27 ms·

Thinkpad X210

1005 points by MYEUHD 8y ago

tormeh 8y ago
>Linux worked out of the box. I had to install non-free drivers for the Broadcom wireless card, then tweak a few module options to get better power saving. This is not, for the record, "working out of the box".
- sametmax 8y ago
  Yeah but after that, he never had any problem with it, except sleep mode cutting wifi sometimes. Or bluetooth not pairing. Or the battery lasting half as expected. Nothing that a few commands can't fix. Zero maintenance.
  - andrepd 8y ago
    Hilarious. Of course, he mentioned no such problems. So please cease the straw man.
    - sametmax 8y ago
      I'm writing that from Ubuntu. It's good to have a little self derision.
  - taf2 8y ago
    This reminds me of a flash cartoon that circulated around 2001 or 2002 with a guy flying through air talking about all he had to do is mod probe or patch his kernel and was like a wizard in the classic kind of flash style animation... I wish I still had the flash file or someone could recreate it in a viewable format for today...
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk
      - taf2 8y ago
        Yes thank you!
- viach 8y ago
  > then tweak a few module options to get better power saving What, what these options are? Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get power management working on a Linux laptop?".
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get power management working on a Linux laptop?" Or even the easier question “how to get power management working on your Linux laptop”?
    - viach 8y ago
      I seriously think this is the main problem of "Linux on Desktop". Just stop the cooler spinning all the time that's it - Desktop War is won, Win and Mac are packing their stuff and go home.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - c0l0 8y ago
    sudo powertop --quiet --auto-tune
  - Twirrim 8y ago
    I haven't been using a Linux laptop for about 3 years now (Ended up with a Mac at my current job, which 3 years in I still don't really like all that much). Back when I did, I found the package laptop-mode-tools to be quite effective. It tunes a bunch of things when you're off A/C, and can be adjusted to control a number of other things. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+package/laptop-mode-tools https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+package/laptop-mode-too... On my mac, I've got HammerSpoon configured to change a bunch of things depending on power levels, sleep state etc, including killing off Slack.
- jokoon 8y ago
  The lenovo website lets you custom the hardware, and I chose a non broadcom, so an intel chip I think.
- xaduha 8y ago
  > This is not, for the record, "working out of the box". I have no doubt that some other distros would work just fine without any changes, you're nitpicking.
  - no-such-address 8y ago
    Ha ha very funny. Yes, just try a lot of other distros until you find one that works, maybe.
    - xaduha 8y ago
      Point is that you don't need to, you can make any distro work. "Working out of the box" for Linux doesn't have the same meaning as for Windows. If you're a buying a custom motherboard for an old notebook that's nothing.
      - chronolitus 8y ago
        I love linux but damn, way to shift the goalposts. edit: Does any one else feel that redefining "working out of the box" to mean the opposite "just for linux", hurts linux's reputation more than just saying something non-hyperbolic, like it "works with a surprisingly minimal amount of driver treasure-hunt"? As a tangent, I wonder if this applies to other things. if BMW users tell you "when talking about BMWs the term low-maintenance refers to not having your engine explode every 10k miles. With that in mind, BMWs are very low-maintenance", are you less likely to buy one than if they say "well there's a little more required maintenance than some other manufacturers, but as long as you do it the car is very reliable."?
        xaduha 8y ago
        Linux isn't just one thing. In a parallel universe he used a different distro and didn't have any issues. That says nothing about whether or not this piece of hardware is a good purchase or how good it is supported in general.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 0815test 8y ago
  Meh, if the non-free blobs are included as part of the distro (as they are with the Debian 'non-free' channel, similar to Ubuntu) it's as good as we've ever going to get. Even Intel wifi cards rely on a non-free firmware blob, and will only work with "non-free" Debian.
rocku 8y ago
How much does it weight?
noopyscroopers 8y ago
Might it be possible for them to ship models with castrated Management Engine and Mic/Radio killswitches? Do they have as Shenzhen manufacturing company/aquaintance any more leverage to take re-liberating measures on their boards?
saagarjha 8y ago
> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7 hours with the extended battery (80Wh). Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. > Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know really shouldn’t be. I have lived and worked with people for whom having their fan randomly turn on for no reason is completely normal, and I just can’t understand how they can bear it. If this happens to me, you can bet I’m digging through Activity Monitor and killing the culprit before the fans can get fully ramped up.
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  Sigh... I got a Thinkpad E485 ( wanted to try AMD Ryzen mobile) and with Ubuntu installed, I get about 2.5-3 hours on the battery, which is... I forget now. I think it's 48Wh.
- tartuffe78 8y ago
  I used to use SMC fan control on my older MacBook Pro to just run the fan at medium at all times. Definitely miss that you can't use it on the new touchbar MacBook pros.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Interestingly, macOS has been the only OS where I have not had this be an issue. 95+% of the time the fans are off, and rouge runaway processes are quite rare (which is not true of say Linux or Windows, in my experience).
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Yes, the only time I hear the fans on my MacBook is when I boot into Windows.
- smcl 8y ago
  Yep the fan spinning up when nothing special is happening is infuriating - for me 99% of the time it's Debian's "unattended upgrades" which I now realise I should just turn off since I update/upgrade/dist-upgrade relatively frequently anyway.
cucubucu 8y ago
I loved the thinkpads. Had most of them. Keyboard was the best.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
I was interested in the hassle for making a payment and buying something from China. Counter to my view of how the world is supposed to work. Payment hassles probably due to buying from a small group of enthusiasts, not a large company. I haven’t done business directly with anyone in China for a number of years (I helped a student on a project about 10 years ago and a media company had me write a simple machine learning model for them) but them paying me was easy, just used PayPal. Buying not rebranded Chinese electronics interests me, because of potential lower cost, as long as it is westernized in things like keyboard, etc. and has a year warranty. I have specifically been looking at products like GPD Pocket 2.
- dbg31415 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14219918#14223933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14219918#14223933 I bought a NAS off Amazon a few years ago... one of their 3rd party sellers had the same product for $50 cheaper so I went with that. Anyway, what happened next was really amusing to me. I get the product about 8 weeks later... I had tried to cancel because it was so slow, and Amazon wouldn't let me -- they said I had to receive the product and then send it back as a return once I got it in order to get a refund. I was planning on just sending the box back the same day... but something caught my eye. The box had come from Shenzhen, China. Curious I cut open the outside box. Immediately I saw that the NAS they sent inside had been opened, and had been re-tapped shut -- and poorly, there was a clear bulge on top of the box. My heart sank a bit... but I figured, "Well, let's see -- maybe it was a return or something... can't hurt to open it again since it's already been opened." Inside the NAS box, all the manuals are in Chinese... and seem like they are just photocopies of the originals. The NAS was not in the original packaging, but rather elaborate bubble wrap. And there's a China to US power adapter to the cord. I'm curious if it would even turn on, so I plug in the NAS... It boots! But not in English. I'm thinking, "What did I just buy?!" But I can sort of read some of the messages and it seems like instead of 4x2GB drives, it came with 4x4GB drives. Interesting. It's late so I leave it initializing the drives (I think that's what it was doing anyway) and go to bed. Next morning I wake up, and it's still initializing the drives. Fuck it... time to call tech support and get my money back. The little light kept blinking yellow, but I couldn't read anything. I email Amazon to initiate the return process, then go to work. I leave the NAS running -- honestly just sort