Big RAM laptops are abundant as Lenovo does its Skylake refresh | Hacker News Reader

Big RAM laptops are abundant as Lenovo does its Skylake refresh

arstechnica.com

65 pointsingve80 comments

Uh, they still haven't added decent screens to the classic X/T thinkpad models.

A 16:9 screen is bad enough, but looks even worse when the laptop's frame is 16:10.

Also, still offering 1366x768 TN screens is really embarrassing, especially on expensive machines like these.

This is a frequent problem I have with Lenovo, outside of the Thinkpad name and the TrackPoint they rarely have anything that makes me want to consider dishing out that kind of money for their hardware. My work provides me with a Lenovo W540 which is a beast of a machine and is certainly nice for software development, but for my personal use I feel I got a much better deal on purchasing my Dell XPS13 than I would have a Thinkpad X1.

I don't know if the X1 is a direct competitor to the XPS13. Probably more the Yoga 900.

> Also, still offering 1366x768 TN screens is really embarrassing, especially on expensive machines like these.

Why is it "embarrassing" to offer a cheaper option? Nobody is forcing you to buy their lowest end machine. You can stick to the top end display (2560×1440).

A $700 1366x768 Thinkpad is a little more expensive than consumer laptops, but the build is still better than a consumer laptop, the uEFI offers more features, it has the TrackPoint, a better keyboard, and replaceable batteries.

Sometimes an employer is forced to go to a lowest cost option that meets requirements, so you want to come up with some contrived set of reasonable-sounding requirements that actually translate in practice to buying a higher-end machine.

It used to be that this requirement was "power windows" on a car rental, which only showed up on cars with all the bells and whistles.

The closest thing to "power windows" would likely be "needs an SSD." Since they don't normally put SSDs into their cheapest i3 machines, only the i5s with the 1080p displays (or better).

Also an SSD is a valid requirement if you actually need to get stuff done, in particular development/SysAdmin-like stuff.

If you are running Windows it makes a huge difference to have an SSD and even if what you are doing is writing Word documents and sending emails and stuff like that the difference is night and day.

I have an old netbook with a single core Atom processor and an SSD that I put in to make it shockproof and it feels incredibly fast compared to an i7 machine I have that seems to take 15 minutes to completely boot.

> If you are running Windows it makes a huge difference to have an SSD

SSDs make a huge difference on pretty much any system which can't live solely in RAM, no matter the OS.

I think it is worse on Windows because Windows uses locking very heavily -- i.e. Windows tries harder to protect system integrity than Unix does, even if that means giving up and showing the blue screen.

So, you want to defraud your employer? Why not just be straight-up and give the actual requirements, and then you know you'll be happy with whatever is purchased, since it'll meet them?

As important as the resolution is the PWM induced flickering (perceptible to some) that may cause eye fatigue, headache, nausea etc.

Hope the displays are better than their past models.

T450s is supposed to have a good display in terms of PWM flicker.

It seems that shitty screens is the one IBM tradition Lenovo will defend adamantly.

Some thinkpad models had stellar screens. Especially for the time. You can get T40s with 1600x1200 IPS panels.

That was, I think, AFFS and not IPS. Much, much worse ghosting and latency problems compared to IPS.

I use the mobility feature of my laptop for meetings where I connect it to a projector and for attending conferences.

The rest of the time my laptop sits in its docking station connected to a couple of external monitors and input devices. The only reason I even leave my laptop open is because I think it helps with cooling.

I don't even know what the resolution is on my laptop and I don't really care.

Any ideas on how well these laptops will support Linux? In my experience, Thinkpads are hit-or-miss when it comes to Linux support and I don't want to be the one that has to figure everything out (which I've done before for a few laptops; going so far as to make my own patches).

Honestly, Windows-only hardware or features are a big warning sign for me as those will be the first things to cause trouble--even in Windows! Microsoft will push an update to Windows and then, say, your power management stops working, the screen starts flickering when playing videos, the special laptop buttons no longer work, etc etc.

If everything works with Linux out-of-the-box though then it's unlikely you're going to experience problems in Windows either.

Given that they don't come in 4K resolution (I have a Yoga Pro 2) it should be quite a bit more usable.

But I agree, it's been hit or miss for me as well.

> Thinkpads are hit-or-miss when it comes to Linux support

Historically, ThinkPad devices seem to me to provide the most reliable Linux support. What issues have you encountered there?

(Note that buying a brand-new laptop with a brand-new chipset can potentially require getting updated drivers, such as for graphics or networking, but that necessarily happens no matter what brand you pick.)

