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Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

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Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#61

Post by guappa »

the_third_wave wrote: post #35
j7ake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not close enough for a programmer who uses symbols and touch typing. For starters the return key are different widths, which is a deal breaker if you’re a touchtyper used to wider return keys. Programming also uses tilde and other symbols that are different between the two. Overall they’re similar for typing alphabets, but symbols and enter key are different.

Just map the character set you want to the keyboard and start using it. It'll take some getting used to but if you're a touch typist it mostly comes natural. Living in Sweden, using a P50 with a UK layout which I switch between US-intl and Swedish layouts there isn't always that much relation between what's on the keys and what appears on the screen but by now I'm used to it. As a bonus it makes shoulder surfing pass…

His problem I think is that in europe we have the enter key using 2 rows, and in USA it uses 1 row only.

So probably he hits what on my keyboard is "ù" when he wants to enter.

I own a laptop with a USA keyboard and I dislike that, because no amount of mapping can change the fact that USA layout has 1 key less.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#62

Post by aqfamnzc »

tivert wrote: post #28
dmbche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come? Most video being 16:9 means you useball of the screen you have, 16:10 adds bars on one side doesn't it?

> How come? Most video being 16:9 means you useball of the screen you have, 16:10 adds bars on one side doesn't it? Do you use your laptop to work, or just watch video all the time? Because if you actually do work, 16:10 or 3:2 is much better.

Having used 16:9 or similar my whole life, I don't get what people hate so much about it. It seems like about the right aspect ratio, when split in half (one window on the left, one on the right). Yes, a single full-screen window has wasted space on the sides usually, but what's the big deal? Perhaps I don't know what I'm missing.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#63

Post by _a_a_a_ »

terminous wrote: post #56
_a_a_a_ wrote: post #5

> but the device failed to win us over in terms of multi-core performance If a dev machine I'd get it, but biz users are email and a few small spreadsheets. I don't get why biz users need multicore anything.

> biz users are email and a few small spreadsheets. I don't get why biz users need multicore anything. Have you opened a Chrome or Electron app recently? And many biz users need to run those apps while on Zoom with a virtual background for the camera. Based on your logic, all most biz users really need for email and spreadsheets can be done using Lotus Notes / 1-2-3 on a single-core IBM 5150 with 5 MHZ and 256KB of m…

I'm not sure if this is a stupid attempt at a rebuttal, or if you've accidentally made a rather good point as well.

BTW My home machine is a decade-old dual core and it runs email, web and all of Libreofffice just fine, and with 90% of its mem unused.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#64

Post by walthamstow »

dmbche wrote: post #52
tivert wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come? Most video being 16:9 means you useball of the screen you have, 16:10 adds bars on one side doesn't it? Do you use your laptop to work, or just watch video all the time? Because if you actually do work, 16:10 or 3:2 is much better.

I'm not writing code, but I edit video and write text on a 16:9 and have never thought that the screen format had anything to do with anything else than video crops. What do you get out of 16:10 for "working"?

It's longer, so there is more of the thing visible on the screen. More lines of an article you're reading, more lines of the document you are writing.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#65

Post by bee_rider »

scrlk wrote: post #48
leononame wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I was the only one. I was excited to get a Thinkpad because just about every nerd praises them all the time and I thought the AMD one would be a great experience, but it was terribly slow. Additionally, the trackpad, the screen and the camera broke independently of each other and needed to be replaced which makes me really doubt the build quality (though having a technician come to your home tk repair it is…

ThinkPads are coasting off the reputation that was built up under IBM ownership. If you're not married to the trackpoint, then a Dell Latitude/Precision or HP EliteBook/ZBook is equally as good. Lenovo went down the route of trying to chase the MacBook Pro crowd and ended up compromising on durability, repairability (soldered components) and keyboard quality (traditionally the USP of ThinkPads).

That happened nearly two decades ago. I mean, there are college students about to enter the workforce who weren’t even born yet when IBM was making Thinkpads. Lenovo has been making Thinkpads for nearly twice as long as IBM did.

Lenovo makes missteps occasionally, but I think whatever the Thinkpads reputation is, Lenovo is more responsible for it than IBM.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#66

Post by jwells89 »

dmbche wrote: post #52
tivert wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come? Most video being 16:9 means you useball of the screen you have, 16:10 adds bars on one side doesn't it? Do you use your laptop to work, or just watch video all the time? Because if you actually do work, 16:10 or 3:2 is much better.

