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I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

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Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#361

Post by kodt »

ukd1 wrote: post #352
kodt wrote: post #345

I have a 14 year old T420, I upgraded the processor, ram, hard drive, battery, and wifi chip several years ago which really sped it up and gave it more usable life. Still runs great for most things.

I have few old thinkpads X220, X230, etc - outside of raw power, the two things that really suck are the speakers (they're truly trash), and the standard screen's performance with anything but trivial light around it. Still, it's fast enough to use with linux, and the keyboard is a joy to use. Swappable batteries are fun, and useful. However, I can't really use one outside of just nostalgia, or for tuning cars.

Yeah, they aren't really suitable for heavy workloads.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#362

Post by jamesdhutton »

fadedsignal wrote: post #359
moffkalast wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The experience is great. Aside from it being a principled thing, Linux does work a lot better on older machines. Newer hardware tends to have shit driver support for a few years. Like my 10 year old Asus laptop which is supposed to have horrid Linux compatibility runs multiple versions of Ubuntu with KDE perfectly, with only bluetooth crapping out occasionally. A new Lenovo laptop that we just got at work that's su…

That sucks. I remember buying my XPS when the new version released and tried to install Linux (Fedora). Nvidia driver issues, CPU E/P core issues, and many more. It literally took 2 years to get stable. Recently, Nvidia released a new version of the driver. Guess what happened? PC doesn't wake up from sleep anymore. I'm not even mentioning the so-called 8-hour battery life.

Yeah Nvidia and Linux don’t play together nicely. I discovered that the hard way too. I switched to AMD and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#363

Post by _fat_santa »

agentultra wrote: post #355

I still primarily use Thinkpads for all these reasons. One incident with fluids and a $3k Apple machine is e-waste. I had young kids, it was inevitable. Instead, refurbished Thinkpads are still coming off leases. Available for a 250-700 refurbished. Bench repairable. I keep good backups. If something incredible happens and I can’t fix it I can get a new one same day and be back on my feet. And I like the aesthetic. T…

I would say even newer Thinkpads are a great deal. I recently bought a P15 Gen 1 from 2020 for ~$700 and it's been an absolute monster. Core i9, RTX 5000, and 128GB or ram. Through research I learned that brand new this machine would have cost around ~$5,800 but even five years later it's better than most new laptops around the ~$700 price point.

The "hard" thing about thinkpads is you have to find them. I must have searched eBay listing for close to a month before the right thinkpad popped up. Especially with the workstation grade laptops, they were so configurable brand new that there are something like 48 possible variants you can find, and finding one with the exact specs you want can be incredibly difficult.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#364

Post by prmoustache »

herbst wrote: post #201
maccard wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When would you define as “before”? I’ve had a thinkpad on and off and I’d describe the quality as consistent. People talking about old Lenovos being good quality are often talking about in the pre-IBM days which is far more likely to be nostalgia at this point.

I have a T420. A few years ago I switched to a slightly used T480, keyboard was a huge downgrade and the whole series can get really stupid USBC issues. After half a year or so it didn't dock anymore and I got an X1, basically the same laptop glad I found it without touch and the 'bright screen' because the screen is barely good enough, keyboard is the same and USBc already started to get finicky. Meanwhile my T420 s…

I've solved the USB-C aging issue by using those magnetic cable adapters on all laptops and smartphones.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#365

Post by interroboink »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #78
interroboink wrote: post #41

Having run some hardware for about 20 years (recently deceased), the problem that eventually happens is that newer OSes drop support for old hardware. If you hit some weird bug on your setup on a new OS release, there won't be anyone to help you fix it[1]. So then you're stuck on an old OS. In time, that means you can't run the latest userland software either, which relies on more modern OS features (eg: your Firefox…

> In my case, the boot loader stopped working for my hardware on FreeBSD 11.4 That's interesting/strange. Did you report it? I'd expect them to care about that serious of a breakage in a point release.

I did! [1] There was some initial activity, and we got it narrowed down to a range of commits, but did not get any real smoking gun. To be fair, I also put in less effort once I found I could just copy the 11.3 loader and get things working. And also some stuff came up in my own life that prevented me from devoting more time to it, alas.

It eventually got auto-closed for not being tagged to any non-EOL versions. I did recently confirm it was still a problem on newer releases, but that hardware died not long after, so I didn't pursue it.

My best guess is that it was some BIOS-level oddity. It's also possible that it was due in some way to the hardware (slowly) dying; I can't be sure. But it was a very clear "worked on release X, stopped working on release Y (and beyond)" sort of behavior.