Ubuntu 15.04+ supports all the hardware on my Thinkpad T450s out of the box.

In contrast, with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 on this machine, networking (wired and wireless) doesn't work immediately. Downloading the Lenovo drivers fixes things, though that's a bit difficult without networking...

Thinkpads are by far the best supported notebooks in Linux – RedHat e.g. is mainly a Thinkpad shop, so lots of kernel maintainers are investing time into supporting every single quirk.

AFAIK Thinkpads are extremely popular with Linux people, especially developers.

In my experience Thinkpads are extremely well supported and get support first.

It's so sad that Intel still sells dual-core notebook CPUs, a few quad-core CPUs and they best notebook CPU has just 2.9 GHz ("Skylake"). see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_micropro...

Compare that specs with 2010 Intel notebook CPUs ("Westmere") max 2.8 GHz - very little has changed for notebooks. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_micropro...

Where are the 3-4GHz CPUs for notebooks? Where are 6 or 8 core CPUs for notebooks?

Unfortunately, battery life drives the laptop market more than any other feature. Most laptop purchasers live in this bizarre world in which electrical outlets are as rare as an oasis in the desert, and the market responds as such.

There are still many places that don't have abundant outlets: classrooms/lecture halls, waiting rooms, airports, parks, your porch.

There's now an OLED screen option in the new X1.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/lenovo-x1-carbon-adds...

Big RAM? 16GB is a lot of RAM but it's not unheard of. My Thinkpad W540 has that much, which is standard in my company. I think any Mac can be configured with 16GB of RAM. 32GB is a lot, but of the four laptops they mentioned, only two of them support that much.

It's the 32 GB RAM chassis that is most exciting since it's no longer ungodly expensive.

In the same way that 8 GB is ubiquitous today for the low-end, 16 GB will soon become the standard.

More precisely, that is thanks to 8Gbit DDR4, which will eventually reach crossover with 4Gbit probably by next year.

Yup. The lenovo p50/p70 will offer 64GB of ECC RAM.

They were suppose to come out last year, but were delayed for some reason.

My 3+ year old Lenovo X230s had 16GB of RAM. My new Lenovo T450s has 12GB of RAM. But if only I'd waited another couple of months, I could have had a laptop with baddum tish the same amount of RAM as the 3 year old version!

Offtopic, but I've always been curious: do people really find trackpoint style mice even remotely usable? Presumably so, since Lenovo still includes them, but personal experience makes this baffling.

Edit: thanks for the responses. I can definitely see how the trackpoint could be more accurate, but my experience is that the workflow is MUCH slower. As basically a joystick device, you must wait for the pointer to move to the desired location. One could compensate for this by pushing harder, but this results in overshoot of the intended target, which requires compensating with slow, precise reversal movement. The whole process is just very, very tedious in my experience using them. That's what I meant, specifically. How do you trackpoint users manage to get around this?

It takes getting used to. But once you do, the way back is very difficult. The speed and precision is way better than any trackpad (including Apple's).

Yes, I used to find them hugely useful once I got used to it even did graphic design with one and it worked really well (years ago I worked in print and used a cheap Thinkpad on top of the colour machine as the print server/layout tool, it worked surprisingly well - was an r50e iirc).

Oh yes.

I have an old Lenovo X200s and a new-ish Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro.

The trackpoint is A LOT more * accurate than the pad. And particularly so for business applications like spreadsheets, word processors etc. Also much easier when you're slumped back on a couch.

I use it for coding, but then I barely need the mouse.

* Now doing things like drawing (even just a polygon in design apps) is easier with a pad.

Yes, absolutely. I actually have a USB ThinkPad keyboard that includes a trackpoint, and use that when at a desk, in preference to any other mouse or keyboard.

With the sensitivity set well, a trackpoint can move the mouse all the way across the screen with a strong push, yet have pixel-accurate precision with a light touch. And it sits on home row, making it trivial to switch between keyboard and mouse without a major hand position change.

I only use the touchpad to scroll. Even for that, some people configure the trackpoint to scroll while holding the middle mouse button, but that configuration doesn't work for me as I rely on a functional three-button mouse (middle-click to open a link in a tab, and middle-click to paste in a terminal).

> but that configuration doesn't work for me as I rely on a functional three-button mouse (middle-click to open a link in a tab, and middle-click to paste in a terminal).

You lose middle-button click only in Windows. The Linux drivers will pass through middle clicks normally, even with wheel emulation enabled.

The trackpoint is the primary reason why I've bought ~5 Thinkpads over the last 15 years.

