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Comment by rubbingalcohol | Hacker News Reader

I lost all trust and respect for Lenovo after the Superfish debacle. I'm a PC user and wouldn't buy one of their machines on principle. But I wouldn't have said that 6 months ago. Lenovo's user-serviceable and utilitarian design are pretty awesome, and their keyboards are among the best.

Lenovo's batteries really suck. They lose life a lot quicker than Apple's batteries and are very expensive to replace, especially since the primary and optibay batteries tend to die around the same time. At least they're user replaceable.

I'm a fan of Dell's laptops lately. Many newer Dell laptops have good Linux support. Oddly, I think Dell Alienware laptops are great as portable workstation laptops because they're powerful and can stay cool, but YMMV.

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"Many newer Dell laptops have good Linux support."

I've been buying higher-end Dells for a while. If you get something based on an Intel chipset, Linux support is generally quite solid, even if it isn't explicitly claimed. Based on my experience with my last three laptops and what I hear from everyone else, I often think there's really two Dells, the "cheap at all costs" consumer end and the business/"prosumer" end that makes, if not gear that gets as much love as old-school IBM, perfectly serviceable stuff. I'm typing this on an at-least-three-year-old Studio 17, and it barely even shows wear. Battery's croaking, of course, but that's hardly Dell's fault (and it's not like it instantly died or anything). Also the fact you can get full service manuals is really nice... even if you're comfortable with hardware, trying to blunder your way through dissassembling a modern laptop if you need to, say, clean out the fan, is no fun.

Yep, and you can find used Latitudes or whatever their current equivalent is, usually with some half-way decent dedicated Quadro or FirePro GPU, for really good prices on used markets. I can usually find corporate liquidators who have tons of them for $300-600 for something recent and decent. The older Latitudes like the D830 are tanks too; user (or IT-department)-serviceable everything, parts cheap on eBay if you need, module bay batteries, magnesium chassis, metal hinges, good keyboard, no stupid clicky trackpad...they got a lot right.

Swap in an SSD and max out the RAM and they're awesome linux workhorses.

My MacBook Pro is on its last legs and I've been thinking about replacing it with a Dell Linux machine.

Any tips on how you've gone about finding said corporate liquidators?

Yup. Dell and Apple are probably the ones with best Linux support.

The downside is they're rather expensive. But I'd rather pay for something that works than for something that does not.

I have an otherwise nice, expensive Dell model from work which has been nothing but trouble with Linux, so mileage seems to vary

Which model? I'm looking to buy one soon myself and I'd like to know what to avoid.

> I often think there's really two Dells, the "cheap at all costs" consumer end and the business/"prosumer" end

When you install Windows drivers, Thinkpads say something about Lenovo Japan, while others (like Ideapads) say Lenovo Shenzhen. HP Elitebooks are well made while consumer HPs are really poorly designed/constructed.

I lost all respect for them when I tried using the trackpad on their newer laptops. After a year of use it still took me multiple attempts to right-click on something. My brother just disabled his and learned to use the nipple. I can't imagine how an established company could make an essential part of a laptop that unusable.

Totally agreed re: the newer trackpads. Those things used to Just Work (tm) 10 years ago, now it's a gamble whenever you buy a PC laptop.

As a general rule, physical buttons and total lack of multi-touch support seem to go hand-in-hand with good ol' quality... but even that is not a foolproof rule.

With the new touchpad, the trackpoint is useless because it badly positioned. The trick is to use the multitouch pad like in a mac and forget about the trackpoint. It is actually not bad, you got pinch to zoom, two finger scroll, etc. Actually is better than the trackpoint sometimes.

That being said, I will change it for a W541/T541 ultranav touchpad asap. But not sure if I will keep it. Getting used to the pinch-to-zoom.

I don't mind clickpads, but the one on the 450s is shockingly bad. I use my rMBP a lot on the train, and I never realized how good the Apple trackpad was at smoothing inputs until I tried to use the 450s on a rough patch of the northeast corridor.

Same. The touchpad on my x230 was terrible--hours of forum searching and 2 driver updates never fixed it. I'm happy that I learned to use the nub, but it just felt ridiculous that Lenovo hadn't figured out how to make a functioning touchpad.

I just disable it in the BIOS

Luckily they have gone back to physical buttons on the x250 and the new X1 Carbon.

I have a Y50 and I enabled 2 finger tap for right click and 3 finger tap for middle click.

Tried that on my T440p. It sorta works. Unfortunately clicking makes the pointer move, so I end up clicking the wrong thing. All. The. Time. It's comically bad.

Ubuntu synaptic drivers got it right. You dont have to push the touchpad all the way. Only touch it with two or three fingers.

Hmm, it doesn't move at all for me. (I'm on Windows using the default driver.)

