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Comment by koverda | Hacker News Reader

On a tangential note, I recently switched from an XPS 15 to a X1 Carbon. The thinkpad is a completely uncompromised device. It feels like a laptop from the future, where nothing sucks. The keyboard is great, the screen is great, the touchpad is great, the keys are all there, it's super light, but super solid, there's a bajillion ports. Anyone considering a new laptop should give a good look at thinkpads. They also have ridiculous sales from time to time - I got my X1C for about 50% of retail price.

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I have a X1 Carbon that is a few years old now. About 2 years ago I dropped it (lid closed) from about 2 feet up (70cm). And it hit the tiled floor, pointy corner first. I thought "welp here go $2000". But no! A 2x3 mm part of the black surface finish chipped of and I see the bare silvery metal now. Oh and the tile cracked.

Have a similar, but slightly more horrific, story with a Thinkpad X230T. I was working from home after the birth of our first child (so... clearly not in my right mind...), and I decided it would be a good idea to carry my laptop on top of a way too full basket of laundry up the stairs to save an extra trip. I wasn't paying attention... tilted the basket at the very top of the stairs... and my Thinkpad rolls down the stairs along its edges... full steam ... and slams into the wall at the bottom.

I pick up the Thinkpad expecting the worst... and the only damage was a very slight opening along the seam of the external battery... not a scratch on the actual unit itself... no components jarred free... nothing...

Been buying Thinkpads ever since...

the X series and the T series are some of the best laptops ever built

unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a Macbook

And, if you use Linux, ThinkPads have a good track record at compatibility.

They even have a page with "certified supported" versions: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426

Recently, they've even partnered with Red Hat to ship Fedora on some laptops by default: https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-lapt...

I'm switching back to a macbook now, but I used to run a T480s with the WQHD screen and it worked really well. Good battery life, nice HIDPI screen, super durable. I brought it with me when I traveled and everything, never had any issues besides scratching the outside surface.

Why are you switching back to a macbook?

> unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a Macbook

If hardware is all that matters to you, sure. But some people actually prefer the software experience of macOS to that of Windows, for a variety of reasons.

I'm running Linux on my X1, works like a charm (and I find myself using my Macbook Pro less and less)

i'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on my Thinkpad P2 Gen 2 laptop, using the Budgie Desktop. I'd guess my entire workflow is 95% the same coming from my MBP.

There is still the issue of software. Lots of programs that professionals use on a daily basis don't run on Linux and don't have good alternatives that do. Plus, macOS is much better designed and integrated (if that means anything to you), and generally more stable[0].

[0]: This seems to be less true every year, both because desktop Linux is becoming more stable over time, and because macOS seems to get buggier with every release. Still, as someone that uses both operating systems on a regular basis, my MacBook Pro is still marginally more stable than my Linux desktop machine on average.

> and generally more stable

People say this yet still use Adobe software on macOS over windows. Despite the fact adobe software runs horribly on macOS compared to windows.

If you buy a Mac for using adobe software you’re definitely not buying it for workflow.

First, I was talking about software that doesn't run on Linux but does run macOS, for the case where you don't want to use Windows but still need certain programs. For those users, the Windows "workflow" is already a deal-breaker, as is the lack of professional software on Linux, so macOS is the only choice.[0] I also didn't call out any specific software because there is lots of it besides the Adobe suite.

Second, can you elaborate? What makes Adobe run "horribly" on macOS? I admit I haven't used an Adobe product in years, but I used to do some design as part of my job, and I can't say it worked any worse on my Mac than it did on my Windows machine.

[0]: I recognize that this isn't necessarily a huge segment of users, but I for one would be hard-pressed to go back to Windows, even if it saved me a thousand bucks on a laptop.

The only software I could complain about on macOS is adobe software. I can't think of any software that gives a bad experience other than that...

If you deal with large photoshop files, and you only have say 8gb of memory. Windows will just get really slow when you move around the document.

On macOS it will crash randomly, and often. Premier you can be scrubbing the timeline, scrub too much, boom premier just stops working.

Lightroom (this is what I mostly used for editing photography) it generates a history of applying changes and removing them, if you begin toggling boom crash.

This is just personal experience, but I know alot of people who do graphic design and they now just have this natural reflex to constantly save their work allllll the time in fear of the software crashing.

Yet on Windows I don't recall any of that software ever crashing...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-cc-2020-c...

There's many more threads on about the software crashing on macOS than Windows.

In any case I'll probably never buy another macbook again. Lenovo + Ubuntu for me now. :)

You can get Linux on those devices too

That's true, and it's really wonderful that you have that option, but it doesn't help if you prefer the software experience of macOS and/or need software that doesn't run on Linux.

