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Comment by cmiles74 | Hacker News Reader

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway.

After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogation they admitted that they had eaten a snack near the laptop and that, perhaps, a small amount of seltzer had "hit the keyboard". I had them bring it to the Apple Store and Apple refused to repair it under the warranty as it had "water damage." I had asked the company to purchase the extended warranty but that had been lost in the shuffle. My co-worker ended up shelling out ~$1000 out of pocket as they needed to get work done and they had very real feelings of guilt. After all, they did _eat_ near to the laptop.

I agree no laptop should get wet, or have a dollop of guacamole sauce splashed across the keyboard, or have the display sprayed with a fine mist of Coca-Cola as someone laughs and an unexpected joke. But these things happen and I don't think Apple is helping anyone by making laptops that can't withstand these common mishaps.

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Not only are Thinkpad keyboards the most comfortable and satisfying on the market, you can literally pour water on them and it will drain out the bottom of the laptop without ever touching internal components.

After using my Thinkpad for about six months, I can't go back. The keyboard is amazing, build quality is rock solid, screen is 4k with 100% RGB, and you can actually upgrade the thing.

I buy a laptop because I need a mobile keyboard experience. Why on earth would I buy a laptop with a keyboard that feels awful and can't handle normal use?

Honestly, if I absolute had to have OSX, I would just buy a Mac Mini and deal with the stationary aspect of it. Macbooks are just that bad. If I desperately needed portable Mac, I would probably even be willing to deal with iOS on the iPad pro over a Macbook.

I want to like Thinkpads for their hardware quality, but I cannot get over Lenovo stuffing malware into their systems, even after they got caught. How can I be put at ease?

That was IdeaPad, nothing to do with ThinkPad.

Good to know, thanks! Do both lines have completely different engineering and management leadership? That might put me at some ease.

The Ideapads are built like the cheap piece of crap x86 Windows laptops you can buy from anyone. They are fine for grandma checking her email but they are not meant to be on the move or do anything hard. I'm assuming the engineering teams are totally different. Thinkpads aren't cheap and the build quality generally shows that.

Thinkpad quality is nowhere near what it was when IBM was building them however :(

I think the perceived quality of older TPs is higher, but the objective quality is not so.

They do. Thinkpads are made out of magnesium and are super durable. Build quality is pretty great. Should be more reliable than a mac.

Mac build quality really isn't all that great. Lots of glue and plastic hinges. Motherboard design is also atrocious. Check out Louis rossman on YouTube. I remember seeing a video where the webcam died because a thermal sensor stopped working and for some reason the webcam was wired into the same bus.

They also solder in ram and ssds now. They removed the data recovery port so if your ssd kicks the bucket there's no way to recover anything. That's what the T2 chip is for- they market it as some magical coprocessor but it's just an ARM chip that acts as a drive and ram controller so they can use soldered parts on the cheap.

The ThinkPad team is still Tokyo based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Yamato_Facility the IdePad is from China.

well, you can do what I do and wipe the OS. Though, that's a bit of a time investment.

That's obvious, and certainly the first thing I'd do upon receiving such a device. But given how Lenovo got caught more than once pushing malware (after promising they'd fix it), I worry the problem could be deeply engrained in their product philosophy, and as such, I don't know that I'd even trust their firmware.

But maybe people change, and maybe I'm just being paranoid and depriving myself unnecessarily from hardware that I would like. (FWIW, I have used Thinkpads and greatly liked their keyboards, enough that I do consider them for every hardware refresh).

The harddrive that came with my ThinkPad hasn't seen electricity since it left the factory, I replaced it before I ever turned the laptop on.

The hard drive isn't the only place malware can live (the BIOS would be one example of another place).

Well, you do what you can.

Didn't the firmware add their malware to windows boot files, if detected? Not an issue if you can use another os, but if you need windows for some reason...

The malware was only found on the IdeaPad series (their consumer line). From reporting on it, the management team is separate from their business (Thinkpad) line, and the malware came from the 3rd party software packages that were included to subsidize the production of the low-end lines.

Those 3rd party packages are not a concern for the Thinkpad lines, since the higher business price point supports the lines without the need for subsidizing.