I'm using Windows too. I tried playing with the settings and using default or various drivers. Accurately getting right vs left click is nearly impossible (takes 3 tried on average to right click) -- I simply don't use it as a laptop.

I ran into the same thing with a T440 we got for a customer, but he didn't care because he just carries a wireless mouse from exam room to exam room with it.

Made working on it a bit surreal recently though until I figured out that he'd stuck the mouse in his pocket and was walking by in the hallway.

Basically everyone wants to mimic Apple superficially. Apparently Lenovo thinks people are buying W540s because they look like MacBooks[1]. It wasn't enough to ship the X1 all weirded out, they had to go fuck up the rest of the line, too.

Lenovo even had a blogpost where they claimed "most users adapt" in a short amount of time. Not that there was any benefit, just that they needed to modernize the design and it wasn't that harmful. Idiots.

The X201t is like the pinnacle of their design. 16:10 screen (important if you use Windows, especially inside a RDP app - 1366x786 just doesn't have enough vertical pixels).

The X201 also had a FULL keyboard. They used every cm of the laptop to fit all the keys in. The newer X series 12", they remove keys, and added blank space around the keyboard. Here they are trynna cram stuff in, and they literally throw away 2-3 keys worth of space.

Lenovo is just beyond incompetent in designing things at this point. I don't know about the sales side, but since everyone else in this space is just as bad, it probably doesn't harm them. But if Dell ever wakes up and says "oh, hey, maybe we should make real laptops", they'd steal away ThinkPad's marketshare pretty quickly.

Oh and just to insult us on top of all these bad changes, they ship utterly crap panels with some of the laptops. I bought a T440p last year, and I absolutely hate it. It has a viewing angle of 0 - there's no point at which you can view it and get anything remotely decent.

1: I've tried MacBooks... the ergonomics are terrible, as is the heat. Beautiful displays though.

I've posted this on another thread, but it looks like Dell is trying to make real laptops. The newest XPS ultrabooks have received rave reviews, and some of them even ship with Linux preinstalled [1]. That said, my personal laptop is a Lenovo T440s, because IMHO Lenovo still wins on upgradeability. I was able to buy a base model, and in short order had the RAM upgraded to 12GB (the max this model supports) and swapped out the hard drive with a SSD from Amazon. I'm not sure how feasible that is with any of the other laptops being discussed here.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

I just bought an X250 after searching around for an alternative. The XPS 13 looked pretty good and I was about to buy it ... but no physical nipplepoint buttons. Maybe next time I'll be willing to risk it. (Yeah, the X250 looks like it has plenty of downgrades from the X201, but it's better than a T440p, and at least it's a known quantity whereas Dell has an even worse rep...)

I'm typing this on an X230, with 16GiB RAM. I busted the screen recently and considered an X250... it's such a shame that "ultrabook" means "one DIMM slot" these days, i.e. they max out at 8GiB RAM - same as I was using in '2009 on my old X61s!

Luckily replacement screen parts are quite affordable these days. And before anyone complains, I do use all this memory, currently dom0 has 4GB free.

Good news! There are 16GB SODIMMs from "I'M Intelligent Memory". You'll have to look around to figure out what model exactly, but people have put them in new X series and they work.

Really? Last I checked there was no BIOS support to recognize them and Intel was only giving support for embedded CPUs. Ta, I'll have a look

Lenovo changed from producing business notebooks to consumer centric stylish notebooks that tries to mimic Apple notebooks.

Very sad, given that IBM ThinkPad and later Lenovo ThinkPad up to T420/X220 where very good robust devices and had a great build quality including a good keyboard and screen. I would pay premium price for a T420 series notebook with a brand new Intel i7 chipset that support 16+ GB RAM (or the T60p series style with a 4:3 display).

> The X201 also had a FULL keyboard. They used every cm of the laptop to fit all the keys in.

And it's not even crammed in, the X201 keyboard is identical in size and layout to the T400 keyboard.

This, a million times this.

Every recent laptop I've tried with a clicky trackpad has been absolute crap. The texture will be too rough or too sticky, the click won't work half the time, the right-click is hopeless, some try to do clever things with multi-finger gestures which usually triggers the mfg-provided crapware launcher, and they're too small.

Apple got the clickpad pretty much perfect, except for when they get dirty or bent. Nothing else that I've used comes within a mile. Trackpads on laptops were not amazing, but usually workable before everyone went clickpad-crazy. Now, it seems like you have to hunt to find something with buttons so you can actually use it. I can't imagine that any of these are getting good feedback, yet it's been a trend for a few years now. PC mfgs make me sad.

I don't understand why others downvoted you.

I personally also prefer a traditional ThinkPad keyboard, trackpad and trackpoint (up to T420/X220 series).

I won't buy any notebook with these slim keys, that might look stylish and fashionable. I need a business notebook for work and IBM ThinkPad and early Lenovo ThinkPad were robust and very good at that.

