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I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

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Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#531

Post by karunamurti »

WillAdams wrote: post #275
M95D wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Fingerprint reader My mistake. > That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards. > - SD card slot Like I said. The laptop itself is very basic (crippleware by Lenovo standards). You have to use USB ports for everything, there are only 3 usable, and also mechanically very weak, not to mention performance, heat inside a closed plastic case, cost, etc.

As a person who uses devices w/ Wacom EMR digitizers by preference, the Thinkpad X###T line is one I _really_ wanted to like, but the difficulty of getting a reasonable OS on one, with handwriting recognition, with manageable performance/thermal characteristics pushed me to the point that I gave up and moved on to a Asus Vivotab Note 8, and then a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10 when it was offered. I keep telling myself I…

thinkpad soldered ram is a no for me

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#532

Post by ivraatiems »

criddell wrote: post #333
ivraatiems wrote: post #48

I love these old ThinkPads. I refurbish and sell them all the time. Just moments before writing this, I finished fixing up a T580; earlier today I did a heatsink replacement on a W510 which is going strong with an SSD and 20GB RAM. The older they are, the better they are, but even the modern ones are still pretty good. Like the OP mentions, the market for parts is strong and it's easy to get what you need. Then when…

I have a T520. What can I do to make this thing useful again? Even when new, the battery life was pretty awful.

Mail it to me and I will take care of it for you ;)

Kidding, of course. Here's what I recommend:

The single best thing you can do for your machine is get a SATA SSD into it. That will 10x the performance of your system for most tasks immediately. After that, max out your RAM at 16GB DDR3.

Assuming a 500GB SSD, you can do both of these things using new parts for less than $100, and if you get used parts, for less than $50.

A system with a 2nd-gen i5 or especially i7, 16GB RAM, and 500GB SSD storage will be fast enoug for essentially every modern computing task that isn't modern gaming, graphic design, video editing, or complex programming (it'll be good enough for simple coding tasks). You can do whatever else you want.

As far as batteries, my recommendations are twofold: Get the highest-wattage charger you can (probably a 170watt for the T520, I think) and the largest battery possible. New ones are available on eBay. You want the "extended life" models. They're not great, but they should get you a few hours of usage. Depending on what you get and where it's from, it's another $20-$50.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#533

Post by ryukafalz »

jabl wrote: post #422
0xEF wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I use one as my main laptop outside work and that's pretty much how I feel about it, yeah.

32 GB of RAM is nice too :)

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#534

Post by wildzzz »

Melatonic wrote: post #521
zokier wrote: post #405

Personally I think beyond T450 generation, i.e. over 10 years old systems, you are starting to make pretty severe compromises. T440 generation had really bad Trackpoint setup, and older hardware starts to lose features. Random stuff that T450 has that T400 doesn't * USB3 * Up to 32 GB of RAM (vs max 8 GB for T400) * M.2 slot (for SSD), 6 Gb/s SATA (vs 1.5 Gb/s on T400) * x86-64-v3 (AVX2 etc) and OpenGL 4.6 * Dual-ban…

T420 has most of that (or can be upgraded to a lot of that) while still retaining the classic keyboard and tank like build.

My T420 absolutely cooks my lap. It was retired a couple years ago (alongside my X60 tablet and X200 tablet) and I bought a maxed out X280 used to replace it. I bought it brand new for school but switched over to the lightweight X60 tablet so I could quickly do homework on the go. I upgraded to the X200 when Quartus II stopped supporting 32bit processors. Both were bought for $100 on eBay back when that's all the money I had from slinging pizza after school. I grabbed the X280 for $200 when I realized how chunky, hot, and slow the T420.

