Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
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The best luck I've had for now is installing ubuntu on a crappy cheap Samsung Chromebook. Runs really well and everything seems to work fine, but the hardware is junk (The screen is atrocious coming from retina IPS displays.) Fun to play around with though, plus the battery life is incredible for it's $180 price tag.
Dell has a 30 day return policy for what it's worth though.
I hear you on the display. My retina screen makes anything else painful.
It works exceptionally well and I generally get about 10 hours of use on each battery charge. I store my work in progress on a USB3 USB flash drive.
The screen is only 1366 x 768 and the touchpad is rather lousy. So given the shortcomings, I've gone back to using an old MBP. Maybe buying a second-hand MBA and installing Linux on that is the better option.
We Linux users need to realize we are an island, and it's our duty to:
- Either Linux-QA-check on our own / as a community the hardware we're buying before we buy, because the constructor isn't doing it (it's doing it for the actively supported OS, Windows).
- Or buy {System76 / Thinkpad}, and get {a lot of / some} help from the constructor.
EDIT: agreed that Mac hardware quality is miles ahead though, not contradicting you on this specific point.
That's a very disrespectful way of starting a post. In particular as you conclude that you largely agree with them. So which is it, they're spreading "Fear, uncertainty and doubt" or they're right? In either case, seems unconstructive.
They're spreading the FUD that Linux laptop hardware support is frustrating, no questions asked. It's FUD because it's a fear-inducing oversimplification of the current state of things, which is that Linux laptop hardware support is enjoyable -if you do your homework-.
I agree you shouldn't be doing any homework to perform basic tasks such as "get [the] machine to hibernate, connect to wifi reliably, etc...". I'm not doing any of it on my Thinkpad, where these tasks work without messing around.
And in an ideal world, yes, I'd love not having to ever think about it too :) . But in the current Windows-dominated non-Mac consumer hardware world, what I say is that you should be doing homework prior to buying a machine you expect to install Linux on.
I'd also try out an XPS-13 if I could afford it; but my $300 second-hand x230 works like a charm for now.
Sure, anecdotes aren't necessarily that useful. For every happy Mac user there seems to be an angry one who always had hardware problems, for example. But it's not exactly news that Linux has issues with hardware compatibility. It's the nature of the beast, really; Apple is able to target a very specific configuration, whereas Linux has to work on any old crappy Windows PC.
Hm, reading {your, UnoriginalGuy, mwfunk} comments, I realize "FUD" is a loaded term. I was using it literally, missing the strong stuff associated with it. Point taken, thanks.
Furthermore you have a lot less problems these days with Linux IMO and so often the quirks are fast to fix. E.g. the full installation cost me 1h plus 1h for copying my old data and I could start working.
For that I tolerate ocasional (like twice in a week) forced power offs when the notebook does not wake up or when wifi stops working.
I have the opposite experience with memory pressure (speaking only about desktop here). macOS (& Windows) do memory compression by default and most of Linuxes I know don't do that by default. I also have the feeling that at least desktop Linux get's incredible slow when you run out of memory and swapping begins (never encountered similar amount of slowliness on Windows or macOS with low memory).
Regarding container technology and macOS. If you are into docker checkout latest dlite beta: https://github.com/nlf/dlite/releases It runs docker on Kernel virtualization level on macOS with xhyve without the need of VirtualBox etc.
Had recurring wifi issues on a Macbook Pro as well (as did many of my co-workers)... Not saying it's great on Linux but I would hardly call the alternatives much better...
The MacBook also regularly (at least once per week) drops all input devices (including built in keyboard and trackpad), which can only be cured by a hard power-strangle and reboot.
My colleagues experience the same problems too.
Basically, the ultra-reliable Mac is a myth, its as prone to failure as any computer.
That, and Finder that becomes unusably slow after working with images for a few hours. (Admittedly, tens of thousands of images, but it degrades to the point that merely opening an empty folder takes 2-3 seconds.)
On the MBP, I experience semi-frequent freezes, kernel panics, overheating, unstable WiFi, inaccurate battery status reporting, scaling issues, occasional green tint, FS lock up etc. - it's still nice, but I wouldn't say it's more smooth than modern Linux with GNOME 3, in fact I've had much less problems with that setup than with my MBP.
Apple has engineers dedicated to building hardware and software that work together. They design and manufacture their own hardware. System76 doesn't. They pick out some components, and get them assembled elsewhere, and ship that out to you.
A better comparison would be Dell's XPS line, which at least has some number of people actively working on making sure they work well and are well supported, but still not to the same degree as Apple, and my understanding is they're generally told "make this work with Linux", as opposed to building a laptop specifically for linux.
I decided to buy a Lenovo E540 a couple of years ago, on which I run Linux Mint: I like KDE's awesome interface add much add I liked Mac OS X's. I wouldn't ever go back...
I am basically using linux just for apt-get, the configurability and the ability to test server-side software in the same-ish environment as it will actually run in is a nice plus.
But yeah, people that argue that "there are no issues" are either lying or were incredibly lucky. I actually bought a laptop that had ubuntu pre-installed that stopped working immediately after doing a system update! (Because the laptop had a binary blob driver for a graphic card, and that stopped working with some new kernel or whatever.)
Sure, HW would work better, but I don't want to update two OSes instead of one.
And the only thing I am really missing on Linux is Adobe Creation Suite. GIMP and Inkscape are not nearly adequate (although they are for a better price). And there is literally nothing like Flash, for a simple animation.
1. Provide a updates for a base installation, the details of which you essentially don't want care about (working drivers, recent kernel version, recent version of wayland/x11 etc.)
2. Provide a repository of curated, versioned and up-to-date software development dependencies
Apt-get does an adequate job at 1., although I have more than once broken my base installation because the binary graphics driver broke after an update, but not so much at 2.
Homebrew is good because you can completely mess up your installation and not effect the base system at all and it is a good starting point to get reasonably up to date development packages. It also offers a much smoother user experience than most package managers.
Some elevated Apple apps are updated via System Update. Some are updated via Mac App Store. Some are updating themselves when they feel like it. Some are updated via brew, or via macports.
But I am not gonna argue much or anything, I grew out of my teens and I no longer want to tell other people that my OS is the best :) it's not, I definitely wouldn't give Linux to my mom (at this state).
One of the most ridiculous examples of "You must do it our way" is the inability to remap mouse buttons (or even support buttons on a mouse with more than left, right and scroll.) MacOS would rather you use gestures on the magic mouse (that thing is an ergonomic nightmare). To be able to support extra buttons, you have to pay for software from the app store, e.g. USB Overdrive.
Linux hardware support has become much better without a doubt.
However just in the last couple days I've had the following sporadic issues:
* External usb keyboard/mouse simply wouldn't work (and doesn't show up in lsusb). Restart fixed.