I just have to say sometimes you can have it all http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/

Or, perhaps not http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/mojave/

High Sierra (10.13) will continue to receive security updates until nearly the end of this year.

would also like to just leave this here:

https://www.photopea.com/

Please pick that up and deposit it properly in the garbage bin.

Typing this from FreeBSD on mine.

I used to run OpenBSD on a laptop (not this one) and that was great too.

The touchpad, speakers and display are significantly better on the MacBook. Also, Apple sell their hardware products at a single, clearly advertized price point. I hate how Lenovo make you fuss around with discount codes to get a fair price.

Lenovo is mainly a B2B company: their target customers are big corporations, they don't really do a good job when it comes to direct-to-consumers services.

Display always had been the Achilles’ heel on ThinkPad but anyone who use trackpad and speaker heavily on a ThinkPad is a peasant.

My sanity requires it.

Of course these are anecdotal. I got my IdeaPad U430 in 2014. Same year it slid off my bunk bed (6' high), first hitting the corner of my dresser before it fell on the hardwood floor. It cracked its spine in half and got a dent in the back of the screen so deep that part of the screen is bulging out. I was sure I would be buying a new laptop. To my delight, there was no functional damage to it, it's still my daily laptop today. My next one will be a ThinkPad when one of the components fail.

Had thinkpad for years as an office laptop earlier when it was IBM and then a while after it became Lenovo. Have Dropped them many times, no issues. They had a sensor where it will detect motion while you drop and park the hard disk head before it hits the ground, Also configured the sensor to use it like WII once. It was one of the best laptops i've ever used.

> Oh and the tile cracked.

That's what I would call pure satisfaction. Thanks for adding that detail. You made me smile.

I've got multiple laptops -- including multiple ThinkPads -- and my 7-year-old W530 is still my favorite out of all of them.

The W530 was dubbed a "mobile workstation" (by Lenovo) and it really is a beast (hell, it's had 32 GB of RAM since day one, which is still more than what you can put in many laptops even today!).

At my previous job, I primary worked from home but when I did go to $work (the office, a customer's site, or one of our PoPs), I would often ride my Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special (midwest weather permitting). That machine -- which was also a beast, by the way -- vibrates like nothing you've ever seen! The W530 would get shoved into my backpack, which just barely fit in the saddlebags. Then, after arriving at my destination, I'd grab it, flip it open, and get back to work. Not once did I have an issue with it failing to do anything. It even accompanied me, in the saddle bag, on a 2,000 mile round trip!

I've had at least two (and perhaps three) MacBook Pros during the same time period but I would never have been brave enough to take one of them for a ride on the bike. I've got a feeling that many lesser laptops would not have survived.

(My next ThinkPad will almost certainly be whatever the current "mobile workstation" is, whenever the W530 finally gives up the magic smoke.)

A client once brought in a Thinkpad they ran over with a truck and the only damage was the soft copper heatpipes and fins were bent. I bent it back a little so the fan wouldn't scrape and it ran perfectly fine.

I used ThinkPads exclusively since 2000 but had a very bad experience around 2011 when the whole office upgraded to T410s machines and every single one (about a dozen) would die within a year the exact same way. They all got replaced and all died again, the second time out of warranty.

Something wrong with screen or the ribbon cable connecting the LCD screen caused the screen to die in a vertical strip about two inches from the left side. [1] You could press down on the bezel just under the distorted/dead strip to try to bring it back, but eventually even that would stop working. Referred to as MIGR-76367.

I actually haven’t bought a ThinkPad since that one. I switched to a MacBook Air running Bootcamp. I do miss the keyboard.

[1] -https://youtu.be/rM9_ZM_8qkQ

Had an x1 yoga in my backpack, padded backpack. Backpack fell off the desk and fell like 4 feet to the floor. Laptop was totalled - screen totally trashed etc. Was under warranty so got the whole thing replaced so it was back to like new within a week. But anecdotes are still just anecdotes lol.

I've fried two Macbook Airs by spilling drinks on them.

I've spilled more drinks on a single Thinkpad than all the other laptops I've owned combined. Everything just kept working.

Thinkpads are (/used to be) exceptionally well built. Including under-keyboard drainage.

(Typing this on a Pixel Slate with the Brydge keyboard, which leads to an interesting though: If I spill a drink on this keyboard, at worst I'll fry a completely separate bluetooth keyboard.)

My X1 Yoga too survived a fall that would have incapacitated any sane laptop (but Thinkpads are insane like that).

It's a good laptop and its performance remained snappy until recently (for a Gen 1 X1 Yoga). Still, I just switched... to a MacBook 12.