of forgot about it. Got pulled into a business trip that day, so it was about 4 days until I got back to focus on the project again. When I got home the little yellow light on the NAS was still blinking, and I thought it was weird that I hadn't gotten an email from the seller with return instructions. I email Amazon to tell them I hadn't heard anything back from the seller, and since I had to wait anyway, decided to call tech support. Cringe. The thing was, the NAS was still doing something. The drives were still spinning... but after 4 days... I figured it wasn't doing anything good. But I didn't unplug it. I read the serial number to the guy in tech support. Pause... "Can you read me the serial number again?" I do... longer pause. "Can you read me the serial number one more time?" I do... Pause... "Please hold, Sir." "Sir, where did you get this NAS?" I'd been transferred to someone up the food chain who told me that the device I had wasn't a valid serial number -- that the number I gave was for a model that hadn't been released yet. Super weird conversation, they took all my details, Amazon order number, and told me they would call me back. Really late, like 2 AM that night, I got an email from the seller. It just said, "What wrong?" So I write back, and my phone signature had my cell phone number on it. I get a call. At like 3 AM. The guy is polite, but his English isn't great. He tells me to just unplug the NAS, and plug it back in again -- then walks me through how to install the English interface. We're chatting for like 2 hours. He's crazy knowledgeable. We get everything set up, but I have no idea what all I just put on the device... most of the links he had been emailing me throughout the process were just IP addresses and paths. But they seem legit... and there wasn't anything on the NAS yet so I didn't mind running strange updates on it. He says the yellow light will blink for 4 hours 24 minutes. (I don't remember the exact number, but the point was it was an exact number.) He says to email him, not Amazon -- he's very clear about that -- if I need help after. He's a friendly guy, I liked how helpful he was. I go back to sleep for a few hours, do some yard work when I wake up, forget about the NAS, but when I checked later... some point after 4 hours 24 minutes... it's all green and working fine. And it's got twice the space than I paid for. And it's all in English. Only thing was... when I hit the "check for updates" option it just spun and nothing happened. But everything else seemed perfect. So I'm on the fence... I have this clearly not authentic NAS from some random guy in China... that the manufacturer says it's not supposed to exist... but it's 100% bigger than what I thought I paid for... That night I got an email from the seller, and you can tell he's sad. "I tried to help you, why did you tell Amazon it was a fake? It not a fake." I wrote back that I think that was from before he and I spoke, I had called the manufacturer's tech support to get the issue fixed and they told me the serial number wasn't real, but that it's working fine for me now. He was writing back instantly, "It not a fake, you want a refund? I give you refund, but please don't complain to Amazon about me, I sell good stuff." Right away I see an email from Amazon telling me that the seller had given me a 100% refund. He even refunded shipping costs. I felt awful. Here's this guy who spent 2 hours on the phone with me, probably spent a lot on an international call, and the manufacturer contacted Amazon about the order and came down on him for selling counterfeits. Probably scared him or told him he wouldn't be able to sell on Amazon any more if it was a fake... who knows. I write back, "Thanks for the refund, where do I send the NAS? I will pay for shipping. I didn't mean to get you in trouble." He writes back, "I'm sorry. It's not a fake. Please don't be mad at me." The case was marked as resolved at Amazon, the guy told me I didn't have to return the NAS, and I never heard back from the manufacturer. Free NAS! But a little guilt because I didn't pay this guy for it, or for his time... and he stopped responding to my emails after that. I offered to send it back to him two more times. About a year later I logged in to the interface, realized the auto-update feature was working fine. Updated the bios and firmware. I think that was 5-6 years ago now -- it's been running great. I had raved about the quality of the NAS to a friend, who bought the same model about 6 months after I did... but his died a few months ago... when we took it apart to switch out the drives we realized it had totally different drives and cables, and even the logic board seemed different from the one that mine had. Sure hardware changes, but... his seemed more legit and polished inside than mine. Mine has a few spots inside that just look glue-gunned in place. (= Anyway yeah, probably 7 years on... my little free (and probably semi-counterfeit) NAS is still running great. That call at 3 AM was by far the most knowledgeable of any seller or tech support person I've ever spoken with.
lelf 8y ago
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. That’s intensive. And sad.
- jasonvorhe 8y ago
  I don't get why people don't just use Slack on Chrome. Everything people rant about when using the Electron-app doesn't happen in Chrome.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    Electron is chromium...
    - alfredxing 8y ago
      Electron is built with Chromium. It's usually behind by a few versions (though the team is really focusing now on getting things up to date), and there are differences and additions.
  - oplav 8y ago
    I run Slack in a Chrome tab but have started experiencing issues where that tab grinds to a halt doing simple Slack things (like switching channels) and the tab eventually crashes.
  - rattray 8y ago
    I do this (I have it as a pinned tab next to Inbox) and love it. Much more resource efficient, faster to close/open, and easier to have (gasp) a tabbed browsing experience to keep an eye on an important channel.
  - eitland 8y ago
    If something doesn't work in an up to date Firefox then it just doesn't work. Same if it doesn't work in Edge (or Chrome for that matter.) I refuse to run Chrome when I can avoid it (not even installed on the majority of my machines.) In Firefox (or standalone) Slack eats CPU when someone uses animated emojis in a thread you have open. Maybe it works in Chrome but I guess not and I'm not gonna install Chrome for that or even for testing it. When the standalone app doesn't work properly && the web app doesn't work properly in all major browsers it is broken.
Causality1 8y ago
This reminds me of just how much I hate whoever came up with chiclet keyboards and ruined laptops forever.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Of course, with opinionated things like keyboards there will be people who love the exact thing you hate. Me, for example.
  - dijit 8y ago
    Choice is good. Lack of choice breeds resentment. I resent the new keyboards. I also resent soldered memory, soldered storage and the lack of ethernet jacks. I vote with my wallet where I can but the keyboards are ubiquitous; you can't vote with your wallet if there is no choice.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Which brings us back to standard forms, in which you could buy a different brands keyboard to suit you.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  Probably the same person who came up with the idea of using widescreens on laptops. At least with keyboards, if you have enough money, you can buy a brand new laptop with mechanical keyboard. Nobody is even making 4:3 monitors anymore, laptops or not.
  - Jach 8y ago
    Microsoft's been on the 3:2 ratio since the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Book, which is pretty nice.
  - random878 8y ago
    Not quite the same, but Eizo have made a 27" 1:1 (1920x1920) monitor. Looks fantastic.
- 8y ago
eggy 8y ago
I have a Lenovo T430u running Kali, and it is rock solid. I love the keyboard, and I use the TrackPoint for CAD work in FreeCAD. I never feel like it is going to slip from my hands when I pull it from my backpack. It is so easy to open up, that I open it twice or more a year to clean out the fans, which are usually clean anyway; I like seeing the internals like a car mechanic who likes to check under the hood ;) I considered the Lenovo Carbon X1, but it is pricey, doesn't have a number pad, and is at the ultra-slim form factor of a MBP or other similar notebook form factor. The Lenovo T580 has the num pad, but the graphics card is the NVIDIA MX150, a mobile but faster version of the GeForce 1030. Not really an issue for me, but my son's Lenovo Yoga came with a 1050 two years ago. Anyway, I've owned all sorts of notebooks, including MBPs, and have found the Lenovos to be my workhorses, and getting out of my way to get things done. Yes, the battery is only 4 to 6 hours, but for me, even traveling and living all over the world, it has never bit me work wise, only when playing.
- linuxlizard 8y ago
  Lenovo/Thinkpad + Kali sounds like a match made in heaven. May I ask what wifi chipset is on board? 'lspci | grep Network' should show it. The product page just says a/b/g/n which isn't terribly useful.
