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Comment by ostenning | Hacker News Reader

I've owned an upgraded T480 since they were released, run archlinux on it. It was a decent computer, but despite having upgraded the battery to the largest possible configuration and using all the tricks in the book to maximize battery life in linux - it sucked. The reality is these Intel processors are just a big inefficient hot mess.

I ended up upgrading to the 14" M1 Max, and there is literally no way you can make a comparison of these two machines, they are worlds apart, build quality, screen quality, weight, battery life, single core & parallel processing, speakers, trackpad - everything.

The only thing the TP wins is bang-for-buck on the second hand market, and getting head turns from neckbeards, thats about it.

View on HN

T480 weighs 3.6lb vs. 3.5 for a 14" M1. I'm surprised you noticed.

MBP doesn't have a trackpoint. Still can't run Linux as well, lacks USB A so still requires constant dongles despite improved port selection.

I moved from a 2018 15" MBP to a P14s Gen 2 AMD. The speakers, screen, trackpad are worse. But I don't care. I'm not stuck using a horrible OS with miniscule amounts of storage to keep the price down. The machine doesn't go from frigid to boiling in 3 minutes either. I can't imagine I'd be happier with a 14" MBP, I just don't care enough about saving 5 minutes to put up with macOS and locked down hardware.

The only thing I miss from the 2018 MBP is the ability to charge from the left or right side.

> MBP doesn't have a trackpoint. Still can't run Linux as well, lacks USB A so still requires constant dongles despite improved port selection.

I've never wanted a nipple mouse, but to each their own and I know some people love them. What I have wanted is a giant 6" diagonal multi-touch trackpad.

Linux is very much a non-goal for me, and if I want to, I can always SSH into a remote instance or run a VM.

I don't miss type A at all, and the 14/16" M1/2s have a much broader variety of ports which largely solves the dongle issue. [edit] the only place I have a lot of Type A devices I also have a thunderbolt dock with gigabit ethernet too.

> The machine doesn't go from frigid to boiling in 3 minutes either.

That's a feature of the Intel CPU on the 2018 15" MBP. You will not find the same on an M1/2. In fact I'm not sure it even warms up?

> You will not find the same on an M1/2. In fact I'm not sure it even warms up?

My M2 does quite regularly with only Chrome, Slack, VS Code and a few docker containers running.

I hate that sub downvotes facts that they don't like

You’re confusing facts with anecdotal evidence.

I know from extensive debugging of this issue that docker is the problem. You basically can't run docker (as of 6 months ago...I hope this will eventually be false) on an M1/M2 without causing significant heating and battery drain. Since this is the fault of the OS, maybe Asahi will eventually be the solution.

Yes, same conclusion.

I wonder if people using it for writing code are running docker at all, you read so many comments on HN of how the battery life is incredible (on any thread about comparisons between any Mac and any other laptop) while in my experience a full charge Macbook Air M2 lasts about 6 hours with Docker running instead of the usual 15 it lasts when its off.

I use my company-provided M1 Pro MBP for mobile dev (Xcode, Android Studio) and battery life and heat are both great for that use case. Very rarely run Docker, but when I have it's seemed more resource hungry than anything else running.

Can't you run Docker on a remote host? I always have a 64GB memory EC2 instance near if required.

Run arm64 ubuntu in a VM and use arm64 images and it should be very fine?

I have a 256GB (with easy/cheap room for 768gb) 28c haswell-e server sitting in my basement though too. Costs like 1/3 of a macbook pro if it comes down to it.

I write code full time. I run Docker as little as possible, preferring to run everything “natively”. It’s so much simpler than figuring out how to get whatever shitty webstack working with reloading etc. It’s faster. Battery life is better. There’s no downside in my experience as macOS is a good enough *nix that almost everything Just Works™.

The only time I run Docker is to test an image locally, which is in general only to debug my Dockerfile.

I switched to using Podman when the licensing terms came out and it was clear we weren’t going to be able to get a procurement through. The move was generally painless and the battery life is great - no noticeable impact unless I’m actually hammering the CPU in a container.

Are you running arm64 or amd64 images? I switched from docker to podman, mostly due to other issues (e.g., the weirdness with the Docker VM seemingly growing infinitely in size and refusing to trim automaticity), but running arm-native containers has never really made my battery life significantly worse.

The 12+ hours, though, I’m not sure how people are getting that consistently. I feel like VS Code and some LSPs alone make that impossible for me.

I can’t imagine if I were doing some web dev stuff and needed Chrome installed of Safari too.

You could also launch a Linux VM and run your docker containers in there. That ought to work better than just running docker in Mac OS and letting it manage VM instances on its own.

You shouldn't pay more money for a top-shelf laptop, then need to do this.

Can confirm.

By the time you have a giant 6" trackpad, then a touchscreen just absolutely makes more sense, but oh, yeah, right, Apple insists on being a decade+ behind the times on laptop hardware features while insisting they're better.

It does not. Touching the screen requires moving your hand even further away from the keyboard and requires getting your screen all smudged up. I abhor touch screen laptops. They make much more sense in convertible laptops with pen input.

I actually disagree. It's all about ergonomics. Holding your hand/wrist up to the screen all day is unnatural and tiring - not to mention smudgey and annoying. The large trackpad being planar with the keyboard allows you to use without physical stress for extended periods of time.

