4 ms·

I'm still using an ancient Thinkpad T400 I bought when they first came out (2007, I think?), and I still love it. Despite heavy use, everything works perfectly

I'm still using an ancient Thinkpad T400 I bought when they first came out (2007, I think?), and I still love it. Despite heavy use, everything works perfectly and the case could probably last for decades. Doing normal dev work on Arch Linux (everything from low level C++ to Python/Julia, but no web stuff) is pleasant despite the dated CPU. Every time I look at reviews of "modern" laptops or try a friend's machine (Apple, Dell, HP, mostly), I get a little sad over how the market has regressed in the past decade. Thus, the only upgrade I'm considering is getting a few T420/X220 machines to last me another decade or so. My dream would be a T60 case with modern hardware and there's a number of retro Thinkpad projects out there, but it's probably not going to happen. Not sure what I'm going to do when a T420 is finally too dated to be productive on, but thankfully that's a very long way off.

sevensor 10y ago
For personal use I'm still very productive with an x120e (under Arch naturally). I love the trackpoint device, and I miss it with my work-issued Dell Precision 5500. That being said, the latter works great under Arch as well, and my only annoyance is the weird screen flicker.
sarcher 10y ago
I also still have a T400 chugging along with Arch. It got put in storage for a few years until I dug it out while recycling some other junk and realized it still had considerable life in it. I just set someone up with a T420 with a few upgrades and it's a fantastic value. Hardest part was finding a source for the rubber HD rails needed to swap a 7mm tall SSD in place of the original 9.5mm platter drive. It was technically a downgrade from a newer thinkpad laptop that they had, but the T420 is just a better machine from fit/finish/touchpad/upgrade/repair perspectives. If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative.
- keldaris 10y ago
  > If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative. There's a lot of people swapping them (one example [1]), but I don't know if there's a consensus on which are the best options, and there's quite a few. I think the T420 and the X220 are by far the best options for reasonably modern but not yet ruined Thinkpads, but for both of them the screens are definitely the weak points. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3hjlbu/so_i_did_the_t420_fhd_ips_mod_and_its_glorious/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3hjlbu/so_i_did_t...
  - sarcher 10y ago
    I agree that there doesn't seem to be a consensus, which is why I haven't made progress. The guide you linked to does seem to be more complete than the ones I've seen in the past, thanks! The gallery linked was especially useful: http://imgur.com/a/O8ntb http://imgur.com/a/O8ntb
  - pombrand 10y ago
    You can replace the T420 screen with a $45 Alienware 1600x900 screen that is allegedly plug-n-play and amazing https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/4no5ak/t420_alienware_panel_replacement_success/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/4no5ak/t420_alien... Considering doing it to my T420S :)
stephengillie 10y ago
I've used a T400 as my kitchen laptop for years, and recently put Win10 on it. I put my SSD in it, back with Win8. The laptop still works great, and it's my main PowerShell workstation - it's where I wrote my Arkdata player tracker static site. (Yes, I wrote it while standing in my kitchen.) The market is the same, really. What you're seeing is the end of Moore's law, with 10 year old laptops still being effective compute devices. This wasn't true in 2005 - that 1995 laptop was painfully old.
- keldaris 10y ago
  When I said the market has regressed, I wasn't referring to the slowing advances in CPU performance, etc. Normally, such a slowdown would enable manufacturers to focus on creating better cases, improve peripherals, etc. Instead, the obsession with thinness and design fads has led to worse usability, much worse keyboards, fewer ports, etc., and maintainability is virtually gone as a concept. Obviously, this is largely a matter of preference and I understand that many users care more about thin shiny things than robust cases or high feedback keyboards. That's fine. The issue is that the market segment that the classic Thinkpads used to fill is completely gone now and those users, however few, are stranded.
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    The market for laptops and computing devices has traversed us like an ocean wave. Where we were once among the bleeding edge for such devices, our obsessions - with connections, with customizability, with function over form - have left us among the long tail of compute users. To rephrase, for the meme generation: https://i.imgur.com/TvSgLr1.png https://i.imgur.com/TvSgLr1.png
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Those things are still there, but you have to get into the B2B section of the OEM offerings to find them. Thing about Thinkpads was that IBM didn't do consumer products.
NikolaNovak 10y ago
I keep buying refurbished T420 laptops; even though my employer provided T450, I cannot switch to keyboard without standard Insert/Delete/Home/End set - not to mention losing the Ultrabay flexibility etc. T420 was the pinacle of the Thinkpads for me; T530 was a meh, T540 is the only time I've seen co-workers genuinely slam their laptops (removal of touchpad buttons etc). T450 brought touchpad buttons and some separation between Function keys, but the home row seems to be gone for good :<
- driverdan 10y ago
  > I cannot switch to keyboard without standard Insert/Delete/Home/End set Learn the alternative shortcut keys. You can keep your hands closer to / on the home row instead of reaching across the keyboard. > not to mention losing the Ultrabay flexibility How often do you swap drives? I haven't used optical media for 5+ years.
  - keldaris 10y ago
    Swapping hard drives and batteries is much more useful. It's also nice that you can take your optical drive, which seemed indispensable a decade ago, and replace it with something useful today.
  - dkuntz2 10y ago
    I have a coworker who uses an old thinkpad, and he's swapped out the optical drive with another battery.
  - NikolaNovak 10y ago
    - I have more than one keyboard and more than one computer/laptop:). The new thinkpads have non-standard home-row placement. All my external keyboards have standard home-row placement. If I ONLY used Thinkpads, I agree that getting used to their quirks would be viable (certainly explains the vehemence of certain brands;). However, the non-standard home-row patterns of new Thinkpads make them an unwelcome part of my ecosystem. - I swap drives once or twice a month these days; used to do it more often. Main usage pattern was day/work and night/personal computer - by swapping the drive, my work "computer" had no personal stuff or data; my personal "computer" had no work stuff or data:). Secondary usage pattern is easy transfer of large amount of data - for example, I may have 300GB of photos to process for a wedding on one drive that I put in the ultrabay to process via Lightroom.
Zak 10y ago
I'm still using a T61/T60p hybrid I built. Sometimes it's kind of slow, but plenty of new machines still have 8gb of RAM and an SSD just like mine. After this model, they switched to a keyboard with a skeletonized baseplate instead of solid steel, though I think the old keyboards can be swapped in to slightly newer models. The big thing for me is the screen. 1600x1200 is perfect for two Emacs windows side by side containing code up to 80 characters wide at a comfortable font size. Later "wide" screen resolutions are more likely to be shorter than wider. I've been hoping for a change to this resolution monoculture, but I think I'm going to have to build something much more custom to replace this.