The killer feature for me is its silent operation - with better performance than my X1. Silence is such an overlooked design aspect, though perhaps I'm particularly allergic to fan noise. With current processor gens a fanless design is a must for any ultraportable that doesn't have a dedicated GPU. That's a relatively new development - the 2015 Macbook 12 was under-powered for some daily tasks but the 2017 is more than fine for those. Shame they stopped making them that year.

The screen is also a significant improvement (though I'm guessing Thinkpads screens have advanced since I bought mine) and the trackpad is no competition.

I'm worried about keyboard reliability but the typing experience is fine. I get along with most keyboards, with the strong exception of one pet peeve - mushy keys. The Macbook certainly doesn't have these.

My T530 survived flying off the roof of a car (in my unpadded backpack, to be clear) at 80mph when the straps for the roof bag ripped off cruising through Iowa. There was a small bit of plastic missing in one corner, otherwise nothing! To date that’s been my favorite laptop (aside from the bad screens thinkpads used to have).

I’ve dropped my 2018 MacBook Pro 13 at least 3 times, twice with the lid open, from a height of more than a meter (though onto a vinyl floor). It developed only a hardly noticeable dent.

> It feels like a laptop from the future

I've been using Thinkpads for close to 20 years now, and it's more correct to say that their greatness comes from feeling like a laptop from the past: excellent ergonomics, upgradability, durability, ports. Indeed, my current machine (X230, 2012 model) already inspired some criticism for deviating from the IBM-style keyboard of its predecessors. Newer models like the X280 have even more complaints arising from the unswappable battery, soldered RAM, and lack of Ethernet port. Lenovo apparently faces the same thinness-over-usability marketing focus that afflicts all electronics today.

X2nn series are definitely not "thin".

Also, as a former die-hard x201 user I actually like the new keyboard. Agree on the memory thought

Hilarious. Long time Thinkpad fanboy here until I finally needed Lenovo support and it took 1 month to get a faulty part fixed under a next business day support plan.

The replacement was faulty. Replaced again (a little quicker this time) but there were still problems. They consider their job done. Never shopping Lenovo again.

Then for a new role I got a brand new XPS 13. Put Ubuntu on it and everything Just Works(tm). Very happy Dell user now. (Shame the sticker price is so high but it is a quality system.)

Also the Lenovo performance was never as good as it should have been. It turns out while it had a then current generation CPU it was a cheaper version than the competitors.

Yeah, I bought an X1C Extreme last year, part of the screen casing tore to the left of the screen, a freak issue I’m convinced was a defect. I tried to get a quote so my accidental damage insurance with my credit card could kick in for the repair—Lenovo wouldn’t give me a quote without paying because I didn’t have their support plan (this was like 3 weeks after I bought it).

The laptop still works fine, but I’ll never buy Lenovo again. Terrible company to deal with.

Same experience with the X1 Yoga. Power board issue. It took 6 weeks for them to finally tell me they couldn't fix it. They just refunded me, which was nice.

I just had a look (in the UK), and it doesn't look possible to go higher than 16GB of RAM, which is a deal breaker for me - I regularly go above that when running VMs and containers for dev and test work.

For such an otherwise powerful machine, I don't k ow why they'd limit it?

The X models are designed to be ultraportable, aka as thin and light as possible. As a result, they're not great machines for people who need lots of RAM, storage, etc.

The P series (https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p/c/t...) is more the "desktop workstation replacement" line; heavier and thicker, but with more room for components. You can get those with up to 128GB of RAM.

You forgot about 15” X1E, which is a desktop replacement. It’s still light and portable but comes with higher specs. I have one with UHD screen, 32GB and 1TB. Same weight as a 15” MacBook Pro. Configured with an FHD screen, it’s lighter than MacBook.

I just switched to the X1E after using Mac for the past 20 years. I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.

It's an amazing machine: excellent build quality, screen, and variety of ports. The only thing I can complain about is the battery life, which isn't great.

You installed cpufreaq yet? It is a life saver and a battery saver too. I run most of the time with 4 cores, turbo disabled, and capped at about 50%. Makes a huge difference in battery runtime.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1082/cpufreq/

FWIW, PowerTOP [0] and tlp [1] used to be the "go-to" utility for this sort of thing.

---

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerTOP

[1]: https://linrunner.de/tlp/

also the FHD screen has twice the battery life, if you want to make that trade off.

I was hoping for the best of both worlds - something with a 14" 3K display, very light (don't care too much about thinness TBH), but with a good processor and 32GB of RAM.

The all-arounders are the T series: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...

The AMD-based T495 can be configured with up to 32GB of RAM; the Intel-based T490, up to 48GB.

I regret getting the WQHD (2560x1440) screen on my X1 Carbon 7th gen. Text is too small to read without scaling, and I haven't figured out how to configure consistent scaling behavior across Wayland and XWayland applications.

FHD is plenty on a 14" screen.