* If left overnight, occasionally won't wake up from sleep; requires restart.
* Upon start trackpad/trackpoint occasionally doesn't work; do not show up in xinput; probably fixable, but haven't dug into it.
On the other hand, mac had its own issues:
* Macbook takes relatively forever to come back from sleep; thinkpad is practically immediate.
* Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often).
* Opening many tabs in chrome on mac causes serious slowdowns. Have yet to see any slowdown on thinkpad even with 20-30 tabs. This also goes generally for mac beachball issues.
In general, Arch/i3 combo is far better than MacOS for my needs (95% of time in terminal/browser).
Waking up from sleep has been nice and fast in Linux for a while, but I have to say that regardless of all the frustrations I've found using OS X over the last year, waking from sleep isn't one of them. It has been nice and fast every time.
>* Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often).
I've found wireless to be a really bizarre experience on OS X. If there are two networks it can connect to in range, it doesn't seem to pay much attention to the strength of the signal, and it always seems to overstate how strong the signal is (that may feed into the former).
I can be sitting in the same room as another wireless endpoint, and it'll choose the one furthest away from it, where wireless strength is pretty low, and constantly suffer communication problems. I've made it a point now to go check which wifi it has connected to.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/software/sleepmode.h...
That said, it would seem that they have, and continue to have, issues with waking up with a new external monitor. Maybe you're being hit by this? Occasionally when I arrive at home or the office and plug my asleep-and-lid-closed MBP 2015 in, the screen will display garbage for a while, and hang for 10-30 seconds until it shows the unlock screen. Sometimes it doesn't recover at all.
Relative is the key:
Linux wakes up in milliseconds every time; by the time I open the lid all the way it's ready to go. rMBP (2012) can be from almost as fast as linux to ~10 seconds. I'd guess the average is ~3 seconds; though sometimes even when it wakes up fast I'll still get a beachball for a bit.
I mostly use my laptop around the house and often open and close it many times in a short period -- for instance say I'm reading something technical on the kindle in the armchair; I'll flip it open quite often to test or look something up quickly, so even having to wait a few seconds gets obnoxious.
I could just leave it open, but I don't always have a safe place to put it while open.
note: no external monitor, so that's not the issue.
Off the top of my head there are a few primary reasons I prefer linux:
* WM Aesthetics - Arch+i3 (or any minimal, preferably tiling WM) provides a gorgeous minimalist aesthetic -- checkout /r/unixporn for examples. MacOS is just too visually noisy for me.
* I was going to buy a new macbook pro, but then they went and got rid of the escape and function keys. Escape I could probably live without (I tap caps-lock for escape), but function keys I want (at least until the apple touchbar proves itself to be comparatively useful).
* I'm tired of Apple's hyperbole and smugness, especially considering they haven't done anything really interesting since Jobs passed away.
* Customizability: really no comparison here. This is my big one.
* Pacman/AUR - honestly homebrew is pretty good though.
Negatives:
* Occasional weirdness/breakage.
* Can take a lot of research to figure out how to get things to work at times (note: usually not common things anymore though, like wifi etc); sometimes they just don't work without an unreasonable amount of work, or at all (e.g. hibernate). Many things are esoteric in general and have marginal documentation (arch wiki is great though). Granted this is part of the fun (I mean, I am a programmer :).
* Spent tens of hours setting things up to function the way I want (keep in mind I don't use gnome/kde so that would likely fix a lot of issues like external monitor support for HiDPI, and I tend to do heavy/esoteric customization of the user experience). Most of this is because I haven't used linux as my personal machine for ~5 years (i.e. setting it up again would be a few hours or less likely). If you use Gnome/Unity/KDE this probably wouldn't be the case.
* HiDPI (x1 carbon): I think this is actually decent in kde/gnome/unity (?), but it's pretty terrible in most GUI apps in my minimal setup. After some fiddling chromium is fine and I generally simply don't use GUI apps otherwise, and when I do it's still usable if not great. Retina screen and OS support was the primary thing that kept me on a mac. (edit: terminal and chrome look great so I'm happy)
* Miss a few apps: Quiver, Artful, Dash
* I still keep my mac around just in case, but haven't needed it yet.
* Touchpad: nothing touches a macbook (although I'm not jazzed about the huge new one), on the other hand the X1 Carbon's is actually quite good.
oh, and I use Manjaro-i3 [1] -- I've been there, done that with setting up Arch from scratch...highly recommended.
1: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-i3-16-06-16-06-1/3329
What about battery life?
Have you tried [1]? This is based on a HN comment. Explanations on the functions are also found here [2].
> * Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often).
Which macOS version was this? Wasn't a related framework replaced recently? Or was that only DNS?
> * Opening many tabs in chrome on mac causes serious slowdowns. Have yet to see any slowdown on thinkpad even with 20-30 tabs. This also goes generally for mac beachball issues.
How much RAM is in the MBP? I had 100+ tabs open on a MBP 2010 (4 GB RAM default, replaced with 8 GB RAM, replaced 512 GB HDD with 256 GB SSD) and never had any issue with that after the hardware replacements. Are you comparing a 5 year old machine with a new one?
> In general, Arch/i3 combo is far better than MacOS for my needs (95% of time in terminal/browser).
Have you ever tried Homebrew (+ Cask) + Amethyst + iTerm2 + Tmux on the Mac?
[1] http://pastebin.com/F3Sh2mjY
[2] http://blog.taylormcgann.com/2012/07/05/hibernate-from-termi...
Thus they barely get their stuff working on the major commercial platforms, and all the rest have to either beg for specs so they can write their own (good luck) or reverse engineers (and risking bricking the hardware because of abusing standards for firmware flashing and whatsnot).
And your primary complaint boils down to power management, aka ACPI. And it, like UEFI, suffers from the second system effect (Linus Torvalds do not hold either in high regard for example). There is at least one documented case of a name brand motherboard offering up junk ACPI data unless Linux claimed to be Windows.
Linux appears to be at a standstill because each time a new motherboard or expansion card gets released, the process basically starts from ground zero unless it happens to be based of some bottom of the barrel chip with zero modifications so the Linux devs can just add another product ID to the driver table and call it a day (resulting in things like USB webcam drivers that support some 100+ camera models).
I hadn't heard about this and was curious. Google turned up this:
Thus the shortest way to get a working system is to stop being an hipster and use one of the major commercial platforms.
Being a hipster has very little to do with using Linux these days. Wanting a productive, customisable work environment has a lot, on the other hand.
Which, in that case, why even have Windows installed, you're just giving resources to something that isn't doing anything besides giving you access to an entirely separate operating system.
Yes, this is perhaps a manufactured problem, but windows is just generally not conductive to my style of work. And really all I need is zsh, tmux, and vim working without causing an audible ping every time I hit a key to be happy.