sevensor 10y ago

For personal use I'm still very productive with an x120e (under Arch naturally). I love the trackpoint device, and I miss it with my work-issued Dell Precision 5500. That being said, the latter works great under Arch as well, and my only annoyance is the weird screen flicker.

sarcher 10y ago

I also still have a T400 chugging along with Arch. It got put in storage for a few years until I dug it out while recycling some other junk and realized it still had considerable life in it. I just set someone up with a T420 with a few upgrades and it's a fantastic value. Hardest part was finding a source for the rubber HD rails needed to swap a 7mm tall SSD in place of the original 9.5mm platter drive. It was technically a downgrade from a newer thinkpad laptop that they had, but the T420 is just a better machine from fit/finish/touchpad/upgrade/repair perspectives. If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative.

keldaris 10y ago
> If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative. There's a lot of people swapping them (one example [1]), but I don't know if there's a consensus on which are the best options, and there's quite a few. I think the T420 and the X220 are by far the best options for reasonably modern but not yet ruined Thinkpads, but for both of them the screens are definitely the weak points. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3hjlbu/so_i_did_the_t420_fhd_ips_mod_and_its_glorious/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3hjlbu/so_i_did_t...
- sarcher 10y ago
  I agree that there doesn't seem to be a consensus, which is why I haven't made progress. The guide you linked to does seem to be more complete than the ones I've seen in the past, thanks! The gallery linked was especially useful: http://imgur.com/a/O8ntb http://imgur.com/a/O8ntb
- pombrand 10y ago
  You can replace the T420 screen with a $45 Alienware 1600x900 screen that is allegedly plug-n-play and amazing https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/4no5ak/t420_alienware_panel_replacement_success/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/4no5ak/t420_alien... Considering doing it to my T420S :)