  - eggy 8y ago
    It's a 2013 T430u with an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 chip. It only supports 2.4 GHz, and not 5 GHz. I use a second, external USB WiFi dongle for Wireshark and other uses. It's six years old and great to use for more than I thought it would be.
    - kortilla 8y ago
      What WiFi dongle do you recommend for good Linux wireshark support?
      - wibble10 8y ago
        If you’re looking for something bigger for aircrack etc I use al alfa networks “AWUS036NHA” which is 5dB and you can pick up off amazon for about 30 euro. For normal dongles a search for “Anadol Gold Line Wifi AWL150 Micro 150Mbit/s USB WLAN S” shows the one I use in various bsds/linuxes with no problems. Both re0/run0 chips.
setquk 8y ago
I keep seeing these and going ooh and ahh and then I realise I’m happy enough with my hack job T440/450 hybrid frankenpad which cost pocket money in comparison.
aquabeagle 8y ago
It can run coreboot, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652584
0w4u2a 8y ago
Please, allow me to hijack this thread. What's the best Thinkpad I could get in Europe for ~200€ right now? (Off eBay of course). I don't care whether it's 13" or 15". Edit: thanks for all the replies.
- wiredfool 8y ago
  I’ve got a T410 and a T430s. Keyboard on the 410 is way better, but I upgraded because I needed more memory and a stouter processor to do webpack compiles. They’re kind of a pain to disassemble, but it’s doable.
  - systemBuilder 8y ago
    T430s is a horrible design mess. there is a middle layer of magnesium and all the wires go through random holes drilled in this magnesium and if you go through the wrong hole you will never get it back together again. the fan is on the bottom of the motherboard on the bottom of the computer and it takes 12 disassembly steps and 12 reassembly steps to fix the most commonly broken part which is the fan. Die T430s, die!!!
- snazz 8y ago
  You could most likely get an X220 for that amount. It has nice old non-chiclet keyboard (I like it even more than the X201 keyboard because it has big escape and delete keys) and is still plenty powerful.
  - clydethefrog 8y ago
    I love my original X220 but it's just a bit too slow sometimes. Definitely would get one with a upgraded SSD and more RAM if you see one.
    - systemBuilder 8y ago
      You can put an msata drive into a sata 2.5 enclosure and stick it in your laptop. There are also pata ssds from kingspec
jokoon 8y ago
I have a L450, it might not the top-notch quality thinkpad, but it's still pretty good. I have a chiclet keyboard, seems preferable. I had to manually remove the FN, INS, PGDN and PGUP keys though, for more comfortable typing. Also choosing a graphic chipset instead of a laptop GPU seems like the best option.
keithpeter 8y ago
"The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack." Things like scrolling down a recent issue Web site are the main reason I'm not still using a vintage unmodified X200. I realise that the OA quote was probably tongue in cheek but I do find that surfing the Web has become a processor intensive activity!
- 0x03 8y ago
  Only if you enable JS ;)
WebDanube 8y ago
Curious about the weight of X210--couldn't find it mentioned anywhere. I'm guessing such a feature-packed device must greatly compromise on the portability factor.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- keithpeter 8y ago
  Probably works out a tad lighter than the X200 with whichever battery the user decides to use. The unmodified X220 I'm writing this on weighs 1.6 kg with the 'stick out' battery and I recollect that my old X200 was about the same.
shasheene 8y ago
This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the knowledge that the cost can be spread out over a longer period. For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end gaming PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. A 2007 Lenovo ThinkPad X61 chassis is not that different to a 1997 IBM ThinkPad chassis (or a 1997 Dell Latitude XPi chassis). If the laptop industry standardized, manufacturers would produce a vast ecosystem of compatible components. Instead we got decades of incompatible laptops using several different power supply voltages (and therefore ten slightly-differently shaped barrel power plugs), many incompatibly shaped removable lithium-ion batteries, and more expense and difficulty in sourcing parts if and when components break. A little bit of forward thinking in the late 1990s would have saved a lot of eWaste.
- O_H_E 8y ago
  Maybe we could try and write an open letter to companies and promise support even for less value at first. Chances are slim, but at least we would have done our part.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Nobody is going to do this, because good components are a competitive advantage. I can’t see any good manufacturer wanting their good {trackpad, keyboard, case} either being put in a computer that undercuts them or being forced to dumb down their computer to fit the “lowest common denominator”.
  - shasheene 8y ago
    To successfully define a laptop standard, it would have taken a consortium of companies. Likely companies which aren't necessarily in the business of selling integrated laptops themselves, but would benefit from the existence of a laptop standard. It's likely companies like Microsoft (pre-Surface), peripheral manufacturers (eg, Logitech) and motherboard manufacturers (eg, Gigabyte) would have gladly got on board in that era. It's likely too late to start this in 2019 (but I may be wrong). Certainly the late-1990s would have been the ideal time for this.
pixelmonkey 8y ago
If you can still find one on then used market, I'll put in a plug for the Lenovo X1C 4th Gen (2016 model) as an ideal Linux laptop. It's what I switched to after the x220, and I describe it here: https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux Fan never turns on, matte display, awesome connectivity, great battery life, and everything on Linux just works.
- sigil 8y ago
  Seconded. I had an X1C2 and am currently on an X1C5. Everything works out of the box on linux and the performance is crazy for something so thin & light (2.8lbs).
- kjaer 8y ago
  I recently switched to a X1C6, and I wholly agree. It's an amazing laptop in terms of hardware and build quality, but it does have a bunch of Linux compatibility problems.
  - olivil 8y ago
    I have an X1C6 on Linux as well since launch, but since they added s3 sleep support it's been 100%. What compatibility issues are you having?
    - kjaer 8y ago
      The trackpad didn't work out of the box, I had to change some settings; annoying, but no big deal. What's a bigger problem is that the trackpad buttons don't work after suspending/hibernating, and I still haven't been able to fix that. Also, the fingerprint reader and NFC do not have any drivers on Linux. The Arch wiki page[1] has been tremendously helpful in getting set up. However, I think the length of the article goes some way toward showing that compatibility is far from perfect. The trackpad / NFC issues seem to only be present on laptops with NFC behind the trackpad, so my recommendation would be to avoid that one if it's possible to get a similar model without. [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_6) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...
ahstilde 8y ago
Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine? Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?
- ilrwbwrkhv 8y ago
  exactly and thinkpads especially. they are usually used in critical places.
- elagost 8y ago
  There's more or less a cult around using Linux on older Thinkpads. They're so widely available for so cheap, and since so many people use and test software with them, pretty much every Linux distro works out of the box. The older models are coreboot and libreboot-friendly, the keyboards are amazing, and almost every single part is replacable (the older 14" models have socketed processors even). Many still enjoy the old IBM models. I'm typing this on an X220 model, and I do understand the risks associated, which is why it's running coreboot, a stripped-down Intel ME, and GNU/Linux (as opposed to original firmware and Windows). The X220 that I'm using has run every Linux distro I can think of with zero modifications, and I even had macOS on it as a hackintosh for a time. I've replaced the wifi card, I have two hard drives in it and two batteries for it, and it still does everything I need a computer to do with zero fuss. Even without Coreboot and Linux, many still find the risks don't outweigh the rewards. Same reason people buy newer Macbooks that lack magsafe, sd card slots, USB-A, Ethernet, a decent keyboard, an escape key, replaceable disks/RAM, etc. For Macs, it's form over function. For Thinkpads, specifically the older ones, it's the exact reverse.
- camgunz 8y ago
  You don't buy the new ones. You buy at latest an X230 and put Linux or BSD on it. All the excitement around 51nb is that you can upgrade to modern hardware if you think the X220 is the last good notebook ever commercially produced. A lot of people (disclaimer: including me) think that, which is why you see them as targets for things like OpenBSD and Libreboot. But you're right, I would never buy a "modern" Lenovo though. But in fairness, I don't know that I'd buy a modern notebook at all.