Linux is generally a little worse. However, from my experience Windows and MacOS are approximately equally buggy in comparison to one another.
An example of an issue I have with my Macbook is that every single day I have to plug my network cable into it 2-4 times before it will recognize the connection.
The line has Intel quad core CPUs, minimal bezel (my 15" is almost the same size as the 14" System 76 Galago Ultra Pro it's replacing), reasonably slim for a quad core, 84Wh battery, 10+ hours of low power dev (baseline power is about 5.25W on my 8GB + 1080p + Xeon E3-1505M machine) in (Arch) Linux? YES.
Oh yeah, and for nerd points the Dell Precision M5510 has the option for Intel Xeon and Ubuntu stock for people doing CPU intensive Linux work (in my case Linux embedded system builds that grind for tens of minutes to two hours).
To add icing on the cake, you can easily get parts (batteries, motherboards, etc) on eBay if you ever need to fix it yourself which is a sharp contrast to the non-existent System76 Galago Ultra Pro I picked up a few years ago after I ditched my last Thinkpad.
I keep looking at the Thinkpads, but they seem a generation behind.
I miss that laptop. The build quality was through the roof and it was solid as a brick.
Base clock speed is down a tick (2.7ghz vs. 2.8ghz) compared to previous generation Intel chips in the M4700/M4800 line vs. the new Precision 5510. Same 8M cpu cache; presumably newer intel chips are more efficient and make up for performance difference elsewhere (e.g. less heat = less cpu throttling during intensive tasks).
Sitting on the fence here, waiting to see if Intel's next line of mobile CPUs bring significant performance improvements. Current setup (M4700, i7 extreme, 2 X SSD, 32GB) is awesome modulo the battery life, which is about 2 hours for minimal workloads.
Yes, ordered a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 from eBay, apparently that's a popular thing to do. A day or two later I stumbled on a deal on the Precision 15 E3-1505M motherboard and took a gamble on swapping it. Worked out without any issues other then likely warranty complications if I ever go down that road.
I can easily get 6+ hours on it doing vim + chromium + GCC builds. If I baby it, it can do 10 hours I assume, but it's to the point it doesn't matter unless you need to go a weekend without charging.
My old System 76 ultra pro was lucky to get 2.5 hours doing the same things.
Most of my components are selected for power. I've heard the 4k display with touch is brutal for battery life and selected 1080p instead. I have 8GB of RAM, started to swap in 32GB but the baseline power at idle went from 5.25W to around 7W. The bigger 84Wh battery is an obvious choice and I use the Intel GPU 99% of the time (sometimes the Quadro M1000M for the rare times I play games via bumblebee).
Except they don't ship with ECC memory.
> 32GB, DDR4-2133MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMMS, Non-ECC [0]
So what's the point of having a Xeon? The Core i7 options offered for the laptop support all the same processor features [1], except ECC memory [2], which Dell isn't even shipping.
[0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...
[1] http://ark.intel.com/products/88970/Intel-Core-i7-6820HQ-Pro...
[2] http://ark.intel.com/products/89608/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-...
Edit: I think it's a legitimate gripe, Dell is selling a Xeon but there's zero benefit over buying an i7 equipped model. But thanks for all the downvotes!
The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway.
The specifications don't even list support for ECC RAM! [0]
[0] http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheet...
The clock is faster, try the compare link[0].
And since I originally bought a XPS 15 with the i7-6700HQ then scored a deal on a Precision E3-1505M motherboard and frankensteined my laptop, I spent 30 seconds doing a benchmark[1]. The tl;dr is that for 6% faster clock, you actually get about 10% better performance, so the cache is contributing. Is it worth the Xeon mark-up? Probably not if I didn't come across a deal, but hey, this thing still costs way less then the local fruit farm alternative.
[0] http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88970,89608
[1] https://github.com/kylemanna/dell-xps-9550-precision-5510
Now the interesting question is of course whether that 3 % difference holds up when these are used in an actual laptop, ie. does it make a difference before all of them throttle anyway?
I thought this as well, figured the i7-6700HQ was popular because it maxed out the thermal design, but haven't observed this.
Mine didn't throttle at all. Test setup was on a desk plugged in to the 130W power adapter, nothing special. The benchmark ran for 10 minutes without throttling, note that Github tests show that the first pass was just as fast as the last.
If anyone is really interested, I can run the tests again, but I expected it would throttle after a few minutes of the fans roaring and hence why I ran a few tests back to back and averaged them. Also, I cut the test short because I wanted to swap the motherboards and get on with life. :)
It may throttle if the Nvidia GPUs were enabled and working at full load, but they weren't as this is how I normally work and what I bought the laptop to do.
Update: Ran CPU Burn's `burnmmx` x 8 for 20 minutes and monitored it with i7z, and the cores remained at 3.3GHz the entire time with the cores ranging from 60C - 70C. Recorded it with asciinema, but apparently it doesn't play nice with tmux so it's not really readable.
As for keyboard, feels great to me, but I'm not that picky.
The convertible, bezel-less XPS convertible = macbook pro + ipad pro
We're not talking about a fingerprint reader here. Convertible laptops have to make very specific design choices/compromises which come with some disadvantages currently.
Software has largely matured for hotswap. Fedora 25 with kernel 4.9 is brilliant on a convertible. Windows has had it for decades.
We already use the cheaper yoga and Dell inspiron convertibles in my workplace. They are awesome. Dell and Lenovo have had many years of experience in building convertibles by now. We are talking of 500$ laptops here. The Dell 5368 hinges are well reviewed by now [1] [2]
IMHO the design of Yoga 900 (with its "watchband" hinges are unparalleled).
BTW, we are in non-Apple territory here. Replacing hinges is damn easy. You can buy a ton of them on ebay.
[1] http://www.techarp.com/articles/dell-inspiron-13-5000-laptop...
[2] http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1404957/dell-inspiron...
As far as the hinges, I had to replace the hinges on my Yoga 900 due to lose cylinders twice already under warranty.
Getting the wristband replacement as an aftermarket part hinge is well impossible.
On my Yoga 1 I've replaced the hinges myself and it never really fits like it came from the factory don't know if they do fitting but it's never 100% straight and with the amount of glue and crap they use to seal laptop with its never really like new.
Laptops with a rotating screen add complexity and have to add weight to make the laptop balance depending on the modes that the screen have to operate under.
They also have other design constraints for the keyboard and buttons which means the typing experience is often sub par due to a shallower keyboard and the screen has to be touch.
Laptops with a detachable screen as in convertibles have other issues including still blue screens (my Surface Book will still blue screen from time to time) as well as a lot more design constraints as far as what goes where in terms of hardware.
The Surface Book is probably the best designed by you still get a very top heavy laptop with a very small battery in tablet mode and problematic thermals.
