5 ms·

Can today's Thinkpads still hang with the best of them? (typed on a recently-upgraded late 2006 MBP)

chr 11y ago
triangle, how did you "upgrade" the MBP you mentioned? Once ram is at 3 gig and the hard drive is SSD, is there anything else to do?
- triangleman 11y ago
  Isn't that good enough? SSD in particular is a huge speed boost.
hyperion2010 11y ago
I'm on my 3rd thinkpad. First one was a T30 that I got 12 years ago. I used it for 4 years and my mother for 4 years after that. I still have it and it still runs but it is now made out of parts from two T30s, the original, whose screen died, and another that had a bad hard drive. My T60p I used for 4 years and then my mother for 4 more years, it had to have its cpu fan replaced once about 6 years into its life, otherwise it is sitting here next to me in perfect working order. I'm 3 years into a first gen X1 Carbon, it runs perfectly. The only annoyance is that I can't get at the battery to replace it. I'd be a bit happier if it had a 2560x1440 screen since then there would really be no need for an upgrade ever again, but as it stands I expect to be able to use it for at least another 5 years. Build quality on the newer T series feels like shit to me, but I haven't spent enough time with them to be able to judge and they are so new we don't really have any data yet. edit: seeing the link to the potential retro thinkpad, that I would get without a second thought
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  I'm on the 3443CTO revision of the X1 Carbon. The "carbon" part of it is starting to fall apart, the palmrest creaks and I really should have bought it a week later when the i7 with 8GB of RAM was available - 4GB and an i5 feels restrictive (what a sad statement on current software optimisation) Oh, and you can only get ~6 hours of battery out of it with very particular settings and a specific power management driver in Windows 8. Otherwise it's 3-4 hours at best.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
I use a W530 for work. It's a true beast of a machine. But I cannot stand the way all the plastic flexes. It feels cheap. I had to replace the keyboard the first week I had it due to a defective key (it happens, no big deal), but there's a little plastic strip at the top that was way to easy to bend and so now it's just ... there. reminding me of it's cheapness.
Eric_WVGG 11y ago
the veep of design at Lenovo has publicly considered building a “retro” Thinkpad (with modern circuitry of course) — http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-thinkpad-time-machine/ http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-thinkpad-time-machine/
- triangleman 11y ago
  That is what the posted article is about, actually.
Symmetry 11y ago
I have a T430s that I like quite a bit. When I was idly considering buying a T450s to get a higher resolution screen I looked into how easy it would be to upgrade the RAM and hard drive (much cheaper than buying a good one from Lenovo) and was disappointed that it seems much harder to replace them now.
deleted 11y ago
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chr 11y ago

triangle, how did you "upgrade" the MBP you mentioned? Once ram is at 3 gig and the hard drive is SSD, is there anything else to do?

triangleman 11y ago
Isn't that good enough? SSD in particular is a huge speed boost.

hyperion2010 11y ago

I'm on my 3rd thinkpad. First one was a T30 that I got 12 years ago. I used it for 4 years and my mother for 4 years after that. I still have it and it still runs but it is now made out of parts from two T30s, the original, whose screen died, and another that had a bad hard drive. My T60p I used for 4 years and then my mother for 4 more years, it had to have its cpu fan replaced once about 6 years into its life, otherwise it is sitting here next to me in perfect working order. I'm 3 years into a first gen X1 Carbon, it runs perfectly. The only annoyance is that I can't get at the battery to replace it. I'd be a bit happier if it had a 2560x1440 screen since then there would really be no need for an upgrade ever again, but as it stands I expect to be able to use it for at least another 5 years. Build quality on the newer T series feels like shit to me, but I haven't spent enough time with them to be able to judge and they are so new we don't really have any data yet. edit: seeing the link to the potential retro thinkpad, that I would get without a second thought

voltagex_ 11y ago
I'm on the 3443CTO revision of the X1 Carbon. The "carbon" part of it is starting to fall apart, the palmrest creaks and I really should have bought it a week later when the i7 with 8GB of RAM was available - 4GB and an i5 feels restrictive (what a sad statement on current software optimisation) Oh, and you can only get ~6 hours of battery out of it with very particular settings and a specific power management driver in Windows 8. Otherwise it's 3-4 hours at best.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

I use a W530 for work. It's a true beast of a machine. But I cannot stand the way all the plastic flexes. It feels cheap. I had to replace the keyboard the first week I had it due to a defective key (it happens, no big deal), but there's a little plastic strip at the top that was way to easy to bend and so now it's just ... there. reminding me of it's cheapness.

Eric_WVGG 11y ago

the veep of design at Lenovo has publicly considered building a “retro” Thinkpad (with modern circuitry of course) — http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-thinkpad-time-machine/ http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-thinkpad-time-machine/

triangleman 11y ago
That is what the posted article is about, actually.

Symmetry 11y ago

I have a T430s that I like quite a bit. When I was idly considering buying a T450s to get a higher resolution screen I looked into how easy it would be to upgrade the RAM and hard drive (much cheaper than buying a good one from Lenovo) and was disappointed that it seems much harder to replace them now.

deleted 11y ago

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