tbrock 8y ago
These are awesome. For a long time I’ve thought a 13.3 X thinkpad like the 2X0 series (a proper successor to the x300/x301) would be the best thing ever. You take the x2X0 chassis, renowned for portabiltiy, battery life, and repair ability and shove a 13.3 inch screen in. Just like how the 13 inch class chassis on the x1 has a 14 inch screen. Well it’s happened: the x390 now exists. Maybe ever better would be a thick X1. Not larger or wider but thicker so the battery life was insane and you could upgrade the ram to 32/64gb.
- jpalomaki 8y ago
  X390 looks very interesting indeed. Did not at first realize that they have actually put the larger screen to the small chassis. Lack of swappable battery is annoying. Maybe I belong to the minority, but battery life is still one of my main problems with laptops. Just so annoying to have to constantly look for an outlet in meeting rooms or conference places. I guess external USB-C batteries are the way to go.
- driverdan 8y ago
  The x390 screen is only 1080p.
- 1986 8y ago
  I've seen a few people on /r/thinkpad trying to do the former, actually - modifying the bezels on an x2X0 to accommodate a 13 inch screen. One example: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/akm76s/another_x250_133_mod_in_progress/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/akm76s/another_x2...
- arebours 8y ago
  > Maybe ever better would be a thick X1. T480?
  - tbrock 8y ago
    No, that one has stupid large bezels. You don’t get much for the thickness.
kensai 8y ago
I am happy to read this review a couple of days after I saw a video of this Unboxing guy evangelizing the use of other Thinkpads. Lenovo is definitely making nice machines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k "Unbox Therapy After many years using MacBook variants I've made the switch to Windows. I've used every version of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that have been released. My current laptop of choice is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon / Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme.Turns out switching from Mac to Windows isn't as painful as I expected."
- luxuryballs 8y ago
  when I watched this video a few days ago all I couldn’t get over how disingenuous he seemed, like he was just getting paid to make the video and didn’t believe anything he was saying
- theshrike79 8y ago
  He's been salty at Apple for years since he made a big fuss about Bendgate (pretty much started it). Hasn't been invited to an Apple event since. To the surprise of no one.
- vxNsr 8y ago
  Wow, how do people watch this format. Also why does he keep looking to his right off camera? I feel like I'm missing something that's happening.
testacc432 8y ago
What laptops currently out in the market have a trackpad comparable to the Macbook Pro's?
- shkkmo 8y ago
  Most of the good ones. Manufacturers finally realized it was a stupid detail to fail at.
  - vernie 8y ago
    Be more specific.
airstrike 8y ago
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. There's something terribly wrong with this statement
- sgc 8y ago
  It's a joke.
supernintendo 8y ago
Another caveat worth mentioning is that this device does not support Libreboot. That’s one the appeals of the original X200 series IMO.
GordonS 8y ago
Is anyone happy coding on such a small screen, even if it is high-res? I have a 2016 13" MBP, and find the screen too small for coding. It's high-res, but that means everything is super-small unless you increase the scaling, which of course reduces the available screen real estate. The screen is annoyingly reflective too, but that's another problem entirely. My daily driver is a 15" HP Zbook G3 with a 1080p display, which I also find too small. I'm thinking a 15", high-res display would probably be ideal for portable coding?
- chronogram 8y ago
  I use an external screen on my 12" laptop. Obviously not useful for coding on the train, but for those short periods the 12" is fine.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    I also use external monitors during the day (27" QHD in landscape as the main one, 24" FHD in portrait as secondary), but when travelling, and in the evenings where I try to be more sociable that shutting myself away, I find the lack of screen real estate a real PITA.
- mikkelam 8y ago
  I once tried 15 and severely hated carrying such a huge device. I mostly dock my laptop so i dont mind the screen. I love the 13" size
  - GordonS 8y ago
    The weight issue I certainly agree with - my G3 is big and heavy, whereas my MBP is small and light. I also mostly dock my laptop, but I still spend a lot of time undocked (probably 15-20 hours a week).
- efficax 8y ago
  yes
- josteink 8y ago
zamadatix 8y ago
Mini DP -> HDMI is possible you just need to buy an active one instead of a passive one.
gesman 8y ago
Nvme SSD slot + plenty of USB 3 slots + ability to plug in 32GB RAM easily is great. Any company reducing physical peripherals slots on their devices should be publicly condemned!
GuB-42 8y ago
What about the GPU? I wanted a ThinkPad but while they were overall good laptops none of them offered a decent GPU except for the very expensive and massive "workstation" models with Quadros on the level of a mid range GTX. I get that these aren't gaming laptops but why not give us the option of doing at least some gaming. And GPUs aren't just for gaming we did some projects at work that involved 3D rendering, plus there is all that GPGPU thing. In the end I got a light gaming laptop, and at work, they also got gaming laptops for these projects that involve 3D. With RGB and all that, something I find kind of fun in a "serious business" environment.
- alipang 8y ago
  Depending on what you want, a gaming box like https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N1070IXEB-8GD#kf https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N1070IXEB-8GD#kf might do the trick. There's a lot of great laptops like the XPS13 that won't do gaming, but can do so with an external box.
- disconcision 8y ago
  The P1/X1e is 3.7 lbs and has a P2000/1050ti
- Improvotter 8y ago
  It'd be neat if this had thunderbolt (or wait for USB4) so you could use an external GPU. I've heard that it works for some people.
- nl 8y ago
  You can get Surface Laptop 2 with a GTX 1060, and Razor has some nice looking, non-huge laptops with RTX-series. I'm mostly interest in running ML on them, and Linux support is somewhat spotty though.
noir_lord 8y ago
I wonder why Lenovo doesn't lean into this. Clearly there is a market for people wanting this kind of machine to the extent they are jumping through hoops for it. I have a maxed out T470P (stock) and it's a cracking little machine and while the keyboard is by modern standards excellent that's because the bar shifted, it's still not as nice as the one on my old R50 was.
- intopieces 8y ago
  I suspect that their primary market is corporations, who have the resources to repair Lenovo's newest models or else have contracts for replacement.
- efficax 8y ago
  Lenovo knows about the love for the retro Thinkpads, and even tried to take advantage of it: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/ThinkPad-25/p/22TP2TTTP25 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser... It was a decent showing, but not what I wanted (an X60 form factor with a 4k 4:3 screen)
  - systemBuilder 8y ago
    A friend of mine who loves thinkpads bought two of those T25 anniversary models (2017). Sadly the only thing that was ThinkPad about that model is the keyboard. The CPU was a meh i5-7200. The motherboard was stupidly designed and the power switch had to come up through a hole in the keyboard. That's not how T4x/T6x series thinkpads work. Also there was no thinklight. Overall what they did was bring back the keyboard and then quit.
- chx 8y ago
  Hell if I know. On various forums we have raised the idea but I guess it just doesn't get through they should run a Kickstarter for the classic keyboard in the, say, successor of the T490 (because the 10nm is going to be a huge change so ppl want to buy that more). If successful, Lenovo adds this option while people front the cost of creating it -- new plastic mould for the palmrest etc -- and get a discount code they can put in when ordering the new machine with the classic keyboard. All this takes very little effort from Lenovo -- all their backend system needs is a batch entry of discount codes. They don't need to ship anything separately and if the Kickstarter fails, they spent very little money.
TheCowboy 8y ago
It's a shame the Thinkpad Retro / 25 Anniversary Edition was released as a one time thing. I think it likely hurt the excitement behind buying one as you could end up with a machine that would be hard to find spare parts for in the future. I never got a chance to buy one because they sold out and didn't release more.
- systemBuilder 8y ago
  My friend bought TWO and it was totally meh. Yes they did put a nice retro keyboard on that thing. It had the same horrible scratchpad as other thinkpads. No thinklight. Basically it was just a t440 with a nicer keyboard. The CPU (I5-7200) was crap. NO GRAPHICS ACCELERATION AT ALL.