To the point where I won't use any other laptop but a Thinkpad and where I also own two Thinkpad USB Keyboards.

I'd have a Mac long time ago if they would offer a Trackpoint.

Only when I'm in a situation where it's impractical to use a normal mouse; for example, while commuting on the train in the morning.

Otherwise, I can't stand them.

I don't really care for the precision, but for me the Trackpoint is easier and faster to use than touchpads. I can keep my hands on the keyboard all the time and don't have to move them down, or take them off to grab a mouse lying several feet away from the home row. I just bump the track point and keep typing.

Aiming takes a while to get used to, though, especially in Windows with its useless mouse acceleration settings. Those take far too much tweaking.

Count me in the "yes" camp as well. I've been using ThinkPads off and on since before IBM sold it off, so I'm quite use to it.

It's definitely less accurate, but I can do quite a bit while only lifting one finger off the keyboard, which is a big productivity boost, and the biggest argument for having it on your computer. Especially for shorter, simpler movements.

I will always reach for another tool (generally a trackball, if I'm at my desk) if I'm trying to do something more accurate or complex.

I'll be the dissenting voice here: I hate them, and would actively go out of my way to not buy a laptop that has one. I've tried trackpoints going all the way back to the original Toshiba Portegé from the 90s. I owned that one, and it was either trackpoint or an external mouse, so I tried to love it. I've had later laptops foisted upon me that had them. Never could get into 'em.

I found them to not be precise, and I believe your use of the word "tedious" is spot on. Always chasing the damned thing around, trying to get it to go exactly where I want. So to each their own, but I'm in the camp that just doesn't get it.

In my opinion, they're way better than touchpads. For any serious work I use a full size wireless mouse, but I'm comfortable on a trackpoint, and continuously frustrated using a touchpad. It's important to use the hard grippy eraser head and not the squishy cup head if accuracy is important. I'm stuck using a Macbook Pro at the moment, but I would love to have modern components in my old Thinkpad T400, or even better, the 600E I had in college.

>I can definitely see how the trackpoint could be more accurate, but my experience is that the workflow is MUCH slower.

Thinkpad trackpoints have a third button, which is good for middle click for me (as well as great scrolling). Touchpads require me to adjust my hand to button+tap or something equally awkward. That's much slower.

Plus, your hands never leave the keyboard with a trackpoint.

>As basically a joystick device, you must wait for the pointer to move to the desired location

In my experience, this is no slower than mouse movement.

> One could compensate for this by pushing harder, but this results in overshoot of the intended target, which requires compensating with slow, precise reversal movement.

I don't have trouble with fast, precise movement with a trackpoint.

> How do you trackpoint users manage to get around this?

I really have to turn this around and ask, how do non-mac touchpad users manage to endure the crap they use? I found them far inferior to mice and trackpads for years.

I love the first line in this article: "We've long cried out for laptops with lots of RAM so that they can handle workloads as varied as hosting development virtual machines or running Chrome.."

Top three reasons why people in my company had to be upgraded from 4 to 16 GiB RAM:

• Running multiple VMs to debug IE 8-10

• Chrome

I'd love to buy Lenovo's big RAM (64 GB ECC) laptop.

But Lenovo included unerasable spyware in BIOS that reinstalls itself after a clean reinstall of non-OEM, original Windows DVD, I think I'll pass. Maybe it doesn't affect Lenovo's business range, but I don't want to take any chances.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenovo...

Lenovo did remove the crapware in question afterwards. It doesn't inspire confidence when they do same spyware/crapware deal multiple times and only remove such software after getting caught.

It doesn't affect the business range.

RAM is the new disk - we're seeing a phase change whereby most data can be held permanently in RAM. For a laptop, this might not a lot of sense (until non-volatile RAM arrives), but for servers, RAM density is enabling multi-TB datasets to be held in memory. This will be transformative since it means that businesses can easily access memory like the big boys (Google, Facebook) using off-the-shelf software.

I really appreciate this but would really really like it to be ECC ram. That and a nice 2K screen would be a really nice setup.

Look at the Thinkpad P50/P70.

Ouch: "Weight Starting at 5.62lbs, 0.96in" (from the Lenovo page on the P50)

There is absolutely no technical reason for Intel to not offer ECC in the desktop/laptop chipsets. Which would then allow people like Lenovo to build it into their 'thin and light' line as well. I put all the blame on Intel for this one as they try to prop up the margins on "server" chips.

FWIW, this is something I hope ARM (and perhaps Apple) totally disrupts. I would love to see an A52 class ARM chip for use in a laptop that offered ECC support on large address spaces.

