I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012 | Hacker News Reader

I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

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379 pointshddherman424 comments

I find it funny how people seem to fixate so much on the fact that the author upgraded various components to say the title is misleading. As someone with apparently similar requirements, the take-away from this should be this:

Even though significant work is required to keep these old machines working, some people prefer to do so. Crucially, they prefer it not because they love tinkering, but simply because the value propositions of 2021/2022 hardware doesn't look better.

As someone running a non-upgradeable Dell nightmare XPS13 2in1 with a nice display, but horrible everything-else, I can relate. I've been looking at recent models lately and find it pretty bleak.

There are upgradeable options though. The framework Laptop to name the most hyped current option for example.

The problem with these projects is that they are all the hype for a while and after the hype dies down you are left with laptop that is only in theory upgradable.

You make it sound like it's a kickstarter.

I love frame.work as a concept, but it's definitely not a "proven" concept at the moment. The company could very well go under or choose not to support upgrading the laptop.

Even assuming Framework shuts down tomorrow and destroys their existing stock of replacement parts and the specs for making new ones, I would argue that you can at the very least assume permanent availability of RAM, SSD, Display (it uses a commodity panel), fan, and battery (there are knockoff batteries for much more obscure laptops).

I would assume that keyboards, trackpads, etc. will also be available as some laptops bite the dust and are scavenged for parts.

Whether the motherboard/CPU will actually be upgradeable obviously remains to be seen. The 11th Gen CPUs get a lot of flak, but they have good single-core performance which will make them suitable for general use for a long time.

It's at least equally upgradeable as the first ThinkPads with soldered on CPUs, which by today's standards is still pretty good - and if framework deliver on their promises, then it will be even better. But either way the baseline isn't bad.

> I would argue that you can at the very least assume permanent availability of RAM, SSD, Display (it uses a commodity panel), fan, and battery

I mean, you can buy a new-ish Thinkpad where you can replace/upgrade all of those things. You get great compatibility and most hw/sw compatibility bugs are already known and have workarounds. Framework has to have some other value propositions as well besides being able to replace things you mentioned.

As I said, that's the absolute worst-case scenario.

I don't own one personally, but reviews have been overwhelmingly positive so presumably it does have something to offer beyond replaceability. (disclaimer: some people on HN seem to have had some driver issues on Linux on theirs)

> you can at the very least assume permanent availability of RAM, SSD, Display

Quite the opposite. That would only apply to a very popular laptop like some thinkpads.

It uses off the shelf RAM and SSDs. For replacement displays I'm not sure but they seem to be pretty widey available for mildly popular devices.

The Framework Laptop uses the same panel as the Acer Swift 3 and several other quite popular laptops, so should be good in that regard.

It may not be a kickstarter but it is definitely a startup in a tough space, being skeptical of its long term success is pretty reasonable.

Try one out before you start with that conclusion

That's the thing, their USP is long-term maintainability and upgradeability, but if they call it quits in a year, you're stuck with a niche product that nobody else is willing to make parts for.

To be fair, once you hit 5 years (or if you’re unlucky 3 years) it becomes just about impossible to get OEM parts from Dell or Lenovo and you have to resort to cannibalizing broken ones off eBay or your parts bin if you’re in enterprise. So either way you could end up in the same boat, except if framework comes up with a gen 2 it’s possible with enough consumer pressure they’ll make the parts cross compatible.

A bit part of the Frameworks USP isn’t understandable by many laptop users who haven’t repaired or upgraded their own laptops in the past.

They will just buy, while a repairable laptop could create beginners who can learn to maintain well designed equipment.

It might not give the iPhone 23 feels.

> you have to resort to cannibalizing broken ones off eBay or your parts bin if you’re in enterprise

Except these graveyards are ENDLESS because of the amount they produced and companies threw away. My favorite is all the originally $150 docking stations that you can pick up for under $20 (or at least when I was in the lenovo t series game).

Fresh (or at least gently used) batteries are the reason I had to stop using my X220 though, as I bought like three different batteries (one OEM that was old stock, and two third-party) and none could keep it up for more than an hour. That's tough without OEM support.

Stuck with a chassis and motherboard, but not the ram, storage, wifi or power supply.

They seem to have too much invested to not make it a year.

What conclusion, I'm not asserting they are going to fail. Startup failure rates are close to 90%, being concerned that this startup might also fail isn't unreasonable.

My intuition is that hardware based startup failure rates are significantly higher, still.

Right! Yeah, I didn't want to get into a debate about the actual product and product space ...

They might just pull it off though.

Let’s not skim the surface.

The Framework seems to be a modern Thinkpad with a similar USP of how they were built in 2012 before manufacturers tried to introduce and convince consumers of disposable laptops for the past 10 years.

The reason I suggested handling one is the build quality for a first gen device is hard to believe until you hold one and use it for a few days or weeks. The framework is well beyond the quality of first gen devices and feels like the smart people at Apple, Lenovo, etc got together to build a laptop and delivered.

Let’s look at it from where you’re presenting it:

Customers exist in multiple segments: Pioneers, Early Adopters, Early Conservatives, Late Conservatives and Laggards.. distributed on a bell curve.

It’s true startups largely fail because most fail to find a product people want, or deliver on finding a market and distribution for it. They seem to have resonated.

Successful startups often need to appeal to a large enough Pioneer and Early Adopter market to sustain crossing that little chasm to sustainability. Seems like a premium priced product is selling out in batches and getting decent reviews.

Laptops are not a small market. Likely enough pioneers and early adopters exist, unlike the conservatives and laggards that delay adopting technology until validated by others. Someone can run Windows or Linux.

Maybe you’re not an early adopter or pioneer.. but many entrepreneurs and creators could be. Innovators usually exist in a mindset of possibility leveraged with unfair advantages and Framework seems to have a few.

While I don’t work for Framework, I’ve sadly owned 10-15 laptops. With each new laptop I also buy the death of that device. The framework has as many if not more replaceable components from third parties.

On being reasonable, I think it’s fair to say that not everything is for everyone. You or I are not everyone or everyone’s needs.

All it has to do is last 2-3 years without much ado, which it probably will, while being produced in small batches that are hopefully profitable.

I bought and returned my framework and outlined why in another comment, mostly I learned I didn’t have the time to tinker, but I don’t think there’s an option like it on the market.

My guess? Framework will be around, and might even build up like Razer, System76, etc and be acquired by a large manufacturer.

Edit: Forgot to add the initial link between a 2012 Thinkpad and Framework.

I really hope you are correct! I would love to see a less consumer hostile (and more environmentally friendly) business model succeed and start to gain traction.

> “The reason I suggested handling one is the build quality for a first gen device is hard to believe until you hold one and use it for a few days or weeks.”

I haven’t seen one, but that’s at odds with peoples comments in this thread from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29806430

“one of the worst purchases I've ever made. [...] This last point is pretty minor, but the hinges are floppy. The whole screen shakes around when I type on it.“

“Build quality. I'm convinced if I drop this thing it's all over. All in all I'm mad at myself for spending over $3k on a productivity configuration centered around what is pretty much beta hardware. I should have known better.”

“Re build quality: yes, it is a bit flimsier than I would like (though have definitely used laptops that are way worse)”

> “All it has to do is last 2-3 years without much ado, which it probably will”

If that’s all you need why wouldn’t you buy a non-upgradeable one? It’ll be thinner, lighter and less fuss. The framework seems to be targeted at people who want a decade of use with upgrades.

Why not instead someone just market a replacement keyboard for one of the more popular laptops? It sounds as though modern keyboards are the primary pain point for newer laptops.

(Or if a 3rd party had marketed an inexpensive replacement power-brick for the author's 2001 Apple iBook perhaps he would still be using it.)

Patents, followed by a small battalion of lawyers.

I’m watching them closely for my next machine in a year or 2.

I love the idea of framework! But I also live in France and I can't get myself to do another preorder adventure right now. When they start actually shipping I might go for that, although frankly I still might wait for a Ryzen model.

It's a classic case of the Ship of Theseus.

https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/shi...

No, it isn't.

The entire point of the "my grandfather's axe" or "my grandmother's broom" story -- of which Theseus' ship is the original -- is that there's nothing of the original left, but replacement was gradual so there's a feeling of continuity.

Whereas this is the original laptop with some upgrades. Same chassis, same motherboard, same screen, same (IMHO, bad) keyboard, but more RAM, more & faster disks, and a new CPU.

This is not Theseus' ship, where nothing was left.

The point of this story is that an end-user with normal tools can, at home, repair and upgrade a decade-old Thinkpad, but you can't do that with the new ones.

The subtext is that in fact CPU performance isn't increasing much any more, and hasn't in a decade and a half. GPU performance is a bit but most of us don't need it, same as most of us don't need lots of CPU cores in a laptop. SSD performance is improving, somewhat, yes. Size, a lot.

New laptops aren't that much faster than old laptops. Unless you're very demanding, old ones are good enough.

So laptop makers, who need people to keep buying new laptops or they'll go out of business, are making laptops that you can't fix or upgrade any more.

Car industry is going in the direction of manufacturer rebuild (remanufacture), so laptop industry should do the same. Instead of making unupgradeable garbage, manufacturers should offer upgrades.

I am not sure of what you're saying, perhaps partly because I don't own a car, and never have since I got my driver's licence at age 38 or so.

I do recall a neighbour of mine saying "back when cars went rusty" to me a decade back, which surprised me. A lot. Apparently they don't now?

But modern cars, and many modern motorbikes, are sealed units which are not maintainable by the end-user. I dislike electronics like that.

For this reason, for years now, I have favoured very cheap smartphones. If I must have a sealed brick that I can't fix or upgrade, then I will have the cheapest one I can get that does what I need.

Luckily, there are very decent £/€ 125 smartphones now, from companies such as PPTV, iRulu and Umidigi, which are entirely usable and which I can replace every couple of years without pain.

For laptops, I just use decade+ old Thinkpads for now. They're fast enough for me and the keyboards are better than any modern thing.

How often do you upgrade your phone or laptop?

I ask because I sort of went the opposite road, making sure I bought something that would last a long time.

Aside from screen resolution and the modern “anything” thinking we all have high resolution monitors my old 2015 MBP is still performing just fine despite its heavy usage.

In the same period I’ve gone through 5 or 6 work laptops that were certainly not top end.

I’m of course scared that the glory days of Apple died and my next mbp won’t live 10 years, but I hope so.

Laptop: rarely. My main travel one is a Thinkpad X220 I bought used for £150 in 2017. It replaced a Thinkpad X200 I bought used in 2013 for about the same price.

I recently (end of last year) bought i7 versions of the T420 and T520, because for me they are the last generation of Thinkpads with good keyboards, and I hope they will last me for a while.

My phone? It varies but typically every 18 months - 2 years. Phones lead hard lives and don't last very long.

Current: Umidigi F2. Before that: 2nd hand iPhone 6S+. Before that: PPTV King 7. Before that: Blackberry Passport (used). Before that: iRulu Victory V3. All those in the same time period that 2 old Thinkpads have covered, and all were relatively cheap.

I follow more of this track as well...buy the highest end model and use it 2-3 times as long as you would a lower end model (but you're not paying 2-3 times the price).

My 2015 MBP made it to the end of 2021 for me - when the fans started to have to run constantly and even still caused thermal throttling - when I had 2 Thunderbolt external displays attached (thus running the discrete GPU). I think it was an OS bug introduced in Catalina or Big Sur.

I even tore down my hardware and re-applied thermal compound and clean dup the heatsinks...no joy.

Running "pmset -g thermlog" while using it sealed the deal for me. I was only getting a fraction of the CPU power when running on two displays (and this is when the ambient room temp was 68-70F). I had a day when my AC conked out for a day and the room temp jumped to 76-78F and it was unusable.

I am really enjoying my 16" 2021. Didn't realize how much of a slouch my 2015 had been by comparison.

That being said, I still rock a mid-2012 MBP for light tasks when I just need a laptop and not a desktop replacement laptop.

Toyota announced last week it's going to offer a full overhaul of its BEVs in the UK every few years. So you can drive it back to the manufacturer and they will make it new, much like a major revision of an aeroplane. This is what should be happening with laptops as well. Sealed devices are a thing of the moment and will not last imho.

Galvanized steel and clear-coat paint finish are a huge part of why cars don’t rust as much as they used to. (But salt will eventually take a toll if you are coastal or live where roads are regularly salted.) Alternative materials like stainless-steel coated aluminum, or plastic coatings also contribute.

Here’s an article contemporaneous to the rise of clearcoats and galvanization: https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/1025/hrust.html

I did not know there was a name for this[1].

I am regularly using a T400 which started life as a Lenovo 3000 N100.[2]

Upgrades since then include a 2 TB SSD, 3.06 Ghz CPU, and WiFi.

I do enjoy tinkering, but I also like the keyboard :-)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

[2]: https://www.nu42.com/2016/12/another-one-bites-the-dust.html

I've done something similar with my machines, because it was so much cheaper than getting something new.

You can get a quad core CPU for about $10, 16GB of DDR3 for about $100 and an SSD for $50.

Even if you add a better heatsink and GPU, it's still cheaper than the cheapest machine you can get new (and they come with 4GB, which isn't enough nowadays).

Those upgrades are "period correct" parts though. The part about value propositions are right but it's not that he installed modern components like latest 12th-Gen CPU or NVMe SSD.

The upgrades aren’t even substantial. The CPU, RAM, and fan are all original parts. You could’ve ordered this exact configuration from Lenovo. The only deviation from stock is the AC WiFi upgrade.

I daily drive a T530, it was max spec already so I haven’t changed anything. It has more than enough power to do software dev.

I see you also follow my rule: When buying a laptop, always buy top spec.

My laptop is an OG X1 Carbon i7/8/256. I can't upgrade it easily, but I'm actually happy with it for my purposes. My main driver is a Ryzen desktop though, that's a proper beast.

I have that exact laptop, abd my only gripe is battery life. How's that holding up for you?

That's awesome! My battery life is not good at all. I had it replaced after 3 years - bought it ahead as part of "warranty", but it's likely due for another replacement now.

Other than that it's only recently started to show some scuff marks on the corners. Everything else is still holding up great, especially the keyboard.

> I see you also follow my rule: When buying a laptop, always buy top spec.

ive become a believer for both desktops and laptops.

the ratio of hardware performance to software performance requirements increases over time, but its linear and the slope is small. knowing that, you can buy cheap machines frequently or expensive machines infrequently and hit a similar $/time expenditure - but one way you get fast puterz and the other way you dont.

the details matter of course. $/performance hits a sharp breakpoint and turns exponential around the 80th percentile. for my money - and everyone i know uninterested in the bleeding edge - a couple notches below the best is an incomparable deal that also saves the time of frequent research/upgrades/purchasing.

It really depends on what you’re doing. When the cheap machine still lasts 5+ years the value proposition of going expensive just isn’t there.

IMO, the reason to buy a more expensive machine is simply the benefit of using a faster machine for several years. If you’re spending 20 hours a week on a PC then it’s worth stretching the budget a little. However, that generally only applies to one or two form factors not everything phone, tablet, desktop, and laptop. If the only thing you use the tablet for is Netflix in bed then a cheap one is probably fine.

There's also the fact that on the pricier machine you'll get better hardware, as in "nicer to use".

For example at work, we use HP Pro and Elite books. Just got a brand new one the other day, and while the screen is incredible compared to the 2013 models, it still looks like absolute crap compared to my 2013 MBP. And I'm not talking resolution, I'm talking washed out colors and ridiculous viewing angles.

All along these years, they also had shitty touchpads, shoddy body assembly that would dig into your wrists while typing, atrocious coil whine, loud fan spinning for no reason, power light that would blind you at night, etc.

So even if the total price paid was lower than my MBP (which I doubt, since I'm on my fourth HP in 6 years), it basically means that during these 8 years I would never have used a nice computer. And only this last one (with a zen 3) is actually faster than my old Mac.

Displays are hardest to upgrade and provide one of the most critical aspects of usability. Maximise display capabilities if possible.

RAM is easily replaced and only gets cheaper with time. Buy with sufficient RAM, and max that out a few years in.

CPU overall tends to have fairly minimal impacts on overall performance within the range offered in a given set of options, and there's often a sharp uptick in price for a small performance boost at the higher end. I'll usually downgrade slightly for savings.

Storage can be replace readily over system life and often should be. Get what you need initially but plan on an update later. SSD or fusion drives are optimal.

Depending on your OS, WiFi reliability often precludes raw performance. For Linux, go with well-supported options. (I don't drive Windows.)

I've never put a premium on graphics performance. If it plays videos and displays xterms, it's good enough for me. YMMV. I prefer open source drivers.

Overall power draw and batterylife are also considerations, and again dropping from peak specs may actually deliver advantages here. Alternatively, you'll find yourself buying capabilities that neither your battery nor thermal management can deliver consistently.

Maxxing out spec is going to cost quite a bit. Buying last season's maxxed-out spec will often provide significan savings, as may buying this season's somewhat-below-peak specs per my guidelines above.

This is based on a few decades of not chasing performance extremes and with a fair tolerance of sufficient performance. Ironically it's raw Web browser performance that seems to be the most critical element of desktop satisfaction these days.

Same. I used a maxxed out Vaio for about 8 years and really the only reason I got a new x1 carbon in 2017 was because the lack of usb 3 (let alone c) was becoming a problem.

I still love that machine. One thing I dearly miss is the real docking station, no usbc cable. That was under $3k that lasted for 8 years.

I don't know how much I'd pay for lesser machines or how often, but I can't believe this math doesn't work out.

Subsequently, the x1 carbon is still perfect but I just had to get a Framework when they came out just on principle, even though that 2017 x1c is still a pleasure to use and I'd happily use it for several more years.

Get the good one, max it out, use it for at least 5 years, enjoy life all day every day instead of being perpetually annoyed.

I specced my T420 freshman year of college but had a budget from my parents so I skipped out on getting the upgraded LCD panel in exchange for the i7 CPU. That laptop lasted me a couple years until I grabbed a tablet X61 and then a X200 for taking notes towards the end of college. I'm now back to my T420 and have spent a little but of time upgrading things the drives, ram, wlan card, downgrading to a smaller 6 cell battery, and doing the ivyrain bios. I really regret going for the cheaper panel as upgrading to a 1600x900 is not a simple process and the cost is halfway to just buying something modern. My girlfriend was going to give me her old Lenovo Flex 14 when she got MacBook but she loves it more than the MacBook and I'm not really a fan of either laptops. I love my old T420 but I'm stuck between spending money on sentimental hardware or just buying something newer.

> the value propositions of 2021/2022 hardware doesn't look better

I'm glad you managed to distill my feelings so clearly.