If I'm buying a laptop I don't want a rotating screen, I don't want a touchscreen, and I don't want any of the crap that has to be tacked on or removed to allow it to turn into a tablet.
I wish people who stop using "FUD" as a synonym for "incorrect" or "wrong".
FUD ("fear, uncertainty and doubt") is a disinformation strategy to undermine the opposition and "influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear" [1].
FUD was famously a tool used by Microsoft against its competitors.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
you are fudded?
Love that feature - use it a few times.
Great to convert it as huge 15 inch, 1080p, 16GB RAM tablet and browse the web/amazon with a few people together. 16GB makes is much better browser experience than ipad and most of the android. The con is that it does weight a lot more than regular tablet.
Getting the same battery capacity would require a battery much larger than the classic removable ThinkPad battery; you'd need a system where you can remove a battery 60-80% the size of the chassis.
On the flip side, you can still replace the battery after a few years when it loses enough of its capacity; it just requires a bit more work. And for people who want more battery capacity and currently swap batteries for that, the trend towards using USB-C as the universal charging port will make it easier to have compatible external batteries, that will also work with your phone and other devices.
AFAIK, fixed batteries are located in the very same place as the removable ones: at the rear of the laptop. They are not spread everywhere, there is no hyper-advanced design is that respect, and they definitely do not occupy 60-80% of the chassis. They could be pulled away / inserted back from the rear is the design choice was such.
Not typically. The tiny system board lives near the back of the laptop, to connect to the ports and the screen. (Often, the system board doesn't even take up the full width of the back of the laptop, and instead has ribbon cables connecting the ports on one side to the system board.) The battery takes up all the space under the front and middle of the laptop.
> They are not spread everywhere, there is no hyper-advanced design is that respect, and they definitely do not occupy 60-80% of the chassis.
I've seen the insides of many laptops, both in person and via pictures. I've seen battery cells laid out in many different shapes around the system board and other components, including Ls, Us, and Hs, and in multiple packets of cells with minimal connections between them.
As for "advanced design", https://www.apple.com/macbook/design/ made a point of talking about its terraced battery cells to fit the enclosure. And while some laptops might not go that far, I've seen many laptops shape groups of battery cells around other components to make a non-rectangular battery.
And as for volume, I've personally seen the internals of many laptops, and the better the laptop, the higher proportion of the volume that consists of battery cells. I wouldn't have given those estimated numbers if I hadn't seen laptops fitting both ends of that range and various points in the middle. (Some quick searches suggest that much smaller laptops, and lower-end laptops, may dip as low as 40-50% battery cells; medium and large laptops, and those intended as higher-end or with higher expected battery life, have more.)
A new keyboard is like 40-50 € for most models, for example. But don't expect to get a sparkling new system board for 200 €. New rubber feet are like 10 € (but it's the whole set for all rubber feet of the system). For the X20x there are still some parts available new from distributors. Which is like 6-7 years of parts supply.
Every time I look at reviews of "modern" laptops or try a friend's machine (Apple, Dell, HP, mostly), I get a little sad over how the market has regressed in the past decade. Thus, the only upgrade I'm considering is getting a few T420/X220 machines to last me another decade or so. My dream would be a T60 case with modern hardware and there's a number of retro Thinkpad projects out there, but it's probably not going to happen. Not sure what I'm going to do when a T420 is finally too dated to be productive on, but thankfully that's a very long way off.
I just set someone up with a T420 with a few upgrades and it's a fantastic value. Hardest part was finding a source for the rubber HD rails needed to swap a 7mm tall SSD in place of the original 9.5mm platter drive. It was technically a downgrade from a newer thinkpad laptop that they had, but the T420 is just a better machine from fit/finish/touchpad/upgrade/repair perspectives.
If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative.
There's a lot of people swapping them (one example [1]), but I don't know if there's a consensus on which are the best options, and there's quite a few. I think the T420 and the X220 are by far the best options for reasonably modern but not yet ruined Thinkpads, but for both of them the screens are definitely the weak points.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3hjlbu/so_i_did_t...
The guide you linked to does seem to be more complete than the ones I've seen in the past, thanks!
The gallery linked was especially useful: http://imgur.com/a/O8ntb
Considering doing it to my T420S :)
The market is the same, really. What you're seeing is the end of Moore's law, with 10 year old laptops still being effective compute devices. This wasn't true in 2005 - that 1995 laptop was painfully old.
Obviously, this is largely a matter of preference and I understand that many users care more about thin shiny things than robust cases or high feedback keyboards. That's fine. The issue is that the market segment that the classic Thinkpads used to fill is completely gone now and those users, however few, are stranded.
To rephrase, for the meme generation: https://i.imgur.com/TvSgLr1.png
Thing about Thinkpads was that IBM didn't do consumer products.
T420 was the pinacle of the Thinkpads for me; T530 was a meh, T540 is the only time I've seen co-workers genuinely slam their laptops (removal of touchpad buttons etc). T450 brought touchpad buttons and some separation between Function keys, but the home row seems to be gone for good :<
Learn the alternative shortcut keys. You can keep your hands closer to / on the home row instead of reaching across the keyboard.
> not to mention losing the Ultrabay flexibility
How often do you swap drives? I haven't used optical media for 5+ years.
- I swap drives once or twice a month these days; used to do it more often. Main usage pattern was day/work and night/personal computer - by swapping the drive, my work "computer" had no personal stuff or data; my personal "computer" had no work stuff or data:). Secondary usage pattern is easy transfer of large amount of data - for example, I may have 300GB of photos to process for a wedding on one drive that I put in the ultrabay to process via Lightroom.
After this model, they switched to a keyboard with a skeletonized baseplate instead of solid steel, though I think the old keyboards can be swapped in to slightly newer models. The big thing for me is the screen. 1600x1200 is perfect for two Emacs windows side by side containing code up to 80 characters wide at a comfortable font size. Later "wide" screen resolutions are more likely to be shorter than wider.
I've been hoping for a change to this resolution monoculture, but I think I'm going to have to build something much more custom to replace this.
And I don't even think it's just a driver problem, as the touchpad can register a finger hovering over it, or not register it at all, if the finger is somewhat dry. I've spent countless hours trying to fine tune the thresholds, but it's just complete and utter shit.
I would have returned it and gotten a Macbook Pro if it wasn't for the fact that the new Macbook seems more geared towards light weight users with the smaller battery, memory and crazy expensive upgrades.
I've had to re-position my cursor three times while writing this, because my palm moves it around. It's rarely a problem when coding, because I don't stop to think for shorter periods, like I do when typing. A quick fix is to set the syndaemon to lock the touchpad when typing, but you can't have that treshhold too high either or it gets in the way.
Oh, and don't get me started on the speakers. There is no way in hell that Lenovo spent any time to tune the acoustics. Listening to people talk almost always gives resonance in the case. I know it's a laptop, but in the current state they are more or less useless.