Their position is if you want to fing on something, fing on an iPad.

If you want to type, point and gesture, get a MacBook.

I'm very ok with that and personally satisfied that Apple didn't jump on that bandwagon.

moving my fingers on a trackpad is way better than stabbing my meat stick on a screen in terms of accuracy and personal energy use

Using still an ThinkPad X220 here with Archlinux. There two important things in any laptop, the built-in keyboard and the built-in screen. This is the I/O-Interface! Customers often do the mistake and doesn't invest in the best available screen. You cannot make this mistake with Apple, because they offer no options for the screen. Regarding keyboards, selecting a ThinkPad is always safe.

I had to buy the X220 from a shop, not directly from Lenovo:

    * TN-Panel -> IPS-Panel
    * ISO-Keyboard -> ANSI-Keyboard
    * Bluetooth 3.0 -> Bluetooth 4.0 LE

All with original replacement parts. I bought it because I wanted to remain the the seven row keyboard, which provides better layout/grouping. The X220 will reach it 10th year in next winter. The keyboard provides excellent tactile feedback and concave keys. Bonus, TrackPoint. The TrackPad is superfluous for me. The frame is made of polycarbonate (feels nice on skin contact) and reinforced with magnesium.

Apples keyboard doesn't provide a good feedback on press and the keys have no shape guiding the fingers. They make superiors chips through TSMC, especially the M1/M2 without any PRO/MAX which allows passive cooling. But I don't want use MacOS. And while aluminium is a nice material for cars, bikes and planes it doesn't feel good with skin contact. We don't use keyboards or mice with aluminium because it doesn't feel well. I know, the aluminium frame makes it shiny and sturdy and allows to glue in stuff (cheap) but I don't like that. I even don't like it with my smartphone.

PS: Battery replacement is a bless. Yes, built-in batteries allow for more sturdy frames but it is bad in long term. It would be enough the provide replacement batteries with a low-weight cage and screws instead of glue.

> PS: Battery replacement is a bless. Yes, built-in batteries allow for more sturdy frames but it is bad in long term. It would be enough the provide replacement batteries with a low-weight cage and screws instead of glue.

I agree with this. That said, an all-in battery replacement by Apple is $199. Once every 3 years isn't going to break the bank vs. like $50 for an X220 battery.

Especially when an X220 gets like 7h of juice vs 17-22h for an M1/2 MacBook Pro.

Yep. We should mention here improvements within the last decade? The X13 Gen3 (AMD) also should allow run theoretically 17 hours[1]. I think a peak was reached with the MacBook (Polycarbonate Body) or T430s which allowed to replace the battery at the device bottom with a coin, easy maintenance and sturdy frame. And good balance because the weight counteracted the open display.

With "peak" I mean the situation that a thing reached a point where it was actually good and then get impaired. Sometimes because another feature was added but didn't fit. Or just for the sake of change. The seven vs. six row keyboard layout is such a thing. The 16:9 screens where everyone immediately wanted the 16:10 back (happening right now). The MiniSD-Slots replacing the SD-Slots...

[1] https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X...

How does one achieve 17 hours of battery life with an X13 Gen3 AMD? I can manage maybe 6.

Do you have a discrete GPU? Disable it. Run TLP and powertop to see what uses too much power and to adjust tweakables.

I do not have a discrete GPU, have run TLP and Powertop and have adjusted the tweakables. Maybe it's my 1440p display.

If you use zenmonitor, what is the package power on a typical workload? It should be 2-3W maximum normally. If it's too high, it's a too common case of manufacturers setting insane tweakables, and can be remediated using amdctl/ryzenadj/zenstates (or in some BIOSes using the PBO2 setting). Otherwise, it can sometimes be a bad SSD using a lot of power.

I'll try those out, thank you for the tips.

The big problem with newer AMD ThinkPads from what I've heard is use of some second-rate (mostly Realtek) components in places, which in comparison to those used on Intel models don't perform as well and are more likely to cause trouble under Linux.

I just swapped the realtek wifi of my P14s amd gen 2 with Intel ax210. Cost was around 10€.

I think since around one year ago upstream kernels do support the realtek wifi card properly.

Actually they use four different. You can swap them yourself (15 - 20 EUR):

    * Qualcomm (Atheros) -> GOOD (or even best?)
    * Intel              -> GOOD
    * Realtek            -> It works okay for average users
    * MediaTek           -> Bad or lack of reputation

The X13 is currently shipped with Qualcomm. Older T14 seem to use mostly Intel. On a P14 Lenovo we got a MediaTek (no reliable after Resume from Suspend) replaced by Realtek.

I would be happy if AMD and Qualcomm team up together again. The questionable ARM-Deal with Microsoft also didn't worked out well for Qualcomm.

> Once every 3 years isn't going to break the bank vs. like $50 for an X220 battery.

