Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

ifixit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 255 posts

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#81

Post by lenaivo »

owenversteeg wrote: post #75

Yikes. Has iFixit jumped the shark? An AI generated press release on behalf of Lenovo, who is (from my perspective) essentially paying them for good PR? And this paid relationship - Lenovo paying iFixit - isn’t disclosed until the very last line of the article, so you have to first read 1500+ words of AI slop? That made me start looking into their scores. The Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 gets a 9/10 despite soldered ports, a p…

Thank you for saying it. There was somehting nagging me after a while. Even the quotes from Lenovo read as being AI generated, which begs the question if the quotes are real or paraphrased of factual at all.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#82

Post by bluGill »

layer8 wrote: post #35
SilverElfin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO. Many people use them.

Surely you mean: Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO — many people use them.

Maybe he isn't one but has a close friend who is? That would describe me.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#83

Post by owenversteeg »

lenaivo wrote: post #81
owenversteeg wrote: post #75

Yikes. Has iFixit jumped the shark? An AI generated press release on behalf of Lenovo, who is (from my perspective) essentially paying them for good PR? And this paid relationship - Lenovo paying iFixit - isn’t disclosed until the very last line of the article, so you have to first read 1500+ words of AI slop? That made me start looking into their scores. The Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 gets a 9/10 despite soldered ports, a p…

Thank you for saying it. There was somehting nagging me after a while. Even the quotes from Lenovo read as being AI generated, which begs the question if the quotes are real or paraphrased of factual at all.

You’re welcome. It’s a real shame IMO. I used to be a huge Lenovo guy, until the quality of the products dropped off a cliff a decade and change ago. Disappointing to see that instead of making a better product they decided to pay iFixit to write AI-generated puff pieces.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#84

Post by evil-olive »

> We noted a similar lack of modularity on the Wi-Fi module, where repairs or upgrades will be impractical at best.

I'm the current owner of a T14s (gen3 AMD) and the non-replaceable wifi chip has been my biggest pain point with it. I'm somewhat disappointed to see them give this 10/10 score with that problem unresolved.

according to lspci it's a Qualcomm QCNFA765 and it works great under Linux...until you suspend the machine. after it wakes up from suspend, it will only stay connected for a few seconds to a minute before dropping the connection and re-establishing it.

I've replaced wifi chips in other Thinkpads I've owned, so I naively assumed this would be the same as well - just swapping out the M.2 card. but no such luck, it's soldered in place.

I ended up using systemd to rmmod-then-modprobe the ath11k_pci module when the system resumes from sleep. this is annoying because it adds a delay of several extra seconds before the machine is ready to use, but none of the "smaller hammer" workarounds I attempted worked at all.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#85

Post by emeril »

tombert wrote: post #51

I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook). Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I go…

my dell is hot garbage from work

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#86

Post by chrisss395 »

Do folks have any security concerns with Lenovo? An IT leader at a medium-large US bank recently told me they won't use Lenovo due to security risks from Chinese firmware (or something to that effect, referencing and older incident I don't recall). I've only seen such policies with defense players ten or so years ago.

That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repairability as the article covers.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#87

Post by fallinditch »

foltik wrote: post #30
p1necone wrote: post #18

Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere. * "This isn't X. It's Y" * "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier. * The em-dash of course * A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness" I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.

Once you see it you can't unsee it. Although maybe this how corporate blogslop has always been, and we're just now noticing now that it's infected everything. > "These are not complaints, merely observations." > "There are repairable laptops, and then there are ThinkPads." > "iFixit approached the relationship as collaborators, not critics." > "[...] they didn’t declare victory and go home. They kept pushing." > "Des…

I found a way to 'de-smell' LLM copy: tell it to take a second pass that processes the text output with the William Burroughs cut-up method. Works well for a small subset of use cases.

Presumably the smelly AI text problem is just ... a problem that will be solved. Or maybe we'll just get used to it.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#88

Post by userbinator »

cookiengineer wrote: post #59
system2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I urge you to try HP.

^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.

Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed.

I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.

Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability

#90

Post by leidenfrost »

kev009 wrote: post #9

If you are ever bored, maxing out a T440p, T430, or T480 is a fun exercise and not very difficult nor expensive. CPU, RAM, SSD, coreboot, modern LCD panel, Liteon keyboard. Load with Linux, BSD, OpenCore.

I have a hard time finding a good battery.

I bought an internal and external battery and the external one quickly started bloating.

Post reply on HN