Most new things are just gimmicks, it's pretty rare that good innovations come into the laptop area.

Think of stuff like non-16:9 displays: older thinkpads had beautiful displays that were amazing for doing actual work. Now we're seeing 16:10 displays coming back, and it's awesome.

The ThinkPad T42 I had in high school had a 14" 1400x1050 display and writing documents was very comfortable. Then a dark age came, and all laptops had 16:9 displays... Editing a document in Word/Writer was a pain in the ass. Between the title bar, the windows icon bar (start menu and iconized applications) and the various office toolbars (and the f-ing ribbon toolbar) you could barely see the text you're writing. It was really moronic.

Getting off-topic, but you know that ribbon bar is collapsible, right? Also Windows up until 10 supported slim task bar, 11 unfortunately doesn't, probably as a compensation for the better displays available :(.

> Getting off-topic, but you know that ribbon bar is collapsible, right?

Yes but it was really meant as an example. Take for example another program like a web browser: between the title bar, the menu bar, the tab bar and the bookmark bar and you're losing a lot of vertical screen real estate.

Yeah the bookmark bar is collapsible and nowadays firefox and other browsers hide the menu bar, but those are useful features (particularly the bookmark bar) and I just want them around.

The problem is not that I should be hiding useful stuff like the ribbon bar or the bookmarks bar, the problem is that 16:9 displays are moronic and should not have been pushed onto everybody forcefully.

They might be okay for content-consumption-oriented laptops, but they're awful for real-work-oriented laptops (readl work raning from editing a spreadsheet, editing a document in word and even editing code of course).

No wonder that high-end external display vendors like Dell/HP (and others) kept selling 16:10 external displays for professional use.

And newer laptops are all so damned huge, and they have terrible keyboards and trackpads with no buttons that are offset to one side.

My favorite laptop currently is an HP EliteBook 2760p that I got for free from a friend who works at a company that was throwing it away. Aside from the battery being dead, it's the best laptop I've ever used.

HP Omen 15" is your friend. Ryzen and GTX 3070 - all SSD

> Crucially, they prefer it not because they love tinkering,

I’m not sure what part of this article gave you this idea? It’s clear to me the author is gravitating towards a solution that allows him to tinker to his heart’s content. I mean did you not see the pile of wires connected to the eGPU — on a laptop?

I've been using my Thinkpad T420 since 2011 just fine and I haven't needed to do anything to it.

How's the display going?

If they had the foresight to spend the money on the bigger display, they are probably just fine. It's not Rentina quality but it's good enough for something to use at home for non-work.

Yes Thinkpads are very inexpensive so it makes perfect sense to max out. At least it did back then. I don't know about now.

I run two Thinkpad T420s and one T420 at home, for myself and family.

The T420s in particular are as small as I need a laptop to be (T420, no 's', is a bit bulky and old school); and yet they are fully modular - you can swap out battery, or Ultrabay (DVD to HDD to extra battery) with a quick pull of lever; it takes one well-marked screw to access primary hard drive or RAM. They're reliable, sturdy, good looking in a timeless way; AND, they don't try to re-invent the keyboard. This is a massive, massive reason I stick with the *20 series of Thinkpads - all modern laptops feel the need to reinvent the layout, which means I can NEVER use my muscle memory to do Ctrl-Home, Ctrl-End, PgUp, PgDwn, which I use constantly. They get relegated to some tiny buttons in non-sensical random places that differ between manufacturers and models. I had to use HpElitebook and Dell something or the other for work, which were fine laptops in their own way, but try to emulate Apple in size and format, and the keyboards were maddeningly awful in their layout.

Less of a Rant, more to the point - the T420s is perfectly usable today without any crazy "mods" - a $40 SSD which literally slots in is pretty much the only thing it needs. We do browsing, movies, light photo browsing/editing, email, MS Office, Schoolwork, etc all on them a full decade after their release :)

Fellow T420s lover here. Yay us!

Pro Tip: get Dells business models like the latitude series

The business Dell laptops blow anything lenovo has ever made out of the water in terms of specs, build quality, and serviceability. Also Dell’s bios is way better and easier to do stuff in. I’ve had a t420 and I thought it was crap compared to the Dell business laptops. The cooling, plastic casing material, and serviceability just isn’t there. On the T420 my palm rest cracked and to replace it you pretty much had to fully take apart the laptop to get it off. ifixit rated that particular repair at a pretty high difficulty, so instead I took the reusable components out, binned it, and used a Dell latitude.

Currently I don't own a Dell business laptop however. Right now I'm using an Intel NUC Laptop and it does pretty good.

They are still a level much lower than Lenovo.

Agreed. Their BIOS is full of bugs. I've investigated a few on the 7275 (business grade): I believe it's technically impossible for it to really sleep on Windows, regardless of how you look at it. It just saves a little bit of power while it looks like it's sleeping, then Windows realize it's an unacceptable power draw and pulls the plug (power off) then transparently resumes from a S4 hibernate to disk.

Check my previous post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29762909

This has been the move for me.

I have a Carbon X1 running Windows through work and Latitude running Linux at home. It's not fair to compare the two because they are different weight classes and running different OSes, but the X1 battery life and performance have really put me off the smaller form factor. It's puny and it regularly gets ~2 hours off a charge versus 4-8x that on the Dell, all just to save a kilo.

I haven’t worked with anything newer, but the late 2000s Dell Precision laptops are a true pleasure to work on — a great deal more pleasant than any Thinkpad I’ve cracked open. With just four screws I’m inside of my old M4400 and can pop off its heat sink, change thermal paste, swap CPUs, change wifi/Bluetooth/cell cards, etc.

Overall, I prefer my old thinkpad to my old latitude. Typing on it right now. A proper keyboard.

The tip on purchasing business grade laptops applicable to several companies as well. I have the P series and it's going strong for 5 years after all the abuse of grad school and internships and now another degree. Apart from the wear on the rubber coating on the lid, the plastic is still robust. If you want upgradability from Lenovo, I think P series tick most boxes. The form factor is different here.

Where did you buy that NUC laptop from?

Yep - Latitudes are always cheaper than their Thinkpad equivalents (example, my e6220 was about 2/3rds the cost of an x220 (this was about 5 years ago).

I've used several Dell business laptops, most from the Latitude Exxx series, and they are great machines.

From what I can tell, they were made to compete directly with the IBM/Lenovo T-series Thinkpads. Similar form factor, ability to use docking stations, good keyboards, even the Trackpoint-like pointing device in addition to a traditional trackpad.

Although I haven't used a recent Lenovo T-series for any length of time, the Dells appear to compare very favorably. More metal construction, so they dent rather than cracking. Docking stations seem to be less expensive. Displays are on par. Similar battery life.

I wouldn't turn down a T-series if somebody handed me one, but many of the points the author makes in TFA about his T-series are true of the E-series Dells also.

My T440p started life in 2013 as a work PC in an engineering firm. Was then retired and sold for scraps to an employee, a friend of mine who later passed it on to me. I splashed out and bought a brand new, higher res display on eBay, less than USD 100 and the quality keeps blowing me backwards. Plus 8GB more RAM for a total of 12, and a new 1TB Samsung SSD, and soon perhaps a battery replacement. And they can damned well pry the thing from my cold, dead hands. It's just a superbly well designed and satisfying piece of machinery to handle.

Meanwhile, a much newer Lenovo is sitting largely unused except for the occasional batch job and some audio processing.

I personally find the value prop of my 2020 and 2021 model laptops, and my 2022 model desktop, to be rather good.

2020: Razer Book 13: 4 core, 8 threads, AVX-512, Thunderbolt 4. Weird gaming company, yes, but also competent thermal design and the machine works perfectly. This CPU when cooled properly is going to be at least 200% faster than that old Sandy Bridge CPU in the article, and that CPU has a much higher TDP so cooling an 11th gen properly is a piece of cake comparatively.

2021: MacBook Pro 14, M1 Pro CPU. The CPU that scared the pants off Intel. Say no more.

2022: 12th gen Intel Core. The empire strikes back. More than doubles the single-threaded performance of 11th gen Core in many cases.

And these machines are cheaper than ever. Competition works.

My 2012 Dell XPS14 is still my preferred laptop even without any upgrades or tinkering. I have a somehwat newer XPS13 for work that is also decent (but not as good as the '12), and according to the calendar I'm due for a refresh but like you when I look at what's available I don't see any reason to go through the hassle of an upgrade, never mind the cost.

I had the 2012 XPS, it was great! That's what got me back to XPS two years ago, which... turned out to be a nightmare. And apparently they are doubling down on this: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/dell-xps-13-plus-buzzy-c...

I've been using a Dell XPS13 (not 2 in 1, but top of the line everything else) for dev work for a year now and I love it. It's small, light, and runs my virtual environment handily.

> I’d like to thank Intel here for making this possible. The CPU innovation stagnation between 2012-2017 has resulted in 4 cores still being an acceptable low-end CPU in early 2022. Without this, my laptop would likely be obsolete by now.

Hahaha, this last sentence seals the overall tone of the article.

This.

Last January I converted my old (2012) quad-core Intel desktop and gave it to my son for gaming. The only thing I had to do was add a 1-TB SSD and put in an RTX-3060 Ti, and it runs every game (Fortnite, CoD, etc) at 100+ FPS without any issues. I'm still amazed that a simple GPU change and the machine keeps up with his friends brand-new AMD box (not sure what chip, just that it was new in 2021).

When the 12th generation intel chips came out last month, it was the first time I felt good about the future for chips. (Yes, I know AMD has been kicking their butt, but that's been in core count and power, which aren't as relevant for my son's gaming.)

What other metrics are there for a processor in gaming, if not (compute) power per core, as well as core count?

Sure, a gaming computer doesn't need 8 cores as much as an encoder, but AMD's single core performance is right up there with Intel, for much less money.

Disclaimer: AMD fanboy and stockholder

I was using power to mean electricity, not compute power. Thanks for noticing that ambiguity.

As for your comment about core usage in games, I'm still surprised how few cores it takes, even for modern games. Not my knowledge area at all, so all of that part of gaming and computing architecture is a bit opaque to me.

Was it a Xeon processor :)?

Ha - it actually is!!!!

This is too funny - I was about to reply to you, and then decided to check my files. Lo and behold, I found that when I bought the components in March 2012, I bought an Intel E5-2609 (which is indeed a Xeon!) for $299. Had I not looked, I never would have guessed.

Thinking about it now (and I might be wrong), the machine has 32GB of RAM, so I might have bought the Xeon to go above 16GB. Can anyone confirm if that would have made sense at the time (or if my memory is just fuzzy?) ?

Chip details here: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/64588/i...

Second hand PC dealers in my country (Turkey) used to put together affordable gaming rigs using old Xeon processors a couple of years back. That's why my first guess was that if it was a Xeon.

I think Xeon processors also have special motherboards, so you can put TWO processors on some of them. That was a huge selling point for computer nerds like me.

Wikipedia says "Because of a hardware limitation not fixed until Ivy Bridge-E in 2013, most older Intel CPUs only support up to 4 gibibit chips for 8 GiB DIMMs". The E5-2609 is at the generation of sandy bridge. So you probably bought the Xeon to support 32GB :).

My wife has been gaming on a fourth-gen i5 + RX 570 for a few months, and it was mostly fine until Halo Infinite— with that title it was pretty clear that she was CPU bound, with the system chugging on open areas, mob AI, particles, etc.

We upgraded her to a second hand B450 mobo + Ryzen 2400 and that's been fine. Still running on low settings due to the limited GPU, but everything is at least playable. And this motherboard has FW updates that support 5xxx series Ryzens, so there's upgrade headroom there now as well.

Don't upgrade for Halo Infinite. That game also turned my otherwise fine machine into a potato. I've since fixed the issue by not playing halo and playing splitgate instead.

I have plenty of time in both Halo Infinite and Splitgate. Even if you take away the portals, Splitgate doesn't play like Halo Infinite at all. They look and sound similar, but they play and feel very different.

The Ryzen 5600X is the gaming CPU of this gen outside of the lower budget Intel chips. Ryzen didn't just win on core count they won in single thread too because competing Intel chips are 120W, which limits their performance on stock cooling. The 5600X is 76W actual.

It was. Now there's 12400F which offers just slightly lower performance(few percent slower) at almost half of the price. And there's 12600k which at the same price offers slightly better performance in gaming than 5600x, but in multithreaded workloads often outperforms 5800x.

that chip can suck down 150W of cooling (which is likely the cooling setup that benchmarks will be running with).

Not going to argue semantics here, but the grandparents point was that cooling the intel chips tends to be where it falls down (thus, the real world may differ significantly), even if there are paper gains in game benchmarks.

Offering a chip which takes double the cooling is just leaning into their point.

It's not just the cooling, it's power usage in general, that's how Intel moved ahead with this generation... 12600K is using 224W compared with 5600X's 134W during the same test (SuperPi stress test where 12600K scored worse at 389s vs. 5600X's 380s).

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that the competition is heating up again, that can only be good news for consumers. But sucking more power to deliver perf gains is totally the wrong direction for this.

Game performance, and cooling in general outside of a very specific use case, isn't affected by what the marketing department of Intel says the 10 core AVX wattage of the 12600k is being compared to what the marketing department of AMD says the 6 core AVX wattage of the 5600X is.

When a single core is maxed out the real world measured difference is roughly 12 watts between the two and remember the 12600k is doing slightly more per second than the 5600X. If your gaming device of choice is a laptop that'd be interesting but both are desktop gaming CPUs. If 24/7 all core workload power efficiency is your concern I'd steer you away from either gaming optimized option.

I really like what AMD has done, my last 2 desktop CPUs have been a 3900X and a 5950X, but if I were to buy a entry level gaming CPU right now the 12600k would be very interesting regardless what the all core AVX thermals look like on a stock cooler.

12400f costs 180 dollars right now. 5600x costs 300 dollars. They perform similarly in gaming tasks(5600x does have larger L3 cache and in cache-sensitive professional applications it is faster). 12400f draws 117W(intel spec). You won't be running both of these CPUs with their stock coolers so, the difference in CPU cooler costs will be 20 dollars at most(if you are not opting for some kind of water cooling on mid range build, which would be insane). Heck, even if you buy CPU cooler you still end up spending less money than on 5600x with stock cooler.

A 12400F is slower than a 5600X in games?

That's really weird because a 11400F has better performance..

There's also the slightly more relevant metrics like IPC which is much lower on Ryzen chips overall. Maybe their single-core speed is a little slower, but they make up for it with incredibly high-performance instruction optimization. 64-bit division on a Coffee Lake CPU is a 36-cycle instruction, with up to a hundred cycles of latency. The same instruction on a Zen3 CPU is no more than 17 cycles, with latency no lower than 12. That's a rather extreme example, but it definitely makes a difference.

In more CPU demanding games it will start running into trouble. Even on a single-threaded performance level a Ryzen 5600X is about twice as fast as a Core i5-2500k from 2012.

Yeah, so something I used to do was buy used servers from ~2010 or so (5-6 years old at the time).

Due to the fact that CPUs really haven't changed a lot for servers (at least for the stuff I was doing), it was a relatively cheap way to get 40+ core computers for less than a thousand bucks.

If it weren’t for the cumbersome and outdated iDRACs and ILOs of those old servers they’d still be perfectly usable for lots of things. If you don’t need out of band management it’s probably best to ignore them as much as possible.

I used a PCIe to M.2 NVMe adapter and an EFI shim so that my Dell R820 could boot from it (which is not supported by the BIOS). Stuff like that adds a ton of life to older systems. I still got rid of it because it was too loud and power hungry for what I was doing. Surprisingly, I was able to sell it for roughly what I paid for it over a year later. 32 cores and 192GB of RAM for under a grand is pretty incredible.

> I still got rid of it because it was loud and power hungry.

Same! I loved my 48 core server, but there was actually a glitch in the Con Edison system where I ended up getting free power for two years [1], and once they fixed it and I got a power bill email for almost $900 while I was at work, I called my wife and said "UNPLUG THE SERVER NOW. RUN, DON'T WALK!"

[1] To be clear, I didn't know there was a glitch, I just thought power was cheaper in that apartment. I'm not greedy, I'm just dumb.

$900 for a month? That seems excessive. 720 hrs * 1.8 kW = 1296 kWh. 1800w is a maxed out 120v 20A circuit.

I pay about $0.10 per kWh, that’s $129.60 for a month.

Well, $900 was the total power bill. I also had one window units running in that room, and another window unit running in my bedroom, and I also actually had an Apple XServe running that I was using as a media server.

I think what caused such a catastrophic power bill was the surge pricing in NYC that happens in the summer, and the servers pumping out a ton of heat, forcing the AC's to run harder and longer.

What's hilarious to me is that Apple considers their own computers of this era to be "vintage"

No joke, that's the real term https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 "About vintage products. -- Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago."

Well, not much has changed on the intel side in that timeframe. My 2013 laptop is still getting OS updates and performs fine for my needs. And now I can brag that I'm running a vintage computer as my daily driver.

Vintage is a technical term for "we don't stock parts to repair these anymore" not "they're unusable and you should throw it out".

s/technical/marketing/g

Possibly legal.

I heard a story that the original Apple II machines came with a warranty that had no expiration and that California residents who purchased a machine in California are still entitled to hardware support on the machine.

Right, Apple specifically calls those "obsolete":

> About obsolete products

> Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago.

Planned obsolescence is Apple's bread and butter.

This sentiment is thrown out a lot but Apple has some of the best LTS on their hardware in the business. 6 year old iPhones are still getting updates. Someone in this thread mentioned their laptop that Apple describes as vintage is still getting updates. Apple is still selling a 4 year old smart watch as new.

I feel much better spending my money on Apple products trusting it will be supported for a long time than spending it on another device where I will be lucky to have support for more than 2 years.

I would say Apple’s bread and butter is creating an ecosystem of hardware and software that works so well together that choosing to leave their environment is such a hard decision that it is easier to stick with Apple.

It's easier to bring the obsolescence bugging users to update. And you cannot disable the popups.

It's not Apple, it's any closed-source hardware. The moment the vendor no longer supports it, it's dead. Not counting those few rare cases where fanatics reverse engineer it.

no, it's not; continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is. (disclaimer: was an engineer with a great rank inside Apple for several years)

> continued innovation motivating upgrades, however, is

Apple seems overly aggressive about breaking compatibility on iOS; as a result tons of apps break every year. This imposes an ongoing burden of maintenance costs onto developers, and many games and apps are simply abandoned. It seems to me that saving Apple time and money at the expense of developers and users may be the wrong trade-off in the long run.