My Apple laptops haven't gotten frustratingly-low battery life—but, hell, still better than any PC laptop I've ever owned at purchase, even when "degraded"—until ~5 years, historically. Including the Intel ones. IDK what Apple does with their batteries (extra, "stealth" capacity? Just way, way higher-quality batteries than any other laptop or phone manufacturer I've ever used?) but they hold up better than any others I've seen. I expect the Silicon devices will fare even better, having truly stupid-long initial battery life (people who are like "LOL who the hell needs 14 hour battery life?"—this is why, if you want 8 hours of battery life after owning the device for five years; it's not just some niche oddball thing, it's about device longevity, in addition to being handy surprisingly-often in the meantime)

I think it's the "way higher quality battery". There are a lot of very low-quality non-OEM batteries, I've rarely had those last more than 6 months and they were wildly unsatisfactory even then. I managed to source a NOS OEM thinkpad battery off ebay and that was significantly higher quality than the usual junk but still, I think Apple is picky about batteries.

While on the whole I'm not overly fond of the non-serviceable battery model on laptops, I do believe Apple when they say they lose money on their repair service as a whole. I just had my iphone 8+ battery replaced after 4 years (yeah it was starting to get real bad lol), I made a point of having it done at the apple store knowing that 4-year-old glue might not want to let loose, it ended up having a different problem and they ended up replacing the whole phone with a refurb, for the $49 cost of the battery repair. Sold, absolutely came out ahead on that, was starting to get glitchy anyway and it was a refurb phone in the first place, honestly was crossing my fingers they'd break it anyway.

If you have an expensive MBP I think it'd be a hard sell to not take applecare, if you end up needing even 1 display replaced you come out ahead. That's the model, Apple really wants you on Applecare and they lose money doing it, it's all part of the package deal of ownership (which of course is not offered to secondhand owners, that's where they make the money).

It's more of a mixed bag on the cheaper models... display replacement still has a decent service charge plus the applecare fee and it's not all that worth it on a say $700 laptop. You're gonna have paid a total of like $500 anyway if you need to use it, at some point the laptop is just totaled and you get a new one. Also probably not worth it on desktops (with the possible exception of imac). But on a $3000 macbook pro? Yeah I'd do it there for sure.

The Apple Silicon models will probably also benefit from being the first(?) ones to run their entire life with Apple's new optimized charging behavior. E.g. my laptop spends most of its life plugged in running a display, and so it has its battery charging kept on hold and is occasionally charged up to ~80%. I can only assume this'll help the battery life in the long term...

Check out the application "aldente" for a tool that lets you manage this behavior directly... it can stop charging at a specific battery level regardless of what "optimized charging" wants to do, it allows "sailing" mode where it won't start recharging until the battery is discharged to a specific level, and it allows halting charging when the battery is above a certain temperature.

It does what it says on the tin in terms of system behavior at least, no idea how much it will actually help in terms of battery life.

This is not an Apple-specific feature, though. Windows 11 has a similar mode on Thinkpads, although I don't recall if it's something Lenovo-specific or it works everywhere.

TLP on Linux or directly:

/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0 #

     ...
     charge_behaviour # [auto] inhibit-charge force-discharge
     charge_control_end_threshold
     charge_control_start_threshold
     charge_start_threshold
     charge_stop_threshold
     ...

Too much options for normal users. Actually one button in UI battery panel "[PRESERVE CAPACITY] or FULL CHARGE" would be optimal.

Also still using a X220 (X230 motherboard swapped) with Debian and a T430s (with 1080p swap) with Windows.

Agreed that the X220 form and function is excellent. The 7-row keyboard is amazing. The IPS screen is serviceable. The swappable 9-cell batteries give around 10 hours of battery life each. The i7-3520M is noticeably faster than the i5-8250U in my surface pro 6, even though benchmarks suggest it shouldn't be.

Just tried a new T14. The keyboard is decent. I haven't found any laptops with a keyboard as good as the 7-row.

> Also still using a X220 (X230 motherboard swapped)

Is there any advantage to swapping the X230 motherboard into an X220 chassis vs. putting the X220 keyboard on an X230?

I upgraded to an X230 from an X220 for Vulkan support, but have swapping in the X220 keyboard on my todo list. Curious if there's a good reason to go the other way.

I have a T14g2, and while the keyboard is indeed reasonable, it is a far cry from keyboards TPS used to have, and the front chassis wedge is so sharp it gave me long lasting and very painful CTS-like symptoms after a single long day of coding on a train (I’ve since fixed that issue by padding the corners with Sugru). The camera is also extremely poor, both in terms of image resolution and light sensitivity.

I wanted to like the x220s I found and then upgraded (well only the best one). I think the keyboard is great. I stuck an IPS screen into it (no nitrocaster).

The good one ended up having the power port die on me and while struggling to pull the thing a part to get to it (of course it is possible, but it's tested my patience :) ) the top case basically crumbled apart. I swapped the good parts to the other one, but it sits idle now. I just don't feel like I can be productive with a small 768 screen. I can't avoid the fact 1080 is my minimum.

I think my T430s is really good (with 1080 adapter and the keyboard is fantastic), but it can end up having the same issues with the top case with small cracks in the top case.

The TP I was able to keep from my last job has none of the problems. It is a T470p. Maybe there was some effort into material quality over the years, but it survived a really hard fall with some minor damage on the top and bottom case. It also is much easier to service :) It's the 470 that's the better overall one I have had, with the 430 being the one with the better keyboard.

> “And while aluminium is a nice material for cars, bikes and planes it doesn't feel good with skin contact. We don't use keyboards or mice with aluminium because it doesn't feel well.”