My several year old x220t has an i7 and 12gb of ram, don't think i'll be replacing it for at least another 2-3 years

My X220 has an i5, 16 GiB RAM, and a battery run time of 19 hours.

Still waiting for a worthy replacement. The X260 clearly isn't one.

The X220/T420 series already supports 16GB RAM, sadly the X210/T410 series only supports 8GB RAM.

Being stuck on 16:9 is bad enough, but worst of all was the move away from the "7-row" keyboard. The island ("chicklet") Thinkpad keyboard is better than other OEMs versions of same, and of course, I won't leave home without a Trackpoint.

But every day since my x201s died—replaced by an x230 tablet—I miss the seventh row. ScrollLock and Pause|Break are not legacy controls, and I get blocked every day when I reach for those keys, and as they say, "There they were: gone![1]"

Oh, and I see no reason why all the pro-line Thinkpads (X,T) don't support 32GB, minimum.

Lenovo seems to be getting the Thinkpad brand back on track, but for my money it's not happening quickly enough.

[1] Possibly from character, Ed, on Northern Exposure

I don't care for all those big cables coming out at the sides... especially the right side where my mouse hand will be. Wish manufactures wouldn't do that so often.

I got a big RAM laptop from Lenovo back in 2012 and it is great! I bought the RAM from Crucial, however, because Lenovo charged entirely too much for it.

My graphics company designs for 96GB. But the time the software ships , the high end should be there.

Ugg. Companies like yours is the reason you need to buy a 16GB laptop today just to browse the web.

Don't take it personal, but it's really starting to get quite absurd.

This an 4k/5k resolutions.

Finally an update worth possibly purchasing, the limited amount of ram was a real downside to the last few iterations they pushed out. That and the single channel DDR situation.

I wonder when the new MacBook Pro with Skylake chips arrive, they should also have similar amounts of RAM.

As someone waiting to upgrade, it's a little annoying that they seem to be taking so long. The 15" pro is still using Haswell processors.

Good news for Qubes OS.

I could give two shits about the X1, but the new X260 can take 16GB of RAM and has an onboard ethernet port. Yes, please.

The X220 takes 16GB, and an onboard gig-e Intel nic. It was released in 2011.

This. The X220 is still my day-to-day personal laptop, and I've yet to find anything else that's comparable (key feel, small size, durability, ease of service...)

X250 can't do 16GB, sadly.

You can get it directly from Lenovo.

X220 doesn't have a high resolution screen available, which is why I'm still stuck on an x200s.

What about RS-232 and LPT?

I and most people in my job role carry usb -> DB9 rs232 dongles. doesn't work, of course, if you are trying to set up a serial console to debug the laptop, which is annoying, but it works fine for what we mostly use it for, which is to say, reading other serial consoles.

They're obsolete for consumer hardware and take up a lot of space, while a physical gigabit network port is extremely useful for low-latency high-throughput communication, such as to NAS.

(RS-232 is still somewhat useful for hobby embedded stuff, but everyone just buys FTDI clone USB-serial cables)

Unfortunately the FTDI stuff (really any USB<->UART converter) has latency issues in the embedded space. : \

I was wondering, would it be possible to create a better converter that did usb -> rs232/parallel port that had a special driver to put timing info? At least for driving CNC motors with a parallel port, timing is critical, you could send the pulse signal along with a timing, like 1 @ t0, 0 @ t0+1us etc.. Reading would be similar. The chip on the converter would have an accurate clock and faithfully reproduce the desired signal.

It could probably be done with isochronous mode (http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb4.shtml#Isochronou...), but realistically it's easiest to just delegate all the real-time stuff to a $1 microcontroller on the other end of the USB link.

After having a quick look at all the external interfaces of my laptop, the only one that has a predictable latency (that I know of) is the microphone/headphone jack. It should be fairly trivial to convert a serial digital data to an audio signal that can be reverted back on the other end. Of course, initially the jack latency needs to be measured (e.g. using a loop connection) and accounted for.

RS-232 is also how you get PPS off your GPS for maximum clock accuracy. emulated RS-232 over USB wasn't good enough as of a couple years ago

> I could give two shits about the X1

The X1 comes with an (included) external ethernet dongle which runs at full speed. That is to say: it's not a BW-limited USB-based adapter.

I agree it's a bit silly to need a dongle, it seems to be quite a popular sacrifice (ref Macbook air) to help make laptops thinner.

As this trend increased, I suspect we will start seeing USB-C (3.x) type networking kits becoming the standard for ethernet. Maybe some day even without the RJ45 connector.

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