And that's not even counting the 32-bit apocalypse which broke most games on iOS and macOS. "This app needs to be updated" but of course it never will be... Many of them have been pulled from the app store as well.

Windows does fairly well in terms of ongoing compatibility on the desktop, and (non-phone) gaming handhelds rarely break compatibility with old software (consider the 3DS which went through 5 or more hardware revisions and many firmware updates with negligible game/app breakage.) The few things that tend to break over time are online multiplayer games when they pull the plug on the servers, or streaming apps like Youtube or Netflix.

to your point, i wonder how many of the "needs to be upgraded" apps just need a recompilation with current Xcode, then resubmission, and I don't know the answer.

Seems arguable -- but if that's the case, they are one of the lesser offenders in the market right now.

The lifespan of much of Apple's hardware is considerably longer than most competitors' products. This is especially true with phones. I'm using an iPhone 7 right now, which was first released in Sept 2016. So, five full years and counting, and it's still running the latest iOS version. Not just "still gets security updates" on an old OS, but actually runs the latest release.

For hardware in 2022, that's not bad.

Personally, I think it's kind of a low bar, and we really ought to be able to do better. (I think a 5-year lifespan for a phone or a laptop, and 10 for a desktop, should be a starting point.)

This is a blatant lie that is so tiresome. How long is life of an average Android phone? How long do they supply updates? Google’s is 2 years of software updates and 3 years of security updates, IIRC. Apple supplies updates to 5 years phones rutinely and in lots of cases even longer. They now even provide a way for you, a private person, to just get tools and parts necessary to do certain DIY repairs/replacements. Quit your bullshit.

Indeed. Not only are my ThinkPad T420s still usable around home (see another post here), but my AMD FX-8350, approaching a decade, is still going strong as my primary (gaming, photo editing, etc) desktop.

I went back to a 2008 R-series several years ago after having some newer laptops fail on me. I still had it and it kept working, so I kept using it. Last year I finally decided I needed a trackpad so I upgraded to a W500 (2009) which if you squint is the same computer with everything upgraded slightly. It's low-end, but it can still do a lot of work and even load Facebook or recipe sites if necessary.

Overall, I've found that even in 2021 a Core 2 Duo can still be a sufficient low-end CPU. Thanks Intel!

I'm using X220 from 2011, it has i7, 8GB RAM and SSD, running Debian Linux.

I don't even feel the need to upgrade. It's in ideal condition, I love the keyboard and form factor, and for my daily tasks mostly involving terminal, text editor and web browser if feels snappier than many modern machines I have worked with.

I bought a new Dell laptop for my wife a year ago, and while the CPU and GPU are obviously way more capable for tasks like running games or encoding video, overall it just feels slower. It takes longer to boot, launch programs, even just switching between windows has some small delay. It probably would be quicker if I installed the same OS, but still - I feel better user experience from a decade old ThinkPad than new $1000+ machine out of box.

I'm also using an X220. I bought an X1 as a potential replacement but the trackpoint is unusable and the keyboard is a big step down. The X220 battery only lasts about 15 minutes though, so I need to keep it plugged in. I'd like to find a replacement battery but am not enthusiastic about prying the housing apart to install new cells or buying a knockoff from a faraway land which might start a fire.

The easiest way to tell the difference between a real and fake is by the white "recycle" sticker

https://preview.redd.it/83f0fqegasa11.jpg?width=1263&format=...

fake batteries have a poorly printed, "fat" looking battery on the recycle sticker and the real ones have a slender properly printed one. For context in the image the bottom one is fake.

Thanks, but the problem is that either it has the original cells inside and those will have the same issues as my current ones or it has new (possibly unmatched?) cells of unknown provenance.

I've stared at the image for 3 minutes and still can't figure out the difference. Where exactly is the "fat looking battery" you refer to?

It looks like it is inside the white circular recycling symbol - not the other triangular recycling symbol.

Aha, that cleared up my confusion! Thanks.

I just got off my X200s from like....2008.

the 1.8 Ghz dual core was getting long in the tooth. But it had upgrades otherwise (newer ssd, though i had a factory ssd from day 1), and upgraded to 8GB of ram. Ran multiple linux distros on it great, including debian with awesomewm and even ElementaryOS.

I will not admit what i bought to replace it, but im happy for the time being and it replaced by desktop and laptop in one (but wasnt cheap). I know theres no way it has the longevity i got out of that x200s.

Technically the x200s is still in service though. I let my daughter use to get better with mouse/hand-eye coordination and do some reading/website work on it.

My X220 is running FreeBSD with 2 SSDs in ZFS mirror config. What a wonderful little machine that is.

A couple months ago I pulled my x220 that I hadn't used in 3 years out of the closet and got it all updated to do some hobby programming while visiting parents. My only other laptops were a work machine (X1 Carbon, I want to say from 2019) that I didn't want to travel with and a Surface Go that I didn't want to wrangle into having a decent dev environment.

When I booted it up, I checked the most recent entry in pacman's logs:

  $ tail /var/log/pacman.log -n1
   [2018-08-24 12:40] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -R aur/ino'

Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything. It just took a bit of finagling in the form of looking through any packages that gave errors (errors like cyclic dependency stuff and conflicts from bad use of pip) and uninstalling those that I didn't see a need for or switching them to the package manager instead of pip. About an hour of babysitting it and I had a completely updated and working Arch setup.

Using it was surprisingly pleasant, I think the most painful thing was initial builds for some large Haskell projects were slow but subsequent builds were tolerable. Also the original screen, while nicely visible with the matte surface, has a painfully low resolution of 1366x768 and so few websites are happy with half of that width now that everything has huge margins.

Probably the most important thing was that it was mine (even though I haven't done the sorts of mods in TFA) in a way that my work laptop and the windows machines I'd been using outside of work could never be.

(I do love how sturdy it is. Especially with the slice battery that almost doubles the thickness and gives it enough juice for hours)

Well of course you fixed your arch install in a matter of an hour, you're a Haskell developer.

I’m not a Haskell developer and Arch is my goto Linux precisely because it’s on the of easiest distros to fix when things go wrong.

YMMV but the snide remark is definitely unjustified.

That's been my experience with Arch as well. I've only seen a handful of actual breakages in my time (using consistently since 2016), and there's _always_ a good discussion with a manual fix available within a few hours, or a few days if you want to stick to official update channels.

Plus KDE Plasma has become such a joy to use! I repurposed my T530 as a media center with a wireless keyboard and it's been a fantastic experience

Out of curiosity, what's your media center setup?

The physical setup is very simple: just the laptop wired through miniDP to the TV, laptop sits behind the TV on a little wardrobe and has its screen turned off. I have various handbraked movies (not for distribution, only my personal usage) and shows that I view in VLC, plus a gigabit Ethernet connection that is more than enough for HD streaming.

I keep it simple, just have a standard desktop install of Arch with Plasma. Lets me also do work on the machine, writing code here and there, checking emails etc. The living room setup is much easier on my back for extended work sessions as compared to my office chair.

Same reasoning here, my back is not well and even though I am starting physiotherapy in a few days, I am looking for a setup I can actively practice from a couch-like position. Even bought a very nice and sturdy (and comfy) folding bed. And will soon order a lap desk.

Makes me a bit salty because the Steelcase Gesture is an absolutely EXCELLENT chair and I paid a lot for it but... health is more important. Hopefully I will be using it more in the future if my physiotherapy progresses well.

Thank you for the anecdote. I am pondering Manjaro with XFCE but might look at KDE Plasma as well; a lot of people praise it.

The best DE is the one that YOU like, I was an avid XFCE user for many many years! Good luck resolving your back problems, it's a long journey.

here's a (temporary) image of this very setup: https://i.imgur.com/YBRlvkF.jpg

Heh, what a (1) lovely and a (2) meta comment, love it! Thanks a bunch for making me smile. :)

Anecdote: I use Manjaro on my home server and on a laptop and it's rock-solid. Not sure why people look down on Arch, I only had good experiences and I'm very far from a seasoned sysadmin.

I don't look down on Arch at all. I came from the yesteryears of using Slackware Linux. It was a lot of work. I learnt a lot of course. But I won't do that again. Arch is much much more modern and elegant, but still requires some handholding. The Arch Wiki is a pearl. I tried Manjaro and was mightily impressed, it was a breeze. I might go back to that on a multi boot machine. Cheers.

People look down on Arch because the stability story is catastrophic, and Arch users deny that because they have low standards:

Parent was surprised that "Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything" after only 2 years of no updates. It "just" took them "an hour of babysitting it" through cyclic dependency headaches. Child comments proudly proclaim "only seen a handful of actual breakages" (since 2016) and "on the of easiest distros to fix when things go wrong".

Compare to my dad's laptop, which has been running Debian for about a decade and often goes multi-year stretches without updates, and has never broken. Not once. That's the kind of performance I expect from an OS.

fwiw I've gotten a debian install to the point where I'd rather wipe and reinstall than fix thanks to a combination of pinning, bad pip hygeine (why oh why is global install default), and not being sure where to go to learn how to untangle the mess I'd created. Sure I was a lot less experienced but there's something to be said for arch giving me enough tools and information that I actually feel like I can fix whatever comes up.

I have a Surface Go 2 running Arch. Great for dev work, aside from the low amount of storage (128 GB).

Its portability is hard to beat for trips; Patagonia’s lovely Atom 8L sling bag is big enough for the tablet with some room left over.

Love my X220, although it has been really struggling lately. Chromium, Opera, Brave or Firefox all cause my CPU/fan to crank up as soon as I have a couple of tabs open :(

I love my X220. Also running arch with dwm. Initially, it was more for tinkering and just to play with but it's getting more day to day use. The keyboard is great and I'm not as worried if it drops or the kids get their hands on it. I also love the light placement rather than the keyboard being back-lit

Been pushing it to do Java development and, while a little slow, it's holding up fine

I used an x220 as my primary machine for a long time. The low resolution screen and the unusually crappy touchpad are what got me to upgrade.

The touchpad in particular was horrible because it had different resolutions in X and Y. In one of those (I don't remember which) it was lower than the screen. So I found myself frequently unable to get to the 1 pixel wide handles to resize windows without the wigglestick.

I turned the touchpad off on my x220 and simply used the track point.

I've always enjoyed being multimodal. There were workarounds but I didn't like not having access to a useful touchpad. It seemed like a clear hardware problem because I had the same problem in Windows as in all desktop environments in Linux.

I'm not sure which DE you're using, but many have a simple shortcut (in XFCE it's something like Alt+click) to resize windows with the keyboard. Becomes very natural to use and much less fiddly than the touchpad alone.

Laptops in the early 2010s kind of reached a level of being adequate enough for most use-cases that it's hard to really justify an upgrade.

I feel, as I write this on my late 2013 MacBook Pro, that it's powerful enough for most normal activities, read, browse, video calls, work on not too large data sets, etc. Anything that needs to run longer than I keep the laptop open can run on a different device, many programs are now web apps. The screen has a high resolution and the keyboard is good, if only battery and RAM replacements were easier it would be as good as new.

This is different to for instance my older laptop from 2008 or that before from 2004 - horrible screens, battery life, no fast wifi or USB.

But also compared to newer laptops, mine seems to get exactly the right balance between being robust and lightweight.

To me VDI is the way to go. I want my development machine to be in the cloud and always running.

I want a lightweight notebook that only takes into consideration screen, keyboard and battery that I can connect to my virtual desktop from anywhere.

I want a dedicated desk at home with a $40 PCoIP thin client purchased used on EBay hooked up to my multiple monitors that connects to the same virtual desktop.

With this you can truly work from anywhere even if your notebook is stolen or dies. With AWS Workspaces you can be as redundant as you want, you can create a daily snapshot of your Workspace if you want and launch it in any region if your primary region goes down.

How do you deal with the noticeable latency? It's pretty annoying even on LAN with RDP. I imagine it'll be worse on the cloud.

I don’t notice any. I also don’t use RDP - for Amazon Workspaces I use their app that utilizes the PCoIP protocol.

Other than that my last job was working at one of the largest banks in the United States. We were 100% virtual desktop since 2014.

My current employer just switched to about 95% virtual desktop.

Nobody ever complains about latency. I think it’s a given that literally everyone will switch to this method at some point - there are too many positives.

Everyone I know who works in VDI complains about latency. My wife’s whole company uses virtual desktops, and anytime she’s working from and I look over her shoulder I shudder, it’s incredibly noticeable.

I have no experience with that. I am connected to a virtual desktop right now that is in my employer's datacenter. I am at home on my personal desktop. On my company virtual desktop I am running Zoom and am on a conference call with 11 people all of us have video turned on and there is literally 0 latency that I can perceive. I have a local Logitech webcam that is perfectly accessible from my VDI desktop.

Moving windows around is something that I typically utilize to test for lag and there is just none. My previous employer was literally using this for 7 years before I came to my current employer and I was so happy when we switched to VDI.

Of course it depends on your Internet connection and your ISP's connection pathway to get to your VDI but I've regularly connected to my VDI desktops over the years from Starbucks WiFi, Dunkin Donuts wifi and many others with no perceived latency.

>I have no experience with that. I am connected to a virtual desktop right now that is in my employer's datacenter. I am at home on my personal desktop. On my company virtual desktop I am running Zoom and am on a conference call with 11 people all of us have video turned on and there is literally 0 latency that I can perceive. I have a local Logitech webcam that is perfectly accessible from my VDI desktop.

inpreceptable latency in teleconferencing doesn't tell you much. There's already so much latency built in (eg. the webcam itself, the encoder/decoder, the time it takes for your packets to travel over the internet to the relay server and then to the other attendants) that the extra latency added by VDI can be buried. On the other hand when you're doing any sort of interactive editing the latency is very noticeable, because there isn't much latency to start with.

I completely agree with this. I recently started a new role that requires me to run 2 separate VDIs. The latency is incredibly frustrating. How people have been working like this for years I do not know. Beyond the latency the resource allocation is far too low. Things just take so much longer to run and Microsoft Teams grinds to a halt if anything else is happening.

Ive been told when my managed device arrives I will no longer need to use either VDI, but if that's not the case I am very seriously considering moving onto another role despite being only ~2 months in.

I prefer having a laptop that's powerful enough on its own, this gives me a lot of freedom when the internet is bad. I also like to have a desktop with a nice screen and a bit more power that I can use to run things that take a bit longer.

Everything more serious happens in the cloud, yes, but it's good to know that I can achieve reasonable results, browse, watch videos and send e-mails.

Even though I'm kind of excited for a new M1 Macbook with way more battery and faster apps, I wouldn't spend money on it until I absolutely have to.

My employer makes us do this and I absolutely hate it. It slows me down so much. I now have to effectively maintain two machines that cause issues at twice the frequency. The server isn't even notably faster than my MacBook. Moreover, in my experience, the uniformity of these cloud development machines also encourages developers to get lazy and start making all sorts of assumptions about the environment the application runs in. This makes it impossible over time to run the application locally and will cause issues during the inevitable hardware upgrades in the future.

I now have to effectively maintain two machines

In a VDI infrastructure, your physical desktop should be either literally or effectively a dump terminal that gives you access to your virtual desktop. Why would you be using both?

The server isn't even notably faster than my MacBook

That isn't the benefit. The benefit is having a desktop you can access from anywhere with Internet access regardless of what physical client you have access to. Another benefit is that everything is centrally backed up including a full-fidelity copy of your workstation. Another benefit is that it is lower cost than distributing high-end desktops/laptops to users.

I'm also using a 2013 MacBook pro as my personal machine.

I walked into the Apple store a few years ago with the intention of replacing it with a shiny new one. I hated the new keys and at the time couldn't get a physical ESC key, so I've been happily stuck in 2013 since.

My employer gave me a 2020 MacBook pro (has physical ESC key) and it is a better laptop, worthy replacement.. But to keep personal development separate and save a few thousand dollars, my 2013 is still going strong.

I still use my 2013 MacBook Pro too, but with Windows 10 on it. Honestly it's a very well made machine and perfect couch computer. I've been wondering about refreshing its thermal paste to cool it down and extend it's life further. But I wouldn't dare try to open it, especially since it still works so well.

Yeah, I love my late 2013 MacBook Pro! I also recently purchased a bunch of ThinkPads (X230 and X220) to round out my options so I have these nice era of computers going forward for a long time, since I know they will become harder to find over time. Def agree about the "early 2010s" laptops hitting a good place, kind of optimal balance of features vs. simplicity IMO

My most used laptop is still my 2015 MBP, the last generation with that stupid touchbar. It does Docker great, which is mostly what I need. The fan whirls almost constantly when I do a docker start, but so far, no issues. I have a newer 27" iMac and work gave me a 2018 MBP, but that 2015 is still my preferred portable.

This last summer, I traveled to South America. Worried about potential theft and travel load, I loaded Kali Linux to my first gen MacBook Air (2012) for shits and giggles. I wanted something that can do the standard email/web, review and backup photos from SD cards, and VPN/SSH into work in case of absolute emergencies. It went great. Some people warn how Kali isn't the best machine for bare metal, every day use, but I had zero problems with it for my use case.

>I feel, as I write this on my late 2013 MacBook Pro, that it's powerful enough for most normal activities, read, browse, video calls, work on not too large data sets, etc.

Same with my 2012 MacBook Pro, the last unibody non-Retina version. Would I like a higher-resolution screen? Yes. But otherwise, with a SSD, it's really hard to justify spending thousands for a new Apple Silicon computer (as nice as that would be).

> The CPU innovation stagnation between 2012-2017 has resulted in 4 cores still being an acceptable low-end CPU in early 2022

I recently got M1 Max MacBook, and I was expecting a huge jump from my 2010 Mac Pro, but on my day-to-day work. It is barely noticeable, despite the raving reviews of M1. Perhaps for me it is not about things getting obsolete, but more of that my own needs on CPU/GPU performance were pretty much fulfilled in 2010. I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high. Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe.

If you mean Mac Pro and not Macbook Pro I wouldn't be that suprised. Single thread performance is mainly dominated by clock speed and possibly instruction set improvements. Having a much higher TDP there isn't much magic you can work to make a Laptop faster than a recentish desktop system.

> I am a programmer, so my needs are not that high

This isn't true for all programmers. I'm a programmer, and until 3 years ago a good chunk of my day was spent waiting for compiles to finish.

> Or perhaps it is that after 12 years, the laptops are now on bar with desktops. I think the biggest improvements for me in last 20 years have been the SSDs and then the NVMe.

Not even remotely close. I have an AMD threadripper [0] in a desktop PC under my desk that I use for development. This is a mainstream, readily available x64 processor with 32 cores (and hyperthreading) that can sustain just 3.8GHz for at least 30 minutes (I've not pushed it any farther than that because I've needed to). Based on PassMark benchmarks [1], the threadripper is substantially quicker than the M1 Max.

