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Comment by ajxs | Hacker News Reader

My x220 has traveled around the world multiple times. It's been through dozens of airport scanners, dropped multiple times, and shared a few cups of coffee with me by accident. It just keeps on kicking. My x220 running Debian is actually quicker and more responsive than my friend's modern Lenovo running Windows. I'd be tempted to upgrade to a lighter and thinner laptop, but I'm too attached to the keyboard.

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One of the few things I'd change about the X220 is the strange 2-piece lid. (What looks like a cosmetic flourish in the lid is actually a seam.)

Two of the four used X220 units I've bought arrived with the lid end piece wiggling, because it was no longer firmly attached to the main piece.

The X200 and almost every other ThinkPad managed just fine with a 1-piece lid, including being rugged against drops, so I don't know why the change.

The X220 touchpad and fan were pretty mediocre. The rest was outstanding, unless you didn't upgrade the panel. I hate nothing similar can be bought brand new.

Ahh x220. I have a most fond memory from 16 years ago. My daughter'sl laptop then was an x220 and the motherboard died so she and I, as a project one day, rebuilt the machine with a new motherboard. That X220 still works today. I told her a couple years ago that she could probably sell at any time for the same amount you bought it for.

A great compact design. Hopefully the new X13 is going to be a worthy successor.

I provisioned several hundred x220's for the school I was working at, figuring they were the most bomb-proof thing at the time. The lid section you're talking about was definitively not bomb-proof. Thankfully, it didn't make much difference to the operation of the laptop, but still pretty annoying.

Good to know I wasn't just unlucky.

Did you find any typical repairs for the lid section?

(I haven't opened up my wiggly units yet, but I guess probably it got banged, and either screws were stripped out of their holes, or some internal plastic piece snapped.)

Sorry, no repair. Didn't really affect function though.

For anyone who was wondering, and finds this thread... Looks the fixes tend to involve opening up the lid assembly, and epoxying small new pieces of material across the two lid pieces.

Yup, also a problem with my X220/X230 units. My most recent repair attempt involves nails expoxied in internally, fingers crossed it holds. My previous repair (a carbon fibre strip glued on externally) failed after a drop.

The extra bit of the lid houses the antennas, it's plastic to not interfere with the signals as much as the magnesium would have. I do wish they could have attached it better or made the whole lid plastic over a magnesium frame or something.

I have one too! The 720p is just not enough, I wish I could at least have a 1080p :(

It's possible to upgrade the panel - mine has a 1080p IPS.

Does it involve the LDVS board that you solder to the main board? I'm looking for a good source and one that doesn't cause problems with the setting for brightness.

Yes, got mine a few years back from taobao (I no longer remember specific details). IIRC the brightness control Just Worked however the chip in charge of that seems to have failed at some point and now I'm stuck at 100% brightness (I no longer daily-drive this thinkpad so I haven't bothered fixing it properly). Unsure if it's down to a design fault with the mod board or I just got unlucky.

Do you ever have any trouble at airports? The one time I ever had grief at an airport was a few years ago travelling with an X230 with the larger battery pack. Security seemed extremely suspicious of such an old laptop and I got stopped again later by a plain clothes security guy.

I've never had any problems! I'm surprised airport security would be so concerned about an old laptop. I'm sure they see way strange things on a daily basis.

did you have the regular battery or the larger one? Maybe it was something about the larger battery flagging some kind of screening process they have.

I was surprised too, I've brought far weirder and dodgy looking stuff through security

Identical setup here, and yes, checkpoint security at an airport in Germany pulled me to the side and made me turn it on to show it was a functioning laptop

Airport scanners? Are those normally dangerous to laptops?

of course not. When you go through airport security, they give you trays where you put your backpack, laptop, and shoes. Happens every day with no problem.

Right that’s why I’m wondering why the OP included it in a sentence along with “dropping” that implied the laptop had “been through some stuff”.

It doesn't cause any problems. I used the phrase for poetic flourish. Aside from the general rough treatment of being quickly unpacked and packed again in a hurry. In the past there were a lot of urban legends going around about airport x-ray scanners harming hard drives, but in reality, they're harmless.

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