On the other hand, what I do love about it:
- Super light weight, very noticeable when coming from a Macbook. - Amazing battery life, I can easily do a full days work on a single charge. - Recharges very quickly, which I think is a result of having two batteries. - Really good keyboard. Probably the reason I'm keeping it. - Debian Stretch was a breeze to switch to. Everything just worked (except for touchapd and docking station!)
But I honestly expected a little more from a laptop that costs $3000.
Expect it would be messy to work with for photoshop. For example, it recalibrates if you hold it down too long, and then creeps away when you release it.
Idea for precision work: small trackball and scrollers built into the side of the laptop (like a port).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-0B47221-keyboards-Universal-...
As an aside the x140e is about the cheapest Linux laptop money can buy. It's built like a tank for school kids, and has nothing exotic inside. You can replace the HDD with an SSD, and upgrade the RAM (shared video / system RAM) up to 32GB I hear. It's not a particularly speedy machine, but it runs well enough, and the price is right.
I'm wondering why this touch pad issue is so important for you if you do development. When I'm not mobile I have a mouse, an external keyboard, headset or external sound system, external monitor etc
I have the same problem with speakers though (X1 Yoga).
This is IMHO exactly the desired behavior. Not sure whether this is a feature of Xwayland or Gnome...
Business require better built laptops than that, they've got money to pay and they want to have decent services and support. As a special characteristics, they also never bother to have a GPU (save money and power but missing for some consumer folks).
Expect to wait at least three weeks for every time you send them an email.
The laptop is OK, though it was dirty when it arrived. It had a bunch of some kind of sticker glue on it.
https://shop.libiquity.com/product/taurinus-x200
One piece of hardware I'm very excited about is LowRISC: they're developing a fully open-source SoC, including open source chips, SoC and firmware.
I think it's the most promising platform for formally verified computing, because it's open and thus possible to model and verify all the way down.
I've been considering building my own and have recently dropped out to start working for myself; I'm thinking, perhaps I could build one for you?
It'd depend on how soon you need it and to what spec, as I'll have to source it from scratch. If you leave some means of contacting you I will, I'm quite interested in building these things for another purpose than "I like having and making these".
Are you planning to do a libre hardware startup or something?
"Secure hardware + software for the masses" is one area I'd really like to work on.
Of course you're right that Lenovo never should have put those on any of their machines, but my impression is that ThinkPads and the consumer line are run by very different groups within Lenovo.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/lse_bios_n...
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2984889/windows-pcs/len...
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht102023
> As of September 2015: Lenovo systems may include software components that communicate with servers on the internet - All ThinkCentre, All ThinkStation, All ThinkPad
I suspect that if a company really wanted to hide something they probably could. So unless you install windows or another OS on it yourself, you don't know what the manufacturer put on it.
I guess it would not be too hard to find in general if it shows up in the list of processes, but they could make it quite obscure and hard to find.
But yeah, I agree that this is quite an annoying move from Lenovo. The least they could do is make it opt-in instead of on by default.
Yes, but "not sure if it has spyware preinstalled" is much better than "sure it has spyware preinstalled".
I guess I could argue that the former is actually worse. If you know spyware is installed, you can opt to remove it. If you are not aware of the existance of spyware on the system, and it happens to have spyware, you are more vulnerable.
You could of course take the risk and assume that it does not have spyware, and maybe you're right and everything is fine, but you can not _know_ that it is fine.
The rest of your comment disingenuously assumes that a computer can only have one piece of spyware, and if you know what it is you can remove it and now you're safe. What if there's more spyware you don't know about? And if your remover is completely safe, why not just run it on all your computers, safe or not?
Not to mention that removing spyware from a computer turns it into a computer that might or might not have spyware.
What I missed at Dell and Apple is the possibility to configure your hardware a bit so that it better fits your needs. This was better for Dell when I purchased the Dell Latitude 7 years ago.
I did not choose an MBP because I feel safer with Linux in the long run. I heared that the security updates stop two years afterwards and the software upgrades makes the 'old' hardware a lot slower.
In the end every OS somehow sucks, but Linux sucks least.
That should fix the palmdetection problem. If not, also do:
synclient PalmMinZ=0
Seriously Thinkpads are the best dev laptops ever.
If it's actually the touchpad changes, they reverted them on the xx50 and up (or made them optional, I forget which).
(Typing this from a T430 I'm using while my W550s is being repaired, and I can't recall any drastic keyboard changes that had me in an uproar in the last while.)
From what ive read it got worse after the t420. So it was a easy choice for me.
Personally, I haven't had tap to click enabled for a long time, since I have physical mouse buttons available.
I picked up a cheap, off-lease T420 several months ago and added in 16 GB of RAM and an SSD and had a pretty decent machine for ~$250 all-in.
How much battery time are you getting?
And which battery do you use?
And are you running Linux or Windows?
(I'm considering a T420 right now)
If i could run Arch painfree on a mac i would agree that i would have better battery life most likely.
I am mostly just arguing against the constant mention for "macbooks having the best battery life for developer laptops". Which is not true if you could also use a Thinkpad with Linux
I wont upgrade until a) it breaks or b) someone pays me to get a new one
It's fast, supports up to 32gb of memory, 3 hard drives (regular, micro SATA, ultrabay), and has a good video card.
I also find the touchpad with its mouse thumb buttons to be easier on my wrists than the trackpoint or other laptop trackpads.
As a W (workstation) version it is heavy and requires a heavier charger. The T520 could solve this problem and also be a cheaper option.
Hopefully Lenovo's "Retro Thinkpad" project is brought to reality.
Personal Machine: (Ubuntu/CentOS with 1 or 2 VM running sometimes) For me: AMD Quad Core - A10 7300 , with 8GB DDR3 RAM and 1TB HDD (acer aspire e15) is perfect Linux development machine, it costs less than $500 . Unless you are running 3 or more VM or stuffs like high-end data processing using 16GB RAM for development is worthless.
Work machine: (Windows / Fedora-19 with 3VBox vm running most of the time) We (team of 7 members) received new Lenovo thinkpad in 2012, with 256SSD, 16GB ram, and i7 processor. Within 18months 3 or 4 of my friends faced hardware related-issues (suddenly stopped booting etc). Luckily mine survived until I left the company in 2015.
I think something is slowing down your boot, I get faster boot on a 2008 thinkpad running the same OS.
OT: systemd was supposed to improve boot performance but it has actually become much worse. Upstart on a weak chromebook boots in under 2 sec, why shouldn't your current generation thinkpad with a fast SSD match that?
Just fyi: I measure boot time from the time I press the power button. The BIOS logo appears a staggering 8sec or something although the BIOS fast boot is enabled. (Maybe the sync with NSA or something ;))
https://askubuntu.com/questions/10290/how-do-i-improve-boot-...