Apple does make (desktop) keyboards and trackpads with aluminium. Not to mention phones, remote controls, and the Apple Watch. No complaints here!

> T480 weighs 3.6lb vs. 3.5 for a 14" M1. I'm surprised you noticed.

Without battery.

The battery itself weights 7oz, which goes up to 13oz with the extended battery (which the parent said he bought)

The MBP running Linux in a VM will probably give you the T480 experience - it will be relatively slow (but still fast enough) and use a lot more battery.

I can tell you now that 2022 was the year of Linux on the desktop with Apple+Parallels! :)

I have a mini datacenter on my desk right now with 5 Debian machines running, 1 Windows 10, 1 OpenBSD machine as gateway for the others. No lag.

Just now I fired up YouTube on 3 of these Debian machines in Firefox as well as one in the Windows 10 VM. All running full screen 1080p videos (a wide second display with 3 VM's, the main display showing the Windows VM). No lag.

Also, I have _never_ heard the fan on this thing. Unsure if it has one! :)

The CPU/GPU combo is of course great, but it's the 400GB/s memory bandwidth that makes all the difference I think.

([edit] oh, and the battery life is nuts.)

Would you mind sharing your machine spec please? Thanks!

Sure; M1 Max, 64GB RAM running Ventura 13.2.1 (and Parallels Pro 18).

like sibling, I'd be interested in the specs. Thanks!

Is the trackpoint really that important when you have a trackpad which doesn't suck with associated drivers and software which doesn't suck? I've never been using a Mac trackpad and felt the need for something trackpoint-like.

I understand the desire for a trackpoint on laptops with non-Apple trackpads though.

Yes, because I have to move my hand off the keyboard to use the trackpad.

Fair. But don't you move your hand off the keyboard to use a mouse when using a desktop PC? Or do you have a trackpoint on your keyboard there too?

I avoid keyboards without trackpoint.

And for the rare case where I have to do something which requires a lot of mouse pointer motion (e.g. CAD modeling or reading schematics) I prefer a real mouse over a trackpad.

Yes? You don't need to move from the keyboard at all, you get physical buttons too. Your wrist is never misinterpreted as a mouse movement either.

It's just better unless your workflow heavily involves the use of 3+ finger gestures. Which I don't personally care about but seems like a necessity to not go insane on macOS.

> "Your wrist is never misinterpreted as a mouse movement either."

This just doesn't happen on Mac trackpads: they have pretty sophisticated and effective palm rejection.

Just spent about 30 seconds there testing this on my m2. Couldn't convince it to move the cursor with anything below the knuckles.

That's definitely not the case in my experience. Has this improved in the recent past?

Nope. It definitely happened to me on my MBP because of the giant trackpad.

As someone with slightly larger than average hands - Yes it does, it happens all the time on both of mine.

I think it depends on your style. I have problems with mine, because I typically type with only my fingertips touching anything. So if my palm hits the touchpad, it registers as a mouse movement. The only solution I've found that works pretty well for me is to rest my palms on the touchpad when I type, which seems to give it a better clue. But this isn't how I type on any other keyboard, so I keep forgetting.

Not sure if that's the case anymore. Had various Apple laptops in the last 15 years and palm rejection worked great. Not so with the 16in M1 MBP. It has trouble with it especially when I wear sleeves. The trackpad might be just a bit too large.

I have small hands and still have trouble with this, to the point where I almost always have an external keyboard/trackpad with me.

Yes, it does. At least to me.

You still need to shift your hand position. One of you hands leaves the home row, or at least that's how I always used the track point (and I started using them in the 90s). Is it as much of a shift as a trackpad? No, of course not. Is it a panacea of speed because your hands don't have to move as much? Not at all. Keyboard shortcuts are still much faster.

You like them or you don't. There's no real need to explain about it anymore than that. Honestly, on my Thinkpads, I used the trackpad just as much as the point. Maybe I'm just not very good at it, but it takes some skill to use the point. The physical click buttons are nice though.

I also don't use 3 finger shortcuts on my Mac either, so maybe I'm just crazy.

>Is the trackpoint really that important

Yes. The arguments for it are the exact same ones Vim evangelists make (ergonomics, speed), but having the TrackPoint there applies those advantages to every other program on the system as opposed to just the one.

I’ve had thinkpads for years, first a T420 and now an X1C (and I use vim a lot) and I can’t seem to integrate the track point into my workflow.

Either it’s too fast and it overshoots, or it’s too slow and it distracts from what you’re trying to actually do.

How long did it take you to become proficient with it to the point you prefer it over a mouse / trackpad?

About 5-minutes into first trying a ThinkPad ever

The trick is to use the stick as a Force sensor, instead of treating it like a capacitive Position stick on console controllers. In other words, you use your skin to "pull" the stick transversely so that the shearing force maximizes the feedback to your fingertip's cutaneous nerves.

The common mistake for those who gave up after 5 seconds of trying is attempting to "push" against the stick which is very difficult to do because there is barely any height to the nub, and in order to reverse directions you'd then need to shift your fingertip to get leverage on the opposite side of the dome.

When you instead use the shearing technique, it enables considerable finesse over not just the magnitude but also rapid modulation of the direction you are applying it in, effectively using the skin itself as both a sensor and a transducer.

Also remember to turn off the operating system's mouse acceleration, and turn up the driver's pressure sensitivity to max.