[0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3...

[1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-...

Oh, can you share more? What is your programming environment?

I am debating a move to desktop/workstation with desktop CPU to support smoother Scala/lots-of-containers development experience.

Pandemic made laptops less appealing. With digital nomadism being a question mark for some. Yes, I do know some still continue to practice this lifestyle. I can be only jealous :)

> Oh, can you share more? What is your programming environment?

I work in games and write C++. Compile times are long, and we deal with large amounts of assets (current project is ~50GB of textures, models, animations, sound. This is small. Last project was >500GB).

> With digital nomadism being a question mark for some.

Sure, if you want portability or being able to move around this sort of machine won't work for you, but I live with my partner in a nice city, work remotely and have a separate home office. I have almost 0 need for the portability of a laptop.

Depending on your needs(!), you can just use the laptop as a frontend for a much more powerful machine. I did that for a while with a Sandy Bridge (core i7-2xxx gen) dual socket server in the basement, and it did work quite well. No matter if I was at home or somewhere else - but for dev work ssh into the Linux host OS was enough for me, with an occasional RDP into a Windows VM.

I considered this option with NoMachine and in-house power-machine or cloud workstation. In a way make sense, but ultimately, I decided against because:

Security – having open port to workstation makes me scared; bugs/0-days are discovered every day;

Quality Internet Connection – less tricky as most access would be local LAN, but I am certain that few times I need it remotely to fix a production issue, something will go wrong;

Maintenance vs Cost – in-house machine would be cheaper but will require remote power on/off capability vs in cloud server being rather pricey

But yes, in general, I agree. Having a light, portable device with long battery life and connecting to a remote, beefy machine would be a dream. And I am not imagining it, as this was my workflow back in 2013 when I was working for a bank. If it was possible then, it definitely is possible today.

Have high hopes for https://shadow.tech/

Steam remote play or moonlight/sunshine [0] working great for me in setup like this.

[0] https://github.com/loki-47-6F-64/sunshine

What about real world tests for you specific workflows? My M1 Max runs my daily bread and butter R scripts approximately 4x faster compared to a top of the line Intel Coffee Lake. For me it's a huge improvement. Having over 100GB/s RAM bandwidth per core and a huge cache are a big thing for many latency-sensitive workloads.

I don't actually own an M1 Max, so I can't do a straight up comparison right now sorry. I upgraded from an 8700k to a 3970x, and for compilation the speadups were pretty much on paper gains. Each individual compilation task is ~10% slower, but the parallelism of 32 cores means that overall it's a 5x speedup over my previous CPU.

I dunno man.. You're comparing a CPU which costs as much as the complete machine (or two M1 airs). It's not portable has a TDP of 280W. Still it's 30% slower single threaded. For multithreaded it's 2.7x as fast. So yeah, maybe for rendering it's faster, but it won't be as snappy as the M1.

Then again, if you wanna use it for rendering, just buy 4 M1 macminis for the price of one CPU. Or 6 minis if you add all the other stuff you need.

The claim was that laptops are on par with desktops, not that they're good replacement for many workflows. This is just flat out not true.

> It's not portable has a TDP of 280W

That doesn't bother me in the slightest for a workstation.

> So yeah, maybe for rendering it's faster, but it won't be as snappy as the M1.

Nobody who cares about performance is doing rendering on a CPU, it's all GPU accelerated. It's not about "snappiness", it's about suitability for work. I upgraded from an 8700k to this machine and saw a 5x speedup (my compiles dropped from 30m to about 6 minutes).

> not that they're good replacement for many workflows. This is just flat out not true.

it is a good replacement for many. It might not be the fastest of all, but that doesn't mean it's not a good replacement

It's faster single threaded, and will be faster until you fully saturate more than around 14 threads.

Couldn't find a linux compilation benchmark, but here a comparison with the M1 on compilation performance:

https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-eigen

Compilation test shows that it's even faster.

It looks like this is basically a serial benchmark, so yeah of course the higher raw clock speed will win out. The run is also less than a minute, so most laptops will happily burst for that long, however what happens if you throw a 5/10/15 minute compile at it?

> Does It Scale Well With Increasing Cores?

> No, based on the automated analysis of the collected public benchmark data, this test / test settings does not generally scale well with increasing CPU core counts.

If your workload is compiling a single file serially, then sure this might be a great upgrade for you. I went through the copmpile benchmarks and the only other one that has an M1 mac and a 3970x on that site is build2 [0] which shows the m1 is 4x faster on a build that scales well with cores. FFMpeg [1] doesn't list the M1 in the test table, but it does have one benhmark [2] which is again quicker with the threadripper.

[0] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build2

[1] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-ffmpeg

[2] https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2201040-NE-FFMPEGBUI53

One interesting thing would be to know how much of the performance improvement in some of the compile tests is due to the high-bandwidth memory interface on the M1 chip. Since the M1 chip has both different cores AND a quintuple memory bandwidth compared to Ryzen's/Threadripper's off-chip memory, if you consider things like cache misses, one has to wonder what's the contribution of both to the performance increases.

Completely agree, and I don't have an answer to that. However, all of that goes out the window if your macbook starts throttling. I don't doubt that an m1 chip with adequate cooling will outperform an x86 one, but at that point you're not on a laptop anymore

> Nobody who cares about performance is doing rendering on a CPU, it's all GPU accelerated.

Has OSL already been ported to GPUs? You're implying that OSL users such as film studios "don't care about performance" but I suspect this simply isn't true.

Sorry, I can't edit my original post to update but you're right.

A large amount of commercial renderers and commercial rendering software is GPU accelerated which was what I was trying to refer to (and would like to update my comment to but can't).

That said, given the render times for indiovidual frames a laptop is going to end up thermally throttling which will wipe out the single threaded gains, and being limited to very small amounts of ram is likely going to make using a current M1 Mac impossible for anything like OSL.

Thanks for taking the stand here; generally new laptops are fast and especially the M10 max seems like a nice rig that beats some desktops for some programmer workloads. Maybe even many desktops for most programmer workloads, IDK. But besides not all programmer workloads being equal, desktops also compromise high end platforms like your sTRX4, and those are a little bit different.

Also, I'd like to add memory constraints as an example of workload inequality: The M10 max only seems to support 64GB. Good for many, but would be a huge draw back at my last dev job. The problem could inherently use huge amounts of memory, and exact memory usage was not always predictable. Especially for those colleagues which did a lot of work for customers, changing one parameter could mean coming back to a OOM after the program run for a night (or longer). Thanks to 128GB this became much rarer, but the for the type of program at some point the only viable option to safe memory is to accept a worse result.

My 2010 Mac Pro has 48 GB of RAM, this 2021 M1 Max has 32 GB. So not much has changed on that respect either. Except on 2010 I imagine it was struggle to get even 16 GB on a laptop.

> Also, I'd like to add memory constraints as an example of workload inequality: The M10 max only seems to support 64GB

That's a really good point. In my last job, our machines had 256GB of memory to fully utilise the 3990x cores.

> desktops also compromise high end platforms like your sTRX4, and those are a little bit different.

They're a little bit different, but they're still mainstream, readily available desktop envioronments. You can go on Scan here in the UK and order one of those systems just like you can order any other intel or AMD system.

Yes, definitely not true for all programmers. I guess with games, if you cannot get real time with instant compiles development experience with 120fps running 8k in debug mode, there is a room for improvement.

I compared highend 2010 desktop to highend 2021 laptop on my use case (which is arguably much lighter). And for my workloads, the laptop is no more a limiting factor (which is great, but not a leap from 2010 desktop). I can imagine todays desktops could be much better compared to todays highend laptops, but it feels like the most of what I do, there is little reasons to upgrade. Which is also great. With Macs the latest macOS support is removed usually from 5 years old machines, but that feels mostly baseless from technical perspective as with hacks you can still run the latest just fine.

Perhaps it is a nostalgia / romancy. Having a 12 years old machine as you daily workhorse where upgrade was not a leap. That is something I haven’t seen before, and I have been in this industry since 90ies and a PC user since 80ies.

> Yes, definitely not true for all programmers. I guess with games, if you cannot get real time with instant compiles development experience with 120fps running 8k in debug mode, there is a room for improvement.

Day to day that doesn't matter. I work on multiplayer games, and being able to run 8/12/16 clients on one machine at 10 fps at ultra low graphics is far more important than being able to run stupid resolutions. You do bring up another point though - GPU performance. Apologies for the links but I'm on my phone, but [0] and [1] have 3dmark benchmarks for the M1 GPU and an RTX 3090 GPU - the 3090 scores twice what the M1 GPU does. This might not be important to you, but it is to some people.

> And for my workloads, the laptop is no more a limiting factor

Ultimately that's all it comes down to. If you're not limited by the form factor/performance of a laptop power to you, but some of us are!

[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M1-GPU-GPU-Benchmarks-an...

[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3090-GPU-Be...

> the 3090 scores twice what the M1 GPU does

It helps that you can buy a maxed out macbook pro for the price of a single 3090 though.

I can buy a high spec showhorse for $40k, or a new mid range sedan for $40k. That doesn't mean that the maxed out showhorse will work for commuting to work every day.

A 3090 is $2300 right now, even paying the scalper tax.

How much M1 MacBook Pro is that getting you?

That said, I do wish the M1 GPU could game; my downtime hobby is the only thing stopping me from buying one.

>A 3090 is $2300 right now, even paying the scalper tax.

Where can you find that? lowest I can find is 2800 new. There are some pre-owned for 2700 and some open auctions at roughly 2300 but those will land substantially higher than 2300 I would imagine.

The 3090 is such an overpowered (and expensive) card, that another GPU doing half of what the 3090 can do is still damn right impressive. And in a Laptop!

Yeah that's actually a serious compliment to the M1 GPU if the 3090 is merely double the scores?! I expected it should be like 4x or more! That's awesome.

3 times faster with 64 cores instead of 10, that slower single thread performance is having a big impact.

32 cores, not 64.

I use the M1 Mac Air for office work. It replaced my 2017 MBP, and the difference is very noticeable -- with some 3 dozen tabs open on my browser (not the best of browsing habit) the M1 can take it without breaking a sweat. Yet for entertainment and hobby programming I revert back to my (really) old 2011 iMac that runs High Sierra -- I have invested much time fine-tuning that machine. I tried to migrate the setup to the M1, but a bunch of dependencies were broken. I'd stay with the iMac for as long as the hardware can hold out.

I think comparing old desktop with new laptop is going to give you different experience than comparing old laptop with new laptop.

I got M1 Air and not only is it a huge difference from my previous 2017 MPB 13" (which I gave to my mother who spilled coffee into her previous laptop), it is much better than my work provided 2019 MBP 16".

"Snappiness" is subjective and hard to measure, but the thermals are huge difference. My work MBP is sitting at 63°C with just Firefox pointed at HN. On both my old MBP and the work one, playing 1440p video (native screen resolution) would make it loud, and playing 4k video on 4k monitor would turn it into a vacuum cleaner.

The Air is completely silent at all times (it has no fan) and sits at 32°C while playing 1440p and maybe 40°C when playing 4k content.

It is of course possible, that this is all because the previous Macbooks were so bad (and due to hw decoding for common video formats) but I had similar "Jesus this is such a loud, overheating mess" experience with other laptops as well. But desktops have much better thermals already - so for you, the biggest difference would be the mobility I guess.

I had a similar experience to the OP with my previous Intel laptops - they've quickly get too hot and throttle and that would kill the performance. When they weren't throttling, performance was fine.

For me the big win with the M1 Pro was that I could work flat out and not worry about it overheating and giving up.

It's a lot easier for desktops to have adequate cooling and power.

I had a dual CPU nehalem around 2010 under my desk. It was a beast. 8 cores, 16 HT. Now I have an M1 Max and I have yet to get it to spin its fans up. So I don't know what your day-to-day work is, but is it possible it's just not CPU bound?

Agree for laptops, but assembling proper desktop gave me a noticeable bump in "smoothness" on pretty much everything, from mouse movements, code navigation, windows resizing, browsing, to, obviously, graphics. Seems like thermal constraints slow down laptops pretty noticeably.

After upgrading the display, CPU, disk, RAM, fan, battery it's a bit click-baity to say you've gone back to a 2012 ThinkPad - but interesting read non the less.

What surprised me the most is that Lenovo ships something as annoying as a loud fan (easily replaceable even for a home tinkerer). Of course they save a few pennies per laptop; but no laptop can ever be good if it's noisy. That was one of the main reasons why I bought an X301 ThinkPad many years ago, even when it fanned like crazy it was very quiet. But the clever design of the original ThinkPad's was starting to fade already then; the X301 actually had it's speakers on top. So you could spill liquid on it, unless you happened to spill it on top of one of your top mounted speakers of course.

I've also gone through a few ThinkPad's over the years, and ever since they stopped being IBM; they seem to loose more and more of the "premium feel" for every generation. Especially the keyboard is way better on my old T40 then on the one I use right now (T14).

Thinkpad sold that model with 16gbs as an upgrade while buying the laptop at the time. SSDs needing to be upgraded has also been recommended since that time. And the processor update was simply maxing out the processor upgrade from that generation. It was available on the workstation version of the thinkpad in the same generation. The i7-3820QM release date is 04/23/2012. A new SSD doesn't mean current gen speeds, the internal and the caddy are still limited to sata 3 speeds. It's a very 2012 machine, a very nice 2012 machine.

True; I just feel that most titles are a bit exaggerated these days to sound more sensational then they really are. If I were to write a book, I'd gladly use an old ThinkPad due to the nice keyboard. But I hope I don't write a blog like this if I do: "Why I went back to my 2003 ThinkPad" :-)

"upgrading the display, CPU, disk, RAM, fan, battery it's a bit click-baity to say you've gone back to a 2012 ThinkPad - but interesting read non the less."

That's the good part - it's possible, and it's serviceable. My spouse uses a 10y (almost 11y) laptop, it has pretty much everything changed & upgraded. CPU, RAM, keyboard, CD->SSD, HDD->SSD, battery, fan, wifi 801.1 b/g -> ac+bluetooth. The discrete GPU is not replaceable, of course.

> That's the good part - it's possible, and it's serviceable.

Agreed. The way things are constructed now (cell phones are of course 10 times worse), where everything is glued in place in order to break if anyone tries to replace them are terrible. The tinker tutorials on youtube seem to be more about which temperature different glue melts at, and which temperature the parts glued get destroyed at; then anything else.

My next laptop will probably be a https://frame.work laptop for that very reason.

Might just be the current supply chain woes but I have a relatively recent X1 Yoga (Gen 1) and the fan went out. Had to buy a Chinese one on ebay to replace it since Lenovo did not have the part anymore. I kind of expected it to be easy to acquire an official part but they told me to look on ebay. The Chinese one works fine though.

That's nuts. Is that the official policy? Here in Norway, a laptop would have a 5 year "reklamasjon" (not 100% sure what that translates to in English). Perhaps "forced warranty" would be my best translation. It basically means that the product is expected to last for at least 5 years, and if it doesn't - the seller has to fix it, or give you your money back.

Some products have a 2 year "reklamasjon" while others have 5; it's sometimes a bit surprising which products get 2 and 5 years. Cellphones have 5 for instance, which seems strange given their (ab)use. Companies cannot opt out of this.

I think this laptop is likely over 5 years old, though I'd expect to be able to order 10 year old parts on thinkpads, but perhaps that is not cost effective since most companies would replace machines before that. In the US I believe it came with 1 or 2 years warranty against defect. I had purchased an additional 2 year warranty for a total of 4 years. I had the battery and cover replaced when it cracked but in the end I decided it was a waste if I could get my hands on the parts since these are easy enough to repair.

nothing wrong w/ the off-shore ones (with regard to fans), they are likely the OEM anyways.

Although I'd think you had replaced the entire cooling solution, heatpipes and all.

That is correct, the fan is welded to the heatpipe.

I've got a dozen ergonomic and mechanical keyboards. The feel of the keyboard is very important to me, just like a good fountain pen. So when my employer was giving to me a new Thinkpad I was excited. Thinkpad was the only laptop whose keyboard I could stand.

This T-14 has a keyboard as horrible as any Asus. It looks exactly like the standard Thinkpad keyboard, but the key travel, the bottoming-out, the spring pressure, are all horrible. Even just rubbing the finger over the plastic it feels half as thick as the previous models, you don't even need to press a key to feel the difference.

The corner cutting seems to have started the moment IBM sold ThinkPad to Lenovo. The fact that ThinkPad used to sell laptop keyboards for desktop use, says it all:

http://www.notebookreview.com/picture/?f=48072

It didn't take more than a couple of years before Lenovo discontinued this gem either; in favor of a cheaper alternative (in terms of production cost).

Everyone knew this was going to happen as soon as the sale was announced. Say what you want about IBM, for decades it was a company run by and for engineers, which meant that things like quality and tolerances were important product requirements, and they sold it to an entity essentially created to do acquisitions of IBM IP based out of China so it could be manufactured more cheaply. Lenovo did exactly what every expected, and it's honestly a miracle that modern Thinkpads are as good as they are, because they still stand neck and neck with Dell, where by all expectations they should be scraping the barrel.

> Everyone knew this was going to happen as soon as the sale was announced.

At least I feared this would happen; sad to see how it all went downhill.

To be honest I think the brand still sells products based on that feeling you got when you bought a ThinkPad 15-20 years ago. It was so sturdy, so nice to type on; everything just felt so solid. That is certainly why I've stayed loyal to that brand.

They still make and sell a T-based laptop keyboard in the form of https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb...

They always had silly, hard-to-search-for names (it seems the variants I have are called "Thinkpad Compact USB Keyboard with Trackpoint" and "Thinkpad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with Trackpoint"): https://support.lenovo.com/nl/en/solutions/pd026745, https://support.lenovo.com/de/en/solutions/pd026744

While they are not original T keyboards, they are supposed to match more recent T layouts. At some point, they had bluetooth and USB variants (I've got 5-ish of them around the house, I love the trackpoint for HTPC use), but this seems to be a newer iteration of those.

Yes, but they really shouldn't have touched the original design; it was just right. I haven't seen those later models in person, but when I worked as a consultant 16 years ago in Oslo, we had 2 guys in my company that lugged that original ThinkPad keyboard around to every assignment they got.

> After upgrading the display, CPU, disk, RAM, fan, battery it's a bit click-baity to say you've gone back to a 2012 ThinkPad

Well, I think the main point is : regardless of how better some modern components are (e.g. screen resolution, CPU energy efficiency with 10nm process, etc), the build quality, keyboard comfort, repairability and amounts of I/O are critical aspects that have dramatically regressed in the recent years. (Not even mentioning the Intel ME and Boot Guard that prevent flashing Coreboot).