I have the same configuration and leave display scaling at 100%, but set the font scaling factor to 1.5 in the Gnome Tweak Tool. In this way, all fonts in Wayland and XWayland apps have the right size and nothing is blurry. Only controls like window borders are a bit smaller than intended by the designer, but I actually prefer it that way because it's more compact.

Likewise (scaling factor 1.4 here). I find that quite usable.

Counterpoint, I also got the WQHD screen, on my T480, and it's great. I absolutely love the print-quality text in my terminals. "Scaling" is not a problem at all - I eventually figured out that the way to get flawless graphics is to ignore all "scaling" settings and simply throw an xrandr command in .xinitrc that forces the DPI to its correct value (144). For some strange reason X11 ignores the real screen DPI (which it knows perfectly well!) and forces it to 96, which is broken behaviour in 2020. Most of the rest of the software ecosystem is a team player, and respects the DPI setting (things that don't are broken - I believe GTK requires an environment variable, but QT respects it). "Scaling" is a broken concept - 12pt font should render at 12pts, no matter your screen size or resolution.

I have an X1 Carbon 7th gen with a 4k screen (3840x2160). I run it at 2x scaling on Wayland (sway) and I haven't had any issues with native Wayland apps. X apps are rendered at 1x and upscaled, making them blocky or blurry. Apparently there are some apps like Spotify that ignore scaling settings and always render at 1x, but I haven't run into them.

There is a fix in progress for XWayland scaling: https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/2064

I'm assuming you're a developer (just because this is HN) - curious to know what kind of battery life do get with a UHD screen?

I use Windows, so consistent scaling wouldn't be an issue. I was more wondering with regards to battery life.

I'm pretty sure I'd prefer a WQHD screen to FHD, but am also pretty sure I wouldn't get any benefit of going to UHD. But at the same time, if WQHD has a significant impact on battery life, I'd probably stick with FHD.

I have a T480s with a 14" FHD (1920x1080) screen and the experience isn't good either. Wayland apps work with fractional 1.25X scaling but are laggy and have odd graphical glitches. XWayland apps are just blurry.

I think 1920x1080 is the perfect native resolution for 14", without scaling. It's a bit small on first look but you're closer to laptop screen than you're to a real monitor, so that turns out just fine for me.

They're ridiculously light too. I have the 7th with the 6-core i7-10710U and it weighs under 1000g (not including power adapter).

That is pretty impressive.

Does it have any issues with heat dissipation or/and fan noise when doing CPU intensive work?

My HP Zbook is pretty heavy and chunky, but still gets pretty hot and can be annoyingly noisy (thanks Mcafee...).

It does get hot, and I'll admit I don't generally use it for sustained workloads, but I've never noticed the fans getting loud. This is just anecdotal but it seems like most of the heat is generated near the screen, above the keyboard, where you don't have as much contact with the machine.

13" MBP is available with 32 GB of RAM now, Lenovo needs to up their game :)

My cheap 2 year old ultraportable Lenovo supports 32 gigs of ram. And it's DDR4. And they're still socketed.

The person I was replying to made it sound like they didn't offer this for their ultraportables, I guess I misread it.

Hell, my 7-year-old W530 has had 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) since the day I got it -- and it's not soldered in either!

Lenovo has plenty of 32GB Thinkpads... nothing new.

I meant in the ultraportable space, which smacktoward made it sound like they don't offer.

Just that 32GB isn’t considered “a lot” I guess.

Besides DDR4 SODIMM 32GB modules exist, if 32GB is what you want you just buy it off Amazon and put it in. Don’t have to mess around with “what they offer us the privilege to be able to purchase” like with soldered RAM.

Didn't fit their desired form factor for the X1, maybe. Their P53 line goes up to 128GB RAM and may be more suitable for your worklaod (I use an X1 but mostly use remote machines and don't need local VMs). I believe the construction is mostly the same as the X1 and T series Thinkpads, it's just bulkier and heavier.

The P series is such a workhorse. If I had purchasing power over my hardware at work, I'd crank one of those up and replace my workstation+laptop with it.

Yep, that's a good description. I have a P51 and T480, and the P51 is basically the same laptop, just supersized.

I believe Intel had some limitations on their support for the LP-DDR (low power) memory and that's why so many systems had the 16GB limit.

On light road-warrior machine like X1 they likely wanted to maximize the battery life. And supporting many types of memory on same model was not likely an option.

Memory power consumption is overlooked but real, and they increase as capacity increase, so if customers aren’t going to use up it makes sense not to offer too much capacity.

I have a T25 with 32 GB of RAM and there's easily 16 GB too much in it. It's only 4 threads so using 32 GB at least as a programmer is a stretch.

With 16 cores and 32 threads I'm able to use all 32 GB easily. I guess I should run more VMs to really understand where people need 32 GB in a laptop.