When I bought my thinkpad I booted directly to the Debian installer via USB and wiped the disk. I get great battery life (check the Arch wiki for tips on your specific machine to fix a few issues that may give it bad battery at first install).

The keyboard is wonderful and everything except the fingerprint scanner works great.

I get twenty goddamn hours from my X270 and it's incredible. I never use the fingerprint scanner, so I recommend Thinkpads all the time. Good connectivity too, although I'd appreciate maybe another USB port or two.

Just reinstall the OS

My only complaint with ThinkPads is that they are ugly as hell and I'm not an Apple fanboy. A device should look beautiful, clean and simple that you are looking at all day.

I'm not sure I agree. The newer ThinkPads, especially the thin lines like the P1 and X1 are beautiful devices, solid metal, matte black, very clean. Sure, they sell a few big and fat workstation designs as well, but you are getting an enormous amount of customizability and upgradeability for that. They have an option for every preference.

And even if you think all the models are ugly, a premium laptop is a very expensive purchase. Function follows form for most people when it comes to that kind of spending.

> A device should look beautiful, clean and simple that you are looking at all day.

That's valid. For my part, I literally could not care less how the device looks. I'll take the ugly one that works better any day of the week.

In my eyes, my Thinkpads (an T430 and X40, both deceased :-( ) do look beautiful, clean, and simple.

Thinkpads are IMO one of the few products that look better as they age. The traces of wear (and maybe a few appropriate stickers) give them the character that they are missing when new. There is something "real" and honest about that look - I like it very much.

I have a T460, and after typing on my work laptop (2015 MB Pro, by office policy), it feels heavenly going back to it at the end of the day. That keyboard is lightyears ahead of the Apple chiclet keys. I still fondly miss the actual scissor style keys of yesteryear Thinkpads, but I'll still take any Thinkpad keyboard over an Apple keyboard any time.

Macbooks used to survive that too. My 2009-ish Pro got half a liter of sweet tea to the keyboard. Keypresses sounded crunchy for almost a year, but otherwise it worked fine.

I still have a 2009 MBP (although was running linux for the last 5 years), I only just upgraded to a Dell XPS 13 this year.

Here's the funny thing: the keyboard started to fail after 9 years of use, this is the only thing that pushed me to finally get a PC replacement (new macs are terrible linux machines) - the little rubber domes under the keys just started cracking and breaking apart so some keys feel really squidgy - mind you they still work at least.

So there's a pretty insane statistic for you:

    - 2009 MBP = 9 years of keyboard use (my main computer)
    - 2019 MBP = <1 year before everyone has problems

Edit: RE the water thing, these models have a big sticky piece of plastic under the whole keyboard which seals it to the top case (I considered trying to replace it - although no one makes new ones so it seems kinda pointless, and quite difficult)

Just do what Apple would do and replace the entire top case. They typically run $30-$50 on eBay for older MBPs. That and a SSD upgrade (if you haven’t done that already) and you will have a functional backup computer again.

I added an SSD over half a decade ago, that's why I was absolutely fine with it's performance (at least after moving to linux and a minimal WM, OS X died for me long ago from bloat)... it's only the human interfaces that started to physically fail.

I know you can pick up spare parts for these but the problem is that they are all as old (they are commonly advertised as new on ebay, but they are not), they are used parts, and it is quite a lot of work to get all the guts out of the top case, only to replace it with a slightly less used components.

The best middle ground I could think of is to selectively replace rubber domes as they fail by cutting out the bits of silicone and gluing in new ones... only needs to pop of one key at a time.

I lost my 2009 MBP to a smaller water spill than that on the keyboard, so I don’t think there was any special design reason yours survived. Additionally, I don’t remember any special claims about those models and liquids.

It had a big plastic plane below the keyboard. Not the watertight with a drain hole type of Thinkpads, but still good enough if you're quick with turning the thing upside down.

Note that I believe the water pouring trick does not apply to the Thinkpad Carbon X1. I killed a third gen X1 years ago from a water spill. Luckily Lenovo fixed it for $500.

It really irritates me how much of a form over function bad laptop the X1 is. Yet Lenovo won't sell stuff like their best screens with say their T-series lineup so you have to make compromises either way.