The first manufacturer that learns from their recent mistakes, be it Lenovo/HP/Dell/etc, will be the winner.

But if it takes too long, maybe someone should start a kickstarter campaign and produce truly business notebooks without any compromises with a 1500-2500$ price tag. A traditional keyboard, trackpad, trackpoint, robust plastic frame, maybe even a 4:3 IPS screen (1600x1200 or higher).

Hell I'd pay $500 just to port the keyboard over from an X201 to a newer model.

"My brother just disabled his and learned to use the nipple."

FYI, it's called a Trackpoint.

http://xkcd.com/243/

For the curious, they're talking a trackpad design Lenovo experimented with 2013-2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY70JFZ_cAE

They removed the physical buttons older thinkpads had [1].

2015 Thinkpads (2015) for X (including x1 carbon), T and W have corrected numerous issues the last generation(s) had, including:

- Bringing back physical keys and the old-style trackpad!

- The "adaptive" function keys on the X1 carbon

- The merged insert key on X series

Lenovo took a bad bet, but give them credit, they fixed 2015 thinkpads.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb7p3VkQCOo - Side-by-side comparison.

Even the T450 (upcoming 2015 model) is still bad. They learned almost nothing from their 2013 & 2014 failures: http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/2q8peu/3rd_gen_x1_...

It seems all hope is lost with Lenovo ThinkPad. They simply don't understand what a keyboard layout means nor why it's important to group keys and create keys with different sizes. Also the slim keys are bad in many ways. The omission of the F-keys, the omission of the audio&mic-keys. ThinkPad was easy to open using just 2 screws. Replacing parts was easy. Forget that with their new consumer style T430+ series.

I personally give Lenovo one more chance for a "T460" in 2016, but I doubt it will resurface the T420 series style. I would support a kickstarter campaign that sole goal should be creating a premium business notebook "IBM ThinkPad style".

New 2015 laptops still do use nonsense 16:9 screens what makes them unusable for serious work.

With libinput 0.14 you can just use two fingers for a right click, and three fingers for a middle click. Anywhere on the pad.

Edit: as you can see with Macbooks, clickpads are not the problem. Drivers are the problem. With the right drivers [0], the T440s clickpad is very precise, clicking doesn't move the cursor, and scrolling is pixel-perfect.

[0] Try Fedora 22

> I lost all trust and respect for Lenovo after the Superfish debacle

Wipe the default OS. Install your own. Problem solved.

I don't buy laptops for the software (I can deal with that), but for the hardware. Anyway most OEM installs are filled with crapware, it's faster to just wipe everything in the first place.

Interesting aside - I went down the rabbit hole of trying this just a few days ago. Called support to ask where I could find the Windows product key so I could do a wipe/install. Mark from Lenovo "informed" me of several things:

- re-installing Windows would void all warranties

- re-installing Windows would result in a non-working laptop because Lenovo drivers are not available anywhere

- I should under no circumstances re-install Windows because it would "break everything, because it's not Microsoft Windows on these laptops, it's Lenovo Windows".

So I guess the moral of this story is, if you have to call Lenovo and Mark answers the phone, hang up immediately and try again.

What model is this? Typically all of the needed software is right there for easy download from the site, or you can often just install their System Update to and it'll offer you the various packages.

If you don't care about Windows, a Linux install will not require any drivers at all and everything will be recognized (even the specific function buttons). The only thing that require additional tweaking on the x220 is the fingerprint reader but I'm not planning to use it (security issues).

If it came with Windows 8 (licence or pre-installed) the key is embedded in the hardware. No need to type it in.

Also, Microsoft has a tool to download Windows 8 ISOs - no need to bother with the OEM.

Superfish is not an annoyance; it is a MASSIVE breach of trust and Lenovo as a company needs to die over this. We as a community need to do everything we can to make sure that Lenovo never sells another product to people we have influence over ever again. If companies can get away with this behavior, they'll keep doing it.

>Many newer Dell laptops have good Linux support.

Dell actually has a line of laptops that ship with Linux [1]. You don't get a choice of distro (they ship with the latest Ubuntu LTS), but the fact that it ships with Linux out of the box means that the hardware has all been pre-verified for Linux compatibility, and installing a new distro should be a matter putting in the install media and grabbing a cup of coffee.

[1] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

I guess my mileage varies in so far as buying a used Thinkpad doesn't benefit Lenovo any more than it benefits Dell or Apple. Anyway any computing device that comes bundled with an OS that automatically connects to cloud services is collecting data. Hell, that's what made Chromebooks viable.

I purchased a Dell XPS13 (the late 2013 version) recently. It's fantastic. My only complaint in Linux is that the palm rejection isn't working all that well.

I have the XPS13 convertible and on windows I've completely got all the palm rejection turned off. It was far too sensitive and I couldn't tab to click on things too soon after typing.

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