Besides, it also shows that a 10 years old CPU/GPU is still perfectly usable (and since we only have one planet, it would be desirable to extend the lifetime of our devices... (upgrading the RAM/SSD/Wi-Fi has an environmental impact, but far less than changing a whole machine !)).

It should be noted that he didn't upgrade the parts to their 2020 equivalent or something, they are all original components. He could have bought it from Lenovo or order from ebay.

I'm all for frugality but that seems like a lot of compromises for what is this person's main work laptop. Cool that it works; but why have a slow workhorse like that?

I picked up a Samsung Galaxybook a few weeks ago. Nice core i5 system on a chip thing with Iris XE gpu. Runs cool including when under load and it's fast enough. Driver support seems decent in Linux. Even the graphics are quite alright. I played some steam games with it even. Nothing recent though.

The touchpad is a multitouch thing that sort of replicates what a decent macbook would be capable off (but with way less precision). The keyboard is alright and they even squeezed in a numeric pad. It has 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Decent battery life too. With Manjaro it's quite a nice work laptop. Not bad for 700 Euro.

At that price (which was a black Friday discount), why bother patching up a ten year old laptop. Not worth the expenses on the parts IMHO.

For one thing (for me, at least): The keyboard.

I have yet to see a good keyboard on a modern laptop, and I use a lot of different ones. Some people do not care, but I do. There's some keyboards that are "still decent", but all of them are progressively getting worse. Well, they say that Mac keyboards are getting better again, but I don't like their zero-keytravel style in the first place, not even in the ones that were considered good.

Thinkpad T400 roundabout was a good keyboard in my view.

Have you tried the ones with mechanical keyboards like the TUXEDO Stellaris 15?

Keyboard + reliability (they almost never break) + price (200 USD vs 1.8K EUR).

I've since switched to an M1 Macbook, but until last year, I spend a good four-five years working from an x220t and x220. As long as the battery is in decent shape, there still really isn't a better value proposition than the old T420-T430 era Thinkpads.

It's worth pointing out that there were several different OEMs for those older Thinkpads, and unfortunately the typing experience depends a lot on which one you have.

The NMB manufactured keyboards are excellent. The others can be hit or miss.

> The keyboard

But what about the keyboard /layout/? My rant at [0]

To clarify it somewhat, currently I have a laptop with two Fn keys. I rarely use the right one, but it feels very organic when I do.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29807256

I know this was a big issue for Thinkpads throughout the years, but as much as I care about the feel of a keyboard, I have never cared about the layout.

I guess we all have our pet peeves.

If it is just for the Keyboard, Lenovo sells bluetooth Thinkpad keyboards. I've just checked and the microUSB ones were under 50€.

They also sell Thinkpad keyboards on new Thinkpads, but they're not impressive.

I agree that the Thinkpad keyboard is pretty much unbeatable in terms of laptop keyboards. But the ergonomics of laptops are inherently terrible no matter how good the keyboard is. It is simply impossible to have both keyboard and screen at the correct heights when they are physically connected together in notebook form.

For prolonged use, you really should have a separate keyboard and monitor, properly adjusted to your individual height and posture. Your back and neck will thank you for it.

As an m1 macbook owner I would say the new mac keyboard is good for a low travel keyboard, but not good when compared to thinkpad keyboards, especially the older 1.8mm and up key travel keyboards. There is only so much you can do to compensate for a lack of key travel.

> I'm all for frugality but that seems like a lot of compromises for what is this person's main work laptop. Cool that it works; but why have a slow workhorse like that?

That's exactly what it was in my case. Maybe it isn't so bad with Ivy bridge, but my previous laptop that I upgraded from was an i7 Sandy bridge T420s. It has the 1600x900 display, and I decked it out a long time ago with 16GB and a solid state.

But still, it totally choked on youtube/twitch 60fps feeds if they weren't piped through streamlink+VLC. I'm pretty self-satisfied with how long I was able to stick it out, but when I got my first tech job last year, it just choked on video calls, necessitating an upgrade to something more reasonably specced.

I like to buy ex-corporate ~5 year old Thinkpads, get from a seller who gives atleast 6 months warranty, put new batteries in and they are usually far better in every way than anything new for the same price. Am currently very happy with my T460S, runs Linux or Win10 great. My previous machines that the kids use for school work and Roblox are x250 and x220, and previous to that I have an X200 and a T61, that all lasted atleast 5 years in my ownership, over 10 years old before they were sold on. I have noticed since my X200 a slow and steady decline in toughness (I presume in exchange for compactness). You do have to pick carefully, some models have terrible trackpads, often the base LCD screens are terrible for brightness and viewing angle, so you need to ensure you get the upgraded ones (eg IPS and/or higher resolution).

I would vouch for this approach too. Ex lease laptops are really cheap, I've got a gen4 x1 carbon for easy carry daily use, a t460s at home, and so many of my customers love their ex lease Lenovos.

> I like to buy ex-corporate ~5 year old Thinkpads, get from a seller who gives atleast 6 months warranty

I am curious if this a US thing only. I mean, I've heard of company vehicles in second hand market but never company laptops. In my experience all these company laptops get decommisioned by IT never to remove any data, but I never really considered what happens at End-of-life for those.

A few questions:

1. Where do you find these retailers?

2. Where do you find suppliers selling new batteries for old devices?

(all of my previous attempts at finding replacement batteries for laptops and e-readers always resulted in very poor performance or even faulty battery packs)

edit: formating paragraphs for questions

I live in Finland, and simply by Googling in Finnish I can find several companies reselling used company laptops, and there's at least one local one that I can physically go to (I've bought a used monitor from there, and they always have stacks of ThinkPads in the store when I go in).

same here in Czechia, pretty much all refurb Thinkpad are from companies, my current T520 is from Singapore of all places, if you choose A grade is basically brand new condition just without brand new smell, they should use some spray :-)

my next laptop will be again refurb Thinkpad, for wife I would choose something like X240 A grade 8GB RAM, that cost like 250EUR

It's 100% a UK thing as well.

Most of mine came from Morgan Computers, but I also check Tier 1 Online and Bargain Hardware too.

I emigrated, and I have yet to find a good such vendor in the EU. Recommendations welcome!

I worked for a company that bought their servers from Bargain Hardware. Good service, and fast. No problems with hardware, of course.

I buy my refurnished laptops from Techsavers (https://www.techsavers.com/). They have local outlets in few EU countries.

I am in the UK. I buy from eBay, there are a number of big sellers to choose from. I tend to get my batteries from Amazon, I've probably bought 6 generic unbranded for my thinpads over the years, generally they seem to be about 90% capacity of genuine, but low prices mean great value. One I bought in 2020 was faulty on arrival, rest have all been good.

Where do you get new (X220) batteries?

GreenCell is very popular here where I live. Dozens of computer shops have them on stock (https://greencell.global/en/standard-batteries/2012-green-ce...)

For my X220 I went for a cheap generic Chinese import (either Amazon or Ebay), its about 90% capacity of a genuine, but the price is so low its not a worry.

I always go for refurbished laptops when I can. My reseller gives me two year warranty and I can buy extra three years warranty if want to. So I can get 2y warranty in price, and I can buy 3 more years. I live in Europe and at the moment I could get T460s with new 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM and 5 year warranty for some 900 € (price with VAT).

My biggest disappointment was the trackpad on T440s. I hated is so much that I was thinkin about replacing it with a new one. Besides that I really like all of the ThinkPad laptops that I've used so far.

I have T460. I like the fact that it has two batteries, good casing, great touchpad (unlike the one that I've had on T440s), holes for liquid drainage... When you put SSD into it, and have 16GB of RAM I don't see it lagging behind more modern ThinkPads. In my opinion, new is not always batter :) The only thing that I miss on my T460 is better graphic adapter. I have Intel HD but even with it I can play games up to Fry Cry 4, Call od Duty 4, etc.

I’ve got the T470 (as it has the old docking + charging port PLUS thunderbolt), modded it with the N140HCG-GQ2 panel (1080p, 100% sRGB, 400 nits, 8bit), with a 2TB NVMe SSD, 32GB of DDR4-2400MHz RAM, etc. I've got two 75Wh batteries I can switch between.

Overall I get great performance even for stuff like running IDEA and a spring web app in a docker container, and I get 13h+ of battery life out of it (+10h if I switch the external battery to the second one I keep in my laptop bag).

I'd wish the 30th anniversary thinkpad (coming this year) will be just an upgraded T25 with a modern ryzen processor but in every other way identical (I know, an unrealistic dream)

I have a Ultra dock for a long time now... And I know that if I ever upgrade from T460 to the T470 will be the last model for quite some time. This is the last one that fits onto my existing docking station. I must say that I prefer mechanical docks over USB/TB and other types.

I'm still using my W510 from 2010 every day. Since most of my work is done on remote computer I don't need much power anyway. I have only updated the old hard drive with a good SSD. I also have plenty of ports (VGA, DP, RJ45, 3 USB), and the laptop is very sturdy I let it fall many times by mistakes and even through there are some cracks in the case it is still perfectly usable.

Although it's not perfect, the laptop is heavy (about 3kg) and thick (about 3cm). But when I look at possible modern alternative it seems there aren't many which offer multiple ports and easy to do maintenance in a somewhat slim and lightweight case. The closest I've seen is the Fujitsu Lifebook U741X series (if someone has used it with Linux please share your experience). I'm also aware of the Framework laptop but it's bleeding edge so I better wait and see how it turns out to be repairable and robust.

Even before reading the post itself, the answer was obvious:

---

Keyboard, keyboard, and again keyboard.

---

That is simply the most important feature of a laptop one uses for work involving writing: Correspondence, note taking and such. Also for people who don't like playing around with their mouse that much. Sadly, laptop manufacturers have degraded keyboards further and further over the years in the quest for thinner laptop heights. And while I can appreciate _some_ people need thinner laptops, many, and perhaps most of us - don't. It's a work instrument for us, not a fashion accessory. Why has it been 10 years since a laptop was last out with a decent keyboard?

In case my internet connection fails, here's a Wayback Machine snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20220110074515/https://ounapuu.e...

I really appreciate your feedback, thoughts and own experiences that relate to this post!

I had similar experiences with the T14 AMD that I used for over half a year. On Linux the Trackpad would often not come back after sleep. Also, the battery would drain very quickly in S3 suspend. The laptop would take off during video calls (though the fan noise was definitely not as bad as with many Intel models). In the end it was really a thousand of paper cuts, especially with Linux, despite the laptop being certified with Linux. The hardware itself was pretty ok and worked fairly well with Windows (I just don't like Windows).

In the end I went back to MacBooks. First an M1 Air, now a MBP 14" with an an M1 Pro. They are insanely fast, while staying cool. The fan on the Pro only spins up during long builds, but even then it's barely audible.

If you don't like macOS, getting an old(er) ThinkPad is probably the best option.

Note that Linux certification applies only to specific distros/versions.

Ubuntu LTS works flawless on my thinkpad but some stuff break on Ubuntu 21.10.

All the same advantages, plus 64 GB RAM, hardware kill switches, thin metal design, Coreboot and no compromises: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14

Well… maybe aside from price.

It is kinda cool that I can get it shipped with Qubes though, which I assume means hardware support is solid.

How much did it cost to perform all your upgrades?

Is it possible to make the more tricky upgrades (CPU, display, fan) on similar models but from the X-series ? X201, X210, X220? I would love to do it on mine.

At least for the x220, there are display and fan upgrades (mine uses a x230 fan), you can max ram at 16Gb (the manual says 8Gb, but 16Gb works just fine), but the CPU is soldered, so no upgrades on that.

Reportedly there have been people who have managed to upgrade the CPU on the X230, it just requires a lot of time and effort to do it properly, BGA-s are a pain to solder and requires specialized equipment to do it reliably.

I still use my T420s as my daily driver laptop. I'd like to get something with a better screen and faster CPU but it's still reliable so it's hard to justify.

What batteries have you had good luck with? My main and ultrabay batteries are both down to around 50% of original new capacity now.

My experience with laptops is that the most usable ones have a low TDP CPU with integrated graphics. This avoids overheating as much as possible, which means you get full CPU power for much longer, as well as having a longer battery life. To make sure it doesn't feel sluggish, get one with a lot of RAM and (NVMe) SSDs.

I dislike the lack of ports nowadays, but USB-C makes up for it. You can get USB-C dongles that provide Ethernet, HDMI/DisplayPort, some more USB ports and USB-PD passthrough all at the same time, so they replace a complete docking station, but they still fit in your hand. That and the fact that I can use the same charger or powerbank for the laptop, phone and the latest Raspberry Pies is great.

Good points. Recent high end laptops suffer from terrible heat throttling. Recently I've resorted to buying a cheap old server to do most my work on. The old machine is significantly faster than my company issued 2019 Macbook Pro due to having great big fans and heat sinks, despite being 1/6 the price. Next laptop I purchase will have a lower TDP CPU like you mention and basically just be a terminal to the server.

About the heat-> I agree so much.

I found that disabling turbo boost caused an imperceptible drop in performance, but a very noticeable decrease in heat and fan usage.

I also used to undervolt the CPU after doing this. Shame that intel blocked this ability on 11th gen+ chips.

I had a visitor over the holidays who needed to work but didn't have a laptop. I had 2x old T420 (released in 2011) so I combined the RAM and did a fresh OS install. My only hassle was finding a DP cable. Other than doubling the RAM, this was still a stock machine from 2011. CPU benchmark scores for this T420 are comparable/better than sub-£400 new x86 laptops available at big box stores which was the other short-term option. Our visitor has had no issues with the T420 for Zoom calls, Chrome and other general stuff. I sold the RAM-less T420 and was informed that it was up and running with fresh RAM at its new home.

To be fair the sub-400 laptops are nearly the same in 2021 that you could find in 2011. Dual core with 1366x768 is still pretty common.

Sure. We're saying the same thing in different ways. A 2011 reasonable spec i5 laptop from my trash pile is still at least as useable for day-today tasks as a cheap new machine in 2021.

I've used a T420 as daily driver until just recently. It went travelling around the world with me, fell from rather high places, got wet more than once and much more.

My new 460s is mostly just better because it's lighter. Performance plus is only noticeable in games and such stuff.

There's a post[1] from 2019 about a group in Shenzen who update classic Thinkpads to modern specs. It's also been mentioned here a bunch of times [2-4]. I got an email from the group just a couple of weeks ago and they're building another batch. It's a bit sketchy with the Western Union funds transfer but I'm seriously considering it. I love the build quality of the x220s that I still have here, but would love to have better internals.

[1] https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19246406 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19246406 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19413436

My main Laptop it's a T430, and from time to time I use a T440p. It's amazing how you can disassemble the whole thing with only one screwdriver and upgrade almost everything.

The T420 keyboard mod it's what's stopping me from upgrading to a newer model. Don't get me wrong it's not mechanical or anything, but has the comfiest layout I have tried on any laptop so far.

There are some drawbacks:

* New batteries are rare

* The display it's bad

* After Covid, it's expensive to get replacements parts like plastics bezels or motherboards.

* The GPU or iGPU it's bad. Gonna be a problem in a few years with how demanding web pages are. Forget about video editing or gaming beyond simple things.

* New Linux kernels could drop support for some of the drivers in the future. This thing's great, but it's old.

In any case, if I upgrade to anything in the future, it will probably be a framework laptop.

M1 Macbooks are probably the best cost-benefit laptop out there for a lot of people (battery, display, cpu power), and I kinda want to try one. But I don't feel comfortable voting with my wallet for Apple's practices, especially with how hostile they have been with the "right to repair" movement.

> The display it's bad

You can retrofit a 1080p lcd with a controller board and a little effort.

> M1 Macbooks are probably the best cost-benefit laptop out there for a lot of people (battery, display, cpu power), and I kinda want to try one. But I don't feel comfortable voting with my wallet for Apple's practices, especially with how hostile they have been with the "right to repair" movement.

I'm not a particular fan of Apple either, but the M1 Macbook was the first laptop that made me want to permanently switch from my old x220. It's simply that much better.

Faster hardware maybe but I think the ThinkPad has other benefits, like being easy to repair and upgrade. I'm extremely frustrated at my 2018 MBP, I stupidly went with the cheaper 256GB option and really wish I could just pop in a 1TB drive. Plus once the honeymoon period with macOS ended I'm now essentially stuck with an operating system I've grown to hate as support for Linux is dismal even with the latest kernel 3+ years on (No keyboard, trackpad, WiFi, Audio, suspend support plus more little issues!). An x220 or other ThinkPad should be very well supported. M1 macs have more interest from Linux devs right now but I'd be hesitant to pick one up unless it runs Linux perfectly now out of the box with most distros.

I have seriously contemplated picking up an X220 or some other old ThinkPad even though the hardware would technically be a massive downgrade.

Intel Macbooks are one of the worst out there. Apple designed a heatsink that it's not capable of handling the heat. I want to try an M1 too, but for repairability, I think framework laptops are the closest things we have to old thinkpads in that regard.

It's funny to read this on Thinkpad T520, only thing I upgraded is 240GB mSATA SSD disk for system and i had there already 8GB RAM with empty slot to upgrade (stil no issues, so not rushing to uprgade), keeping 320GB HDD for media and backup, thinking whether to buy external harddrive or Ultrabay adapter and install third hard drive since I don't use DVDRW at all anyway.

There is no problem with speed, I chose 520 because year later they already fucked up keyboards, not that it would matter now when I started to use later external keyboard, mouse and 32" display.

Btw. I don't understand his issue with HDMI, I have connected display directly through DP cable.

Instead of tablet I'd consider for wife something like X230/240.

I miss my Thinkpad T400-420s

I especially miss the keyboard and that particular pointstick (with those buttons).

It is really weird that since then, keyboards just have been getting worse. Build quality otherwise has improved, especially on the lower end. But when it comes to keyboards, it seems no one has found a good solution except ye olde IBM engineers.

My laptop is from 2012 too. It has got an i5 processor with 2 HT cores, so the OS sees 4 cores. I upgraded its RAM to 8GB and replaced the HD by a 1TB SSD. Good enough for what I do.

I tried a recent machine with a modern i5 and the same amount of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The owner asked me to update the OS to windows 11. It didn't seemed faster than my laptop with ubuntu 20.04.

A 10 year old laptop may be still good with enough RAM and a SSD, but I doubt recent versions of windows will run well on such machines.

Linux works amazingly well on these machines, fwiw. I have a modded x230 that performs surprisingly well with Arch. Ubuntu worked great on it as well. So many Linux users use Thinkpads that the chipsets are very well supported.

