ThinkPads 2020 - X13 AMD - X1 Nano?
github.com
github.com
I’ve got a 2017 MacBook Pro and a 2016 Lenovo ThinkPad and the ThinkPad runs circles around it.
It’s also literally a hybrid drawing tablet laptop running MacOS - so unimaginably useful as a creative - and something Apple doesn’t offer, unless you want half-baked iOS software (no Illustrator, no Animate, no Blender) on an iPad Pro.
Even if it wasn’t for that awful keyboard (went to the Apple Store, tried the 16” keyboard, still not impressed) - there’s a ton of other factors. (Not to mention the ThinkPad keyboard is so tried and true my 2016’s keyboard is nearly identical to my 1996 ThinkPad...)
From the awesome amount of ports, tablet/ink support (if your ThinkPad has it), great battery life, native updates (I‘ve not had an issue with .x updates on Mojave or Sierra/High Sierra), and about half the price for the equivalent specs, it’s, IMHO, the literal best of both worlds. Even the build quality of ThinkPad laptops is lovely.
I’ve never had a single issue with MacOS not running as well or significantly better than the equivalent Apple hardware, with the exception of SSD write speeds.
EDIT: Forgot to mention the #1 benefit - replaceable HDD/SSD and upgradable RAM.
I will not, on principle, buy a computer whose hard drive I cannot remove with a basic computing toolkit.
And I will also not, on principle, buy a computer that cannot be internally upgraded.
The environmental impact alone is preposterous.
So what if you make your computers out of aluminum instead of plastic if you design them to have no future?
I think, specifically, of the ludicrously-limited 128GB SSD models of the 2016/2017 MacBook/Pro.
Using that, for basic development - (it was sadly what we were given at the startup I was working at during the time) - was useless, by the time I put Unity and XCode on it, and started making builds, I daily saw the ‘your hard disk is almost full’ message - and what is there to do about that, except get a whole brand new computer?
Since Catalina randomly decided to destroy access to about 1/3rd of my software (I rely on old-school music plugins that won’t be updated) - I’m gonna link you here to the Mojave tool: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/
This is not my tool, it does require a Mac to use, in order to create the USB boot key you put in your PC.
I have successfully patched about a dozen ThinkPads and Dell computers with this.
Due to the ThinkPad’s popularity - support for virtually every unit that can support it hardware-wise exists. If you have any issues, there’s a great community around it, and personally, after patching, I don’t even worry about .x upgrades anymore and leave auto-update on - that’s how far it’s come.
I literally prefer the Lenovo to the Apple hardware.
And be prepared to swap your WiFi card, intel cards are unsupported, so are nvidia graphics.
Is there a workaround (replaceable card?), or does running Mac OS mean you can't use discrete graphics (which is a major degradation)?
https://github.com/mighildotcom/X230-Hackintosh is the guide i followed, it is very x230 specific, but should give you a good idea of the overall process.
Very occasionally I'll have a slight issue with resume from sleep, but otherwise pretty much everything just works. You will need to buy a new wifi card, and depending which you want to use may need to reflash a modified bios to get rid of the whitelist.
400 nits matte displays in other models are also excellent.
Check http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/i_pdf/ThinkPad.pdf for the specs of currently-public models. Most of the models after October 2019 in the linked document are not yet public.
If current trends hold, the not-yet-released T14/T15/P15 will all have an optional screen available that's pretty good. Some of the lower-price L14/E14/AMD options will only have options for crappy screens. And, the point that's most important for Thinkpad enthusiasts, the majority of the business-lease sales that end up on eBay for $400 in 2023 will have the crappy screens and/or L and E series devices.
Still, I'm curious what the "ThinkPad Thor-TP" might be.
Believe it or not, there are still corporate legacy apps that run on DOS and looks great on 1366x768 and look like crap in 4k. In fact, Linux still look like crap in 4K today.
Not sure if it is because of the apps or wayland or the laptop, but it works for me.
However, I'm going to have to disagree strongly with your latter statement: Linux looks great in 4K. I'm running Ubuntu 19.10 to an external 4k monitor from a T430 right now (native display is a 1600x900 TN unit, which kind of sucks) and it looks great. I've had no significant aliasing or other problems.
