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I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

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Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#421

Post by urda »

sitkack wrote: post #411
culopatin wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but you’re missing the point and reassuring OPs. Three people might as well be zero.

I am not. If we continue to sit on our hands talk down about "most people" aren't interested in XYZ, we are the problem. Armchair dipshits like to slag on Louis Rossmann, but did lead repair sessions where he would teach people how to do hot air pcb rework. Dude walks the talk and empowers people. You are missing my point.

You’re venting, not arguing. Teaching three people doesn’t scale, and anecdotes aren’t data.

No one’s dismissing Rossmann or the value of empowerment. The problem is acting like isolated efforts equal systemic change. If this were as easy as you claim, the landscape would reflect that.

So yes, you’re missing the point. Passion is fine, but without policy, infrastructure, and incentives, it goes nowhere.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#422

Post by jabl »

0xEF wrote: post #217
roywashere wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, the MNT Reform looks _so_ awesome!

Except for that price. Yikes. Heck of a barrier to entry for an unproven product. I do wish them well, but as we call for more modularity in laptop design, we can't forget the core value of keeping it affordable for the masses.

Also, a Cortex A76 isn't exactly a speed demon, even compared to some used x86 laptop saved from the recycling bin.

The Cortex A53 on the original MNT Reform is even worse.

Then again, if you're mostly just editing text and doing some light web surfing, I suppose it's fast enough.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#423

Post by makeitdouble »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #334
makeitdouble wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the M1~2 series Macbooks scratched the screen with the keyboard. Mines did, and asking second hand resailers it was a very common issue. Rigidity is only for the main body, not the screen part.

FWIW, I’ve been toting around the 16” M-series models since they launched and recently picked up a 13” Air and have yet to see this occur. Haven’t heard reports of it from coworkers or friends either. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but I suspect there’s a particular action or pattern of behavior that makes it more likely, such as placing it under heavy objects or packing it in tightly with books or something like that…

Yes, it's not a fatality.

For context, that's what I'm talking about with the kind of patterns when it happens: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254769961?sortBy=rank

> packing it in tightly with books

Which is basically equivalent to "putting it in a backpack" to me. I brought my last one in a lot of places, putting it with an iPad in the laptop compartment, the iPad was fine, the MacBook screen wasn't. For comparison I have an Asus X13 now, same use case (the iPad became a Surface Pro) for the same one year+ period now, and the screen is still perfect.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#424

Post by jeffbee »

dpedu wrote: post #10

> A [macbook] battery replacement involves carefully prying out a glued component. Can't speak to every model, but it's not always like this. I just swapped the battery on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air, and it's much easier now. The battery is glued to a metal tray that unscrews and lifts out of the laptop. It is discarded with the old battery. The tray is also held down with pull-tab adhesive strips, but they are trivial t…

The way 99.95% of customers would replace a macbook battery is to take it to the Apple Store and have them do it for a fixed charge while you wait. It's a great service. Apple will still replace the battery in your 2013 MacBook Air. By contrast there hasn't been a first-party battery pack for the T400 in many years.

These "fragility" arguments always, as in the case of the OP, ignore the actual experience of owning and using the thing. People will adopt an ancient smartphone because they are locked into the idea that removable battery and removable SD cards are morally superior, and then blindly ignore the fact that the battery life sucks, the only batteries available are random chinese junk, the backs are easy to break and lose, SD cards are unreliable and easy to lose, and so forth. There is a reason that the market overwhlemingly prefers phones and laptops with fixed storage and integrated battery packs.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#425

Post by wwweston »

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…

> Apple's era of easily (or even hot) swappable parts.

This. It existed. The laptops still commanded enthusiasm, felt great, capable, and solid without being too heavy, and had swappable RAM and disk. Keyboard and battery swap were screwdriver set DIYs. Heck, the old Pismos had hot swappable battery and drive bays.

I'm still frequently using a MacBook Pro 11,3. Only lets you swap the drive but that by itself is a great point of flexibility.

The M series does amazing things which have their own merits, but the particular set of tradeoffs aren't inevitable.

The "sacrifices must be made" idea apparently sacrifices recall of other possibilities first.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#427

Post by ggpsv »

huslage wrote: post #376
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…

Framework laptops aren't really repairable in the same way that old Thinkpads are. Maybe that's good, maybe not, but replacing an entire motherboard every 3 years isn't all that different from replacing an entire computer really.

To add a data point here, my Framework laptop is 3 years old and I have no plans to change the mainboard anytime soon.

Also, you don't change its motherboard, you change the mainboard (for my laptop, it's the CPU/integrated GPU + memory sockets); this is unlike changing the entire computer. Then, you can reuse the replaced mainboard as a server if you wish to.

This pales with my experience using a Macbook Air whose motherboard failed. I did have to replace the entire computer.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#428

Post by DrNosferatu »

acrooks wrote: post #388
DrNosferatu wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing does not prevent the other: that's what standards are for.

You will need to sacrifice something. If the regulations become more restrictive, one of the following needs to change: - cost (laptops getting more expensive) - quality (laptops getting less powerful / smaller) - time (manufacturers have a long grace period before they need to implement the regulations, to allow technology to catch up)

The EU always implements this kind of legislation with grace periods - obviously, no step functions.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#429

Post by LeFantome »

metalman wrote: post #250
shoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back LD, average distance between Earth and Moon = 384,399,000 m [1] C = circumference of moon = 10,917,000 m R := approximate round trip distance = 2LD + 0.5*C = 774,256,500 m n = total number of thinkpads on earth Alas, T / R, the ratio of total thinkpad distance T to our lunar round trip distance R, is at most about 0.11 . This is with…

Comment on the comments.....it sure looks like moores law is loosing relevance and that going forward the possibility for durable, stable, device implemtations, that can last for generations is inevitable. Manufacturers may be resistant, but with 8~9 billion customers, and the inevitable losses and damage to devices, it will take a generation to get one in everybodys hands

Video editing and animation already require modern kit. And AI is adding significant processing requirements. We are not off the treadmill yet.

I say this as somebody the regularly uses laptops as old as 2009 (like, I will spend most of today on one). A lot of real-world, everyday computing barely taxes modern hardware on a decent OS like Linux. Old hardware will let you do a lot more than people think.

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