Thanks for the detailed explanation - you've inspired me to give it another shot.

Yeah, I tried repeatedly with an IBM laptop years ago to get used to the nub, and couldn't get accurate with it without dropping to like 1/20th my mouse-using speed. Even the shit-tastic trackpad was way, way better. But of course I just did what a lot of PC laptop owners do and ended up carting a mouse everywhere (I'd have to have the power brick anyway, and once you're in "I'll need a bag" territory you may as well toss the mouse in)

Are you touch typing? I am sincerely curious. For me, because I am touch typing, the trackpoint was a big advantage over the trackpad - I don't have to lift the hands from the keyboard. This is how I got used to the trackpoint.

Yes, and depending on preference, it's better. With a properly working trackpoint, you barely need to move your hand or fingers at all. Complete screen navigation from slight finger pressure. No swipes, no wrist movement, no carpal tunnel, no RTS. The single best control system ever invented, once you learn to stop trying to use it like a mouse or trackpad. Trackpoint combined with touchscreen is the best.

You know I've run Arch on Thinkpads forever and I never got one head turn from even one neckbeard. It's one of those dreams that never comes true.

It happens! Whenever I see a Thinkpad I start thinking I should buy one even though I have an M1 MacBook Pro.

I'm sure I'm not the only neckbeard lusting after Thinkpads.

I like the Carbons but I also have a Mac/use all three OS's

It's hard for me buy a brand new device though idk... What sucks about used devices is the battery and replacements are usually fake.

Funny M1 has been pretty good (cool) but with rider it was getting warm, open up htop and all cores working.

I'm a fan of the screen the most on Macs.

Eh... the newer models aren't what they used to be. They used to have arrow keys you could feel. Now it's all flat cost-savings.

I have some thinkpads privately and an M1 MBP at work. Bang-per-buck is best with the MBP, no doubt. The absolute number of bucks for a used thinkpad is super low and they live for a long time, so I have old thinkpads for light home use. The fact that anyone would go back to a thinkpad is surprising to me, but if you need win10/11 (or insist on no-VM linux) I guess it begins to make sense. On every other point they seem objectively much worse. (And I have a beard!)

They have a trackpoint, so there's basically no other option. Sadly the build quality and repairability has gone down, which used to be the other big selling point. Also Macbooks are way uglier, but that will probably be disputed :P

I use my Thinkpad everyday for more than 2 hours on the train, with a big Arch and GNU stickers on the cover. I was never successful to grab anyone's attention.

tips fedora in jarenmf's general direction

Highly relevant: https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments/10w3ke1/the_lif...

> they are worlds apart, build quality, screen quality, weight, battery life, single core & parallel processing, speakers, trackpad - everything

Well, depending on your job and work setup, that might matter more or not. If you're tied to one desk or another, battery life is rather secondary – if you're on international flights a lot, 12 hours of battery are a godsend.

Performance is another matter. Plenty of users have systems that are still basically terminal multiplexers. An ancient i3 with 8 gigs of RAM can do that. Others do heavy processing work, where the M2 just wins.

Ergonomics? Well, do you work with just your laptop? Inside or outside? Totally docked? Trackpad ergonomics or keyboard ergonomics? (classic Apple vs. Thinkpad topic, although they're both worse than 20 years ago, keyboard-wise)

(Generally greybeard me thinks laptops are horribly overrated and -designed, but that's a totally different discussion)

Trackpoint? Keyboard quality? Linux support for most/all components and features? Easily salvage data if some other part fails or is physically damaged by removing the SSD? Price and availability of replacement parts?

But... Steve Jobs... Think different... Aluminium with laser holes!

> "Easily salvage data if some other part fails or is physically damaged by removing the SSD?"

Fair point. But important to remember you're just as likely to lose the whole laptop if your bag gets stolen or something, or maybe the SSD will itself fail. Regular (cloud?) backups are indispensable.

I can not speak about how it would work with an MBP but the SSD replacing is a huge factor if you need it.

4 weeks ago we had to deliver a build of our game to Meta and 2 days before the deadline my laptop died out of the blue. I scrambled to buy a new one (didn't care which as long as it had enough oomph and I could source locally quickly).

I went for a Lenovo Legion 5 ( or 7, I am actually not sure, it doesn't have a sticker on it and I don't have the box anymore :) )

First thing I did was void the warranty by popping it open, installing the ssd from the other laptop and 30 minutes after unpacking the whole thing I continued working where I left off when the other one broke ( not literally since it was not suspended to disk but you get the meaning)

The machine is actually quite nice and I am, so far, happy with it, but the whole experience was so incredibly easy that I would not want to go for any non linux machine.

With a MBP, you'd just restore from a Time Machine backup. If you don't have one, that would be on you.

That's some Apple-sanctioned gaslighting right there.

How is that gaslighting? I've done this multiple times when returning a lease to Apple and setting up a new machine. I was up and running in less than an hour.

Restoring from a backup is of course something I would have resorted to if it would have been necessary, but the point I tried to make was that it was not necessary because there was a much quicker way to get back up to speed.

Also not sure if the time machine backup would reinstall all the apps and settings exactly as they were before, but maybe it would, I honestly don't know the Apple ecosystem well enough for that.