cpburns2009 8y ago
"The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack." That's amusing and sad.
leiroigh 8y ago
I am a happy owner of an x62. This article almost convinced me to buy an x210 next. Minor gripes: (1) The dispayport-hdmi thing, (2) the mainboard is split (sound + rhs usb are on a separate board) and the small part has pretty flimsy attachement inside the case, (3) the CPU (i5 broadwell engineering sample) is pretty lackluster but perfect for development (no turbo, no throttling, no surprises), (4) finding an ok screen is hard, (5) nobody told me that I have to buy a separate wifi card. There is a free mini-pci slot, but 51nb could have been clearer on their online description, (5) the old x60 speakers suck. Overall, it is an awesome machine (trackpoint, ibm keyboard, beautiful rubberized metal case). And shockingly cheap: An x62 mainboard, plus an old x60 chassis from ebay and battery from amazon, plus screen from alibaba, plus SSD, wifi-card and ram comes at ~$600 (I think?), cheap enough to buy as an experiment. I can definitely recommend to anyone who is ok with a little tinkering and the small adventure of ordering this from China (best approach: have Chinese colleague). edit: Linux drivers work perfectly. Really, the ram was the most expensive component of this build. To expand on the no-surprises advantage of the CPU: To me it is more important to effortlessly benchmark small code changes than to quickly compile large codebases. And the weird engineering sample CPU that the 51nb guys sourced somewhere is absolutely perfect for that: Timings reliably match up with Agner Fog's instruction tables / iaca, without anything getting into the way (after the kernel cpufreq manager adjusted).
- ggreer 8y ago
  I'm not sure what screen you got off Alibaba but if you want something better, you might want to try the daylight LED mod.[1] You won't get better color gamut, but you will get insane brightness and better battery life. I did that mod to my X62 and it made the screen actually usable. 1. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml
  - xiphmont 8y ago
    It'll be a little while before I'm offering them again. Still clearing new projects out of the way.
subway 8y ago
and sound like jet engines..
xiphmont 8y ago
Echoing Geoff's article, I'm a big fan of the 51nb mobos from the X62 on. The X62 was very very good, and the T70 and X210 are even better. Can't wait for the X63. One reason I'm taking time off from making X62 backlight kits is to make some new mods for the latest machines-- a 13" 3k screen and internal battery. I've gotten both running, but it takes time to work kinks out of production. It's also why I've been working on my microscope. :-)
swiley 8y ago
Not an X210 but you can get refurbished X201s for just about nothing. They suck for games but I don't really know how to improve them as a homework/development computer (maybe EFI would be nice but that actually exists as part of the open source replacement firmware.)
EdgarVerona 8y ago
I'm sold on 3:2 aspect ratio, and wish there was a wider variety of modern laptops available possessing that screen ratio. I hate looking for laptops and finding the only ones with reasonable specs to have widescreen aspect ratios. I feel noticeably constrained using them for anything other than playing games and watching videos.
mtw 8y ago
> doing something intensive like... scrolling in Slack There's something wrong if you go thru all of this and Slack consumes significant resources on your laptop.
dangban 8y ago
It looks like the 13 year old Thinkpad R60 I keep as a backup (mine also has a mini trackpad). With 3 gigs of RAM and a 480gig SSD. The first version of Windows 10 Pro works on it, but I can't get the Windows 10 Pro product key to work on it. More recent versions of Windows 10 Pro do not install on it. Anyone know how to get a legal Windows 10 Pro product key working on the first (July 2015) version of Windows 10 Pro?
trollied 8y ago
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. Made me chuckle :-)
pascoej 8y ago
I went and visited their office in SZ last summer to buy one of these motherboards. I was amazed that it seemed like a 5-7 person operation and they designed a modern laptop motherboard. Maybe they contracted out some work and the office was mostly just operational people, but it was really cool to talk to a bunch of retro thinkpad enthusiasts making what they love.
daveheq 8y ago
That is beautiful... I loved those old 4:3 high-res laptops with big arrow keys. Now standard laptops are small-screen low-res tiny-keys... pain in the ass.
spion 8y ago
You know you're doing something wrong when a company that sells alternative parts for your old products is doing better in the news.
fao_ 8y ago
> You can even replace the Trackpoint and the little rubber feet without much trouble. I've been trying desperately to source rubber feet for my X200 but can't find them anywhere.
qwerty456127 8y ago
So sweet...
umvi 8y ago
I noticed the author names his computers after elements (iron). I do that too! I was taken aback because I have a box named "iron" also (as well as cobalt, oxygen, and helium)
- ggreer 8y ago
  I name all of my computers after elements. I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc. I also tend to categorize machines by elemental classification. Servers are alkalai metals, laptops are nonmetals, consoles are halogens, etc. I didn't have any neat nonmetals left, so I just called my new laptop "iron". I describe the whole scheme in a blog post I wrote long ago: https://geoff.greer.fm/2009/06/17/hostnames/ https://geoff.greer.fm/2009/06/17/hostnames/
  - umvi 8y ago
    > I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc. Ok, that's definitely a step farther than I've ever taken it. Ingenious though, I'm stealing that idea!
b3b0p 8y ago
I have a MacBook Pro (2017, 15" top model). I came from a Thinkpad running Red Hat and FreeBSD later. I have been for the last couple years putting a Thinkpad (P52 or X1 Carbon/Extreme or P1) I'm lusting over in my cart, but not hitting the buy button. After owning this MacBook Pro, my first question is how replaceable are the keyboards? I want to have a spare in the case of spills, crumbs, dirt, etc and so forth. It's piece of mind at this point. From my quick and dirty research, they aren't as replaceable as they used to be, but still able to be done by the user. The P52/72 seem to be the only easy option like the, "good old days." While the X1/P1/X series require the entire top palm rest replaced, which is costlier, but it's an option none the less. I'm eyeing either an X1 Extreme, P52, or maybe getting something slightly more portable like the X390. I feel this is the year I'm finally going to hit that buy button and at least test the waters if I can get myself out of the Apple Ecosystem and survive without regrets using Linux, even so, it will be a fun experiment.
- systemBuilder 8y ago
  MacBook Pro keyboard replacement is a nightmare it's a 3-hour process search up the videos on YouTube you have to undo about 50 screws. The sooner you realize that Apple only makes throw away shit the better off you'll be in life!
- ww520 8y ago
  I stocked up thin silicon membrane keyboard covers, put one over the keyboard, and replace it every 6 months. It prevent spills and scratch. Keyboard can get really dirty. Replacing it once a while is like getting a new keyboard.
  - b3b0p 8y ago
    This is what I have on my MacBook Pro now, since the millisecond I took it out of the box. It's just not as pleasurable to type on, especially comparing to say, a Thinkpad keyboard. I was thinking how much peace of mind I would have using a bare Thinkpad P52 keyboard with a spare in the closet and knowing I can just go to Lenovo's parts site and order up a new one for a reasonable cost.
keyle 8y ago
The irony is not lost on me... > The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I hadn't realised about the (lack of) HDMI over DisplayPort - now I don't feel so bad that I can't afford one - this would render it much less useful to me.
systemBuilder 8y ago
You guys thinking ATX is a standard has me laughing my head off. On those motherboards we had 6 bus 'standards', 6 video card 'standards' (AGP, AGP 2X, AGP 4X, ...), 6+ disk 'standards' (IDE, EIDE, PATA, SATA-1,2,3, M.2, PCI, and the list goes on). the biggest joke is that CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years and yet we are still fooled into buying entirely new systems every two or three years by the Intel-Microsoft-Dell-Motherboard Cabal.
- tbolt 8y ago
  Can you provide some evidence that “CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years?”
- shasheene 8y ago
