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Comment by MrGilbert | Hacker News Reader

I bought a x230 last year as my non-gaming computer, and I really like it. I bought it for 117€, it was pretty beaten up. The display is the cheap TN panel, has a light spot in the center, and the keyboard doesn't match my locale. However, it has the top-level i5. (i5-3380M, I think). I also bought a docking station at a bargain.

This year, I bought a new IPS display, a matching keyboard and a new screen bezel for it. I'll hopefully be able to use it for some more years - I really love the form factor.

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Enterprise ThinkPads are amazing machines. They're very sturdy (although the X230 notoriously has a weak screw holder in the top left (or is it right?) corner that will almost always break and make that corner of the case a bit wobbly. Annoying but not critical. And the i7 top of the range version that comes with the 180GB Intel SSD... Well, the SSD is bad and can be thrown out. It has a bug in its firmware that was never fixed by Intel and never acknowledged by Lenovo so no recall, and no fix. Just throw it away and replace with a 256-512 GB SSD.

And the parts are cheap and plentiful. Get the docking station if you can, I paid 30$ for two a few years ago (top of the range dock, the one with all the connectors and 2x video out)

Also, the IPS upgrade is well worth it.

IPS upgrade?

Tell me more!

https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=126294

https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/02/thinkpad-t430s-ips-scree...

Thanks! Though they seem to be x430s rather than the X230s :/

Some of the x230 configurations shipped with IPS screens, so you can just obtain one of those (or a compatible replacement) and swap it in. The resolution is still 1366x768. Beware of sellers falsely claiming "IPS".

Alternatively, you can do a bit of soldering/modding and put in an aftermarket 1920x1080 panel. https://nitrocaster.me/store/x220-x230-fhd-mod-kit.html

Oh. My.

This!!!

While I agree with this, I have an Intel graphics version of the T430 (running Ubuntu) and it doesn't seem to play nice with two external monitors, even with the "fully loaded" docking station :(

I had external display issues as well, with a T440 and an UltraDock under Debian. It was mostly flickering and blinking of the outputs, but occasionally a display wouldn't come out of powersave mode.

You may have already found and tried these possible fixes, but just in case you haven't-

1) There's a firmware update for the docks that is supposed to resolve a number of display issues.

2) It appears that similar issues can be caused by having a defective or incorrectly-sized dock power supply. So replacing the power supply with a known-good and/or bigger power supply might help.

Though, in my case, neither of the above helped. It turns out I had a bad HDMI/VGA adapter. Since eliminating that, I've had zero display issues. But I'm guessing that probably doesn't apply to you, since my configuration is a little unconventional.

Anyway, I hope you find something that fixes it for you.

Using a t440p base as my laptop, best laptop for the buck. bought it as a 4300m model with a dual core. now it has an IPS display, better coreboot+bios update, 32gb ram, i7-4712, 2x 512gb ssds plus a 4tb hdd. all together cost me less than 600eur. hackintosh compatible if necessary, though it's running Arch these days.

I use a couple of X220s as my work laptops, as I find the keyboard far superior to the X230 and all later models (it's the last classic ThinkPad keyboard prior to the chiclet designs). The hardware is still mostly sufficient for my needs (just don't run Electron apps...) and the case and the keyboard are much better than anything I could buy new these days. Apart from the displays, it feels like laptops have mostly regressed over the last decade and continue to do so at an alarming pace (just compare the T490 series to the T480, for instance).

Hah! I am writing this from an X220 for exactly the same reason. I bought a Thinkpad 25 when those came out, just so I could get the keyboard, but I agree with you: they're just not made as well as the older Thinkpads, which are tanks.

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