All I know was that a friend of mine had a very similar issue recently with a Macbook (don't ask me which one) and she had the problem that not all data was on the time machine, some recent stuff was there, some not so recent stuff was missing and some even older stuff was there again. That's probably some user error but she was expecting everything to be backed up correctly so she did not even know that there was a problem.

It's definitely user error. We have a lease program through Apple and we get new machines every few months. Getting back up and running is simple and every new Mac computer asks if you want to transfer from an existing machine or a Time Machine backup. Transferring from machine to machine is a 1-cable or WiFi affair that takes less than an hour for most of our machines and any hardware issue is done from a Time Machine backup that takes a few hours at most. I don't see the advantage to being able to swap an SSD from one machine to the next since only the most technical users would even attempt that.

Is it appropriate to blame non-"technical users" for "user error" in such a case?

I think so. The default configuration for Time Machine is to back up everything. There's not really a way for a non-technical user to prevent it from backing up everything on the machine unless an admin changed the options in Time Machine to exclude specific folders/data.

A year ago I was given a Macbook M1 at work. Really nice battery and mostly silent. However I couldn't stand macOS so I asked for a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Battery was worst but not by that much, I mean, maybe the M1 would do 25% more actual time.

I really like what Apple has done with the M1/M2, however, I cannot stand the non-mate screens, not having a TrackPoint, the keyboard, the metallic body, and macOS. It also doesn't help the obsession of Apple of making everything thinner at the cost of ports.

The products haven't really been trying to get thinner since, I don't know, 2017? Certainly not since Ive left.

They've even regrown ports again.

> screen quality

> battery life

> speakers

> trackpad

All things you can replace with the T480. Which I've done, and can just recommend. There's much better options than the ones shipped by default, including trackpads rivalling the M1, a screen that beats the M1, and a battery that has 20h+ capacity and can be swapped with a second one to double the capacity in seconds.

> a battery that has 20h+ capacity and can be swapped with a second one to double the capacity in seconds.

And which basically doubles the size and weight of the laptop.

Yep, it ain't pretty, it's just possible. If you're a function over form kind of person, the ability to work for several days in a camp site or road trip without plugging it in is a terrific accomplishment and well worth the extra bulk. If you're the latter (form over function) then in the case of batteries, the cure is worse than the disease.

Does that actually matter? Seriously, it's less that some of the text books I used to lug around at school.

I thought the same until I developed shoulder and back pain from carrying around too much stuff all the time. Be thankful that it still doesn't matter for you.

Of course not. While not strictly a ThinkPad, IBM used to make some very loud "communication devices" that Americans famously toted around the European continent in the 1940s; the largest batteries available for them still didn't push its weight over 6 pounds.

They seemed to manage that just fine. You can carry a computer across the office.

That aside, the extended battery on the T480 is still bad- it raises the bottom of the laptop and prevents the laptop from sitting flat. This was avoided on the older models by designing the hinges and lid properly such that the 100Wh battery would simply stick out the back but they don't make them like that any more.

Why is raising the laptop bad? I have a few ThinkPads of that era - having the back raised is quite nice. The battery also provides a convenient carrying lip/handle.

> a screen that beats the M1

By what metrics?

By whatever metrics you want, you can choose which panel to install.

You can beat a 224ppi P3 display with working auto brightness and auto whitepoint (truetone)?

Auto brightness and auto whitetone aren't features of the panel, but of the OS. Apple just mosattributes that, as always.

And yes, 200+ ppi P3 displays are easily available, Apple just buys their panels from the same suppliers that are available to you.

They are features of other hardware associated with the panel like light sensors.

And no, just because a contract manufacturer makes the panels doesn't mean they also designed them.

Is it even possible to buy a panel with higher ppi than the mac pros? Genuinely asking here. I guess if you value 240hz you could run with that.

Apple usually buys their panels from LG, most of the time you can get better price/performance if you buy the same panel directly or in other assemblies.

Where at? Do you have a link?

I'd recommend modding a panel from a different thinkpad, like from the newer X1 models: https://www.ebay.com/itm/354162731881 This should, with slight modifications, fit any thinkpad with a non-touch 40-pin eDP. Not all T480 will have the right connector, so make sure you've got the right one before buying.

This panel will get you full DCI-P3 color gamut at 3840x2160 in 10-bit, but only 500 nits.

Thanks for the link, this is definitely a "nicer" panel than MBP ones. Maybe it is time to jerry-rig my t420 :)

Well, it definitely beats the MBP at resolution (290 vs 220ppi), has the same colorspace, same brightness, and is much cheaper and easy to replace :)

Right, but "If you upgrade the screen, batteries, trackpad, speakers, RAM and SSD and then it's a pretty good laptop" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

A 38-horsepower 1980s Mini 1000 is a fast car, if you install the engine and drivetrain from a Toyota Celica GT-Four.

Did you... just quote my favourite car of all times, the GT-Four?!

The best things in life can't be bought ready and require thought and even sacrifice.

Ikea furniture requires you to build it.

The best beds on the planet are pre-assembled.

Not saying the exact thing you're saying isn't true (IE; the best things in life are actually not things but relationships and experiences); but it is categorically untrue that "the best products require you to build them".

Messing with a few screws and latches is not exactly "building". "The best bed" depends on who's asking, and it would have to be built for you.

