Comment by sublupo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sublupo | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame that thinkpads are becoming less and less modular and functional. Some of my favorite functionalities are:

* Red nub. I use it exclusively, the track pad is disabled and serves me no purpose

* Hot swappable battery. I have a spare battery and it effectively doubles how long I can use my laptop without without charging.

* 7 layered keyboard. It's great to not have to use so many keyboard shortcuts, but rather have a dedicated button.

* Hardware switch for WiFi. If only it had one for the camera, microphone and sound.

* Durable and modular. I installed a hard drive using nothing more than a screwdriver and a 5 minute YouTube tutorial.

* Linux support (or at least not hindrance)

Some things that I do not like about the leaked Thinkpads.

* Envelope widthed laptops. I'm planning on using the Ethernet port before I plan on mailing my laptop in an envelope.

* 1 gram lighter than earlier models. I'm not so strong, but I have no problem sticking my laptop in my backpack and walking around with it. If I really wanted to I could remove 1 gram from my backpack without having to make the compromises that Lenovo is.

* Soldered memory. WTF

Does anyone have a recommendation for a laptop that is still being built that have most of the features that I am looking for. Assuming that it is good quality, money is not so much of an issue.

I still use X220s for all my portable computing needs as it was the last model before Lenovo ruined the keyboards. As they invariably die off or just get too slow (or architecturally different - can hardly profile code on them nowadays) I have no idea what to do. Every single modern laptop, irrespective of price, looks like a huge downgrade in every aspect I care about other than the CPU.

Are there any options out there at all for laptops that have at least usable keyboards, hot swappable batteries, proper Ethernet ports, basic maintainability and solid build quality instead of the insane thinness fetish?

I'm not sure if there's one for the X220, but there's an unofficial motherboard available that turns an X61 into an "X62":

https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/

Unofficial motherboard mods for X220 and X230 are called X320 and X330, respectively.

I've since bought an X210. It's an X201s chassis with:

• A Core i7 8550u (4 cores, turbo boost up to 4GHz)[1]

• 2 DDR4 SODIMM slots. I put 32 GB of RAM in.

• 2x mini PCI Express slots. There's an 802.11/Bluetooth card in one. The other is empty but could be used for LTE.

• An M.2 NVMe slot. I put a 2TB SSD in it.

• An upgraded screen (2880x1920, 450 nits, wide gamut). The bezel is cut to make room for the 3:2 aspect ratio, sacrificing the webcam.[2]

I have small hands so I slightly prefer the X62's keyboard, but everything else is much better on the X210.

1. https://ark.intel.com/products/122589/Intel-Core-i7-8550U-Pr...

2. http://i.imgur.com/lj7g7CV.jpg

I didn't think the X201s ever had a camera to begin with. The X200s doesn't.

I didn't know that. I figured the webcam was removed since the 2nd batch X210s had them.[1] It looks like the 2nd batch chassis is the X201, not the X201s.

1. https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/1019773411688570881

If you want to see (most) of the many "TYPE xxxx-xxx" variants of a given older ThinkPad model number, and don't mind doing some detective work, you can Google for "PSREF" PDF files.

The PSREFs were/are catalogs of the variants available for sale and their specs, issued periodically. There were also PSREFs for withdrawn variants, covering year ranges.

(I got well-acquainted with these when stockpiling X200 units for Coreboot, a large-screen workstation model I like, and an older model that has better build-quality keyboards that can be swapped into certain newer models.)

Various Lenovo Web site lookups of specs have come and gone, and TYPEs seem to disappear from them sometimes, but the PSREF PDFs are forever.

Sorry I don't seem to have PSREFs covering X210S, but I suspect they're out there.

Oh wow. I have an X62 and T70, but skipped the X210 because of the display. If I knew you could get it with a 3:2 display I'd have been really tempted to get one. Do you do the mod yourself or purchase it pre-installed?

It came with the display pre-installed. I think all 3rd batch X210s have the new display.

@ggreer,

would you consider writing a review, please?

I'm interested in

- how often the fan goes on

- whether it runs Linux/BSD flawlessly

- where you can buy it (without speaking any Chinese)

Here you go: https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/

> It's a shame that thinkpads are becoming less and less modular and functional.

The new T490/T490s/T590 ThinkPads are even worse in terms of upgradability.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T490s-T490-T59...

> It seems that Lenovo prioritized sleeker designs over flexibility with the newest T ThinkPads, as the manufacturer is making some rather drastic changes to the internals and ports of the new models. Features like the SD card slot (replaced with MicroSD) or full-size RJ45-Ethernet on the T490s are getting the axe, the same is true for the 2.5 inch storage bay on the T490 and T590. Also, Lenovo is relying more on soldered RAM than before. The ThinkPad T490s has a maximum of 32 GB of soldered RAM, while the T490 and the T590 both have up to 16 GB of soldered RAM plus a single DDR4 RAM slot (up to 48 GB RAM in total). All of those changes will likely result in some fierce discussions among the ThinkPad fans.

I think the silver T490 is a little telling. Anecdotally, people are abandoning MacBooks for Thinkpads due to a drop in the quality and utility of the former, and Lenovo is trying to grab that share by... making Thinkpads more like Macbooks?

Sadly, those of us who value features only found on older Thinkpads are probably in the minority. My X220 is slowly aging out of usefulness and I'm not sure what will replace it.

What's interesting is that even aside from build quality, that little red eraser wad basically pushes Thinkpads outside the normal comparison shopping market.

If you don't like touchpads, your choices are basically "buy a Thinkpad direct from Lenovo" or "try to find the weird corners of the world where they actually mention, let alone sell HP Elitebooks and certain Dell Latitudes, and then find they're mind-blowingly expensive because they basically only compete with the high-end ThinkPad series."

I ordered a new laptop recently, and the ThinkPad option (an E585 plus adding my own RAM and SSD upgrades) clocked in about 40% cheaper than buying the comparable Elitebook. Even if the bottom were epoxied on, and you had to pay heir absurd prices for RAM and storage, I'd probably have ended up there.

Check out the P52. It's still got the Ethernet port and upgradeable memory. I've got a p51 and I just dropped 64 GB of RAM into it. I'll probably replace the SATA SSD with an NVMe drive or two as they drop in price in the next couple of years.

The T-line of laptops has suffered from the same kind of design mistakes for several years now, but as long as Lenovo keeps making the P-series with replaceable parts I'll keep buying them.

Go for the T440p. It should fit most of your needs and you can also replace the trackpad with the T450 version's in case you want clickable buttons. Unfortunately you dont get the 7 rows keyboard.

I'd really like a USB-C-Thunderbolt-based UltraBay. That would let you do literally everything UltraBays have ever been used for and more. Can you imagine sliding the 10GbE into your laptop...

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