What are the issues? I love my X1. I had one for work a few years ago and finally bought my own recently. It’s perfect for me. Can’t upgrade the ram, but that’s par for the course on ultraportables.

I dislike the keyboard.

I dislike them ditching the spill proofing.

I dislike the general lack of upgradability/repairability.

I would much rather have the t4xxs form factor with better quality components but you have to go x1.

According to the specs [1], the X1 Carbon Gen 3 does have a spill-resistant keyboard, and the current Gen 6 too. Given the compact design, maybe the liquid just couldn't escape from under the laptop in time, so it soaked the motherboard from below?

[1] https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-...

Yeah, it definitely wasn’t the keyboard that was the biggest issue, it was the motherboard. I guess a spill resistant keyboard is great, but if you don’t have a spill resistant motherboard...

Spill resistant keyboard means there are slits inside that channel the water under the laptop without it reaching the motherboard.

I remember knocking over a bottle of water onto my T420 freshman year of college. I knew the drain holes were there but never tested it. It was pretty nerve-wracking for a few minutes wiping up all the water and seeing my laptop still working.

I did the same thing. I need OSX, but hate the current laptop lineup. So I got a Mac Mini, eGPU, and a killer screen. Cheaper than an iMac, crazy performance, and very upgradable (apart from the soldiered SSD). Looking hard at a Thinkpad for my next laptop, even as a strict OSX user since 2004.

I agree it's great hardware. Do you run Linux? Because my problem with Lenovo is Windows. It's hot garbage despite the perception that Windows is decent again.

But what's not great hardware is the touchpad. I always miss the Apple touchpad. It's perfect.

I run Ubuntu on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon. Runs beautifully out of the box, install was very easy, and I haven’t had a single issue with it.

I run Fedora 29 on TP Carbon X1 6th gen. Perfect - no issues for me.

Carbon touchpad is one of the bext non-Mac ones I have tried. is it perfectly up to par with Mac...no, but I havent found any that were.

Can I get my TP keyboard and Mac track/touchpad? That would be nice :)

The keyboards are good (although I'm also totally fine with the Macbook 2015 keyboard). However Lenovo and all others in the windows universe can't provide any touchpad experience that is close to what Apple can offer.

On my last Thinkpad I mostly opted to use an external mouse. On my Macbook I absolutely don't miss it.

As a Mac and iOS user, I often feel that I'm just putting up with their bad hardware to use their operating system nowadays.

Honestly any Laptop you pay 1200+ on should "survive"(1) you _splashing_ Coffee on it, not just a view drops of liquid. It's totally technical doable in a number of ways and the only thing in its way is because you are fanatic about getting your laptop another mm thinner and/or profit margins.

(1): Survive in the sense that it's in general fine and you at most have to replace some easy to replace not super expensive part. I for example splashed ~1/2L of Orange juice on my Laptop, and it was fine except for the keyboard (due to it being orange juice, water probably would have been fine). Removing the keyboard so that I can continue working with an external one took ~10min for an inexperienced person. And the replacement Keyboard had a price of ~80 Euro with Backlight 40 without, also easy to put back in.

Several years ago, I had a Sony Vaio VGN-FS115M and it was in the waterproof laptop sleeve in my bag. I literally poured a whole hot latte with sugar in the sleeve and the laptop was swimming in coffee. I took it out, removed the battery, disassembled it, took away all visible stains carefully with a good quality paper towel and let it dry. A year later the only thing not working was the lan port and I blame the sugar for that... If the same thing happened today my laptop would be long dead before I could disconnect the battery...

Is it normal for companies to expect employees to pay for accidentally damaged equipment? At everywhere that I've worked, some accidental damage was treated as a cost of doing business, and IT would replace it.

No that is not at all normal

I don't think so... Generally all of the Dell's have an extended warranty and, so far, most of the damage has been covered under that. Where I work there is also an insurance policy to cover laptop damage, they are currently in talks with the insurance company to get the damage covered.

I think that in the end my co-worker will be refunded the money. I don't think they will be left with the bill.

In many companies that's the case. I hate it.

Let them sue. They'll lose if they can't prove negligence.