Using here an X220. I replaced the HDD by an SDD and extended the RAM - it is still working. Currently I'm looking for a new small "44" battery (which fits completely into the body) but the replacement I received has a malfunction. I've still a 44+ which provides a longer runtime but also weights more. Plus the excellent hardware-maintenance manual! Of course always running with Linux. The new models are more sturdy (good) and provide a lot more CPU and GPU-Power (AMD) but the RAM is soldered and the battery not swap-able.

We need laws which enforce sustainable devices wich swap-able disks, main-memory, batteries and long time spare part supply including maintenance manuals. It shall be EXPENSIVE and UNATTRACTIVE for both vendors and buyers to purchase devices which doesn't offer this. How? Put well understandable "traffic lights" on every device by category {software replaceable, spare parts, maintenance manual, batteries}. Every single red light needs to increase the price by 30%[1]. I don't call for prohibition! Sometimes somebody need something extra flat and soldered and whatever reason - but even how uninformed you are - you must be aware of it how you harm yourself and anyone else.

   Apple MacBook:  
   Software not replaceable + 30%   
   Batteries glued and not purchasable from third parties + 30%  
   Maintenance manual not published + 30%  
   This adds 90% extra tax upon price.

   Lenovo ThinkPad:  
   Batteries screwed or glued, even require buying a "guarantee" for replacement service + 30%  
   Main-Memory soldered + 30  
   This adds 60% extra tax upon price

Smartwatch which is glued? Guess what! And I'm not saying adding another 30% extra for the not replaceable software because it allow it to be an embedded appliance. In case of Smartphones this will be another 30%.

I hope both customers and vendors will change their behavior quickly. If not we have a lot money to spend for health, schools and social support. What I don't want and not require is that you use your laptop for ten years. That unfair and not necessary but something possible and even normal. And if you're a developer or gamer, sell the old one and buy a new one. As long the devices can be used a long time it is good.

[1] I've chosen a high value to ensure an effect, especially - but not limited - to the high end market.

I have, over a few decades now, treated my computers like an artist would treat their paper notebook, and have therefore every laptop/portable in my personal collection as reference. Well, almost, I was lucky to have had a GRIDpad back in the day, and I still haven't got around to finding a Dauphin DTR-1, but .. yeah .. the point is, my Thinkpads are still freakishly reliable, great computers, upon which to hack.

Another thing, more 'personal' computing experience .. Prior to his 'upgrade' to a gaming laptop, I had the eldest of my kids on an ol' Thinkpad or two, Linux of course, and not only did they gain much great understanding of things before encountering the consumer zone, their siblings act as force understanding multipliers.

I am often much amused at their insight into why their friends Windows bollocks needs to be blown away &etc. .. although they do somehow seem to have managed to maintain their own Windows (gaming) systems well. They at least knew what Linux was before that became a thing in their lives.

I attribute that fact to the Thinkpad being really great to hack on, and solid enough to give to an 8 year old and expect to have it sort of still work for a while, and in our case, a few early hacker minds were well serviced by its dependability ...

Let's circle back in a few months; I too feel nostalgic when I visit my dad's and play some classic games on the old faithful PC from my youth (still rocking a 17'' Trinitron CRT). But after a few hours reality hits since I use my PCs nowadays to actually... get stuff done. I can't imagine that PC would be very useful for any productivity work, at most (frustratingly slow) browsing.

Nah, the upgraded 4-core T430 is plenty fast and very productive. You'd be surprised.

I used a dual-core upgraded T430 for quite a while. The problem was actually the battery life. 2-3 hours just doesn't compare to a M1 Macbook's 13 hours.

I've been hanging around on an X201t for almost a decade now, but finally upgraded to an X270 last October. Its the last X series machine they sold with non-soldered RAM. So far things have been pretty good, Fedora works almost perfectly out of the box, but there is a nasty issue where the third party 65Wh battery I have causes the laptops embedded controller to scream that the CPU is overheating. I've had to write a script to squelch that to stop the thing from throttling down to 400mhz all the time.

I've had the thing in pieces, keyboard, trackpad, palmrest, lcd and RAM have all been replaced and the build quality really pales compared to the older machines, there is no magnesium midframe here, its plastic everywhere. But at least I can get a solid 10 hours work out of the battery, and decent quality IPS panels are widely available.

I'm not sure what to do once thing thing reaches the end of its life, all the replacement models are going to have every component soldered down, the batteries are all internal and not hot-swappable. Grim, I had might as well buy a Macbook.

This laptop doesn't have a dedicated GPU and while I love my old thinkpad, a third generation i7 isn't powerful enough to do 4k h265 decoding and physically lacks any hardware acceleration for vp8, vp9 and both 8 and 10 bit h265. 1080p content is fine but with 4k it will start to struggle. This author doesn't seem to be using the laptop for multimedia consumption, but I would like to bring this limitation up for anyone looking to run this generation of thinkpad as a daily driver. If someone was planning on doing screen recording, I would strongly urge them to pick a newer generation of processor that can do hardware accelerated video encoding. A 720p webcam is fine, but seems like the limit as well since the author had to drop the desktop resolution to 720p to use OBS screen recording functionally. It's a great machine though and I completely understand why someone would feel those tradeoffs are worth looking past. I miss my w520 sometimes. I have never felt so at home with another machine.

Well, it is not much equipped to output the 4K either; the internal display is 1600x900, you can upgrade it to full hd and the external output can do 4k@30 at most, even the thunderbolt-equipped model.

Excellent writeup. I don't think I'd be happy with that setup, but I still appreciate how you explain your thinking process and why you did things this way.

I switched to Mac a little over a decade ago, and since then I don't really think about my computer. It's a tool that generally just works. It's not for everyone but it really solved that issue for me.

A car from 1950s and up is quite serviceable today, and I think we're getting to the same place with computers.

I don't buy things on principle (freganism/volunteerism), so I'm restricted to hand-me-down computers, and I've been quite happy with this for the past 7+ years.

Of course, my work is mostly text-based, but I'm quite happy with a high-end 6-year-old computer today, and before this was using an 8-year-old computer low-end computer with some obstacles.

I think that as a web developer, I can promote this idea further by leaning hard into the accessibility and compatibility spectrum, really embracing "Any Browser" 100% and leaving no browser, client, user, scenario, network condition, etc. behind.

And I do. All the sites I develop, as well as the framework I use for them, are guaranteed compatible with Netscape 2.0+, IE 3.0+, Opera 3.0+, and pretty much everything that's come since then, including text-mode, no-JS, and screen-readers.

Check out the https://frame.work laptop. Repairable, upgradable, beautiful 3:2 screen. This one checks all the boxes...

Looks nice but too bad it doesn't have any AMD options.

10 years used laptops are wonky. Maybe nice DIY project but definitely not as main workstation for travels. And if you want multiple 4k screens or newer peripherals...

My current setup is Dell XPS 13 from 2015 and portable Deskmini PC with Ryzen 7 5700g. This laptop is pretty hackeable ultrabook, over years I replaced chassis, keyboard and some ports. But it has only 16GB RAM and supports only 1x4k@30Hz, so it will be soon replaced by Framework laptop (64GB RAM, 4x4k screens).

And Deskmini is tiny 2kg PC with great desktop CPU. I found all high end laptops to be rather expensive and with insufficient cooling for constant load. With this I can have proper desktop performance in laptop sized package.

So my final setup will be two computers, with 12 cores and 128GB RAM and weight of only 5KG. I can use 7x4K screens and have total 20 TB of integrated storage. All cheap hardware with no crazy hacks.

For any laptop, I want at least full hd 15 inch screen, the very best keyboard (centered, without numpad) and a trackpoint. If it comes without dedicated graphics, that's a bonus. This means a thinkpad, afaik.

So unless I wanna spend a fortune on the new Thinkpad P1 (I don't!), I think the best option is a modded T530. I installed a 1920x1080 screen with great color, upgraded RAM to 16G, put in two SSDs and retrofitted a T420 keyboard (you need some scotch, a nail clipper and a BIOS hack). This is enough for my purposes---for now.

But you can also replace the heat sink and the processor using parts from a W530. Reportedly, this might also let you upgrade to 32G ram. So I'm confident that I'll be able to use this machine until I can either afford a P1, or lenovo puts out something even better.

"To make this machine viable in 2021, you need the CPU, RAM and SSD upgrades at the very minimum"

This is not really a 2012 machine any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

I'd argue against it, the core of the machine that makes the laptop a laptop is still the same.

Does the ship of Theseus become not a ship?

My favourite example of Ship of Theseus is the joke about the axe which has had its head and handle replaced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIdUEzQKyJo

This DEFINITELY doesn't count as Ship of Theseus. All those parts are designed to be replaceable on the Thinkpad.

If you really want to talk about Ship of Theseus-ing a Thinkpad, the hardcore guys have literally ripped out the motherboard and installed a completely different motherboard with a modern i7 CPU. These "frankenpads" include the X62 (Broadwell CPU and motherboard in an old X61), T70 (Kaby Lake CPU in a T60), X210 (Kaby Lake R CPU in a X200 body). They also rip out the LCD and replace it with a modern IPS display. They sometimes also rip out the keyboard to replace it with an older keyboard- T420 keyboard in a T430 is common.

> the hardcore guys have literally ripped out the motherboard and installed a completely different motherboard with a modern i7 CPU.

So, a CPU upgrade? How is that not what OP mentions?

The LCD upgrade is also on the wishlist..

> So, a CPU upgrade? How is that not what OP mentions?

Are you asking how replacing the motherboard in a laptop with a custom third party hobbyist replacement is different from putting a faster CPU in a CPU socket?

I think most people are not aware that there was a time when laptop CPUs were replacable and not soldered on.

I had confused the model with a non socketed one

This kind of CPU upgrade was all but supported by the manufacturer.

Unlike modern laptops, the T430 motherboard had a socketed CPU (like a desktop motherboard). Upgrading the CPU was only marginally more difficult than upgrading the RAM (as long as the replacement CPU had the same package/pinout and was supported by the chipset). Lenovo datasheets would even give you a table of every CPU configuration they tested.

The "hardcore guys" mentioned by the parent are installing bodged motherboards that were never designed to fit in a given model's enclosure, occasionally doing major board surgery to make it work.

There were reasonably fast laptop SSDs in 2012. I had the intel one In my x61 and x201 thinkpad. The specific components though may be faster, then again the newer SSDs would be bottlenecked by the motherboard bus. Sourcing newer models would be a matter of logistics, not performance improvement. Same with RAM. CPU improvements have also been marginal in my opinion, for intel chips, depending on your workload. I was running photoshop professionally just fine, video maybe not so much.

The ram upgrade was common since the 2012s, thinkpad sold 16gbs as an upgrade while buying the laptop at the time. SSDs needing to be upgraded has also been recommended since that time. And the processor update was simply maxing out the processor upgrade from that generation. It was available on the workstation version of the thinkpad in the same generation. The i7-3820QM release date is 04/23/2012. It's still a processor from 2012. A new SSD doesn't mean current gen speeds, the internal and the caddy are still limited to sata 3 speeds. It's a very 2012 machine, a very nice 2012 machine and still lacking a dedicated GPU.

That CPU is generationally accurate though. It would be possible to have that much ram and that CPU when the system was brand new.

I own a T430 myself and have enjoyed using it for a couple of years already. Very durable, reliable and upgradable - plus its just fun to use. I removed the CD Rom and put an SSD in its place; upgraded to 8GB Ram; got a GTX 1050ti as an external GPU running and connected it together with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse to a docking station. That way I can use it on the go and then just put it on the docking station to have all the peripherals connected/disconnected easily. I could also update the processor but it would require spending more than 100€ on the chip and an improved cooling which I dont think justifies a minor boost in performance.

Does the external GPU works alright? I have a T530 with a NVidia that I use dual monitor. But it's old, and Blender doesn't use it for rendering. Been thinking about one of these little egpu adapters, but don't know anyone that used it actually.

The gpus from that generation are quite shit. Nonetheless, the igpu version is better for battery life and linux. I changed my motherboard from w530 to t530 (igpu version) to get rid of nvidia.

Being a frequent on /r/thinkpads I was delighted to see a fellow ThinkPad enthusiast!

Can't remember how many TP's I've had over the years but I'll attest to the older models being solid laptops. The newer ones, however, are disappointing.

My last good ThinkPad was a T470s with an i5, 8GB, 256GB (UNIX/Windows). After several years of (ab)use, I wanted to splurge on a X1 Gen3 and the specs were more than enough for my needs with an i7 (hexa-core), 16GB, 512 GB, 1050TI, 1080p 400nits display. However, when I got it and started to use it hardware issues stared to pile up. I went back to my trusty T470s and sold the X1.

Now I have an MBP M1 Pro and it's great.

There are exactly 220 comments on here as I write this one.

On a post about ThinkPads, this makes me happy.

Self Selecting though; it would be surprising if nerdy sites like HN "didn't" have love for the nerdy Thinkpads

I suspect you missed my point (if you didn’t, I apologise).

I was not merely pointing out the volume of comments.

Instead I was embracing the joyful timing coincidence of 220 comments, in reference to one of the most iconic ThinkPads ever made - the x220.

Ah yes, I missed that, sorry

Also, my 230 is better ;p

I love these projects. I have T430 with 16GB of RAM. Sadly, it is i5 version.

So far: - replaced fan to DELTA - refreshed thermal paste - added Samsung 860 EVO Pro - acquired (yet to install) USB-C charging port

Until I replace the CPU, it is not good enough for Scala development.

That said, compared to AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4700U and 32 GB in ThinkPad T14 it falls short quite fast.

T430, X230 and T61p hold a special place in my heart, but these are dated platforms. Once to start getting to media processing, paying attention to battery life, CPU performance per Watt, etc you will look for modern architecture.

I am personally pleased about move to Performance/Efficiency cores architecture. Not all tasks are created equal :)

Do something fun with the ExpressCard34 slot.

Shame it isn't a 54 slot. You'd be able to get an expresscard bluetooth mouse. They're comfier than you'd expect and incredibly convenient. They even charge while stored in the slot.

Or use it for an eGPU connector, I believe there were also options to use it as additional storage

There is a community (on Reddit ?) using X200/201 with homemade eGPUs to play AAA games.

I have a T430 from late 2011 which is still in use. I've replaced the battery and upgraded the RAM. One glaring issue this author only mentions in passing is the screen, which in my opinion is a complete dealbreaker for using this laptop for any sort of daily driver tasks like media consumption and web browsing. Even for its day the screen was poor. I'm not talking about the resolution, but color rendition and contrast. Its a complete pig. I run arch (btw) on mine and use it as a troubleshooting machine which i can carry with me and throw around without worrying too much, but i would not use it as my main computer.

Seems like lots of IT folks have fond memories of the T420/T430 (and X220) era. I personally think it was the golden age of the Thinkpad line, going back perhaps to T40/T42, it was some of the best laptops I ever worked on. No other laptop has come close to getting it right since. It was really the perfect combination of build quality, modularity and performance that won me over.

I'm now on the new M1 Pro Mac and while the battery life is amazing, I felt a lot more confident working on my T420 back in the day. And yes I tried the X1 Carbon/Extreme lines, and I wasn't sold on them either.

I've used an X200 for ten years (I bought it used with 3 years on the clock) and I'm actually surprised that the X200 is kind of glorified nowadays as one of the best Thinkpads ever, because back then the X200 was decried for its numerous build quality issues (palmrest, right half of the keyboard, thermals, noise etc.). The X200 is of course build fairly well compared to the more recent models, but that's hardly surprising. From my PoV the Thinkpad series has been constantly and consistently reducing build quality for at least 15 years.

(That being said most of the issues the X200 has had were just things that feel poorly, it won't fall apart)

I still use my x200s, though its battery barely holds a charge, so I use it docked with am external monitor, as a desktop machine. Most of my work is writing, so no issues with its lower CPU compared with newer machines.

I have been using as my only machine a T530 uninterrupted (think 10h/day uptime) since Nov 2012, both as a desktop replacement and to carry it around. I had to replace its motherboard recently but it was my fault as I put it in too enclosed of a space and overheated/burned it. Aside from a bit of fan noise, it's still going strong. It's definitely underspecced wtr to graphics nowadays, but still able to run things like League of Legends smoothly with just the integrated chip. Happy to answer questions about it if anyone is interested.

My only machine too since... 2015 I think? Replaced an old Dell inspiron, been running great with containers, IntelliJ, Jupyter Lab, dual monitor. Only Blender 3.0 doesn't work too well due to the old version of cuda. Other than that, never had any issues.

Does League have demanding hardware requirements? It's older than that laptop.

Can't give you a good informed answer but I've seen friends play League on like 8 different machines -- all very unimpressive in terms of specs.

I have to say, League is one of the very best games out there in terms of optimization and modest sipping of resources.

Shame about the community though; fairly toxic and demanding (IMO) and that's why I'll never play it. But the game itself is a technical marvel.

I've done the same only with a T440p.

Upgraded everything (cpu to 4 core to 47w model, max ram, CD replaced for SATA bay, screen to 1080p, touchpad to T450 version), even updated the bios to a modified version so I could set my own power curve parameters. Works great most of the time though the screen I got has deteriorated and needs replacement. I'm going to replace the fan as well as the bearing is giving out but it's not high speed on most of the time anyway.

Had a T430 before that with the same upgrades but that motherboard died.

I'm using an old T520 as my main machine for the similar reasons - it's a rock solid machine. Yes, I gave it more memory at one point, and I replaced the HDD with an SSD. No, nothing new comes close.

I only ever regret the decision when I am travelling through airports, when I see people effortlessly slide out their thin, light laptops while I heave around a machine of yesteryear, large and ominous-looking (I swear, the screening agent scrutinises the Thinkpad longer than he does look at your MBP), and heavy.

The Intel CPU-s had throttling issues that made them unusable for basic things like calls over Google Meet as they would throttle to 400 MHz.

That seems to be a common theme with the newer laptops. Look up "Intel DPTF" and power limits. They are severely throttled by firmware/drivers, long before they actually hit their (thermal) limits. There are various tweaks to unlock the full potential of the CPU, the easiest of which is to disable all the manufacturer crapware completely.

We hit the 400Mhz problem as well, on corporate high-end 14" Dells. Disabling thermald did not help much, as the laptop almost melted. But we discovered a "magic" spell involving rmmod/modprobe.

It sparked a kind of a custom: - guys, my laptop is throttling hard (...) - here, run this untrusted code snippet as root - yaay, it worked!

Disabling thermald did not help much, as the laptop almost melted.

