Ask HN: Is this new ThinkPad E14 worth it to bother with warranty? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is this new ThinkPad E14 worth it to bother with warranty?

2 points_p9wz21 comments

So I bought a new ThinkPad E14 Gen2 for 560 euros in the Baltic market. It has 15.2 GB of usable RAM instead of 16GB stated and 930GB SSD instead of 1Tb stated by the vendor mdata.lt. No wonder they were reluctant for me to check the SSD storage upon delivery. Hope that they go bankrupt and hang their useless selves in theirs useless offices.

It also has a backlit keyboard, aluminum casing on top and probably PC + ABS casing on the bottom, AMD 3 4300U 4 core CPU, Windows10 pre-installed, 2 year warranty.

I can buy a refurbished T480 for ~500 euros with the 1Tb SSD and 16GB RAM + 2 year warranty for the Thinkpad and 6 month warranty for the battery from another vendor. Or a new L14 G1 with 8gb RAM, 256 GB SSD, AMD Ryzen 5 6 core and backlit keyboard for ~670 euros (no soldered RAM) from another vendor.

Should I bother to send this E14 for incorrect specs (the discrepancy in which basically may not matter much for me for now)?

Your laptop has integrated graphics, which means some of the RAM will be reserved for the GPU. The amount is configurable in the BIOS but can't be 0. Any computer with iGPU will do the same thing, it doesn't mean they did not give you 16GB.

As for the SSD it comes down to the units used by HDD and SSD manufacturers vs the ones used by operating systems, which is indeed misleading and bordering on fraud imho. But, again, your laptop certainly do contain a 1TB drive and you will find the same discrepancy in reported capacity even if you buy a 1TB nvme drive and install it yourself.

I want to believe this is true, maybe Ubuntu in dual boot will show more info on RAM and SSD.

There's nothing much to show here, this is common on most drives. SSDs that are 1tb tend to round off at the 960gb mark for a variety of reasons, and the remaining space is probably Windows installing 4 or 5 versions of Candy Crush for you. Like the other comment said, your iGPU also needs memory for a framebuffer and some basic windowing capabilities, which should take up around a gig on most modern systems.

Your reaction to this is off-base, and wishing ill on anyone for a rash misconception is a bad habit to get into. Roll with it, if you need more storage then upgrade to a 1920gb (2tb in Big Box stores) SSD instead.

WIndows shows 930GB total SSD capacity, with 35GB used by Windows. But the remaining free space seems sufficient for at least the 2 years of warranty.

I am worried a bit that even under rather small load like opening folders and checking sound/video palyback, the vent grid on the bottom of this new E14 (which doesn't have a vent grid in the side) gets rather warm, so I need to constantly use the external cooling pad.

P.S. Ok, my reaction to this is 95% off-base and a bad habit to get into, but the implicit on-site idiotic circus that led me to buying from this vendor may overweigh by the remaining 5%, so a deeper awareness can also benefit to everyone.

If you want to return the laptop, return it. Absolutely nothing you've mentioned so far indicates a hardware failure or warranty-covered replacement.

Basically I do not want to return it. I knew it will have 8GB of soldered RAM, but I found this article [1], which explained some benefits of soldered RAM. And elswhere on some gaming forum it was mentioned that if soldered RAM is faulty, it will be evident in he first month of usage. I'd like to install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows as soon as possible, but in recommendations on testing new laptops there is a memory test. If it still worked fine (no blue screens etc), should I run the memory test to test the soldered RAM or the soldered RAM functionality will be more evident under some "natural" loads like 3d modelling software and compute intensive/parallel tasks?

[1] https://www.makeuseof.com/why-laptop-parts-soldered-instead-...

I'm worried a bit that in the attached sparse documentation it is mentioned that customer serviceable units are only as power adapter, base cover assembly, memory module, memory module bracket, solid state drive and power cord. Isn't battery sort of not user replaceable?

It doesn't make it right, but usable storage is always lower then what is claimed... either because of OS space usage, 1024 VS 1000 or filesystem...

Yes, it's always lower than claimed, but the whole SSD capacity shown by Windows is 930GB. Or is it too much of a great deal for 550 euros?

> but the whole SSD capacity shown by Windows is 930GB.

Because the OS shows you drive capacity in power of two units, while the drive manufacturers advertise drive capacity in power of ten units. And the small difference in size between the two units adds up as the size of the drive grows.

A power of ten 1T size drive is about 930GB of space when measured using power of two units. Hard drive manufacturers have been using power of ten units for advertising capacity for about 25 years now.

There's a recovery partition.

https://superuser.com/questions/915238/what-is-this-recovery...

How can 16GB of RAM have 15.2GB usable RAM? (there probably is 8 GB soldered RAM)

Because as @tredre3 indicates, the GPU that is integrated onboard the CPU chip of the laptop is given 800MB to use as its frame-buffer space. Leaving 15.2GB for the OS to utilize.

All GPU's need memory to store the frame-buffer. For video cards, the memory is on the card, so no system RAM needs to be reserved. For integrated GPU's, part of system memory is reserved for the GPU (as it would otherwise have no frame-buffer).

Your laptop is totally fine. The numbers are always slightly lower when shown this way, on any laptop. My "500G" hard drive actually reports 468GB. It also shows 15.3G of RAM instead of 16G. They just round the numbers so it sounds nicer in ads.

Enjoy your new laptop. Thinkpads are awesome.

The massive discrepancy in specs absolutely matters. It will reduce your productivity from 10X to a mere 9.99X. And forget about crafting professional artisanal code on that cramped toy setup. I would send it back tomorrow with something extra in the box to show your disgust with this scam.

Why this RAM/SSD/CPU (AMD Ryzen 3 4300U 4 core, 4 threads) setup in E14 is not enough for professional artisanal code? Can it be sufficient for dual booting Windows10/Ubuntu 22.04 and learning the relevant coding skills to at least 80%? Or do you need Linux only installed without dual boot?

Lots of programmers, myself included, learned relevant coding skills on hardware far less capable than what you describe. You don’t need a Ferrari to learn how to drive a car. The hardware has very little to do with learning programming.

So why did you mentioned "And forget about crafting professional artisanal code on that cramped toy setup."? I will be using Windows in dual boot with Ubuntu, and if VM allows to activate Windows from a VM, I may remove Windows completely from this laptop.

How can you define my "productivity" on the basis of the laptop only with no individual data about myself? How can a 30GB presumably lacking in an SSD with ~890GB free space "degrade my productivity"? Is forgetting about crafting professional artisanal code on that cramped toy setup is just your personal opinion skewed by Dunning-Kruger effect or you can provide some arguments of a logical or physical type?

Battery is not mentioned in the user replaceable units. But it should be relatively easy to remove and insert or replace a battery on a thinkpad E14?

What's funny, this lousy vendor was recommended to me by another lousy PC repair/retail shop (who has got an Facebook ad with this vendor) recommended by a 10x lousier CS teacher who teaches C++ in Windows.

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