  Video card interface electrical standards may have changed, but GPU form factors have not. Electrical interface changes just need to be paired with compatible motherboards. Same with hard drives: the interface changed but the form factor has not. They are even compatible with their larger versions: a laptop 2.5" platter drive or SSD can fit in a 3.5" drive bay with a cheap bracket. The SATA versions were backwards compatible speed bumps. Performance was always the maximum supported on the motherboard. M.2 is just PCIe in a different form factor, so on desktops a $5 passive adapter allows NVMe SSDs to be used on any PCIe slot on even on relatively ancient PCs (though use as a boot drive dependent on BIOS support). Same with display interfaces. VGA is still supported on many systems, with DVI-I being backwards compatible with cheap passive adapters. DVI and HDMI are electrically identically (minus audio) so cheap passive adapters work. The broader point is that large incompatible electrical changes are possible because they only mean the new motherboard just needs to be paired with a compatible component. There's still market pressure for backwards compatibility unless the leap is large enough.
- detaro 8y ago
  > the biggest joke is that CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years 2009 high-end/enthusiast desktop CPU: Intel Core i7-975 2019 high-end/enthusiast desktop CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K Single-thread performance has doubled. And the i9 has double the number of threads. And uses less energy. > and yet we are still fooled into buying entirely new systems every two or three years by the Intel-Microsoft-Dell-Motherboard Cabal. The point is that you do not need to buy an entirely new systems every two or three years (and I personally know few people that do), but can comfortably upgrade parts. CPU upgrade compatibility has sometimes been annoyingly short, but most of time you can easily extend the lifetime of a system by buying a former high-end CPU for cheap, and for other pieces compatibility is way longer. SATA drives from 10 years ago still work with modern PCs if they survived (or your PC from 10 years ago you still use because "CPUs haven't become faster" can be upgraded with a SATA or PCIe SSD, which it can't fully utilize, but it'll work and make a difference. PCIe cards always have been compatible between versions, you had the choice between AGP and PCIe for quite a while (when that switch happened, like 15 years ago?), and technically can still buy boards with PCI ports today (although that's a market niche).
m0zg 8y ago
Just buy a Carbon X1 that's a couple of generations behind "current" - they're still being sold. Amazing battery life, trackpoint, high res screen (if you want it), super light, tough, good keyboard. And it's cheaper, too. What's not to like? Mine is 3.5 years old now, still going strong. Running Ubuntu since day one.
mberning 8y ago
I find it hard to believe they put a 2TB m.2 ssd and 32GB of ram in it for $1200. Surely that was added on top of the $1200 base price, which makes this much less attractive than it sounds.
paulddraper 8y ago
Interesting. What's the difference between this and the Thinkpad P-series? (That's what I use.)
kristianp 8y ago
Can they do upgrades of my old T410? Love the keyboard on that, I blame Apple for ruining the keyboard experience since the loss of separate pg up and pg down keys, and Intel for standardising that layout in the ultrabook spec.
bitL 8y ago
I can't comprehend why not a single company could do a notebook like this! Classical keyboard, hi-dpi 3:2 screen, centered trackpad (well, in this case not 100%), latest CPU/memory/SSD. Is it that difficult?
- untog 8y ago
  To sell enough of them at a price people want to pay? Sadly, yes.
  - bitL 8y ago
    They can bump the price and it would sell like hot cakes among developers. There are simply no similar products on the market. If NUC is profitable, which is a niche product, I can't see how such a notebook couldn't be (given at least minimal marketing and not putting a product notice into a locked cellar).
- iNate2000 8y ago
  Isn't that Surface Book?
krick 8y ago
I don't get it. How is it Thinkpad X-something, and yet "made by a group of enthusiasts, not a big company"? Is it an illegal rip-off? Is it Lenovo lending their name to someone else? What is this 51NB exactly?
truth_seeker 8y ago
>> If the SSD fails, you can replace it. If the RAM fails, you can replace it. If the wifi card fails, you can replace it. If the screen fails, you can replace it. You can even replace the Trackpoint and the little rubber feet without much trouble. The laptop can be entirely disassembled with two Philips screwheads (#0 and #1). At no point do you encounter tape, glue, or pentalobe screws. I am sold, totally :)
danlan 8y ago
I'm still using a 2015 MBP and can't bring myself to upgrade. I'd love to see a service like 51NB for Macbook Pro's, does something similar exist? 2018 logic board internals in a 2015 logic board form factor maybe?
isostatic 8y ago
Why don't Lenevo build these types of laptops any more? There's clearly a demand for a laptop with a good keyboard and screen, but "wiring $1200 to someone’s personal bank account in China, then e-mailing a qq.com address." is something I'm not particularly happy with. I'll just stick to repairing my 9 year old t410s.
dotancohen 8y ago
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. The next time somebody asks why everybody has a problem with Electron, I'm referring them to this page.
- cztomsik 8y ago
  I scroll a lot in vscode and it's fine... but yeah, it could be lighter
- lucideer 8y ago
  Electron is far from ideal, and it may be argued it's incredibly difficult to make a relatively efficient Electron app (vscode is often cited as one, but Microsoft has plenty of resources). However, for all the efficiency challenges Electron brings, Slack is universally cited in types of comments such as the above. This makes me highly suspect that—beyond being just written in Electron—Slack is actually an extremely poorly written app, and just the canonical example of overengineered inefficiency in general. Slack Web, for example, also does similarly draconian things to my CPU. Similarly, Riot.im—probably the most comparable app to Slack functionality-wise—is also built in Electron. It has some of the performance problems one would expect from any Electron app, but it is nowhere near as bad as Slack (and has a much much smaller development team with much tighter resources). In short: Electron may not be ideal, but it seems to get an unfairly bad name from Slack; we should be laying the criticism with the Slack dev team rather than with the Electron one.
  - s_ngularity 8y ago
    I think the disproportionate noise about Slack is just due to it being (often without choice) used by so many people, and hence to cite that people only complain about Slack as evidence that Slack is worse than other Electron apps isn't very convincing.
    - lucideer 8y ago
      > people only complain about Slack as evidence that Slack is worse than other Electron apps isn't very convincing. Spotify is almost certainly used by many more people than Slack, and vscode's usage is probably at least within an order of magnitude. The general feedback in comments is that Spotify is bad but not exceptionally so, and that vscode is actually very performant (not when compared to Vim, but it seems to do fine in the context of GUI IDEs). The other app that there has been a lot of complaints about in the past has been Atom. These have declined recently due to improvements by the Atom team, but also: Atom being the very first ever Electron app probably didn't help here either.
mcv 8y ago
"Like the X62, the X210 is made by 51NB, a group of enthusiasts in Shenzhen." Is that normal? That a group of enthusiasts designs Thinkpad models?
- 0815test 8y ago
  Is not officially Thinkpad model. Is "Frankenpad", made by combining parts from many Thinkpad model, in a creative way. This is what "group of enthusiast" in Shenzen do.
el_cujo 8y ago
It seems really counter-intuitive to me that you'd pay $1200 for a Thinkpad. Isn't their popularity largely because old models are widely-available, reliable, and most importantly, dirt cheap? I don't do anything on my T420 but use the terminal and the web browser and the hardware has been sufficient, though I guess if you're gonna be rolling with multiple electron apps, upgraded hardware might make all the difference.
anderspitman 8y ago
My 2011 X220 refuses to die. It's been tossed in bags, scuffed, cracked, and burned with a candle. The keyboard is perfect. Touchpad is fine. Wifi is excellent. Upgradeability unmatched. I'm running Linux with a tiling window manager, and performance is fine for pretty much everything I want to do, including compilation. It runs super hot (80C+ sometimes), but is always way quieter than my XPS15 from work. Only complaint is the low resolution of the screen (1366x768). 1080p would be perfect for the 12.5in screen.
- dwhitney 8y ago
  "burned with a candle" - nobody upvoted you for any reason other than wanting to know how this happened. Do tell, OP!
  - michaelgrafl 8y ago
    I would guess he put his laptop close to a candle which was subsequently tipped over. But maybe there was Satanism involved. In that case please do tell, Mr. OP!
  - anderspitman 8y ago
    My sister put a candle on the table and the rising heat was barely under the lip of my open laptop lid. It melted a bit of the plastic, but the damage was only cosmetic. Sorry; pretty anticlimactic I know haha.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
How does this compare to the 25th Anniversary Thinkpad that seemed to be produced solely to scratch this kind of enthusiast itch?

