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ThinkPad X1 Carbon

www3.lenovo.com

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Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#51

Post by piker »

alaithea wrote: post #44
piker wrote: post #16

Has anyone installed Linux on this machine? If so, how has your experience been with respect to driver support, etc.? Thanks in advance.

I can't speak to this generation of the machine, but I've had a decent experience with Ubuntu on the 3rd gen Carbon X1. I have constant issues with the wifi, though... networkmanager needs to be restarted a couple times a day or else the OS will just lose connection and say wifi is disabled. There is also a general sluggishness, especially when web-browsing, that I have not yet tracked down. All in all, though, it is…

Interesting that your wifi experience sounds terrible, but you've given it a "decent" rating. For me, wifi concerns are among the most important. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#53

Post by ge96 »

These look nice, I'm only able to afford like the first generation but I look forward to buying that.

If only they were fanless.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#54

Post by rcarmo »

I was assigned one of these (the 2015 model) as my office laptop, and I hate the thing for five reasons (two dealbreakers on top):

- It is huge and unwieldy, like a cafeteria tray (and comes with a sizable power brick)

- The touchscreen doesn't have an oleophobic coating, so it becomes a smudgy mess within hours (unlike my iPad, which looks pristine for weeks despite being even more heavily used)

- The screen seems dim or washed out no matter what I try (then again, I have a retina MacBook at home...)

- Battery life is poor(ish) on the i7 model. I can only partially blame all the corporate junk we have installed.

- Wi-Fi seemed flakey at times (and you need a proprietary dongle for Ethernet)

I've seen the 2016 models (which don't improve on the above) and they share the good bits:

- Very decent (if somewhat mushy) keyboard, with lots of travel (perhaps a bit too much)

- Relatively lightweight (considering the size)

- Pretty decent touchpad (not on a par with a MacBook, but good enough for three-finger gestures, although maddeningly imprecise at times)

- Despite the color/brightness issues, the HIDPI screen is sharp and readable under Windows 10

- The fingerprint sensor actually works (but doesn't hold a candle to TouchID)

- DisplayPort or HDMI output (depending on model, mine has both, and I use my Apple dongle for DP->VGA)

I disabled TrackPoint within a month due to RSI (I used original IBM laptops for years and it was a recurring issue for me).

TrackPoint is much more precise than the trackpad for accurate positioning, but I'd rather carry a Bluetooth mouse and retain the use of my fingers (whereas I'm perfectly fine with the Mac trackpad for drawing diagrams and pixel-level positioning).

Edit: Oh, and I run Linux on it through Hyper-V and Docker, since I need to run Windows 10. Had no trouble booting a couple of Ubuntu/Elementary Live USB drives for playing around, most of the hardware seemed to work.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#55

Post by dom0 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I want to be excited by a good non-Apple laptop. But they're all just so terribly designed. They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere. I had a T530 for a few years at my first job and just hated it. It had fantastic specs but it felt awful and unreliable and like I had to babysit it. I got a 2015 MBP to replace it after IT damag…

The 13.3" Clevo is pretty much an unbranded Macbook Air (Google for Schenker S306 or https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/lafiteII/)

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#56

Post by lobster_johnson »

As someone who is considering moving from a MacBook Pro 2015 to a Linux laptop, the keyboard and, in particular, the trackpad on PC models are the biggest disappointments. Apple has spent so much effort on the tactility of their laptops, while PC manufacturers still seem to be stuck in an earlier decade. I was a little bit shocked to discover that Thinkpads still have that terrible little mouse nipple, which I hadn't seen in about 10 years.

The laptop with the most promising keyboard/trackpad combo, that I have found, is the Dell XPS (it has physical trackpad buttons, but at least they're located at the bottom), which is probably not accidental; it looks a lot like a MacBook, too.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#57

Post by faragon »

It is almost perfect. I would love real 4 core i7 with 8MB L3 cache CPU for laptops, instead of the 2 core (4 threads) with 4MB.

Edit: 6th generation of mobile Intel CPUs have models with 4 cores and 8MB of L3 cache (i7-6970HQ), using 45W [1]. However, in 7th generation there are only 2-core models [2].

[1] http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-In...

[2] http://ark.intel.com/products/family/95544/7th-Generation-In...

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#58

Post by wklauss »

nerflad wrote: post #47
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I want to be excited by a good non-Apple laptop. But they're all just so terribly designed. They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere. I had a T530 for a few years at my first job and just hated it. It had fantastic specs but it felt awful and unreliable and like I had to babysit it. I got a 2015 MBP to replace it after IT damag…

It isn't perfect by any stretch, but I've been liking my XPS 13. The battery is especially noteworthy.

How do you feel about the odd placement of the camera? I'm considering it but a couple of design choices always make me doubt I'll enjoy it as much. Camera is one of them (I use videochat a lot)

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#59

Post by oblio »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #38
eropple wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trialware is installed because it improves ROI on the product. Whether people want them or not is functionally irrelevant--whether they're willing to pay to not have them is relevant. If you're willing to pay more, feel free to demonstrate it. (I'm not, because I nuke-and-pave hardware when I get it.)

How long does it take to do a full reinstall nowadays? Still hours?

Not really. Windows 7/10 should be up and running in under half an hour in most circumstances.

Re: ThinkPad X1 Carbon

#60

Post by dom0 »

mverwijs wrote: post #21
TheDong wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo's laptops generally have some of the best supported components for linux. This has been true for quite a while now. Most office environments where developers run Linux are full of Thinkpad T4xx, X2xx, and X1s.

I'm typing this on a Lenovo x230, having owned an x210 and x220. However, when such a statement above is made I was hoping that, like Dell, Lenovo had started to officially support Linux. Hence the question. Furthermore, Lenovo has been in the news late 2016 for not allowing Linux to run on some of their (Microsoft certified) laptops. And when the t460's and x260's came out early 2016, the Linux distros available at…

As far as I'm aware laptops of new generations practically never ran Linux well out of the box from day one. It always took some time to adjust stuff to the new chips of a new generation. Only after some time you can just stick Linux into it and it'll just all work.
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