That x280 is going to last me a long time. It's a perfectly capable home laptop with an i7 and 16gb of memory. I recently dropped in a new 1TB nvme drive so other than the integrated graphics, it's the best. I'm still able to play games on it, I recently got through Splinter Cell: Blacklist with the specs set at like medium. It's not going to play a modern AAA but anything at least 5 years older than the laptop runs fine enough.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#536

Post by wwweston »

wiremine wrote: post #495

> MacBooks are not modular, completely proprietary, and have a perishability built into them. I'm ok with this... maybe I'm odd? I view my laptops like I view my cars: I expect them to be replaced after a period of time. I'm NOT trying to maintain my old 2002 Honda Civic, and I'm NOT trying to maintain my older Macbooks. Once they leave Apple Care, I expect maybe another 12 to 18 months out of them, and then I move o…

> I'm NOT trying to maintain my old 2002 Honda Civic

My 2004 Pontiac Vibe is the newest car I've owned -- drove a few GM cars and one Nissan into 200-300kmi territory before that. Saved me tens of thousands of dollars and got me where I needed to go.

Suppose that's consistent with me typing this on an old upgraded MBP.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#537

Post by askvictor »

neilv wrote: post #66
askvictor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I provisioned several hundred x220's for the school I was working at, figuring they were the most bomb-proof thing at the time. The lid section you're talking about was definitively not bomb-proof. Thankfully, it didn't make much difference to the operation of the laptop, but still pretty annoying.

Good to know I wasn't just unlucky. Did you find any typical repairs for the lid section? (I haven't opened up my wiggly units yet, but I guess probably it got banged, and either screws were stripped out of their holes, or some internal plastic piece snapped.)

Sorry, no repair. Didn't really affect function though.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#538

Post by ajxs »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #343
ajxs wrote: post #16

My x220 has traveled around the world multiple times. It's been through dozens of airport scanners, dropped multiple times, and shared a few cups of coffee with me by accident. It just keeps on kicking. My x220 running Debian is actually quicker and more responsive than my friend's modern Lenovo running Windows. I'd be tempted to upgrade to a lighter and thinner laptop, but I'm too attached to the keyboard.

Do you ever have any trouble at airports? The one time I ever had grief at an airport was a few years ago travelling with an X230 with the larger battery pack. Security seemed extremely suspicious of such an old laptop and I got stopped again later by a plain clothes security guy.

I've never had any problems! I'm surprised airport security would be so concerned about an old laptop. I'm sure they see way strange things on a daily basis.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#539

Post by ajxs »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #379
xdavidliu wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course not. When you go through airport security, they give you trays where you put your backpack, laptop, and shoes. Happens every day with no problem.

Right that’s why I’m wondering why the OP included it in a sentence along with “dropping” that implied the laptop had “been through some stuff”.

It doesn't cause any problems. I used the phrase for poetic flourish. Aside from the general rough treatment of being quickly unpacked and packed again in a hurry. In the past there were a lot of urban legends going around about airport x-ray scanners harming hard drives, but in reality, they're harmless.

Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

#540

Post by sneak »

Melatonic wrote: post #501
sneak wrote: post #306

It’s just a different layer of abstraction. The chips on your SSD in your thinkpad are also soldered without any easy way to replace them save for replacing the whole SSD. Same for your RAM. Now in a modern laptop it’s the top case or bottom case or board; the robot-made factory parts are bigger integrated components of the system. All you care about is your data anyway, the repairability of the system as a whole by…

I see what you are saying at some level - but for a laptop form factor (which is already inherently larger since it has keyboard and larger screen) wouldn't it make more sense to at minimum have a few super dense robot made boards all integrated ? Maybe you have the main motherboard with CPU, RAM, and possibly GPU all together. Save space - integrate bigger and better batteries. Swappable storage though seems like a…

Try using a Macbook8,1 sometime (or iPad Pro for that matter). There isn’t size or weight budget for swappable anything. Connectors take space, mechanical retaining pads and clips do too.

This is like wanting a headphone jack or usb-A or SD card slot on an iPhone SE. It’s a step backwards, given the size and weight. We’re actually at the point where the thickness of a micro-sd card slot cage matters.

Any weight budget that could be used for such things almost nobody ever uses is rightfully used instead for battery.

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