I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.
If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a couple of times to discharge all capacitors etc, otherwise you will blow a microscopic fuse (I did!) and it's near impossible to replace it. I just soldered a bridge between the contacts! I just can't do anything wrong again or I'll fry something.
I wish the multiple replacement batteries I got for it over the years were as performant ;o)
It is most likely due to poor quality batteries. The "cells" in a 9-cell battery are 18650 batteries, which vary in capacity from 3400mAh at the high end, to counterfeit ones that are labelled to have 1200mAh capacity, but in reality have only a fraction of that. Lithium-ion batteries also have a limited shelf life, so even good quality aftermarket batteries will have a fraction of the rated capacity if they have been sitting in a warehouse for years.
Battery had been disconnected, also the CMOS battery. I usually remember to hold down the power button for a few seconds. Dang.
Didn't chase this further, as I am clumsy with board-level repairs, and my friend didn't want to throw more money at the project.
Edit to add: Obviously this is an i5 laptop from 2012, much newer than some of the other machines in this thread. Although it's not my daily driver anymore I do still use it for music production.
About dying suddenly; that goes, in my experience, far more for new hardware. Old hardware (especially if we are talking ‘ancient’ hardware like before 1995) has a lot more signs of giving up and a lot easier ways of fixing it when it does. I have machines that dies that first started smoking so you could pinpoint what component gave out. The x220 is not quite that old but because I have a stack of spares but one favorite, I have been able to fix it after it suddenly died quite easily without just replacing the entire thing. That will not happen when your 2018 mbp suddenly dies.
(I was sure I'd have complaints about the keyboard until I spent a solid month on one and then I raised that the old style keyboard just hurts my hands. It's a little less proof against spills, though the computer underneath is still fine about them.)
The other part is keyboard - I absolutely believe that if I used a T480 for a couple of weeks I could get used to them... as long as they were the ONLY thing I ever used. But that's not my use case. I have client laptop, and a lot of regular keyboards for my desktop and laptops. They all have the standard home row (Insert/Home/PgUp, Del/End/PgDwn). It's not that laptops have changed this pattern - it's that each manufacturer and even model changes it _differently_ (and seemingly needlessly), which makes it hard to have a consistent muscle memory for these keys:<
As for keyboards--that's why I brought my machine to clients when I was a consultant, and specify the same laptop at my new job. ;)
Main thing that worries me is the bios, but coreboot seems to work.
It's funny the one I bought new direct from Lenovo in 2011 is still fine, but I was able to upgrade doubling the core count and getting USB3 by assembling out of I7 parts.
I am thinking of finally upgrading to an X280 or an X1 but I am afraid the keyboard will be too much of a downgrade.
If you were to use it primarily docked and with a Thunderbolt dock, though, I could see it being pretty awesome.
Sure the x220 has a good keyboard compared to its replacements but the other thing it has is superior mechanical design: you NEVER have to prye apart plastic pieces. Want to change me more? It's one screw away. HD? One screw. Keyboard? 3 screws. Battery? Push 2 tabs, pull the battery pack.
Sure it's a bit thicker, but I don't understand when that's an issue ever, at least I can use it on trains, cars and even airplanes as long as they don't have those space-invader-reclining-seats.
Every new laptop I look at is just worse design, less upgradable (note: I only look at laptops with track points, the other ones are useless to me). What happened? Why have laptops gotten worse?
I advise installing an SSD and thinkfan or TPFC. Mine is mostly silent (except when watching video)
I didn't replace the HDD because the longer load times aren't really an issue. It's the parts that require some processing power that are a bummer. And this is also where the noisy part comes in, given that it's in high load for longer stretches. I prioritized lower temps over lower noise, this may have helped with the longevity.
I might throw in an SSD just to show the little workhorse some love.
Now I'm just waiting for this newest one to kick the bucket. There are already some stability issues. Once it goes, I'm going to try fixing the thermal paste myself (https://www.ifixit.com/Story/20939/MBP_2011_GPU_Nightmare). I have all the parts and tools in my desk drawer ready to go for when it's game time.
I don't really know what I'll do if that doesn't work. I've considered getting a refurbished 2015 MBP.
See https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/166876/macbook-pro... for more info
but it would be nice if we had good aftermarket hardware support, so maybe this is a fine time to rep.
my x220 is a delightful experience. awesome mechanical keyboard and (with SSD & 16gb ram) pretty snappy on all the websites i need it for.
perfect for all kinds of non-javascript coding, and handles webpack acceptably well.
Solid machines indeed!
I found a way to turn 16:9 into an advantage: if you go for 70-character columns, you can get a 3-column display in a tiling WM or Emacs if your resolution is 1280 or more pixels horizontally (there are 5-pixel wide fonts out there, but none of them are very legible).
https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/6wnmqd/x220x230_f...
I had that very machine with 1 GB RAM (though with a SSD, its SATA1 (!!)). Couldn't run GNOME 3 on it, but more lightweight stuff like XFce ran great.
It also can't do VMs well since it lacks the hardware extensions, and it can't do Docker either.
The only good about it was the rfkill, the chasis, the ThinkPoint, the detachable battery, the price, the keyboard, and Coreboot.
It has more USB ports than my current MBP which also lacks rfkill and doesn't have a detachable battery though the trackpad is the best (2015 version).
Total agree with regard to hardware design / ergo superiority over the MBP -- that's exactly why I made the switch