stephengillie 10y ago

I've used a T400 as my kitchen laptop for years, and recently put Win10 on it. I put my SSD in it, back with Win8. The laptop still works great, and it's my main PowerShell workstation - it's where I wrote my Arkdata player tracker static site. (Yes, I wrote it while standing in my kitchen.) The market is the same, really. What you're seeing is the end of Moore's law, with 10 year old laptops still being effective compute devices. This wasn't true in 2005 - that 1995 laptop was painfully old.

keldaris 10y ago
When I said the market has regressed, I wasn't referring to the slowing advances in CPU performance, etc. Normally, such a slowdown would enable manufacturers to focus on creating better cases, improve peripherals, etc. Instead, the obsession with thinness and design fads has led to worse usability, much worse keyboards, fewer ports, etc., and maintainability is virtually gone as a concept. Obviously, this is largely a matter of preference and I understand that many users care more about thin shiny things than robust cases or high feedback keyboards. That's fine. The issue is that the market segment that the classic Thinkpads used to fill is completely gone now and those users, however few, are stranded.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  The market for laptops and computing devices has traversed us like an ocean wave. Where we were once among the bleeding edge for such devices, our obsessions - with connections, with customizability, with function over form - have left us among the long tail of compute users. To rephrase, for the meme generation: https://i.imgur.com/TvSgLr1.png https://i.imgur.com/TvSgLr1.png
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Those things are still there, but you have to get into the B2B section of the OEM offerings to find them. Thing about Thinkpads was that IBM didn't do consumer products.

NikolaNovak 10y ago

I keep buying refurbished T420 laptops; even though my employer provided T450, I cannot switch to keyboard without standard Insert/Delete/Home/End set - not to mention losing the Ultrabay flexibility etc. T420 was the pinacle of the Thinkpads for me; T530 was a meh, T540 is the only time I've seen co-workers genuinely slam their laptops (removal of touchpad buttons etc). T450 brought touchpad buttons and some separation between Function keys, but the home row seems to be gone for good :<

driverdan 10y ago
> I cannot switch to keyboard without standard Insert/Delete/Home/End set Learn the alternative shortcut keys. You can keep your hands closer to / on the home row instead of reaching across the keyboard. > not to mention losing the Ultrabay flexibility How often do you swap drives? I haven't used optical media for 5+ years.
- keldaris 10y ago
  Swapping hard drives and batteries is much more useful. It's also nice that you can take your optical drive, which seemed indispensable a decade ago, and replace it with something useful today.
- dkuntz2 10y ago
  I have a coworker who uses an old thinkpad, and he's swapped out the optical drive with another battery.
- NikolaNovak 10y ago
  - I have more than one keyboard and more than one computer/laptop:). The new thinkpads have non-standard home-row placement. All my external keyboards have standard home-row placement. If I ONLY used Thinkpads, I agree that getting used to their quirks would be viable (certainly explains the vehemence of certain brands;). However, the non-standard home-row patterns of new Thinkpads make them an unwelcome part of my ecosystem. - I swap drives once or twice a month these days; used to do it more often. Main usage pattern was day/work and night/personal computer - by swapping the drive, my work "computer" had no personal stuff or data; my personal "computer" had no work stuff or data:). Secondary usage pattern is easy transfer of large amount of data - for example, I may have 300GB of photos to process for a wedding on one drive that I put in the ultrabay to process via Lightroom.

Zak 10y ago

I'm still using a T61/T60p hybrid I built. Sometimes it's kind of slow, but plenty of new machines still have 8gb of RAM and an SSD just like mine. After this model, they switched to a keyboard with a skeletonized baseplate instead of solid steel, though I think the old keyboards can be swapped in to slightly newer models. The big thing for me is the screen. 1600x1200 is perfect for two Emacs windows side by side containing code up to 80 characters wide at a comfortable font size. Later "wide" screen resolutions are more likely to be shorter than wider. I've been hoping for a change to this resolution monoculture, but I think I'm going to have to build something much more custom to replace this.