If you're interested in Thinkapds but find the X1 a bit limiting, check out the T-series or the P1. They're only slightly thicker but often have a much higher RAM headroom (and often can be easily upgraded by the user).

I use an x1 and this is my biggest issue with it; mine is from 2017 maxed out from the factory at 16gb and it’s amazing the ceiling has not been raised even three gens later.

That said, the forthcoming x13 mentioned in the linked piece goes up to 32gb, looks like. It’s only 0.25lb heavier and looks to be much less expensive. The catch is a smaller screen :-\

I do development work on it and haven't ran into any issues. That being said, if you need something a little more beefy, and a little less lightweight, the T line is the next place to look. There's also the X1 extreme. However, after the XPS15 I wanted something a bit more mobile.

I have X1 Extreme Gen 2 with 64GB of RAM

The keys are all there - laptop review from 2020.

It's an important consideration!

The current line up of X1 Carbons (the 8th gen) are absurdly priced! $2279 for a base model with an i5, low res screen and only 8gb of ram.

For that price you can get the highest end 13" macbook pro, 32gb of ram and 2TB of SSD. baffling

I think what you are seeing on Lenovos page are placeholder prices, the device isn't shipping.

Pricing was announced to start at $1499.

I think the price is too high especially as you can still buy gen 7 which came out last summer fully loaded with 4K screen, 16GB ram 1TB ssd for about 2K. 32GB ram nor 2TB ssd are an option.

The highest end 13" with 2TB of SSD and 32GB of ram actually costs 3000

Reducing it to a TB SSD and 16 Ram leaves it at 2200 for the mac.

Unlike Apple, where sales are infrequent and minor, the prices on Lenovo's site are much higher than you'll end up paying if you wait for a deal (even from Lenovo).

edit: My X1C gen7 with 1080p screen, 10th gen i7, 16GB ram and 256SSD was the equivalent of just under $1200 USD

i have an x1 carbon and i hate it. There is an bug with the trackpoint and mouse pad that makes the pointer drift randomly. I have had my computer back and forth and replaced everything. It still drifts

> There is an bug with the trackpoint and mouse pad that makes the pointer drift randomly.

If it drifts in a single direction in that time, I found it was actually a physical problem and fixed it by cleaning around the trackpoint.

I haven't seen this in software though, I currently have the X1 gen 6. Which do you have? Which bug is it? I'd love to see if there is a way to help.

my track point been replaced and cleaned two times. Its not just the track point but the mouse pad is wonky too.

Maybe new thinkpads are exceptionally bad, because I've used thinkpads daily for decades now and have never had this problem. X40, X61, numerous X61S's, X201S, X220, X230, X250, and mix of T-series machines back in the day, not once has this been an issue for me. And I abuse these machines to the point that I replace the worn-polished and sloppy keyboards, and often crack the chassis, they don't live an easy life under my hands.

The only remotely related phenomenon I've seen is after resting on the trackpoint steadily long enough, it learns that to be the new center as it's constantly adapting. So upon finally removing my resting finger, it will drift just long enough for the adaptive centering to update and the drift stops. But that's perfectly normal and very short-lived.

I have OP's problem (drifting trackpoint) with an x230. To be honest I had never looked it up or saw it mentioned before, I just kind of live with it. Sometimes the cursor randomly starts drifting and I have to play a little with the trackpoint to get it to stop. It is occasionally annoying but doesn't bother me that much. In any case, it is the x230, so looks like the problem isn't exclusive to newer models.

This makes me wonder if it has to do with the OS/driver configuration.

I've always run the trackpoints as PS/2 mice in Linux which is basically the legacy compatibility mode, and I don't use the touchpad. So I'm not running the Synaptics driver at all, and I do remember when I tried using the Synaptics driver on the X250 @ my previous employer it was very frustrating until I got rid of that and got things back in old-fashioned PS/2 mouse emulation mode. I wasn't having problems with drift, it was more click behavior and acceleration curves being very wonky.

But maybe if you're driving things at the Synaptics driver level there's a tighter integration and the OS/driver plays a bigger part in recentering the trackpoint. I'm just speculating here.

They've all been bulletproof used as PS/2 mice.

Kind of inherent to its nature, pressure sensing device like TrackPoint has too much precision and dynamic range to be hardware zeroed.

Instead the firmware takes average value over time and regard that as the current neutral, and if your finger is on it longer than that integration period, the sum of mechanical imperfection, planetary gravity, heat, whatever noise AND weight of your finger all combined becomes a new zero point.

The solution is to lift your finger off of TrackPoint and letting it wander until pointer stops. There’s nothing mechanically wrong or damaging in and around that, again, just how it is. Same as how digital kitchen scales or body weight scales need to calibrate itself upon powerup, except TrackPoint does it on the fly.