They'll throttle and hard-shutdown long before permanent damage occurs. Recent laptop CPUs have maximum temperatures of ~100C and are perfectly fine to stay at that temperature 24/7.

Mine T440s survived being soaked twice. Once with hot latte, once with mineral water. Both times it was completely soaked.

It has internal battery which means it is not enough to power it down, you actually have to go to BIOS to turn the battery off. But when I spilled latte the keyboard stopped working and I was unable to power it down. I had to turn it around to open it up and in the process the sweet latte reached every single part of the motherboard.

The second time, I had the laptop in my bag. I put the bag on my lap on a bus stop and after some time I felt water on my legs. I yanked the laptop and from inside water started poring. I think there was at least 0.2-0.3L of water in it.

As I just moved I had no tools on my hand. I had to call my boss and tell him I need to take care of my laptop. I then drove to a shopping center to buy IPA, demineralized water and tools.

Water got absolutely everywhere. It was between individual leaves of LCD panel. I had to disassemble the laptop into its constituent parts including the display.

In both cases I have thoroughly washed the laptop (actually submerging it), first in water and then in IPA.

The laptop is still fine and other than a little bit of discoloration of the LCD panel and a small bit of hair from my beard within the panel which I missed when assembling it, you wouldn't say anything bad happened to it.

I have two Thinkpad X230T 2nd Gen i5 (T stands for touchscreen, it has a swivel capacitive touchscreen and a stylus) They don't have webcams (they have space for it but these being refurbed office models they were probably sold without webcams installed. But I have a seperate 360p webcam in some drawer should the need arise.

The one I'm using right now has windows 10 (no W11 support ;p), the other has chrome OS. (but only one charger sadly, original battery and charger are a pain in the butt for me to find).

These are perfect for my casual needs, and If I need anything extra, I have a refurbed Thinkstation S30 with a quaint Quadro 2000 card (no prefix). (It has no w11 support either, heh)

My real issue is battery (even the chrome OS one has ~2 hrs battery, I really thought the lightweight OS would help but hasn't) and inability to play x265 codec files. Backlit keyboard would have been nice but eh.

But with an SSD and and 8gb ram upgrade, it's a dream to use, it's a nice compact size, the keyboard is amazing, and it has decent port selection. I don't game or edit videos or whatever, and I'm never far from a charging point (the charger is a slim tube thing, so takes barely any bulk) so I'm not sure why I would need more for quite some time, as long as nothing is physically wrong with it.

At the risk of nitpicking, the T stands for Tablet, not touchscreen. The full product name is ThinkPad X230 Tablet, which is often shortened to ThinkPad X230t or ThinkPad X230T.

ah damn, mixed that up, sorry

I similarly use a Dell Latitude from 2012. After upgrading to 16GB RAM I don't have any issues with it whatsoever.

At work for new devs we bought ThinkPads with Ryzen. These are in general fine, except that multiple people have this weird issue with the computer completely freezing at random times on Linux. The one person who had Windows didn't have this issue. If it weren't for this issue that would be our default buy for new hires. Now, I don't know really.

> At work for new devs we bought ThinkPads with Ryzen. These are in general fine, except that multiple people have this weird issue with the computer completely freezing at random times on Linux. The one person who had Windows didn't have this issue. If it weren't for this issue that would be our default buy for new hires. Now, I don't know really.

Likely an issue with the C6 power state. Try searching for "ryzen linux c6 state" and you'll find plenty of people with these issues. Try updating BIOS, disabling C6 in BIOS or with https://github.com/jfredrickson/disable-c6.

Thanks for the tip!

I know that some of the guys have tried some of the fixes that can be found online with limited success, I'll forward this to them!

It's a real pity though! Were it not for the freeze issue the laptops would be quite solid!

Those 10 year old Thinkpads are still surprisingly capable. I still didn't completely stop using my X220 (also with some HW upgrades like 16GB RAM and ac Wifi) although I bought a Thinkpad P14s Gen 2 (AMD) this year.

Some remarks for running Linux on the P14s:

> On AMD models, performance was less than stellar for my workloads and not a significant jump over a laptop from 2018.

Might be that you need to bump up some power management settings to get full performance via e.g. [1] or [2]. There is also /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile but this is broken currently for T14/P14s Gen2 AMD and maybe other models [3].

> Wi-Fi/Bluetooth would not work on one of the laptops, even when I was using an up-to-date Linux distro. Likely related to the type of adapter used (not Intel).

Lenovo switched to using a Realtek adapter for some models (due to chip shortage according to their Linux support team). Linux 5.16 includes the driver now, there is also a backport [2] for older kernel versions available.

[1] https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj [2] https://github.com/xsmile/ryzen-ppd [3] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215177 [4] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89

1.5 years ago I went ahead and upgraded my retired workplace laptop, a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E743 from 2014:

- bigger 500 GB SSD, resized system partition (no re-install necessary)

- replaced the dual core CPU with a quad core model (Intel Core i7-3612QM, 35W)

- replaced its really crappy keyboard with a backlit one from a later model that fitted

https://www.facebook.com/gernot.kieseritzky/posts/1022366591...

All in all the upgrade cost me about €200 (about US$230) and the laptop is still up and running, used daily for home office and private stuff (including streaming of retro games on Twitch). Replacement batteries are easy to come by but we still had some unused spares at my workplace.

Unlike the Thinkpads these laptops are kind of an underdog when it comes to its modding community. But these things are actually quite hackable. I wonder if I could have even tried to plug in a 45W model of the same CPU mentioned in TFA to get even more processing power and maybe modded the cooler that is a bit too loud for my taste.

Also a nice thing on Fujitsu Notebooks is, the power adapter stayed the same since many many generations. I can use the same adapter for my 2006, 2014 and 2020 Fujitsu notebook. And yes, I upgraded also the two older models with more Ram and SSD.

I've generally been in this camp, up until last month my primary personal box was a 5-6 year old Chromebook (HP Chromebook 13 G1), which with the recent ability to run Linux containers let me do almost everything in my "home" workflow.

However, a month ago I got one of those new Macbooks to fill in a few voids the Chromebook and borrowing my wife's laptop couldn't. The biggest being video editing. The main incentive was back in October when I spent ~30 hours editing my kids school concert video. Playing all sorts of tricks to get the machine to be barely useful for editing, etc.

That Mac hardware lets me copy the media from my phone or action cam and directly edit it. I don't have to generate optimized media, and it's lightning fast at scrubbing and rendering.

Now I'm running into wanting to update my work laptop, which is only a couple years old, because I got 2 4K monitors on end-of-year sale, and the laptop can only drive them at lower resolutions.

So, yes, for many use cases older laptops are just great.

I felt stupid spending that money on a new laptop, for what is an infrequent use case (videos, slicing 3D files being the big ones). But, what previously, even with my desktop that died, was a painful experience, has now become a joy. That has made it worth the price.

Plus, my spend on laptops over the last 7 years, personally, has been around $700.

If an old laptop works for you, great! If an old laptop plus some new upgrades works for you, fantastic! But, don't forget that if spending some money can solve a pain point, it might still be a good value.

These days I just wish we'd go back to the days of easily removable keyboards, and several keyboard options for each model.

I'd like a 15" laptop without a weird offset numeric keypad I never use, and the old style short travel keys you used to get rather then these rubber things with no surface texture - like you would've found on an old gateway laptop.

Somewhere along the way, everyone trying to emulate Apple has just ruined things.

My T430s: would be nice if I can pull out better battery life (have two new ones) and has some occasional issues with the wiring for the network hardware kill switch. It's perceptibly slower on some pages, but only slightly (never bothered to figure out if it was the old WiFi or the CPU, an i7 for the time). It has some superficial cracks on it. It would also be nice to have USB-C and all that new stuff. But: with a screen upgrade (1080p with the ASIC card) and the best laptop keyboard I ever used and spare parts online galore and the potential at least to easily swap the BIOS and upgrade further, and perfectly fine and performant for the software development I do, it's close to perfect. Maybe a T430/quad-core would be nicer, but I'd rather just own my work computer (T470p, which is also close to perfect as well, but in other ways.)

So, it is rather funny to confirm again what some others might be thinking. The hardware is old and will have longer-term support issues, but for now and for a long time, I am glad not to think about having to get a new laptop for any use.

The author should be made aware that the 11th-gen Intel products are a no-buy, and should be shopping for 12th gen models that are around the corner, which are quite a leap forward and similar to the Apple M1 in their level of impressiveness.

I'd say overall this article is a curmudgeon-ish view of modern laptops. The author tried two brands of laptops, from two manufacturers who are not even close at the top of the market in terms of level of innovation.

Dell and Lenovo are two brands that businesses automatically purchase like zombies, even though they often represent some of the worst choices available.

There are some truly amazing pieces of tech out there that will stomp all over a 2012 ThinkPad in both performance and innovative features.

Here's an example video showing off the latest upcoming models from ASUS, just from one OEM. I know these laptops are all gaming-oriented, but a lot of them are packed with some really cool and clever features and form factor innovation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdBTkgtnTsw

Oh, a ThinkPad T400 series, one of those models was actually my first laptop at work in my current company (joined about 4 years ago)! Albeit it was a bit dated even then, it was still a pleasure to use and i never really felt like i needed to switch to something newer, maybe just for more RAM. Though my current ThinkPad has a larger screen, which is nice too! That said, 24 GB felt enough for me throughout 2021, even for enterprise Java projects.

Honestly, as far as laptops go, it feels to me that the various types of ThinkPad laptops are some of the best out there - they feel sturdy, the build quality is good, the driver support is generally pretty good (only had problems with display drivers once in a newer model) and the keyboards are the best that i've tried in any laptop to date (outside of Apple devices, i guess).

I've also been meaning to look into the Fujitsu Lifebook series of laptops for personal devices, but currently can't really afford them. Are there any other sturdy but powerful laptops that the people here would like to recommend?

I'm using an X220 which is even older than the T430. It is on its last legs and its keyboard doesn't work at all (using an external) but I feel that it is fast enough in terms of cpu, storage, etc. I do some programming on it but it is not a hardcore dev box. I use remote servers for that. I don't feel like I need multiple disk drives: if I want to back up on the same machine, 1TB microsdxc cards are a thing (in fact I only need 256gb or so).

I need to replace the X220 quite soon and there are way fewer used Thinkpads on Craigslist than there used to be (any vintage, not just that era). I don't know why that is. But I agree with the article that the newer stuff is way too crapified and that the 2012 era machines are about the best ones to use right now. Older ones were even more solidly constructed, but had DDR2 memory, considerably slower processors, etc. So I will probably look for another X220. (X230 is similar and a little newer, but has the silly 6 row keyboard instead of the nicer old 7 row one).

The X230 and X220 keyboards are compatible. You could get a new X220 keyboard to solve your immediate problem, and then after you find a suitable X230, swap in the keyboard.

Thanks, that's nice to know about the swappability. I don't know if my X220 keyboard issue is with the keyboard itself or on the motherboard side. I inspected the tiny ribbon cable connector pretty carefully and didn't see any problems with it. The symptom was that a few of the keys stopped working, then more of them, and finally it seems all of them. Maybe I can try temporarily swapping in another keyboard. I think I have one that I can try.

That's so weird because I'm currently using the T420. My desktop has basically stopped working so I had to start using this one with Ubuntu 18 something. Pretty disingenuous to say you're using an old Thinkpad when you've upgraded the RAM to max and everything else. I haven't (4gb currently) and it can be pretty frustrating.

YouTube and other video sites will start to freeze up after awhile and forget about multiple tabs of videos because that will just speed up the process. My browser gets too slow on certain web games. Ultimate Paperclip, now that I've progressed to the end, is unplayable.

Otherwise though, outside of gaming, the switch from Windows to Ubuntu has been relatively painless and unnoticeable. I tried doing some music production with LMMS and VMPK. For some reason, the audio just isn't registering even though it works fine for all other applications. But not too bad considering it was my last resort before having to buy a new computer or spend money trying to repair the old one.

I'm typing this on my daily driver, a T500 (manufactured May 2009), and it's fine for Linux development workstation after a few tweaks.

The tweaks are to install SSD, max out RAM at 8 GB, swap in the second-fastest P-series CPU, and install an older and better T60 keyboard. The T500 is hopeless for anything GPU-heavy, but I have a GPU server for compute jobs.

Before moving from T60 to T500, I bought and tried a few newer models, but decided the T500 was the best balance for lines of code and laptop ergonomics (sadly, the T520 was just too wide and heavy to be comfortable using in all the laptop ways).

About the only compute-bound thing that's painful right now is a very small number Web sites that are doing grossly-inefficient JavaScript to secretly spy intimately on my browsing behavior, yet are not yet blocked by the uBlock Origin ruleset I maintain.

I updated my laptop this year and I picked the XPG Xenia 14, it ticked many boxes and I honestly loved it:

1. Easy to unscrew and upgrade (I bumped the RAM to 64Gb)

2. Has 2 M.2 slots (I replaced the stock SSD with 1Tb PCIE 4.0 for the OS and apps and added a 2Tb PCIE 3.0 for media and data)

3. It has a thunderbolt port, so it supports an eGPU

4. It is incredibly thin and light

5. It has a decent collection of ports

My circa 2011 x220 thinkpad is the greatest most indestructible machine ever. It survived 10000kms of travelling on airplanes, the Indonesian jungles, underground gold mines and to this day runs like a champ.

Sure a couple keys are missing, a few superficial cracks but I will never be able to throw this guy away. So man memories

I'm sure you're aware, but in case other aren't, individual Lenovo keycaps can be easily bought online.

Funny story, I'm actually looking to make the opposite switch t430 -> t480.

My t430 is already equipped with 16gb ram and modded EC so I can use cheap 3rd party batteries and the OG 7 row keyboard instead of the trash 6 row island keyboard. There are still some upgrades to be made like i7 QM cpu, and a 1600x900 IPS screen, but I just can't justify the costs anymore.

The reason for moving to t480 soon is that I'll be doing the t25 frankenpad mod solely just for the 7 row keyboard. Better power effiecient cpu, nvme and high res screen is a cherry on top.

So far my thinkpad experience has been superb, and both my machines t410 + t430 have survived many drops and various liquid spills(water/coffee/alcohol) and besides replacing the keyboard, I had 0 issues. Hopefully the t480 will be similar experience.

My favorite laptop is an Acer I bought new in early 2009 for maybe $400. The only hardware change I made was to upgrade the RAM from 2 GB to max it out at 4 GB.

There are a couple of advantages. First, it's a joy to type on something with a good keyboard. Part of it is that older laptops have more bulk to them, and that makes for a better typing experience for me. Second, modern displays are the wrong shape. It's hard to find a nearly-square screen these days. Performance is not an issue. It's the most responsive computer I own. I'm running AntiX, a distro that shows how to do lightweight right.

Having said all of the above, one thing limits my usage. It has a 32-bit CPU. Among other things, that means no Electron apps, and one in particular is critical to my workflow.

Still use my T420. No upgrades - just running a lightweight Linux distro. And that keyboard is sublime.

Agreed, that T420 keyboard is simply perfection.

I have a similar story about my 2007(?) 17" MacBook Pro, back from when Apple made serviceable products. This MBP have had many owners before again circling back to me. I have opened it up more times than I can remember and replaced most replaceable things, like swapping the optical drive for a 2nd hard disk (and back again), and even replacing the entire screen plus assembly.

"Old" hardware is totally usable for much of what I do today, but the number #1 thing that I would miss is the modern displays which are just so much kinder on my ailing eyes. Amusingly the keyboards are often better on my old devices, but the trackpads are not.

EDIT: the processor is 64-bit. I was thinking of my ThinkPad T42p (another heavily serviced unit).

> Replace the display with a compatible 1600x900 panel that has better image quality. The current screen is awful

The TN displays from those days are so bad. Why Lenovo didn't at least have an IPS option for their machines (other than the tablets, which they did), is a mystery to me.

The T430S was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Atrocious. I finally stuck to MacBook Air/Pro at that point.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T430s-N...

In the last couple years, they started putting decent 1080 screens in (sometimes the brightness is lacking, but my T480 is not bad at all), and they have a fantastic 1440p screen in some models.

Does this mean that "things that have survived for 10 years are more durable than average", or "in the last 10 years, we have become unable to make useful, durable laptops"?

If it's the latter, then I can hear the footsteps of the Anti-Singularity getting ever closer....

We're capable, companies have just decided there isn't a market for it.

Or else there are still useful durable laptops being produced, but not this model or this company.

What's the difference between the two? Especially when the product in question requires the co-ordination of 10s (probably 100s) of thousands of engineers, designers, and operatives, as well as a mass-market able to make the initial investment worth it.

I thought about doing the same for my T430 but found out it'll cost me ~400$ and several hours so I ended up buying a second hand t470s for 300$. I like my T430 but it is really heavy and bulky and the display quality is awful (really bad viewing angles).

For Thinkpads, T450 (from 2015) probably hits the sweet spot as a daily driver. Few important notes:

* Haswell got most of the major ISA extensions like e.g. AVX2

* T440 did not have buttons for Trackpoint, making it pretty awful

* 802.11ac 5GHz wifi and USB 3 are nice to have

The T430 was the machine that hooked me on to ThinkPads almost 20 years ago. Having tried many newer models since then, including the X1 Extreme I use for work nowadays, I agree that they just don't make them as they used to.

Ever since the Lenovo acquisition in particular, quality has gone down substantially, to the point where they don't feel special at all, and are on par with other Chinese mass produced brands. For the exorbitant prices it still retails for, you'd think that coil whine wouldn't be an issue, and that TrackPoint drift would be fixed after all these years.

> you'd think that coil whine wouldn't be an issue, and that TrackPoint drift would be fixed after all these years.

To be fair, trackpoint drift (atleast as I understand it) is a byproduct of the technology, ie the trackpoint driver constantly recalibrating itself.

I agree with you that the quality has gone down drastically though - I miss my X220t still after upgrading to a T480 last year. I've had my keyboard replaced twice under warranty and the third one is exhibiting the same issues now that the other two did (backspace key keeps popping out).

> To be fair, trackpoint drift (atleast as I understand it) is a byproduct of the technology, ie the trackpoint driver constantly recalibrating itself.

Possibly. It would be interesting to know if other implementations (some HP laptops, UHK, etc.) have the same issue. I haven't used it on any other hardware besides the USB ThinkPad keyboard, but it's disappointing that little to no investment was done in R&D to perfect the technology over the years and avoid this very common issue. Unsurprising though given the overall drop in quality since Lenovo took over.

> The T430 was the machine that hooked me on to ThinkPads almost 20 years ago.

Ah, I misremembered... It was actually the T42. The T430 was still a pretty good machine.