1005 points by MYEUHD 8y ago

>Linux worked out of the box. I had to install non-free drivers for the Broadcom wireless card, then tweak a few module options to get better power saving. This is not, for the record, "working out of the box".

sametmax 8y ago
Yeah but after that, he never had any problem with it, except sleep mode cutting wifi sometimes. Or bluetooth not pairing. Or the battery lasting half as expected. Nothing that a few commands can't fix. Zero maintenance.
- andrepd 8y ago
  Hilarious. Of course, he mentioned no such problems. So please cease the straw man.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    I'm writing that from Ubuntu. It's good to have a little self derision.
- taf2 8y ago
  This reminds me of a flash cartoon that circulated around 2001 or 2002 with a guy flying through air talking about all he had to do is mod probe or patch his kernel and was like a wizard in the classic kind of flash style animation... I wish I still had the flash file or someone could recreate it in a viewable format for today...
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk
    - taf2 8y ago
      Yes thank you!
viach 8y ago
> then tweak a few module options to get better power saving What, what these options are? Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get power management working on a Linux laptop?".
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get power management working on a Linux laptop?" Or even the easier question “how to get power management working on your Linux laptop”?
  - viach 8y ago
    I seriously think this is the main problem of "Linux on Desktop". Just stop the cooler spinning all the time that's it - Desktop War is won, Win and Mac are packing their stuff and go home.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- c0l0 8y ago
  sudo powertop --quiet --auto-tune
- Twirrim 8y ago
  I haven't been using a Linux laptop for about 3 years now (Ended up with a Mac at my current job, which 3 years in I still don't really like all that much). Back when I did, I found the package laptop-mode-tools to be quite effective. It tunes a bunch of things when you're off A/C, and can be adjusted to control a number of other things. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+package/laptop-mode-tools https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+package/laptop-mode-too... On my mac, I've got HammerSpoon configured to change a bunch of things depending on power levels, sleep state etc, including killing off Slack.
jokoon 8y ago
The lenovo website lets you custom the hardware, and I chose a non broadcom, so an intel chip I think.
xaduha 8y ago
> This is not, for the record, "working out of the box". I have no doubt that some other distros would work just fine without any changes, you're nitpicking.
- no-such-address 8y ago
  Ha ha very funny. Yes, just try a lot of other distros until you find one that works, maybe.
  - xaduha 8y ago
    Point is that you don't need to, you can make any distro work. "Working out of the box" for Linux doesn't have the same meaning as for Windows. If you're a buying a custom motherboard for an old notebook that's nothing.
    - chronolitus 8y ago
      I love linux but damn, way to shift the goalposts. edit: Does any one else feel that redefining "working out of the box" to mean the opposite "just for linux", hurts linux's reputation more than just saying something non-hyperbolic, like it "works with a surprisingly minimal amount of driver treasure-hunt"? As a tangent, I wonder if this applies to other things. if BMW users tell you "when talking about BMWs the term low-maintenance refers to not having your engine explode every 10k miles. With that in mind, BMWs are very low-maintenance", are you less likely to buy one than if they say "well there's a little more required maintenance than some other manufacturers, but as long as you do it the car is very reliable."?
      - xaduha 8y ago
        Linux isn't just one thing. In a parallel universe he used a different distro and didn't have any issues. That says nothing about whether or not this piece of hardware is a good purchase or how good it is supported in general.
- saagarjha 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
0815test 8y ago
Meh, if the non-free blobs are included as part of the distro (as they are with the Debian 'non-free' channel, similar to Ubuntu) it's as good as we've ever going to get. Even Intel wifi cards rely on a non-free firmware blob, and will only work with "non-free" Debian.

rocku 8y ago

How much does it weight?

noopyscroopers 8y ago

Might it be possible for them to ship models with castrated Management Engine and Mic/Radio killswitches? Do they have as Shenzhen manufacturing company/aquaintance any more leverage to take re-liberating measures on their boards?

saagarjha 8y ago

> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7 hours with the extended battery (80Wh). Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. > Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know really shouldn’t be. I have lived and worked with people for whom having their fan randomly turn on for no reason is completely normal, and I just can’t understand how they can bear it. If this happens to me, you can bet I’m digging through Activity Monitor and killing the culprit before the fans can get fully ramped up.

unethical_ban 8y ago
Sigh... I got a Thinkpad E485 ( wanted to try AMD Ryzen mobile) and with Ubuntu installed, I get about 2.5-3 hours on the battery, which is... I forget now. I think it's 48Wh.
tartuffe78 8y ago
I used to use SMC fan control on my older MacBook Pro to just run the fan at medium at all times. Definitely miss that you can't use it on the new touchbar MacBook pros.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Interestingly, macOS has been the only OS where I have not had this be an issue. 95+% of the time the fans are off, and rouge runaway processes are quite rare (which is not true of say Linux or Windows, in my experience).
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Yes, the only time I hear the fans on my MacBook is when I boot into Windows.
smcl 8y ago
Yep the fan spinning up when nothing special is happening is infuriating - for me 99% of the time it's Debian's "unattended upgrades" which I now realise I should just turn off since I update/upgrade/dist-upgrade relatively frequently anyway.

cucubucu 8y ago

I loved the thinkpads. Had most of them. Keyboard was the best.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

I was interested in the hassle for making a payment and buying something from China. Counter to my view of how the world is supposed to work. Payment hassles probably due to buying from a small group of enthusiasts, not a large company. I haven’t done business directly with anyone in China for a number of years (I helped a student on a project about 10 years ago and a media company had me write a simple machine learning model for them) but them paying me was easy, just used PayPal. Buying not rebranded Chinese electronics interests me, because of potential lower cost, as long as it is westernized in things like keyboard, etc. and has a year warranty. I have specifically been looking at products like GPD Pocket 2.