Even Windows guests with Virtualbox scaling look good. You could easily use that to run corporate legacy apps, and probably should, knowing the stability and installation difficulties associated with legacy apps.. a .vmdk is probably much easier to version and distribute!
4k consumes (more or less significantly) more, which comes at a price - see the widely documented XPS 13.
If one prefers super-high resolution, it's totally fine, but it's not correct to depict 1080p as poor for a work machine.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Extreme-Gen...
Need to capture this rant here about part selection. My x1 carbon 6th gen shipped with a crappy SSD which showed random errors in dmesg and would occasionally cause the machine to reboot randomly. Then a few weeks ago after about a year of use it totally died. I googled the model number of the drive and found I was not the only one to experience that. Seems like Lenovo was not adequately testing that part for its impact on overall machine stability.
OTOH I was pleasantly surprised that it was replaceable, even though this is the "ultrathin" model meant to compete against Apple's soldered-in components. Replaced with a third party m.2 SSD and now the system works smoother than it ever has.
There's also too much glue in the internal assembly.
The wireless card could perform better.
I like the machine a lot though, it's pretty close to my ideal. I hope that nothing breaks on me again.
Also this. I just bought a new 16" Macbook Pro because I just maxed out the SSD in my 2015 Macbook Pro due to all the Docker images and generally all the data that I have. It was running perfectly and I wouldn't even think about upgrading if the storage was upgradable.
The next best thing to buy an upgrade kit from iFixit and spend some precious time just to upgrade the SSD.
At this point, 2015 models are actually going for insane values second-hand; fans understand this may be the last great laptop Apple ever makes - from the ports (built-in HDMI and SD card slots!), to the keyboard, to the ability to replace the SSD post-market - people are already certainly catching on.
I seriously shake my head every time I think about it. It blows my mind. Think about the environmental waste. :( Shameful.
Disk space is so important these days with Docker, node_modules, venv, bazel, etc. where every directory basically has its own OS. We all should have >10TB on laptops.
https://bikeshed.party/objects/35fccbd6-b611-46b5-8e15-84807...
Just thought you should know. :)
You're paying around $2.2/2.5k a piece. We buy 1 or 2 every month depending on hiring or whenever I find someone who has a machine like the one you describe (128g/8g ew).
Similar x1 carbon off amazon is maybe $1.2k with taxs, no apple care.
Say we buy 15 in a year, math:
Apple/applecare = $2.5k * 15 = $37.5k
Lenovo = $1.2k * 15 = $18k + say $50kish for a decent help desk employee because there's no way in hell I'm working 60 hour weeks on product AND dealing with laptops beyond, 'run diagnostics and take it to the apple store.'
The value proposition isn't hard. We're going with the MacBook Pros. For the grand total of 5 people who have to have windows for reasons we just run bootcamp.
(This is why the components are easy to replace in those laptops)
Anyway, Lenovo care service (whatever its called) costs about $400-500 for three years and they send a technician to your place within 24 hours.
We have a fleet of Macs and thinkpads and the thinkpads last more and cost less in total.
Thank You, along with the rant from Taika Waititi at Oscar. There is still hope the old keyboard with more key depth will come back.
There hasn't been a single improvement I like about the Mac both in terms of Hardware and software since 2015. ( Edit: Ok there was Mac Pro ) Sadly Windows hasn't made much improvement in 5 years either.
I do miss the trackpoint and keyboard a little...
Many or even most common MacBook Pro competitors like The X1 and XPS 13 have a replaceable SSD but not RAM.
I got a 13" MacBook pro a couple years ago, when I started needing to support mac users more consistently. I was on a budget, so I got an 8GB version. I wanted to upgrade, so last fall I bought the last new 13" I could find online that still had physical function keys, with 16GB ram. I was having trouble running VMs effectively with the 8GB system. I would love to have 32GB ram, but I don't want to go to a 15" or 16" laptop.
I thought I would sell my old 8GB laptop, but I found a really good use for it. I work at home, and I have a multiple-monitor setup that's really nice to do extended development work on. I don't like to disconnect my laptop if I don't have to, but I want to work in other parts of the house sometimes. I realized I could just use the older MacBook as a thin client when I'm not doing memory-intensive work. It's been nice to be able to do more casual work in other parts of the house.