I gave up on a Macbook Pro to use a Thinkpad T420s, the last one with the traditional keyboard. Aside from maxing out the memory and the SSD, I only upgraded the LCD panel to a better one ordered on AliExpress.

Am I the only person who is just fine with the new keyboard?

Obviously the ones on ideapad and whatnot are not in the same league, but the keyboard on T450s and T460s are pretty awesome.

I've been discussing just this with the folks in reddit /r/thinkpad recently.

There are lots on your side, but I see lots of upvotes for the new-keyboard-haters too.

For me, the 220/420/520 are the last good Thinkpads. I have all 3 and use them all regularly. Anything after that, IMHO the chiclet keyboards are unusable trash.

They've got even worse since the ?30 generation and now are right down there with Dell and other cheapo glued-together skip-ware.

(Skip = dumpster in USian.)

I would not dismiss Dell so quickly. Screens in their 7000 series of the same era were much better. Keyboards were trash.

This article makes me more glad than ever that I saved all my old Stinkpads (a name I use cynically, yet affectionately). They're the only brand of laptop I've used since when they were made by IBM. I have 8 or so now. None of them quit working -- all replaced just because I wanted a newer model. Reliability and Linux readiness has never really been an issue (except the normal Nvidia driver issues). These, along with a stash of IBM M-101 keyboards keeps my ergonomics consistent since the 90s.

I upgraded my 2008 HP with an SSD and max amount of memory. That thing was ahead of its time - a Macbook-style touch strip where you can control volume and other things (albeit much less fancy), and fingerprint login.

It's a beautiful machine, but unfortunately your biggest bottleneck is the CPU. The modern Internet is ridiculously inefficient, and the laptop struggles to do even casual browsing. And video service streaming also maxes the poor guy out.

Overall, it was a satisfying experience to resurrect it. I call it Lazarus.

I did almost all the same upgrades to my T430 around 2014, with small variations (BIOS reflash with hardware programmer instead of software workaround for wifi upgrade, as at that point no workarounds existed). I used it for more than 2 years, but I had to upgrade because I needed more RAM. It still lives with a friend. It was surprising how well the CPU behaved, especially since the thermal solution was not really created to handle 45W CPUs (there were no T430 laptops with quad core CPUs).

I 'retired' a T510 in 2017 that's slightly deficient by modern standards, Google Maps in particular is not much fun to use on it. I think their durability is overrated; a clip broke on the bundled battery and it wouldn't stay attached after that, and some of the plastic strips around the air vent broke off from being caught on something while in transit. I'm not a huge fan of the red nipple in the keyboard but it was very comfortable aside from that.

Nowadays a tower suits me better.

Reading this on my 2012 15" Retina MBP w/ 16GB and 2.3 GHz Core i7 running High Sierra.

Don't know what those CPU numbers mean since everything still "just works!" ;^)

Okay, actually Adobe cloud software tanked years ago, and my Tweetdeck is a bit slow to load, and my iPhone 11 Pro's photo features don't work consistently, but otherwise, I figure I can wait for the M2 MBP.

p.s., Thanks goes to my employer for the 2020 MBP in case I truly need something recent, like the Touchbar. No, just kidding! ;^)

Interestingly this CPU is only 20% faster than a newer i7 9750H ([link](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-9750H-vs...)). I'd imagine under load the performance will be similar since 9750H can't run at max without overheating in a slim XPS body being next to another hot (graphics) chip.

I haven't seen the ThinkPad L440 mentioned here.

I bought one a few years ago because it has the same benefits as a T440p but the value hasn't been inflated. It's part of that last generation where the CPU is user replaceable. The screen can be upgraded to an IPS if you can find a good replacement.

It's supposedly a lesser build quality, but the plastics seem great and mine's still going after my wife stepped on it. I have a bad habit of leaving it on the floor by my chair.

I've got a T430 as my personal laptop (although I still use the work one more than I should) 2-3 years ago specifically because of its upgradeability.

Since then I found myself having the haul the laptop enough times to wish for something smaller and lighter so acquired a smaller X240.

I don't plan to move away from (these) ThinkPads until the arm-based improvements make it compelling enough. Hopefully someone will make a arm-based laptop that is as modules/thinkerable as ThinkPads.

It also seems that Linux hardware support gets worse over time. I upgraded an old laptop to a newer distro, and the CPU fan was constantly blowing, cpu scaling stopped working, video became buggier, Bluetooth would randomly stop working with A2DP, hibernation stopped working. It took nearly a year for me to figure out each of the issues, because this is Linux; we don't "help users" or "test hardware", that would make us soft and weak!

I do miss the track point controller. It’s kinda like hardware vim: difficult to learn to work with, so majority of people don’t. But once you do, it’s an absolute killer.

This might be blasphemous but after being thinkpad exclusively for the past 13 years (and my first thinkpad was in 98) but I find myself using the touchpad more and more when I'm not on my external trackpoint keyboard.

Not quite sure why, might be due to slightly dodgy Linux experiences (x240 dodgy buttons and then now my sensitivity on X1 gen 9 is a bit touch and go)

That said for regular point and click the touchpad is good enough. Tho when working there is no substitute for not leaving the homerow

It might be multi-finger gestures maybe? I use those a LOT on touchpad for scrolling, panning and dragging. Back when I was using Touchpoint, the trackpads weren’t capable of this, if I remember correctly. And they were like 2x3 cm in size anyway.

Primary issue I have with Lenovo systems is the swap of the FN key and the Ctrl key.

I know it can be changed in BIOS, I just hate the idea of breaking the standardized layout.

My current main laptop is a T450s from 2014 or so. It's got 12 GiB of RAM, enough to run most dev tools comfortably. The slowdown in CPU speed acceleration has meant that a PC from between five and ten years ago, or even more, is not as flagrantly obsolete as it once was, and I'd rather keep life in my old machines, especially when new machines start to grow features I don't want (like Pluton).

Recently I bought a T420 for 120 euros. I updated it to 8gb ram and 250 ssd for 100 more euros. Total cost 220 euros for a laptop that covers most of my needs as a developer. It runs Windows 10 and manjaro Linux on two partitions flawlessly!

I don't think that there's a better value for money laptop anybody could buy. If somebody believers otherwise I'd really like to see what's the other options.

I've had great experiences with Apple products lasting far longer than they should. I won a first gen iPad when it first came out, and six years later I would use it as an umbrella to run down the block to the coffee shop, and it would still work when I got there. My phone is a five year old iPhone SE, I've replaced the battery once and the screen once, and it's running great.

I have my own version of "Bill Gate's" quote , "640K Ought to be Enough for Anyone". An i7 with 16GB of memory ought to be enough for anyone. "Anyone" in this case is the typical office worker or home surfer. Gamers, devs with a bunch of VMs, data scientists, no, but the vast majority of people surfing and running Office? It's enough.

For anyone who wants the most powerful laptop from this generation, T530/W530 can be equipped with i7-3940XM and has a good wide gamut FHD display. igpu models are recommended for battery life and linux. They are also supported well by coreboot, and you'll be able to run just about any OS on them. A slightly newer T440p is also a decent choice.

Don't forget that they're the last gen compatible with the classic keyboard.

I had a 2011 MacBook Air that I used as a casual "couch laptop" up until a month ago. I probably could have continued using it if it wasn't for both the battery and the power supply becoming unreliable. It surprises me that with a dual core i5 and 4GB of RAM, it was more than adequate for all but the most demanding tasks.

I don’t think the author is alone in keeping an older thinkpad running by upgrading its components, that’s part of why they’re such popular machines with tech people. I have to say though, his complaints about the newer machines doesn’t resonate with me, my T495s works great (the only issue is the awful Lenovo buying process)

I honestly feel like there were some issues in their specific hardware selection. Linux shouldn't be that bad on a recent Thinkpad system

I was looking for a linux laptop last week. Dell only showed one laptop (Precision 7760 Workstation) that they support linux on. It doesn't seem surprising that if the reviewer bought a Dell that Dell don't support linux on, then it didn't support linux when the reviewer tried either.

I am also currently using a ThinkPad from around 2015 running Fedora. Fedora and Linux support in general has increased so much in the past few years. Every function you would expect works out of the box, including Bluetooth, brightness, volume and all of the keys associated with that are functioning.

Old thinkpads are like framework laptops

My company decided to sell some of the old laptops before Christmas and I immediately jumped for the T430 and bought a couple of them. I know they are solid and can't wait to install Linux on them to be my main development machine.

Well I ended up installing Windows 10 but still they are pretty solid.

One of the biggest reasons to keep an older laptop running is that they're likely to still support the S3 sleep state. I had a 2016 XPS15 which had good sleep characteristics, upgraded to a top-of-the-line 2020 XPS15 and it just sucks (battery) because it will only use S1 sleep.

Same thing, I bought a low quality L-series thinkpad, without a GPU.

GPUs need a lot of cooldown, and thus a lot of space, and laptops can't be well cooled.

I upgraded to a SSD, I can still add some RAM if I want.

Laptops can't be war machines, unless you have deep pockets, and it will be difficult to cool it down.

I mourn the loss of my W541 every day. Survived a series of absurdly intense physical traumas that would have obliterated a lesser machine, until she was unjustly stolen from me by the corrupt federales of Quintana Roo. But that's another story.

The most salient thing about this whole episode is that the author was even able to upgrade anything on the laptop.

I would happily take a little bit chunkier case like we used to have if that meant that I could swap out parts without having to use a soldering iron.

The "unsexy" business or workstation laptops from basically every large computer manufacturer allows this.

I'm still rocking an SL510 from 2009. It's been relegated to home server duty due to it's bulkiness, but it still runs like a champ. I like them so much, I just upgraded to an X1 Yoga Gen 6. Beast of a product line.

I started in a new job a year ago, and they got me the new Dell XPS 15. The experience has been dreadful so far, given that I've been a happy user of a Dell laptop for the past 5 years. Seems the quality consistently deteriorated.

X220 checking in. All I’ve done is a new battery, SSD and upgraded to 16gb ram. My son plays Minecraft and Roblox on it all the time and works great. Keep considering upgrading it but it works great for what’s it’s being used for.

haha, the similarities to my recent experiences are funny. I also recently have started using an X230 (same era as T430) and an X220, also running open source OSes and I used Hugo to publish my personal site, using the same theme as the article author. Today, these machines are so affordable and still offer excellent computation power and acceptable power efficiency. Not mind-blowing, but still fine. The repairability is a major plus, one of the best in a laptop I've thus far seen.

I've got an X230 still I need to offload. 16GB of ram, IPS panel, 9 cell battery. Would anyone be interested? Not sure if this is against the rules. Located in Texas.

Would absolutely love to take that off your hands, sounds just like one I never should have let get away a few years back. I'm in East Coast USA and email address in my profile. Thanks!

> I had to drop my screen resolution to 720p

This is the deal breaker for me. Upgrading my trusty x250 to a M1 MacBook Air means I can use two external monitors comfortably again.

I know they are the opposite of upgradable, but the new MacBook Pros solve all of the author’s other problems (assuming they don’t have to run Windows).

And I should mention that I very much support repeatability and reuse. However, as a father of a young kid, I don’t have anywhere near the spare time to even contemplate doing something like this. Hence, I need my hardware to “just work” (for my use cases) with minimal annoyance. That’s what I value about the MacBook Pro M1 Pro.

Dell Latitude and Precisions from this era are also an excellent choice, paired with a docking station @ home with dual monitors, you're golden.

My laptop is a 32 bit dual core from 2008ish. Just needed a new battery and an upgrade from hdd to ssd. Works pretty well for most stuff.

hahahaha when I saw that picture I immediately realized that this was just that a project but not real world use. Side note, I do love how much flexibility laptops that are not Mac have. Ive been using System76 laptops/desktops for a while, and I LOVE them and the options and upgrades you can make (I do not work for System) lol.

Anyone have a recommendation for a new laptop with a H processor? I want Thunderbolt and 8 cores.

I'm thinking about HP Zbook G8

If my T410 didn’t have that crappy screen I would still be using it. Felt very solid compared to latest models.

On the MacBook side of things, the jump from a 2012 machine to a 2020/2021 M1 machine is enormous.

Lenovo Thinkpad really helped me throughout my college journey, the laptop never let me down.

> "I’ve been using this setup for over a month now, and it has been surprisingly adequate."

Well, I don't know about you guys, but "surprisingly adequate" isn't really enough to get me to hit the "buy now" button.

I really miss my x41

I still use a T430 in my kitchen, great laptop.

Do you also have a comparison to macbooks?

I did something similar by switching back to my old Lenovo after a poor experience with a HP computer. I tell here my story for those interested in cases like the one described in the article.

Three years ago, I was feeling that my Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 540 (2014) was a bit outdated, and since I just won a grant and had some money for this, I looked for a new laptop. At the time, my employer encouraged all the staff to buy laptops from HP; the discount was not significant, but for those that accepted to follow that route, the amount of bureaucracy was significantly less (I work in a public university in Italy, and the bureaucracy for even the simplest tasks can be daunting!). The model I chose was a HP ProBook G450, and I bought an extended warranty too.

After less than one year, one of the small plastic clips holding each key in place on the keyboard got loose, and after having put it again in place a few times, after a couple of weeks broke. I contacted the assistance, asking for a replacement of the pin. Well, they told me that my extended warranty did not cover «external peripherals» like the keyboard (wtf, is the keyboard in a laptop an external perhiperal?!). The person at the phone was clearly embarassed in telling me that HP's policy prevented them from sending these paper clips by email, and he instead told me that the only solution was to substitute the whole keyboard for ~340€. Obviously I refused. I started looking for replacement pins on eBay (which were sold for <1€ each), but in the meantime another key pin broke, followed by another one, and another one… In a few months, I had a dozen of keys with broken pins! (Before suggesting that I should type with less force, let me say that I have a soft touch, and that no other laptop I owned had this kind of problem.)

I decided to buy a replacement keyboard on eBay, after I quickly checked on YouTube that there were videos showing how to make the replacement step by step. Once I got the keyboard by email, I started tearing apart the laptop as described in these videos, but at the end I found that some glue was keeping the keyboard attached to the frame, and that I should have used some solvent to remove it and then glue it again. (It would have been better for me to view the video in its entirety before ordering the replacement!)

I was scared by the idea of doing this kind of work, as I never did something similar before, so I decided that I would have instead removed the pins from the new keyboard and used them in the laptop. I put together every piece of the laptop again, but I probably broke some wire or misplaced some component, because once assembled the computer refused to start! Out of frustration, instead of debugging the problem, I took my old Lenovo Thinkpad out of the shelf and upgraded its OS, putting the two-year-old HP back in a drawer.

It has been my workhorse again since six months, and despite not being as performant as the other one, at least it works! In particular, now I am really appreciating the sturdy keyboard, which is still working fine after 8 years. To think that I disliked it when I typed on it for the first time!

A laptop for software development or ANY serious work? No thanks.

Instead I want a better keyboard, video display, and processor and want room for several disk drives, provision for more peripheral devices, etc.

And I'm currently rushing back to the last update of Windows 7 Professional, a copy of Office 2016 (the 2013 version is fine except for Outlook that needs an update for a change in SMTP email standards), and an old version of Firefox. For Firefox, I have been using it to view my 6000+ HTML files of software documentation via a simple macro in the editor KEDIT, but now each time I want Firefox to display such a file I get an absurd delay and three popup windows, one to decline an update, one asking me to make Firefox my default Web browser, and one to announce that there is an update to Firefox. So, I'm just trying desperately to do MY work, and just from a simple attempt to use Firefox I get jabbed in the ribs about updates twice.

I've specified both to Firefox and Windows some hundreds of times, maybe thousands, dozens in the last week, that Firefox IS my default Web browser. Somehow Windows and/or Firefox interact in some way to refuse to accept that Firefox is my default Web browser.

For an update to Firefox, I've declined that now likely over 10,000 times, maybe 20,000 times, including a few hundred in the last two weeks.

It appears that Firefox does have old versions available. They worked MUCH better than the recent version I've tried to use, and the old versions didn't keep pestering me, interrupting my work, stopping, refusing to work, until I click NO to some pop-ups about updates. In the old days, when a horse or mule suddenly refused to move, it got whipped.

Just now I've had to stop all my work to respond to these problems of Windows and Firefox that have recently and for no good reason sabotaged my work.

I've also been having similar problems with Adobe's Acrobat PDF reader. E.g., somehow the location of Acrobat was changed from

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe

So, how that change was done, I don't know. To me, that sounds like a huge problem in computer security -- no such change should be possible. The change broke my KEDIT macro for starting Acrobat to read a line in KEDIT that has the tree name of a PDF file I want to read. Somehow, a bit amazing, the change was also made to my desktop icon for starting Acrobat -- the situation of LNK files for desktop icons now seems to be a complicated subject.

With rare exceptions, I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise any and all updates to software that is working FINE.

So, back to Windows 7 Professional and some old version of Firefox. Then find how to get Adobe Acrobat OUT of the Windows auto-start list and try HARD to get an old, stable version of Acrobat that does NOT try to do updates.

These updates are nothing less than massive external attacks and sabotage of my work that force me into a version of mud wrestling that takes a huge fraction of my time.

No, no, no, no, absolutely no, essentially always, I want NO updates or new versions.

I want, close to screaming in frustration, to do MY work and avoid the system management disasters and sabotage of my work of absurd updates.

Circumstances, long story, pushed me into a laptop instead of my desktop I plugged together around an AMD FX-8350 processor. By the way, that processor has a cooling fan but it is quiet, can't hear it.

My three favorite pieces of software are Rexx, KEDIT, and TeX, and all are essentially perfect and none are subject to updates for at least some decades. These are three great tools, and I have great success and no problems with them.

If my collection of hand tools worked this way, somehow I would discover that all my English dimension socket wrenches had been converted to metric. Then I would discover that my reversible electric drill had adopted a default of rotating counter clockwise and would not rotate clockwise without my pushing two buttons and holding them for three seconds each, for each use of the drill. And a new drill would have a video message window that frequently put up "Do you want to?" requiring that I stop my work and take out 20 seconds and push two buttons. Still worse will be a car with a pop-up window on a heads up display: To avoid a collision at 60 MPH, I try to slam on the brakes but nothing happens until I click on some icon to respond to some message "Do you want to do that? Using the brakes ..." CRASH.

Wish me luck in defending myself from sabotaging updates and absurd pop-up windows.

For Firefox you should try a policy template to disable all together updates and the default browser check <https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates>

WOW! Thanks. Will try that.

tl;dr: some people have too much time and no interesting hobbies.

any Thinkpad above t430 will work just fine as well.

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