Similarly, you could hire someone to build a laptop for you if you categorically object.

Rather than a bed, a better analogy is a home - even the best ready plan can be improved for a particular family. Apple just doesn't allow that.

At what point is it building then?

Assembling could be considered the right term I would suppose, but equally I wouldn't say that the author "assembled" his laptop, since it involves disassembly.

> isn't exactly a ringing endorsement

Why not? Consider it a DIY kit, not a product, and you'll be happy. People build their own IKEA furniture with countless mods applied to it, why not do the same with a laptop? The framework is popular for a reason.

They are popular around here but I'm not sure they're popular in general.

I discuss laptops with a fair amount of people in real life and none have heard of the Framework laptop. They do, however, know what a MacBook Pro or ThinkPad is, and some even know they can customize the latter.

Binky!

Erm, I believe it's spelled "SillyCar".

Thinkpads are traditionally scoring high points at repairability and durability. It almost become a must-go step for battery swaps right after getting an used Thinkpad model.

> a battery that has 20h+ capacity and can be swapped with a second one to double the capacity in seconds

Any computer that can be charged with a usb-c connection doesn't need additional proprietary external batteries, you can just use a generic battery pack, which is why the T480 was the last TP with an external battery.

If you want to a) have a huge external device connected all the time, b) destroy your battery with constant charge cycles so badly that you need to replace it every few months, and c) want to be unable to charge other devices from your laptop.

> c) want to be unable to charge other devices from your laptop.

You just charge them with battery pack.

The whole point of a laptop is that I can use it on my lap, on public transit. That's not possible with your recommendation.

Having a cable go from my laptop to a battery in my bag isn't the biggest issue, even on my lap, but maybe things are different for your use case. Granted, since my laptop lasts >12 hours, I never really worry about battery life too much anymore anyway.

The question I replied to was about charging other devices from laptop. You can charge your other devices in your bag with battery pack, not dangling from your laptop while you're charging them.

can you actually link to the ones you recommend then?

Because I am quite interested then in figuring out the economics side of obtaining one

I’ve modded mine with 16 GB DDR-3 3200MHz RAM [2], a 2 TB NVMe SSD [3], a Wi-Fi 6AX card [4], the Innolux N140HCG-GQ2 1080p 100% sRGB 8-bit 400 nits panel [5] (based on the T14 display), and the Lenovo 61++ battery [6].

Depending on region and local pricing, all mods together should be around 300$.

[2] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08LQG2SDS/ [3] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07MLJD32L/ [4] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B097TQ7HBF/ [5] https://www.xelent-store.de/Innolux-N140HCG-GQ2-400cd-Low-Po... [6] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B06WGMPFCD

Which battery is required for 20+ hour capacity?

And which track pad are you referring to?

The track pad has always been the hardest part about moving away from a MacBook. Love my XPS, but I HATE it’s track pad. Battery life is another reason, but swappable batteries would be amazing (not on XPS)

Same, but I think he might refer to an external trackpad.

I haven't ever encointered people upgrading their trackpads.

Does anybody even use the trackpad on a thinkpad?

It can be done in this case. Tho I’m unclear if the X1E is ‘Macbook equivalent’.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/j0mrh5/t480_with_...

Hence the question. Love to know a trackpad (even external) that is of a similar feel and quality as the MacBooks.

Personally, I prefer the X1E trackpad over the feel of the trackpad on my dell XPS on or my friends' macbook M1s.

Apple offers one if i'm not mistaken.

Can you link these things?

I’ve used T series Thinkpads for years (mostly to mimic the environment of most of my clients), there are definitely better computers out there if you plan to swap out most of the parts. https://frame.work/

Tbh, if I could put the framework's AMD motherboard in my T470, that'd be amazing. I love the thinkpad keyboard, I enjoy the X1E glass touchpad, the T14 Gen2 screen is amazing, my battery life is 13h of work in IDEA, and I got all of it combined for less than 600$.

But I really dislike the hardware of the framework :/

There is no AMD yet

>The reality is these Intel processors are just a big inefficient hot mess.

Well that may or may not be the thruth but Linux and the cpu itself has sweepdstep, which can and should clock down to like 800Mhz when idle saving a lot of power. What I found the biggest drain was the display. Dell XPS 15 is a nice (linux) machine, almost everthying works out of the box, BUT the battery life is a joke. The 4k display is the biggest betteryt hog here (check with powertop). Also I do not understand why the manufactures build muxless machines for dedicated GPUs.I want to disbale nvidia complelty, unseen on the PCI bus via bios setting....

> and getting head turns from neckbeards

Where is all this hate coming from? It seems unjustified.

I take the remark more benignly. I think it's meant in an affectionate manner.

yes, with this post sitting comfortably on #1 on the king neckbeard forum, it is as certainly getting head turns from us as it is certain never to become more than a passing bemusement

*neckbeard used affectionately as an equal opportunity mindset that has evolved from its origins like many words have; there are women neckbeards too, as are neckbeards with no beards or for that matter no neck

> with this post sitting comfortably on #1 on the king neckbeard forum

I'll have you know my beard is full, luxurious and grey, as befits someone with 20+ years of Unix experience.

Now here’s a nickel, get yourself a better computer

> or for that matter no neck

Are you referring to our robot overlords? Or corporate personhood?