The problem with doing that is that it sometimes can drift for several minutes and thats super annoying when you are working on something, it really slows down you productivity.

That's something that plagued my ThinkPads since forever, made worse when they moved from the rounded trackpoint nub to the flat one. Easy fix, take out the rubber trackpoint nub and put it back (maybe clean the area a bit). Or disable it if you're more productive with the touchpad.

sadly the touchpad is wonky too and sometimes its glitchy

This has been a problem with trackpoints since as long as I can remember. Definitely saw pointer drift on a thinkpad running XP, and see it today on their latest. Wonder if they'll ever actually solve it.

This is a known quirk of Thinkpad trackpoints. Once in a blue moon, the mouse pointer drifts randomly; touching or nudging the trackpoint usually makes it stop. Regardless, it stops doing it on its own after a minute or two.

My old IBM 600X (1998 era) had this issue, as did my 2013 T430 and my current 2017 T470, although it hasn’t happened for a long time.

This was an eventual issue on my X61 in 2008 and on my T4something in 2018. It's a shame. I had to just apply a lot of pressure in random directions to the trackpoint to get it to stop, periodically.

The bug with the trackpoint is if you rest your finger on the trackpoint. If you lift your finger, it should stop drifting.

no it dont stop when i lift my finger.

I am wondering, are there any Windows laptop keyboard that are better than Thinkpad?

Long time ago the Thinkpad Keyboard was the closest thing to 2015 MacBook Pro Keyboard.

It is just sad in 2020 we have to look for keyboards with all the keys and companies dont mess around with the key travels.

Based on personal experience from using both Thinkpad T series and MS Surface Book, keyboard on Surface Book feels even better than the one on Thinkpad.

To add to that, trackpad on Surface Book (can only talk about the first gen one, haven't tried 2nd or 3rd gen yet) is also by far the best trackpad I've ever seen on a non-macbook laptop.

Thanks. Will take a look at that.

Also got the X1 carbon. I have no idea how something that feels so sturdy can feel like its light enough to float away!

Exacty! The build quality on this thing is out of this world. Any time I unplug it from the dock and use it in more of a laptop mode, I get little dopamine hits all around.

I also love my X1 Carbon. Fantastic machine, and extremely affordable on the used market. The only reason I stopped using mine is because the BIOS is locked and I wanted to run Linux full time, and my model (gen 3) can't be reset like a lot of the other models (I can't remember what the process was). It's a great machine and after resale value, I spend ~$200 for two years of a solid machine, which I consider a win.

Are you saying you sold a two year old machine for $200 less than the price you paid for it when it was brand new? How is that possible? Even MacBook Pros don't have that good of resale value.

I think he probably got it used, used it for a couple years, then resold it for ~$200 less than he originally paid which is entirely believable.

Yeah, you're right, I didn't think about getting it used initially. That makes way more sense.

That may be the way to go but our office cheaped out and got discounted T490s. It's a great laptop minus the screen and trackpad...but management doesn't want to spend more than $800 on a laptop

Thinkpad range is great. But I made the mistake of getting one of Lenovo's desktop machines (Lenovo Yoga A940) to replace our dead iMac, and to give my daughter a system with a stylus etc. for doing artwork. On paper it looks good. In practice there's been issues. Bleed and dead pixels on the screen, occasional reliability issues. Didn't want to pour out the cash for the Surface all in one, but kinda wish I had.

Wish the Thinkpad quality would extend to their other products.

Same. I love my X1 Carbon.

I bought an X1 carbon about a year ago and it has been an absolute nightmare for me. It's true that the keyboard is nice, the display is good etc. basically it is perfect on paper, but I have had so many issues caused by bad firmware from Lenovo (thunderbolt/HDMI failures, bluescreens). I've had the mainboard replaced 5 times, the trackpad replaced twice, and I am currently using a laptop with a trackpad I am not happy with and speakers that are broken and I'm genuinely afraid to let lenovo touch it again because it always comes back with some new issue. If you use the physical trackpad buttons to click, it causes the pointer to stop dead for a second or more, which means no drag and drop, no text selecting etc. Not a massive issue, but I bought the laptop partly for the good inputs, and now it is no different to any other laptop with no physical click buttons because I can't really use them the way I like. I'm lifelong windows/linux, so really don't want to go mac if I can avoid it, but it just doesn't seem like there is a single windows laptop manufacturer that focuses on quality or reliability. most surveys I see put the failure rates at double mac level.

mac simply won the laptop war. no contest. the only people using anything else haven't tried one or have no choice (my linux homies waiting for system76 to catch up get a pass). at least that was the case until apple went all in on usb-c :/

"no contest" might be a bit of an overstatement. I'd agree that there is no contest when it comes to quality, but this is definitely not the case regarding features. There are a huge number of features available from lenovo and other manufacturers that are simply not available from any mac laptop. connectivity is a total joke and I have no idea why they persist with the infuriating lack of ports, even on premium or "pro" models. no matte display options, faulty keyboards that take years to rectify (by reverting to a previous design no less) and not to mention the extortionate price of peripherals, total hostility to repairs. etc. etc. Carbon x1 is significantly lighter than a macbook air with a larger display, more connectivity and better travel on the keyboard.