The initial boot delay is VERY annoying. I wish libreboot was supported on my laptop, then I could ditch lenovos ancient BIOS (and the NSA ping) once and for all:
For the Linux portion of your boot, try running "systemd-analyze plot > /tmp/boot.svg" and looking at that. (Also note that "kernel" includes any time spent waiting in the initramfs for you to type your disk encryption passphrase.)
My average uptime is about 22 days until I reboot for an update or something.
I used Linux for years, and I understood that in 2008 sleep/resume on notebooks didn't properly work, but now we have 2017 - 9 years later!
I've had Linux on mobile for ages and have yet to have reliable sleep/wake behavior on a dozen machines over the years.
Sleep on Linux works reliably if you run it inside a Mac VM though, FWIW! ;)
I was reporting that.
BTW: OSX has not a "pure" suspend to disc anymore and the default method is suspend to RAM when closing the lid
Which means the user loses data.
Also, old laptops with dieing batteries (or new ones with always-on sensors such as fingerprint readers) have some leakage during sleep so it may be better to turn them off if you are not going to use them for a few days.
edit: resume/suspend in linux works just fine and has done so for many years (in response to eltoozero)
I don't mind boot times in the 20s range (X220/Fedora/cheapo SSD) too much, but I do need to close down/reboot a couple of times a day otherwise no point in encryption.
Given, I'm not a Linux user, but I don't understand this at all.
On Windows, encrypted is encrypted-- the lock screen is exactly as secure as the login screen. Are you saying that in Linux the lock screen is easily-bypassed? So you have to keep your computer logged-out when you're in a place it might get stolen?
Above quote is from the section titled 'How to encrypt your disk in Linux' on the page at
https://theintercept.com/2015/04/27/encrypting-laptop-like-m...
I'm just a bit confused about how Windows can remove keys without messing up file handles &c when suspending to RAM.
The level of security I have now is adequate to my purpose but certainly something for others to take into consideration. Thanks for posting.
Wasn't there a recent story about how Windows is storing keys so that it can wake up in the middle of the night and apply updates? I thought that the conclusion was that locked isn't as secure as logged out.
Basically, everything works, I can get like 80% of the customization I had on Arch, haven't had any BS for the few months I've used it (besides newest Spotify version crashing with Wayland, but a downgrade solved that). It's pretty nice.
If you look around, you'll mostly find 14.04/16.04 in supported OSes. Even for OSS software, not just commercial stuff.
I bought a Broadwell laptop right when the first ones came out, and had a lot of trouble with the integrated graphics (Intel, who supposedly do a good job with their Linux drivers compared to anyone else). It took about an year for Ubuntu to package a kernel that didn't either have annoying blinking glitches or hard lock-ups regularly. Obviously, I've been using the mainline kernels all that time, but even with them it took a couple of months.
So yes, caution and patience with bleeding edge hardware is advisable.
If something goes wrong, you'll have a long wait for service, due to unavailability of parts or replacement systems. I had to wait literally months for "next business day" service. (Under normal circumstances, they really do show up on the next business day.)
Wait a few months, let any teething issues shake themselves out, and then get one. If you can't wait that long and need a new laptop now, grab an established model.
see ThinkPad T470
"The T470 is one of the new models to feature an optional Intel Optane 16 GB cache drive, and it also will have a touch fingerprint reader and Windows Hello camera option. Thunderbolt 3 is also here on the 14-inch laptop, along with a GeForce 940MX GPU and up to 32 GB of DDR4. It continues to feature the split battery, with a 23 Wh in the front and a removable 48 Wh or 73 Wh battery in the rear. It will be available in February starting at $914"
ThinkPad T470s
"The ThinkPad T470s continues to get slimmer and lighter. What was once a slightly lighter T series is now a 14-inch notebook that is under three pounds, with the latest version just 2.9 lbs. It can be had with up to 24 GB of memory, with 8 GB soldered on and a single DIMM available for another 16 GB. It still features Ethernet, along with Thunderbolt 3 and up to 1 TB of PCIe SSD. The thinner T series is also available in silver, with availability in February starting at $1099."
ThinkPad T470p "The p model is for performance, with 45-Watt CPUs instead of the U series found in the slimmer and lighter notebooks. This is combined with the GeForce 940MX, and up to 32 GB of DDR4. The T470p is also available with the 16 GB Intel Optane caching drive, and split batteries with up to 12 hours of battery life with the larger 72 Wh battery in the rear. The T470p will be available in March starting at $1049."
ThinkPad 13
"The ThinkPad 13 is Lenovo’s value offering, and it will be available in January for a starting price of $674. For less than $700, it will feature Intel Kaby Lake processors, with up to 32 GB of DDR4 with 2 DIMM slots, and up to 512 GB of PCIe storage. The display is a FHD 1920x1080 touch version, and it features 3 USB 3.0 ports, USB-C which doubles as a charging port, dTPM 2.0, and a SD card reader. It’s 19.1mm thick and weighs 3.17 lbs. It will also be offered in black or silver."
ThinkPad L470
"The L series is positioned as the mainstream business value lineup, and they slot in for a bit less money than the T series. The L470 is a 14-inch FHD IPS model, and it also features optional Intel Optane caching, and 2 DIMMS for up to 32 GB of RAM. It keeps the split batteries as well, offering up to 95.5 Wh of battery capacity. In addition, it adds a discrete GPU in the Radeon R5 M430. It will be available in March starting from $799."
ThinkPad X270
"This 12.5-inch ThinkPad has been around for quite a while now, and the latest version adds USB-C for power, display, and data. RAM options are 4 to 16 GB of DDR4, and storage is up to 2 TB of HDD or 512 GB PCIe SSD. It offers the ThinkPad split battery with 23 Wh in the front and 48 or 72 Wh in the rear. With the largest battery, Lenovo claims up to 21.4 hours of battery life. It comes in at 2.9 lbs, with availability in March from $909"
I am selling my much newer MacBook Pro retina now, as the Thinkpad is so much more functional, the keyboard is amazing the feeling of the machine itself is fantastic.
I am thinking to buy a X260 brand new because I need a newer CPU and better battery life, but for sure I'll only buy Thinkpads or Latitudes (I have one at work, amazing machine) from now on.
The keyboard is a smooth smudgefest with so-so tactile feedback (this particular point will depend on which manufacturer supplied the keyboard that ends up in your unit). The keys and trackpoint leave marks on the display when it is closed. The display bezel leaves marks on the palmrest. This is really poor engineering on basic stuff.
When I pick up the laptop by the lower left corner (hey, it's an ultraportable, why would I ever do that, right?), it immediately crashes with a garbled screen. After looking that up I found out that the HDD/SSD is under the left palmrest, and picking it up there may flex and alter the SATA connection, causing the crash. This seems to affect a random sample of users. So much for Thinkpad's vaunted "sturdy rollcage". But here's the real kicker: when I found this info on Lenovo's own forum, it was for the X230! This defect has been known for 3 generations of X-series Thinkpads, and yet they have never bothered fixing it.