I guess parent and you are talking in the US context, but to add another data point in France it's not even legal. If the employee did it on purpose or by (grave or repeated) negligence then you can fire them with fault, if they really tried to harm the company "faute lourde" and then sue them for damage.

But making them pay for repairs for a laptop after accidental every day accident? You would lose up in prud'homme court faster than ever (its the worker / employees court).

Absolutely not. Maybe if there's a pattern of repeated irresponsible behavior, I could see a little bit of an argument for it, but the more likely state of affairs would be that the problem employee would only ever be given shitty or cast-off machines.

Frankly, I'd see it as more reasonable to FIRE someone who repeatedly failed to care for company equipment appropriately.

Not a single company I've worked for has had a policy of employees paying for accidental damage.

IMX, it varies. At the hospital I worked, damaged equipment was replaced without question, but only doctors were issued laptops or iPaqs (this was pre-smartphone). If the same individual kept damaging equipment it went to the individual's lead or supervisor for disciplinary reasons, but I only ever saw that once when a guy threw three iPaqs against a wall (never found out why).

At the school district I work, the policy for staff is similar to the policy for students.

If the damage is caused through normal wear, the district pays.

If the damage from a preventable accident and a first incident, the district pays. Everybody gets one excused.

If the damage from a preventable accident and it's a second or later incident, the staff member is charged $25 or the cost of the repair (whichever is greater).

If the damage is intentional, then the staff member always pays. This comes up more often than you might expect.

Stuff like lost keyboard keys we didn't track, but pretty much everything else we did. We have about 600 staff devices. There's usually one or two individuals every year who are careless enough or unfortunate enough to have to pay for damage to their district issued system. I recall one teacher whose children kept damaging her work laptop. That year she bought 3 chargers (cord cut) and a laptop (it had to have been thrown or dropped over 10 feet). She was told she couldn't take her laptop home anymore.

Simply put, the district does not have the funding to replace laptops that staff members damage.

> If the damage is intentional, then the staff member always pays. This comes up more often than you might expect.

I’m guess the children example you mentioned might be one example of this?

That does happen and it is considered intentional, but, no I meant the staff themselves damaging them. Drawing on them (the screen in particular, which often doesn't come off cleanly), popping the keys off and on until they break, flexing parts of the case (hinge covers) until it breaks, getting angry and hitting the computer and breaking something. Anything you would expect a kid to do we've seen teachers admit to doing themselves.

Kids do that stuff too, but they also do stuff like break headphones off in the jack, punch a hole in the screen with a pen, gouge the screen with scissors or a hobby knife, smash them on the ground, stand on them, sit on them, etc.

Remarkable! Thanks for sharing.

AFAIK it's normal for companies to have warranties for expensive computer equipment. The small tech startups I'm familiar with just buy consumer AppleCare or the equivalent, while the bigger companies I'm familiar with have big enterprise warranty plans.

I’m in no way defending Apple’s keyboards and there are some real issues with tiny bits of dust completely ruining a keyboard, but normal laptops have always been susceptible to even a little liquid damage.

But if your coworker couldn’t just go to his manager, tell them what happened and the company paid for it, that says more about the company.

I know somebody who spilled a whole slurpee into a cheap desktop keyboard once and had it continue working fine. I would pay extra. To have a laptop like that for sure.

A desktop keyboard is a completely different story than a laptop. It can be much thicker and therefore more mechanical than a laptop keyboard.

I don’t need my laptop to be slurpee-proof, and given the trade offs of laptop design I hope it isn’t. I’d think this would add significant heft to the device to be able to guarantee such performance.

Fair enough, but I'd just say that I don't mind an extra half inch if the device weighed the same. IMHO, 10 year old 13 inch laptops were plenty small, but I do appreciate the lower weights

Sure, I wouldn't mind a tiny bit thicker to get the old MBA/MBP style keyboard back. I also loved the "Blackbook" keyboard, and the 12" Aluminum PowerBook. Those were the days!

I wouldn't mind a bump in weight just because of how stupid the compromises have become. Maybe not back to 6 pound laptops but still.

Desktop keyboards have wider tolerances to work with even if they're cheap. Lenovo has managed to figure out how to make a spill-proof laptop keyboard though.