As I mentioned in another comment, I've had at least two and perhaps even three ("loaded") MacBook Pros in the same timeframe that I've had my ThinkPad W530.

The MBPs have came and went but the W530 is still being used nearly every day.

Many of us (former) die-hard Apple fans have become disillusioned with Apple in the last several years.

nice, me too. donglegate is really the only reason im lurking in this thread and considering going back. the thinkpad given to me when i was a child still works(!) but it's gunky and the finish is a bit worn, while the mbp i've used every single day for the last 5 years is still going strong and looks brand new (apple did replace the screen under a recall).

this is just my own experience but i think they both have well-deserved reputations as being tough machines. i would sooner drop a thinkpad than a mpb, for sure, but i love using the macbook so much more. i think apple's problem is they stopped innovating, and while their systems should be getting cheaper as a result, they are getting more expensive. while thinkpad continues to grow.

Newer Mac Books have known issues with their keyboards. Not only do their keyboards feel almost like typing on a solid hunk of plastic, but those butterfly keyboards are very delicate, fail easily, and are very expensive to replace.

On my Thinkpad T470, when the keyboard goes bad (which, yes, happens about once every two years), replacing it requires a $50-$60 replacement keyboard, a single small Phillips screwdriver, and spending about 5 minutes installing the new keyboard.

been buying nothing but Thinkpads for years now, after a very positive experience with the X220 in the first place. My last thinkpad is a X1 carbon, and while it's a trade-off (thinner, less ports, no upgrade possible for RAM), the build is really solid (the keyboard is almost just as good as any other thinkpad's), and the case is a mix of metal and carbon fiber and feels extremely nice all around. It's also trivial to change the battery by yourself, this thing opens up for servicing with just a few screws. Really happy with my purchase.

I only run Linux on it, and I have never had any issue with hardware support (except fingerprint sensor which I do not use anyway). Note that I have heard that Linux support on X1 Carbon Gen7 is somewhat poor (the only one so far with such issues).

> I got my X1C for about 50% of retail price

Wow. What was the original price? ~$2k? Where did you get such a big discount?

Lenovo frequently runs significant sales on their own site, often focused around holidays. I'd expect to see a significant sale for Memorial Day up next.

Seconded (well, eighth'd, if the rest of the comments are any indication). I got a 6th gen X1C at the end of '18 and it's brilliant. It'd be neat to have a Ryzen option on them in the future, as I have a desktop I build with an AMD CPU and love it.

My only complaint about my X1? Windows.

What OS are you using? How was the switch from 15" to 14"?

I've had an XPS 15 running Ubuntu for about 2.5 years, and while it's certainly got a lot of objective things going for it, it's my least-favourite computer in the last ~15 years and I'm considering an update.

I'm hesitating between an XPS and an X1. What do you find better on the X1?

the XPS I had felt like a laptop from the past, the X1 feels like a laptop from the future.

The XPS's keyboard would multi press, the touchpad didn't work great, the hinge made it difficult top open the screen, the speakers kinda sucked. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice laptop, but felt very over hyped. A death by a thousand cuts. I felt a bit let down from what I expected after reading a bunch of reviews.

On the other hand, when I finally got the the X1C, I couldn't believe that there was so little hype about this laptop. All I would ever see online is stuff about macbooks and the XPS line, nothing about the X1C.

The X1 is such a solid machine. The interface is completely uncompromised, yet it is so light, it feels like I've just got a spiral bound notebook in my bag when I'm carrying it around. Feels like a leap ahead, rather than two steps forward, one step back.

No op but for me the clincher was vastly superior keyboard and the expansion capability with dual ssd/dual ram slots that made me go for X1 Extreme Gen 2. I have used Dell in the past and after using this Thinkpad, I have to admit that I find the latter to be of better quality overall.

Long time XPS customer. My last one had the very famous battery swelling in just a few months and Dell refused to replace the battery. On previous models for other customers they replaced it for free for what it is: a manufacturing defect. The keyboard and touchpad are also finicky, but that's not a deal breaker for me because I'm mostly on external.

My next laptop will be a Lenovo.

I have both. X1 keyboard hands down any day... ANY DAY. I love the keyboard so much I’ll now never buy any other laptop brand.