Ever since they decided to move to 16:9 with horrible Low-Fi resolution (for a line of laptops meant to be for serious, professional users), I feel like Lenovo's Thinkpad group have be led with the vision and drive of a Roomba: mostly face-plants, and every actual improvement is to catch up to the competition (notable exception: hot-swapable battery). I only stick to Thinkpads because of the trackpoint and Linux compatibility, I suspect I'm not the only one.
Never had a hardware related issue in ~2 years of use. Well except that one bluescreen a couple months back - that could be hw I guess.
The screen res pisses me off though. :/
This is why I don't recommend something like the X260. You can't buy a premium laptop and "just hope" it will have none of the reported defects. We pay a premium with an expectation for reliability, not for a QA lottery.
Conversely it seems most complaints are for the X2xx and T4xx series, which is why I believe it has to do with manufacturing tolerance: maybe on 15" it's just good enough to not have any significant defect, and they kept the same M.O. for the more compact models, and there problems did pop up.
(The screen resolution has in fact been getting better for the latest two generations, but here again it is only to catch up to the competition. Remember when you could get a 15in Thinkpad with an IPS 2048x1536 display, long before the "retina" buzzword came to life? That was before Lenovo took over.)
In my experience, only Thinkpads and Latitudes have provided me satisfying user experiences.
Except XPS 13 and Macbook Pros, which I tried and I don't like the feeling.
Well its subjective either way. We've got over 300 of the things in the office though, so more inclined to trust that than counting complaints in threads.
I'm sure there are better laptops out there but the x240/260s are far from duds. What they are though is old...office is replacing them with x1 carbons thankfully - with HD screens (finally).
Reportedly a little fiddling in the BIOS to get it booting from the M.2, but I'd expect that to be the normal question of setting the boot order.
He has a whole bunch more on his channel about others similar to that lenovo.
If you know any other options, I would be happy to know.
It's isn't. Clevo, MSI, Razer, all offer high-performance options in their high-end models. The Clevos and the MSI with these specs don't start at $4k, I might add :P
All of the DDR4 laptops by Clevo seem to support 64GB of RAM, as well as 4K screens and GTX 1060/70/80 discrete GPUs.
EDIT1: To dig further: compared to half a dozen linux "tweaks" with my former Dell XPS laptop, I have zero with this Thinkpad. Everything works as expected, no hardware-related config whatsoever. This is using Arch Linux, which ships a recent kernel.
EDIT2: I bought the larger T560 version because I like the simplicity of doing everything on the same machine, but I'm more often using it at home than on the go, so the mobility / screen size trade-off is easy for me, and it's still relatively light (it's relatively thin, unlike W series).
On my NUC, when new, I ran debian testing and had to pull in packages from debian experimental for Intel driver support.
So I'd suggest maybe switching to downstream Ubuntu might involve less trauma?
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-update...
EDIT: Oh, and swapping out the hard drive isn't super easy any more. It's a matter of watching a Youtube video then everything goes smoothly, rather than look at the bottom of the laptop and everything goes smoothly.
I'm going to toss a couple of things out there:
1. If you are saying that literally nothing works, everything is awful, and that computer X is just complete garbage, then a few things pop into my head:
a) I start wondering if maybe you are just bad at computers, b) I suspect that you are probably talking about a computer your work bought for you that isn't your preferred OS, and c) I decide that you really aren't contributing anything useful to the conversation.
2. By the same token, when I see people writing that everything works flawlessly I think a couple of things as well:
a) you probably aren't doing anything that interesting with it, b) you are talking about a machine you are personally invested in rather than one bought for you by your work, and c) you really aren't adding anything useful to the conversation.
Here's the bottom line, from my point of view--as well as my point of view:
I spent my own money on and use two mac laptops, a windows laptop, and a Linux desktop.
From work, I have a mac laptop and a windows laptop, and a windows desktop.
All of these computers have benefits and drawbacks. The baseline of shit that just needs to work actually works on all of them, most of the time. Weird things go wrong from time to time. I find the Linux desktop to be more fiddly than the other machines at times, but not so much that it pisses me off more than apt-get makes me happy.
The windows machines are harder to get set up properly than the macs for working with dynamic languages, but they are the best choice for working on the Microsoft dev stack. Duh.
The macs have some real problems as well for certain parts of statistical work. Homebrew + anaconda + Xcode-select just doesn't get the job done far too often. And deving on mac + deploying to Debian or Ubuntu can be a bunch of not-fun.
Not a one of these machines is perfect or flawless in any way, but any one of them would be acceptable for a daily driver work box.
To the people who are speaking about specific issues on specific machines, I greatly appreciate that. To the top and bottom 10% who are saying everything/nothing works, you really aren't helping much here, and I find your opinions suspiciously biased.
crossing my fingers for 2017... 10g ethernet, sd reader, USB3, USB-C, Thunderbolt, and a fricken headphone jack would be spectacular! It doesn't have to be super thin, just a manageable weight and functional form!
3. Same resolution but smaller monitor and smaller overall size makes for easier traveling imo.
7. I have the exact same issue with hitting the touch pad when typing, but I've learned to go slower and avoid it.
8. I first ordered the x230 by accident with the larger battery and was amazed at the working time of 12-15 hours but it was also quite bulky. So I re-ordered with my missing keyboard backlight and with the slimmer battery and I'm quite happy with the slimmer form-factor while still having a good 6 hours of work time.
11. It's clearly not a media machine, it even lacks shortcut keys for pause/play media.
Suspend and networking work smoothly out of the box with systemd. The touchpad is OK using xf86-input-libinput, surprisingly the Trackpoint hardware is so bad in this model I've stopped using it.
I did buy it used so it could have just been a problem inherited from its previous owners. It worked well for the short time it did work.
I got another one when I switched teams at work, but the last guy had taken it with him on a boat and it got wet. The touchpad didn't work and the lower left screen was discoloured. I didn't use it very much.
For battery life (and maybe fan noise?), have you installed "laptop-mode" or its successor "tlp" (the laptop project)? Both will tune the system automatically for AC or battery power, and it does make a huge difference for battery life. If you don't use either, you should really try them: the 5 mn installation time will be a good investment ;)
Main issue on my side: I bought it just after it was announced, and Linux support was so-so (functional, but annoying glitches and stability problems). Next time, I'll wait for the new models to be out and will buy the last gen one on the cheap --- there's so little changes anyway nowadays. But now all this is gone, and Linux support is top notch.
Quality ok but not as good as I had imagined: there's now a bit of flex in one corner. Not a problem in practice, I just expected more sturdiness from a TP.