At least for myself, I fully expected Apple to fix the laptop. I had read about these keyboards and their issues, I was really surprised when Genius refused to take it in for warranty repair.

I suspect that if we had purchased the extended warranty, there's a good chance it would have been covered. Reading through the text of on their website it seems like this kind of thing might even be somewhat expected (like people understand that phones will be dropped).

"Coverage for up to two incidents of accidental damage, each subject to a service fee of $99 for screen damage or external enclosure damage, or $299 for other damage, plus applicable tax."

https://www.apple.com/support/products/mac.html

Coverage for accidental damage is not available from Apple for Mac products. You would need third party coverage

Check out the link above from Apple's website, the quote is from their extended warranty page.

AppleCare Plus definitely would have covered this incident, no question.

Spilling liquid on the keyboard resulting in not being able to power on the machine is different than the sensitive keyboard issues due to debris.

I wouldn't expect Dell to give me a free repair on my XPS if I had "only accidentally spilled a little bit of water in it."

If the problem was really just eating a snack near the laptop resulting in some keys not working right due to crumbs then Apple most likely would have covered that.

> normal laptop have always been susceptible to even a little liquid damage

Check out Thinkpads

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/landingpage/small-business/reso...

I came here to say this as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U5n2WaMMHo

I was a real dumbass myself one day and spilled a glass of water on my Lenovo in a cafe. I took it apart just in case to dry out, but I'm not sure I even needed to. I put it together and it was just fine.

I have an Apple laptop for work and I work in cafes a lot. I assumed that Apple of all companies would consider this lifestyle issue, but now I'll be extra careful. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that times have changed for Apple.

Annecdata. I had someone accidentally knock a glass of water over a working T440s and it died.

They're water resistant not water proof. If you pour water right down the CPU vents you're gonna have a bad time.

OP suggested otherwise...

I deliberately poured water onto my thinkpad T430 a total of 3 times in 6 years. All three times, I did it while the laptop was running.

The second time I did it, the laptop turned off as I was pouring the water. The drains are only so big; water can only move so fast through them. I had poured the water so fast that it overflowed the drains and the keyboard, and run into the motherboard.

I pulled the battery, keyboard, and access panels, and let the laptop dry overnight. I turned it on the following morning, and it worked without any problems.

So yeah, spill-resistant laptops have their limits. Dumping a quart / liter of water on them all at once is beyond their limits. And you may get unlucky with spilling onto the laptop in just such a way that it gets into something. In general, however, they seem to be very effective at preventing damage from liquid spills.

Exactly. Here is Louis Rossmann dumping a pint of water on his Lenovo https://youtu.be/ig3xI8dUdm0?t=1702

A nice exception to that rule were (are?) the HP G series. Similar in class to latitude. A staple of corporate class laptops. Their keyboards are spill proof and have internal drainage channels for coffee not to puddle or get into the internals. I've seen it work a couple times, after a cleanup those Laptops were back at their (messy) user's desks.

HP (ProBook/Elitebook/Z Book), Lenovo (Thinkpad), Dell (Latitude and even a few Inspirons) - the classic trifecta of business devices has had spill-resistant keyboards since...dunno, basically forever.

And yes, it's my experience as well - they have prevented quite a lot of workplace drama. :)

I am sorry for what happened. But I just can't understand people who drink and eat at the same table with electronics. It is hard to happen, but eventually it will and will damage everything, so why doing that, this upsets me when I see people taking risks for nothing. Foods and drinks shouldn't stay outside kitchen.

Your kids are different from my kids then.

So what? You've never carried your laptop to a café and bough some coffee and a donut?

It's 2019, I'm not saying laptops should withstand me dropping an entire can of soda on top of the keyboard, but I should be able to eat near it or maybe even above it without any serious repercussions.

"this upsets me when I see people taking risks for nothing" this happens all the time, for every task. Life is practically a game of balancing risk and reward. Different people balance risk in different ways. Perhaps they accept the risk, but find that the productivity boost or convenience of eating at their desk is worth the small risk of paying for the price of a new laptop/keyboard. Or perhaps they have mistunderstood the risk, having never (yet) suffered through the process of replacing it.

