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Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

arstechnica.com

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Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#71

Post by eertami »

ihateolives wrote: post #40
schipplock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Thinkpad E14 Gen3 is quiet most of the time. My T470p is boiling my hands and the fan is constantly whirring (I still like it :)). But I agree, Apples MacBook is of a different kind. The only time I heard the fan was when playing Metro Exodus and when I ran cinebench :). My MacBook Pro outperforms every other computer in my possession. But I'm still interested in this Thinkpad, because I'm not too happy with macOS…

> Thinkpads often have terrible screens imho True. I was not interested in Intel Macbooks because the pluses even with that great screen didn't win me over from of thinkpads but M1 has changed the game for me. The battery and performance improvements are just too good to ignore.

I have an M1 but never use it at home, the battery is only really useful if I need to spend a few days on the road away from power.

My daily driver is an Intel 1185g7 based Laptop which I can work a whole day without charging if needed (tops out at about 10 hours), and anymore than that doesn't really add any value. If Linux support gets better on the M1 I think I would consider switching but honestly when I put them side by side I don't notice a big performance difference. The M1 just uses a lot less power to get that performance.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#72

Post by [deleted] »

ZiiS wrote: post #68
francis-io wrote: post #63

I know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn. Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM? If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine. Whats the state of this in Ubuntu?

Applications need recompiling to run nativly on ARM. However you can still emulate x86 for programs that need it (with a speed penalty). Ubuntu has great support for ARM. However the is an extra dimension that Arm laptops are also _much_ less standardised then x86; I would wait to see hardware compatability this this precise device.

[deleted]

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#73

Post by daptaq »

ksec wrote: post #48

>The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099 This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default. Otherwise it is a machine that cost about the same as MacBook Air M2, with lower Display Res, slower CPU and GPU and No Touch ID. This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price. With the scale of iPhone and iPad, Apple is now at a point where the whole PC industry…

> Biggest lie ever. People want 16:10, but for years the industry shove 16:9 to your customer because it was the cheaper panel. Any background on this? I always assumed 16:9 became popular because of videos.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#74

Post by AnssiH »

ihateolives wrote: post #7

Interesting. I was recently looking to upgrade my personal T480s which I use for development, but didn't see anything in Lenovo lineup that were reasonably light/powerful/quiet/cool enough to make put in the order. I've grown so sick of laptops constantly hissing at me when I do something more complicated than browsing the web. My work issued Dell is basically unusable in a quiet room without headphones. So as an imp…

FWIW, I switched from X270 to X13 Gen2 AMD (5850U, 32GB) recently and the difference has been night-and-day - even just web browsing on X270 caused audible noise, while X13G2A is practically completely silent unless I do something very demanding.

So maybe look into T14s Gen2 AMD (which may be pretty similar to X13 Gen2 since they share the HW maintenance manual). But YMMV of course, and I have no experience of M1.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#75

Post by danmur »

ksec wrote: post #48

>The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099 This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default. Otherwise it is a machine that cost about the same as MacBook Air M2, with lower Display Res, slower CPU and GPU and No Touch ID. This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price. With the scale of iPhone and iPad, Apple is now at a point where the whole PC industry…

Or 3:2 even better

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#77

Post by FeepingCreature »

jwandborg wrote: post #62
LAC-Tech wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem with that "distro" is the window manager sucks

The filesystem is horrible too.

Drivers - also not great. Left up to the manufacturers, no commitment to code quality, closed source, and often comes with bloatware.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#78

Post by masklinn »

francis-io wrote: post #63

I know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn. Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM? If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine. Whats the state of this in Ubuntu?

> I know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn

Is it? Unless you’re routinely working with assembly it’s essentially irrelevant, unless you’re writing low-level multithreaded native code (aka you’re directly working with atomics and barriers).

Though obviously if you assume customers are or may be switching hardware, it can be useful to test or bench on ARM to get some inkling as to their eventual experience, or make sure you’re not relying on ISA details.

Don't get me wrong, ARM is neat and all, but your comment’s assertion that “it’s time to learn” doesn’t seem motivated by anything real, any more than “it’s time to learn” about RISCV or PPC.

> Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM?

Technically you could run emulated, although that has a non-trivial cost.

> If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine.

You could always get an ARM-based devboard (e.g. a raspberry pi or similar) to play around, that’s hardly a major investment, although obviously it is what it is.

An other alternative is to use ARM-based “cloud” systems.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#79

Post by my123 »

PennRobotics wrote: post #66
kohlerm wrote: post #27

It is a shame this is based on X1 cores not X2 cores. Feels like they are trying to rip off people.

I'm curious if they even considered the A78C, the variant with a similar cache (except L2) that replaces all LITTLE cores with big and possibly costs less to license as it's probably a roadmap core like the A78. It's chronologically a step behind but could unlock better performance (than A78+55) with a negligible/nonexistent hit to battery life.

Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is 4xX1 + 4xA78, with no A55s.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#80

Post by Beltalowda »

hef19898 wrote: post #56
codethief wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either have never tried a ThinkPad prior to the W530 (i.e. more than 10 years ago, when they significantly changed the keyboard for the first time) or you haven't used one of the "next-gen" models with "next-gen" keyboards that they have been building ever since and that get worse with every iteration.

I have used as far back as 15 years ago, have a back up one that is 5 years old (?), privately a X1 Extreme Gen 2 and a company L13. No significant difference in keyboards, all of those are, or were, great. Especially compared to HP or Dell. Not to speak about Asus...

I agree; the keyboards are fine. I do dislike the layout changes they've made compared to the "classic" keyboards, but it's still better than most layouts out there (and they fixed some design mistakes in the first iterations of it).
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