> there are women neckbeards too, …

Colloquially known as legbeards …

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=legbeard

Don't we have "greybeard" for that? My meme game isn't as good as it once was, but I do remember the horrible "neckbeard nests" pictures…

Neckbeard means a sexually creepy anti-feminist nerd. Basically someone socially awkward who is unable to connect with other humans romantically and has channeled that into a combination of hatred towards their desired sexual partners and a love of computers or other "nerdy" endeavors. Which is both weirdly specific and extremely common in both males and females.

I don't think there's any way to use the term affectionately. Unless there's another meaning?

Your proposed meaning is a more recent interpretation. Searching online I see the mysogynism angle becoming more prominent in the 2010s: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/how-neckbeards-have-...

here's from stackexchange from some years prior: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/3173/whats-the-non-l...

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/23545/Neckbeard-is-this-a-wo...

I've seen it used as a synonym for "unix beard". https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24

Receiving headturns from neckbeards is a whole lot better than getting headturns from youngsters sipping latte at Starbucks.

Resorting to silly Mac user stereotypes that were barely true when they dropped in 2008 is a good way to tell people you’ve never used a Mac or been to a Starbucks in a decade.

This is the comment where I now get offended that you said that as if not using a Mac or not going to Starbucks are shameful.

It's rare to see such a flame war on hn

As a coffeebeard I wouldn't be caught dead (nor alive) in a Starbucks.

No, they said it as if GP had no idea what they were talking about.

That's actually a 2000s political stereotype rather than a tech stereotype (he's just said "Mac users" instead of "liberals"), but I think Starbucks is more associated with suburban soccer moms now.

Yeah. M1 MBA owner using it as a cheap daily-driver/thin-client, probably will upgrade to a MBP M1 sometime, I'm not going back to Intel. Maybe a 11th-gen for AVX512 but really I'd want to move onto a 6800U or similar at this point, and the selection of "AMD + good display + good KB + repairable hardware" is not very deep.

I know they've said it'd be a huge amount of effort and they're not planning on it, but I really wish there was a Framework laptop with a 6800U or similar.

>, build quality, screen quality, weight, battery life, single core & parallel processing, speakers, trackpad - everything

Strangely mac fanboys always make sure to carefully avoid the subject of their crappy keyboard.

It is worth using a lenovo over a Mac for the keyboard only. Who cares about a trackpad one barely use on a decent desktop. Mac users overly rely on a good trackpad because their desktop is terribly user-unfriendly. I spend all my time on the keyboard, not the trackpad.

The butterfly keyboard was by all means crappy. The 17” M1 keyboard is really good though. Granted that I am not a keyboard expert but I use a mechanical keyboard with my iMac.

The newer Thinkpad keyboards are getting worse unfortunately: I have a T480S which I really like the keyboard of (other than the annoying positions of the pageup/down keys), but I tried the T14S Gen 3 and preferred the M1 MBP 14's keyboard, so went with that (battery life and screen quality also played a part)...

The 2016-2021 Butterfly keyboards were bad, but in my usage of the M1 MBP macs they're good again now.

The crappy "butterfly" keyboard that Apple put on Mac laptops for years was indeed very crappy, but that ended when Apple redesigned the keyboard before the M1 came out. The current keyboard is great.

The battery life (and in some cases, horrifically bad TN panel screens) are what kills these older ThinkPads, Latitudes, etc for daily drivers. If I’m spending so much time at my desk that being tethered doesn’t matter I’d be better off building a desktop with modern hardware, which confers the biggest benefits of ThinkPads while also being vastly more powerful and expandable. If space is an issue, ITX builds solve that pretty neatly.

Really, somebody needs to develop power-sipping ARM motherboard board replacements (much as xyte.ch does with x86) for the various business notebook models.

> horrifically bad TN panel screens

The only 'great' ThinkPad screen is the 14" WQHD (2560x1440)

The others are just...bad. So dim, dull colors, and the low-end screens are sad, terribly washed out TN panels

Newer ThinkPads are a lot better in this regard — my X1 Nano Gen 1 for example has a 16:10 2160x1350 450 nit matte IPS panel that looks excellent. These models aren't that well liked by ThinkFans though.

Isn't the apple device 2-3x the price, though? Doesn't seem like it's even fair to compare.

I am not a neckbeard and my T480 has 64gb of RAM and 2TB Nvme drive and wifi 6 card. I need a lot of RAM for my workload. I am running Ubuntu and lots of VMs with lots of databases and k8s clusters.

I mocked Apple's focus on weight and portability and thinness until I got a recent Macbook pro for work. Holy shit they are heavy! Be careful what you wish for, I suppose!

> The reality is these Intel processors are just a big inefficient hot mess.

I usually get more than 10 hours out of it, running Ubuntu. I think that's great.

> and there is literally no way you can make a comparison of these two machines

This is such a weird thing to say.

“neckbeards” is quite funny

Can you run Arch Linux on the M1 Max natively?

Linux 6.2: The first mainstream Linux kernel for Apple M1 chips arrives: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-6-2-the-first-mainstream...

So, no. The headline is clickbait and basically just wrong.

Asahi is based on Arch already, it's been about the only thing you can run until recently. But maybe you're dissatisfied with how well things work at this point.

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