I also like the look and feel more and it’s always easier to upgrade Lenovo.

For what it's worth, apparently a new XPS 15 and XPS 17 are being announced this month or next, with basically no bezels, and hopefully Ryzen 4000.

X1 hands down. I sold my XPS13 and never looked back.

This sort of comment is all over this thread, and it really doesn't help me make a decision

All X1 Carbons I've owned and the one my partner owns have been so nice to use. I mean you just need to get one into your hands... The rubbery cover, very sturdy design, super lightweight, perfect keyboard, in the later models perfect screens too (2k Adobe RGB 100% and HDR just nails it).

And you can throw it everywhere, just travel with it and use everywhere due to it being so small and nice. And you can damage it and probably the floor tiles break before the laptop gets any real hit.

Edit: oh and Linux just works so great in any of those business ThinkPads. Any linux. I'll go with Arch typically, but even more exotic operating systems, such as OpenBSD just work with it (running it in one of my ThinkPads for some years, and the experience is great).

You didn't answer the question at all.

i sold my xps because the trackpad was glitchy. go to dell and count the number of driver revisions. its like a perpetual beta product. the nosecam lol. the bezels on xps are purdy tho.

Didn't Dell finally fix the nosecam?

they did! but not before i returned mine. the worst part was that your hands blocked the lens if they were on the keyboard... such egregious design(s) flipped me away from dell laptops

I've been using a Dell Latitude 7390 and I think it could be the real thinkpad killer, if only it had the trackpoint.

Give it a look, it's quite a marvel.

Are there any particularly good times to potentially catch a sale or do they come up at random?

Black Friday is a good time. This past November I picked up a ThinkStation p720 for like 60% off. Not sure whether laptops are discounted to the same extent, but it's worth investigating.

At any time of year, see if you are eligible for their "Tickets At Work" program which offers sizable discounts. They sometimes even stack with seasonal sales...

Holidays. Memorial Day next, July 4th, Labor Day, then probably not much until Black Friday sales.

Could also watch or set up relevant alerts with model numbers on Slickdeals.

I find the Dell touchpads and keyboards superior.

Can it run OK under Windows 8 or 8.1?

How is the driver support for Linux?

Driver support on thinkpads is ( and has always been ) excellent.

What display did you go for?

I got the 1080p low power. I get 8+ hours of full brightness Netflix!

what screen? i keep reading anything but the basic 1080 nukes battery life? i just cant imagine a laptop in 2020 doing 3 hours after having a mbp retina for the last 5 years which is capable of running all day

I would recommend the 4k panel. 4k in a 14" screen is overkill, but compared to other options the 4k panel has a wider color gamut, higher dynamic range, and higher brightness (500 nits). You can easily use it in direct sunlight. I'm writing this comment in a sunlit room and my brightness is at 34%.

Most of the complaints about battery life seem to be by people who keep the screen at a certain percentage instead of keeping it at a certain brightness. eg: There are reviews where someone keeps the screen at 70% brightness instead of 200 nits. That's like a car reviewer keeping the gas pedal pressed down 70% of the way and then complaining about fuel efficiency.

Edit: Oh and if you're curious about battery life, see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23106156 You should expect 5-12 hours depending on what you're doing. You could go as low as 2 hours if you stress test the CPU while at max brightness.

cool, thanks! matte or glossy?

Sadly there is only a glossy option for the 4k panel.

I'd go with 1080p if you're planning to run Linux. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23107338

FWIW I have a t480s with the 1440p display and am using Linux and my battery life is typically around 6 hours or so for regular use. If I start running more dev tools and building things it plummets as to be expected, but the display really doesn't seem to make much difference.

The biggest thing I miss from my MacBook is being able to open it after a week of being closed and still have battery. There's definitely something not going into deep sleep when I close the lid, but that's probably my fault.

To use no battery when sleeping, you'll want to configure hibernation. I haven't done this because I only suspend my laptop for 10-12 hours at a time. Also it's tricky if you're using disk encryption with a swap file.

The Arch wiki has lots of information on how to do this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management/Suspen...

I've been issued MBPs at my past few jobs. On each of them "all day" is about five hours, tops. You must not be doing a heckin lot of dev work if you actually get all day out of a single charge of an MBP battery.

maybe "all day" on mbp was an embellishment. but i'm reading things like 3 hours of web browsing time on the latest thinkpad displays! i've also seen comments in here it's not that bad. maybe a batch of bad batteries? i really would love to try one and get away from the mac ecosystem (mainly because of dongles, although one must ask, is an AC brick better? and why can't anyone else make a brick like apple, with tidy cables!)

I got the 1080 screen for battery life considerations. Totally satisfied with it, however I haven't spent much time on retina screens.

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