Clearly the chicklet keyboard of the MBP is the best of this kind, I ever used. The oldschool keyboard of the TP (it is the last without this chicklets) is the best keyboard I ever typed on.
The touchpad of the TP is disgusting. I deactivated it minutes after first boot and haven't enabled it again. The Touchpad of the MBP is the best touchpad I ever used. The multitouch gestures work flawlessly, I never hit it while typing and it is big enough to use two hands (preferred for some actions).
So it's a comparrison of apples and pears ;-)
The Mac is better for grapical stuff and everything visual. It's OS & Hardware are optimized for that. It's Design is overrated as it is pretty but doesn't provide more aesthetic value to me than the good old TP, but this is very subjective and many may disagree with me in this point.
The TP is better for Linux / Dev / Coding. The keyboard has enough keys to comfortably control everything without a mouse. If you need a pointer, use the red knub. Once learned you can nearly "beam" the pointer to where it shall be.
Don't want to miss one of them, I love both <3
Connectivity : It's the last macbook pro to have both a ethernet port and a DVD slot. And you have one of the new thunderbolt ports and a firewire port.
The i5 processor is still good. The only drawback is the screen (and the GPU). But for development it doesn't matter, and for my part, I watch movies on it without any problem. With SSD and RAM you have a computer that is as fast as the latest macbook pro.
It is solid and quite beautiful like all Apple portable computers. The battery is not very powerful (about 5 hours web browsing with chrome), but you can easily get external batteries (like the ThinkPad).
It is easy to install linux on it with the new boot system, though I like macOS because it is still Unix and has a lot of convenient apps and more softwares (and I can still install most of linux apps with macports or compile them myself).
Recently running 16.04 on it as well, once again an update without any issues.
Whilst on my other machines (An HP laptop and custom destkop) I always had _some_ problems with Ubuntu or other flavours of Linux. The HP laptop had the movie player problem mentioned here in the post, and had some issues with running Skype webcam/voice-chat.
The desktop had an issue of freezing up randomly, and some audio issues at first.
Currently Ubuntu is running on all these machines, but the old Lenovo laptop was the only one that in all these years worked without any issues.
See https://system76.com/ for example.
Apart from that the laptop has been absolutely stable and silent most of the time. I'd rate it better than average, just below the old IBM Thinkpads (e.g. T42) and Macbook Pros mostly because I wish they'd make the keyboard and trackpad feel a bit more solid like the one on a Macbook Pro. I'd step on a T42, not so much on the T440s.
While it's not perfect, I'd consider buying it again, especially as a Linux user.
For the Carbon there seems to be a recent version released (in the US): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13286150 (maybe they plan to substitude the 460s?)
Some sort of matrix of what Apple HW will work with Linux is found from here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple (but do your own research too)
Maybe a 4+ years ago, but this is less true today.
You must not have used recent Thinkpads or prosumer/business Dell laptops. It would probably blow your mind to learn they some even have the same touchpad hardware controllers. Sure, OS X has better software touchpad support, but the hardware is often identical.
Furthermore, the serviceability of RAM, SSD and battery on an Apple is typically non-existent while trivial on things like the Dell Precision line. And from my experience, most people who run Linux tend to tinker with things as opposed to buy a blackbox and never open it.
> Some sort of matrix of what Apple HW will work with Linux is found from here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple (but do your own research too)
That is handy, thanks for sharing! I wrestled with Linux on a 2012 rMBP before when HiDPI support was rough, and this would have saved me some time. :)
Coreboot support too if that's your kind of thing.
Stay away from the tablet x201, forget that noise.
Edit: And no, they really don't support more. The memory controller only supports 2 Gb chips, so with two ranks per channel you only get 2x 4 GB. (Intel i7-600, i5-500 series processor datasheet, section 2.1.1).
I believe there were other chips at the time that supported more than 8 GB (i7-9xxM perhaps), but these are a different die (Clarksdale quad cores, ie. high end mobile chips that are selected desktop chips).
If you'd excuse me now, I believe my work here is done ;)
... and at something like 1.3-1.5 kg they aren't really heavier than more modern laptops anyway, just thicker.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/intel_graphics https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-mode...
My only complaint is the lack of graphical oomph; gaming isn't really a thing this machine does, though it's okay at it. Then again, if that's what I was going for, I probably should have bought something else.
You can buy reasonably cheap laptops with similar specs, either by buying >2 generations back (this T430 was $300), or by buying new models that are made of cheap plastic.
In my experience, all laptops eventually suffer damage, the more durable ones just take longer and tend to be more minor faults each time.
So if you can afford your laptop suddenly failing and switching to another machine (possibly by swapping the drive out, presuming that didn't fail, or restoring from backups/cloud storage), great, you have a robust setup. But many people don't have such a robust configuration, nor do they bring a backup laptop when e.g. traveling.
So for individuals and businesses that have configurations of Highly Replicated Data (where it doesn't matter if you lose an individual laptop), it might be worth it to buy lots of cheap laptops.
For cases where the amount of time/value of data lost to failed laptops is worth far more than the cost difference of the more durable laptops, it's probably worth it to get the ones with the rollcages and carbon fiber-infused chassis and [...].
Full details can be found here:
https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...
Been using it for a few months now for development and it's been great.
What _did_ help was to take out the fan, clean it and then oil it carefully (too much oil or doing so without cleaning it first will only make things worse). You can also buy replacement fans, although original fans are quite expensive.
Started experimenting with an x230 + FreeBSD -HEAD (i3wm) about a year ago. It took a while to get setup, but everything works, including resume.
Just started using Ubuntu 16.04 on a X1 Carbon 4th gen. Pretty flawless install, except it won't correctly boot an encrypted LVM.
Ubuntu works flawlessly on it with the exception of not auto-rotating the screen when you fold it (you can set up a hotkey to do that, so not a big deal.)
Always loved thinkpads and if I was to buy a developer laptop today would probably be a thinkpad with Linux on it.
All of Lenovo's offerings seem overpriced as with the industry as a whole.
The T460 has hot-swapable batteries, real memory slots, and standard SATA disks. (but I wish is was a NVMe disk)
I picked a 460 over a 460s because it seems a lot more servicable in the future and I can easily replace worn out batteries.
If you're a single freelance person or consumer, the X1 may be the more appealing choice.
It used to be that ThinkPads had great keyboards too, pity about the chiclets.
ThinkWiki is unclear on its presence - The T460s is listed as a model with it, but the Tx50 models seem absent.
...or as a HN user said a while back:
tuananh 42 days ago | parent [-] | on: Why the MacBook Pro Is Limited to 16GB of RAM
all of this largely depends on personal preference.
to me, i value battery so much more.
it seems when people recommends stuff that has many flaws like this, it seems they set the standard pretty low and i find it hard to take the recommendation.