I think laptops SHOULD be water resistant actually and that it's bullshit to not be able to eat and drink at my computer. So I buy durable computers instead of the MBP. Probably the only think that's truly inadvisable is drinking stuff like sugary drinks and milk at the computer because that crap is really hard to clean. Drink water.

I've always liked Lenovo computers ability to take a spill.

I have ruined several keyboards (3 Apple, 1 HP) by accidentally spilling water/coffee on them. What I don't understand is how do these devices get completely destroyed by small amounts of liquid.

I've disassembled these keyboards, cleaned and dried them out to no avail. Is something getting shorted out permanently ? Is some sensor getting ruined ? what exactly is happening and is there nothing that can be done to revive them.

Corrosion is almost always to blame. Corrosion damage can often be repaired with some microsoldering work.

> My co-worker ended up shelling out ~$1000 out of pocket as they needed to get work done and they had very real feelings of guilt.

Ouch! Really? What kind of company wouldn't pay for this repair? And isn't this some sort of legal issue? The laptop doesn't belong to your co-worker so they can't really authorize repair of it. Just a weird situation, that.

I think this may have been lost in my post: the Genius at the Apple Store was clear and insistent when they diagnosed the issue with the laptop that the customer was at fault. It is my suspicion that Apple is trying to push blame onto the customer and I think that is unfair at least in some situations.

It reminds me of the extended warranty on phones; you get one because in the course of regular use you might drop the phone. In this case Apple has made these machines deliberately brittle and now you really need to get that extended warranty because in the course of regular use you might sneeze on the keyboard or drop crumbs of something onto it.

They also need to get work done ASAP and while we have spare Dell laptops on-hand, we don't have any spare MacBooks. I expect them to be reimbursed eventually, there is an insurance policy that covers lost or damaged laptops.

I damaged my company 2017 MBP by dropping it ~24" when I caught the cord on my foot. The Genius Bar wanted me to pre-authorize $800 of charges before they would even look at it. I was a bit appalled that I couldn't pay any kind of diagnostic fee.

A moment of silence for the dearly departed MagSafe.

You can get one of these for really cheap... I use them to type in other languages

https://m.aliexpress.com/s/item/32774074005.html

And if you care about mushiness the TPU ones are great compared to the silicone ones. example [1].

Yeah, I don't understand this whole, "my expensive computer isn't bulletproof sentiment". One of the things I was stoked about and ultimately a major factor that won me over when I bought my personal MacBook Pro back in late 2013 was that you could buy a matte screen protector and keyboard cover that fit like a glove. I had a friend with a 2009 MBP that was in amazing condition despite being his only machine when he was in high school, living by the couch and frequently being the entertainment source while eating. He had promptly put it in a case and put a keyboard cover on after receiving it.

I agree with sentiment that some laptops are going to get eaten over, but I don't think it's the manufacturer's job to make sure that it can tolerate that. Some people are never going to eat over their laptop. Like I don't bring food near my. I can tell you from experience that if I want full power on my MBP I need to take it out of its plastic case and definitely take off the keyboard cover. And I do do this when the task at hand warrants it, but most of the time I keep the cover on, and I appreciate the flexibility.

[1] I recently replaced my old one and bought this; I'd recommend it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AQFFSAG

Thanks for the tip, bought it.

I had that happen to my 2012 MBP.

Ordered replacement top case with keyboard assembly off ebay.

Took a very long day to take it all apart, transfer to new top, and reassemble.

Worked first time.

A few months later random keys would glitch.

I use it like a desktop when I need to now.

By Bay Area standards, you work for a super shitty company.

I don't think anyone was prepared for this to be something that wasn't covered under warranty or, if it wasn't covered, so expensive.

Where I work there is an insurance policy to cover laptop damage, they are currently in talks with the insurance company to get the damage covered. I think that in the end my co-worker will be refunded the money. I don't think they will be left with the bill.

I think it's terrible for any company to cause an employee to reasonably think they need to pay out of pocket for the company's equipment. "Bay Area standards" have little to do with it. My first part-time job was doing tech support for a small town public school district that had very little money and was far from a flashy Bay Area tech company, but they had a supply contract with HP that covered equipment failure and damage.

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