I'm not writing code, but I edit video and write text on a 16:9 and have never thought that the screen format had anything to do with anything else than video crops. What do you get out of 16:10 for "working"?

It’s less of an issue with larger screens, but with small screens 16:9 gets vertically cramped really easily with all of the taskbars, menubars, toolbars, status bars, titlebars, etc eating up that space like candy. Open up an IDE like IntelliJ or Visual Studio (not Code, full fat VS) on a 13” 16:9 screen and this problem becomes immediately evident.

Most devs would probably prefer an ever taller aspect ratio than 16:10 but laptops with those screens that fit other needs are hard to come by.

It’s one of the reasons why I think the notch was actually a net positive on MacBooks: Apple added a strip of vertical pixels to 16:10 which acts as a “nook” for the menubar and notch to live in, making it effectively taller than 16:10.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#67

Post by bee_rider »

gramakri2 wrote: post #47

Seems like I lost access to my old account, so had to create a new one. I just bought this a couple of days ago. I went with the ryzen, OLED version and 32GB RAM. I ordered without an OS and run Ubuntu on it. The decision was between T14 , the carbon x1 and the framework. My previous laptop was a x1 gen 3. The laptop hinge broke :/ I absolute love this machine. Impressions so far: * Ubuntu 23.04 and Gnome runs so goo…

What kind of programs do you use? I can get ~20 hours on a zenbook flip with OLED, because I use mostly terminal programs (black background, so most of the pixels are off).

Have you tried running powertop for a bit? It would be interesting to see if the screen was consuming most of the power, or if the draw can be attributed to a particular device (maybe it is something useless like a Bluetooth radio that you can shut off!)

I wonder, if you can’t see the difference, maybe try halving the screen resolution? No reason to render all those extra pixels if you don’t need them, right? Plus, I guess it is rare in 2023, but any UI elements that are badly coded and not scalable would be sort of “normal sized.”

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#68

Post by FirmwareBurner »

Aardwolf wrote: post #14

Does anyone know if it's possible to buy thinkpads with a US keyboard layout in Europe? Any thinkpad with a layout that's not the non-qwerty local variant of my country takes more than 6 weeks to deliver, and that is to get UK layout, not the US layout with different enter key, which I can't even find available at all

>Does anyone know if it's possible to buy thinkpads with a US keyboard layout in Europe?

Order them from the Netherlands, Romania or other EU countries that use the US-INT layout.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#69

Post by bee_rider »

john_miller wrote: post #22
JonChesterfield wrote: post #3

Happy to see the refresh. These APU systems are great. The alarmingly priced usb-c dock works. Three monitors around laptop, no problem. The LTE modem works out of the box on windows and works with some arguing on Linux (I built a driver from GitHub, but that's probably improved since). An not-obvious benefit of the Lenovo ones is they're on the approved list for AMD's employees, so broken stuff is pretty immediately…

What's the battery life like on linux?

We’ve got another visitor running Linux on it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38098486

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G4 review: Business laptop is better with AMD Zen4

#70

Post by millzlane »

bkovacev wrote: post #53
ggpsv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I've had a 12-gen Framework (i7, 32GB RAM) for almost a year and half now. I use Docker on a daily basis (using Windows and WSL2) and it works fine for my development workloads. Like other Intel laptops I've had, the fans do come on occasionally but not very often. I do have some qualms about this laptop but I'm happy with it and the tradeoffs I chose.

That's actually quite interesting - same configuration with i7 1280p and on windows and wsl2! Blah, I wish I knew what you were doing differently. The moment that Chrome, Slack, Docker and PyCharm are up and running, it gets quite loud :(

Not meaning to sound condescending, I explain to users that the cooling systems are much like cars. At idle the fans may turn on then turn off. But when you're driving on the highway or racetrack or even stop and go traffic, those fans are always on.

>The moment that Chrome, Slack, Docker and PyCharm are up and running, it gets quite loud :(

It sounds like you're at least cruising on the highway. Not to mention, you may be experiencing other bugs, either with the software or OS. Maybe try toggling windows defender and see if the issue persists.

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-293604/IntelliJ-is...

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