[1] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257722

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#366

Post by bdavbdav »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #6

I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…

I’m not sure they’re there yet. I bought a FW13 as I love the ideology, but it felt cheap next to the MBP/A, for not a lot less cash. When it arrived with a failed backlight (which admittedly they immediately offered to dispatch a replacement part), it went back instead.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#367

Post by roywashere »

maccard wrote: post #141
roywashere wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My new company of about 100 persons uses ThinkPads as their 'standard issue' laptops. Which I guess is great. I have a T480 privately. But modern ThinkPads are not as great as before, and I was just thinking about if the Framework might make a nice 'standard issue' laptop for the company. I guess it might be just fine!

When would you define as “before”? I’ve had a thinkpad on and off and I’d describe the quality as consistent. People talking about old Lenovos being good quality are often talking about in the pre-IBM days which is far more likely to be nostalgia at this point.

I definitely know that people have complained that modern ThinkPads are not as good as before, and they have been doing that for ages, just as Socrates back in the day already was complaining about modern kids and their behaviours ;-)

In this case I was referring to post-T480 ThinkPads which have soldered memory, and no longer have hot-swappable batteries or on-board Ethernet.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#368

Post by xaldir »

silisili wrote: post #192
CursedSilicon wrote: post #6

I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…

I think durability on old Thinkpads is way underrated as a reason people love them. Me, as a 250ish lb giant, have stepped on one multiple times without so much as a creak. Granted, it was on accident each time and I'm sure perfect heel placement could have done the job if I tried. Even so, can Framework do the same? Can anyone else making laptops today?

As someone who started it's career in a thinkpad only shop

Indeed, old thinkpads were designed to survive a coffee spill on the keyboard and they did, and various drops (with spinning rust as storage and cfl backed screens)

And when you achieve to break some part, it can be easily swapped. Oh and the documentation for that is available and very detailed.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#369

Post by dagw »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #350
dagw wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who once loved the track point on my old IBM ThinkPad, I've found that for some reason every track point not made by IBM sucks. Even the modern Lenovo ones are terrible, and I have no idea why.

Interesting; I do find sometimes I need to go into the app and adjust the acceleration/sensitivity/speed to my liking, but even up to my current work Yoga (12th gen Intel), I used them preferentially to trackpad when on the move (ergonomic mouse when stationary). I have struggled more with Dells and HPs, but can usually get it "close enough"

To be fair, I went IBM -> Apple -> Lenovo, so it is conceivable that the track point is actually as good as it ever was, and I just got spoiled by how good the Apple trackpads are.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#370

Post by op00to »

masswerk wrote: post #293
quailfarmer wrote: post #79

The tightness of hardware integration isn't a bug, it's genuinely a feature; In fact, it's the defining feature that makes Apple hardware great. Socketed RAM, CPU, and Storage just weren't worth the tradeoffs, namely size, weight, cost, and performance. Including those modular interfaces just wasn't worth it when the internal interfaces would be obsolete within 5 years, and the average user was replacing sub-componen…

That said, I've a MacPro 3.1 in production (also 17 years now – always up), which is from Apple's era of easily (or even hot) swappable parts. Apart from failing 3rd party RAM, no issues ever. – And I'm probably going to upgrade the drives to SSD (still HDD) this year, since you can still get new upgrade parts for its ancient busses. (And for the failing RAM: open the hood, a LED tells you which strip is failing, swa…

I'm a huge Thinkpad fan. I'm an even bigger MacBook fan.

None of my MacBook Pros ever had any issues, and I used my last MacBook for 9 years. I could keep using it with Linux instead of MacOS, but I think almost a decade of use is plenty of value for me.

There were recalls and scandals with the MacBook Pro over the years, but nothing that other vendors also didn't see, and that wouldn't have required the same exact parts being replaced. I'm thinking of the GPU issues with certain MacBooks. The difference is Apple is usually able to be held to task to fix issues, while almost any other vendor did not care to stand behind their product, including Lenovo.

I had a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon with the HiDPI screen that was absolutely awful, requiring replacement multiple times. Each time, the moron from Unisys that Lenovo sent to do the on-site repair would return me with a laptop that was poorly reassembled, and with new problems due to the tech's ineptitude. The same dude did service for Lenovo servers, and he once dropped a server that needed a fan replaced on the floor. Talk about fragile.

Thinkpads are great, and the oldest ones are still solid to use, but to say that MacBooks are fragile ignores that Thinkpads too are fragile.

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