That got me thinking, though - with this setup, there's no reason I need a laptop to power the desktop setup. It's been over a decade since I've owned a desktop computer, but I think I might buy a mac mini next time I upgrade, and keep the 16GB laptop as a thin client around the house, and also have a decent laptop to travel with.
Any thoughts on this approach?
If I didn't need macOS and Thunderbolt 3 then no, the Mac Mini makes no sense at all.
Years ago, we didn’t have this problem. I don’t know I’ll ever be able to buy an Apple laptop again at this point. I refuse to pay $1200+ for something I can’t upgrade a year or two later.
Thanks!
It works really well, and means you never have to futz around with things like homebrew.
Are you sure about that number, because that seems.. rather low.
Sandy Bridge era T420 and X220 accepted 16GB. Just double capacity after 9 years isn't that impressive, is it?
There are 32GB DDR4 SODIMMS in the market.
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...
> Just double capacity after 9 years isn't that impressive, is it?
In their defense, there's a limit to what you can fit into and cool in a laptop chassis. The most expensive MPB you can buy now (with Coffee Lake?) can fit a max of 64GB. You can build an AMD (or Intel, if you want to waste money) desktop with >1TB RAM.
T495s -> max 16 GB T495 -> max 32 GB.
I use the T495s and it is a great laptop. It is slighter thinner/lighter than the T495.
It will be interesting to see these come to market.
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107GLM [Quadro P2000 Mobile]
It's enough for most games. However buying a thinkpad for gaming is like buying a Tank to do groceries.
I did some decent Linux gaming on my T450 -- moderate settings and framerates -- but ultimately they're work laptops.
I played (and finished) the first Witcher game on a x201.
(Lenovo also sells Legion laptops, which are more gaming machines. But not Thinkpads.)
And every X-series Thinkpad has at least two, as far as I know.
My E495 has only one and it's rather annoying (since it's also used for charging).
I’ve seen a few power pass-through docks, though. Might be worth looking into if you haven’t already.
https://www.cablematters.com/pc-899-126-usb-c-multiport-adap...
'Cause I just sit down, plug any of my laptops (all of which have USB-C in, and everything just works. Windows, Linux, Macs (n.b.: this required a bit of a hack because they don't support MST, but it's not a huge deal)--sit down, go.
Vendor-locked lower-bandwidth docking ports are an antipattern.
My Lenovo TB3 dock has two DisplayPort outputs, two HDMI outputs, Gigabit, a 3.5mm jack, 5 USB3 ports, and a USB-C port. It can also daisy-chain Thunderbolt 3 to another high-bandwidth device; I haven't tried it with a PCIe dock or anything, but in that kind of extremity my X1 Extreme has a second TB3 port onboard anyway.
And USB-C PD can charge my X1 Extreme--not as fast as the dedicated 135W charger, but a less hungry laptop charges rapidly.
What more do you want? What are you missing?
Are you really using cds and floppies in the year of our lord 2020, or are you just strawmanning?
For especially valuable data you want to preserve for 100+ years, there are "archival quality" discs [0] [1].
That would be 170 CD’s - nearly 30 DVD’s - which will eventually suffer disc rot.
DVD/CD write speeds are very slow, comparatively speaking to even USB 2.0 transfer speeds - and increasing the speed, in my experience, makes exact copies of discs extremely error-prone.
Explain how this is efficient? Genuinely curious, with the price of solid state storage these days.
(I understand even solid state storage has a shelf life, but at least it also can’t be so easily harmed as a CD/DVD)
A microSD card can hold 500GB. DVDs (and even blu-rays) are far from "dense".
They also require an order of magnitude longer to write, lose their data to bit rot faster than SLC flash, and require devices with mechanical motors for both reading and writing.
I wouldn't call them convenient compared to flash memory, and I'm surprised anyone would.
Archival quality optical discs are marketed as having a 300+ year lifespan.
I've never viewed SD cards as something appropriate for long-term offline storage, is SLC flash exceptional in this regard?
I was comparing the convenience of optical to tape, which is bulky and annoying, and in my experience quite unreliable.
I'll admit it's not quite as satisfying to plug in the cable, but it's still very functional and stable.
The one I use at work delivers power, has five USB-A ports, four monitor ports (pretty sure it doesn't support using all four at the same time, haven't tried) a thunderbolt port, and a headphone jack.