #48

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the…

For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end gaming PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. And that's great, if you're into generic beige boxes. It's been years since I put together my own IBM compatible computers. But in the time since then, I haven't really seen any innovation in desktops. Yes, for a while the processor numbers ticked up, but then plateaued…

It's worth mentioning that the utility of a pickup truck dramatically exceeds the utility of a Tesla.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#229

Post by twblalock »

shasheene wrote: post #48

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the…

Standardization limits innovation. If we had standardized on laptop form factors in the late 1990s all laptops would still be an inch and a half thick, and all screens would still be 4:3.

Re: Thinkpad X210

#230

Post by quanticle »

papaf wrote: post #181
askafriend wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Pros not being user serviceable at every component level doesn’t mean they’re not environmentally friendly - not by a long shot. In fact, building a device like that might even shorten lifespan in a laptop form-factor, not to mention no one wants to carry around a heavy, clunky machine so it likely wouldn’t sell anyway. Here’s an example report that mostly has to do with the production and recycling aspects:…

Robust engineering, longevity, support, and resale markets do more for the environment than making components user-replaceable. But if the parts were also user replaceable it would be better for the environment.

"User serviceable" doesn't imply that the user will actually perform any service. I would be willing to posit that for the vast majority of users, an ATX desktop is just as "serviceable" as a Macbook Pro. In the case of the desktop, if it breaks, they take it to their IT department or Best Buy and get a technician to fix it. In the case of the Macbook, they take it to their IT department or the Apple Store and get a technician to fix it. And the Macbook Pro is a darn sight lighter, more portable and more attractive to have sitting on your desk...
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