dbg31415 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14219918#14223933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14219918#14223933 I bought a NAS off Amazon a few years ago... one of their 3rd party sellers had the same product for $50 cheaper so I went with that. Anyway, what happened next was really amusing to me. I get the product about 8 weeks later... I had tried to cancel because it was so slow, and Amazon wouldn't let me -- they said I had to receive the product and then send it back as a return once I got it in order to get a refund. I was planning on just sending the box back the same day... but something caught my eye. The box had come from Shenzhen, China. Curious I cut open the outside box. Immediately I saw that the NAS they sent inside had been opened, and had been re-tapped shut -- and poorly, there was a clear bulge on top of the box. My heart sank a bit... but I figured, "Well, let's see -- maybe it was a return or something... can't hurt to open it again since it's already been opened." Inside the NAS box, all the manuals are in Chinese... and seem like they are just photocopies of the originals. The NAS was not in the original packaging, but rather elaborate bubble wrap. And there's a China to US power adapter to the cord. I'm curious if it would even turn on, so I plug in the NAS... It boots! But not in English. I'm thinking, "What did I just buy?!" But I can sort of read some of the messages and it seems like instead of 4x2GB drives, it came with 4x4GB drives. Interesting. It's late so I leave it initializing the drives (I think that's what it was doing anyway) and go to bed. Next morning I wake up, and it's still initializing the drives. Fuck it... time to call tech support and get my money back. The little light kept blinking yellow, but I couldn't read anything. I email Amazon to initiate the return process, then go to work. I leave the NAS running -- honestly just sort of forgot about it. Got pulled into a business trip that day, so it was about 4 days until I got back to focus on the project again. When I got home the little yellow light on the NAS was still blinking, and I thought it was weird that I hadn't gotten an email from the seller with return instructions. I email Amazon to tell them I hadn't heard anything back from the seller, and since I had to wait anyway, decided to call tech support. Cringe. The thing was, the NAS was still doing something. The drives were still spinning... but after 4 days... I figured it wasn't doing anything good. But I didn't unplug it. I read the serial number to the guy in tech support. Pause... "Can you read me the serial number again?" I do... longer pause. "Can you read me the serial number one more time?" I do... Pause... "Please hold, Sir." "Sir, where did you get this NAS?" I'd been transferred to someone up the food chain who told me that the device I had wasn't a valid serial number -- that the number I gave was for a model that hadn't been released yet. Super weird conversation, they took all my details, Amazon order number, and told me they would call me back. Really late, like 2 AM that night, I got an email from the seller. It just said, "What wrong?" So I write back, and my phone signature had my cell phone number on it. I get a call. At like 3 AM. The guy is polite, but his English isn't great. He tells me to just unplug the NAS, and plug it back in again -- then walks me through how to install the English interface. We're chatting for like 2 hours. He's crazy knowledgeable. We get everything set up, but I have no idea what all I just put on the device... most of the links he had been emailing me throughout the process were just IP addresses and paths. But they seem legit... and there wasn't anything on the NAS yet so I didn't mind running strange updates on it. He says the yellow light will blink for 4 hours 24 minutes. (I don't remember the exact number, but the point was it was an exact number.) He says to email him, not Amazon -- he's very clear about that -- if I need help after. He's a friendly guy, I liked how helpful he was. I go back to sleep for a few hours, do some yard work when I wake up, forget about the NAS, but when I checked later... some point after 4 hours 24 minutes... it's all green and working fine. And it's got twice the space than I paid for. And it's all in English. Only thing was... when I hit the "check for updates" option it just spun and nothing happened. But everything else seemed perfect. So I'm on the fence... I have this clearly not authentic NAS from some random guy in China... that the manufacturer says it's not supposed to exist... but it's 100% bigger than what I thought I paid for... That night I got an email from the seller, and you can tell he's sad. "I tried to help you, why did you tell Amazon it was a fake? It not a fake." I wrote back that I think that was from before he and I spoke, I had called the manufacturer's tech support to get the issue fixed and they told me the serial number wasn't real, but that it's working fine for me now. He was writing back instantly, "It not a fake, you want a refund? I give you refund, but please don't complain to Amazon about me, I sell good stuff." Right away I see an email from Amazon telling me that the seller had given me a 100% refund. He even refunded shipping costs. I felt awful. Here's this guy who spent 2 hours on the phone with me, probably spent a lot on an international call, and the manufacturer contacted Amazon about the order and came down on him for selling counterfeits. Probably scared him or told him he wouldn't be able to sell on Amazon any more if it was a fake... who knows. I write back, "Thanks for the refund, where do I send the NAS? I will pay for shipping. I didn't mean to get you in trouble." He writes back, "I'm sorry. It's not a fake. Please don't be mad at me." The case was marked as resolved at Amazon, the guy told me I didn't have to return the NAS, and I never heard back from the manufacturer. Free NAS! But a little guilt because I didn't pay this guy for it, or for his time... and he stopped responding to my emails after that. I offered to send it back to him two more times. About a year later I logged in to the interface, realized the auto-update feature was working fine. Updated the bios and firmware. I think that was 5-6 years ago now -- it's been running great. I had raved about the quality of the NAS to a friend, who bought the same model about 6 months after I did... but his died a few months ago... when we took it apart to switch out the drives we realized it had totally different drives and cables, and even the logic board seemed different from the one that mine had. Sure hardware changes, but... his seemed more legit and polished inside than mine. Mine has a few spots inside that just look glue-gunned in place. (= Anyway yeah, probably 7 years on... my little free (and probably semi-counterfeit) NAS is still running great. That call at 3 AM was by far the most knowledgeable of any seller or tech support person I've ever spoken with.

lelf 8y ago

> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. That’s intensive. And sad.

jasonvorhe 8y ago
I don't get why people don't just use Slack on Chrome. Everything people rant about when using the Electron-app doesn't happen in Chrome.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Electron is chromium...
  - alfredxing 8y ago
    Electron is built with Chromium. It's usually behind by a few versions (though the team is really focusing now on getting things up to date), and there are differences and additions.
- oplav 8y ago
  I run Slack in a Chrome tab but have started experiencing issues where that tab grinds to a halt doing simple Slack things (like switching channels) and the tab eventually crashes.
- rattray 8y ago
  I do this (I have it as a pinned tab next to Inbox) and love it. Much more resource efficient, faster to close/open, and easier to have (gasp) a tabbed browsing experience to keep an eye on an important channel.
- eitland 8y ago
  If something doesn't work in an up to date Firefox then it just doesn't work. Same if it doesn't work in Edge (or Chrome for that matter.) I refuse to run Chrome when I can avoid it (not even installed on the majority of my machines.) In Firefox (or standalone) Slack eats CPU when someone uses animated emojis in a thread you have open. Maybe it works in Chrome but I guess not and I'm not gonna install Chrome for that or even for testing it. When the standalone app doesn't work properly && the web app doesn't work properly in all major browsers it is broken.

Causality1 8y ago

This reminds me of just how much I hate whoever came up with chiclet keyboards and ruined laptops forever.

saagarjha 8y ago
Of course, with opinionated things like keyboards there will be people who love the exact thing you hate. Me, for example.
- dijit 8y ago
  Choice is good. Lack of choice breeds resentment. I resent the new keyboards. I also resent soldered memory, soldered storage and the lack of ethernet jacks. I vote with my wallet where I can but the keyboards are ubiquitous; you can't vote with your wallet if there is no choice.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Which brings us back to standard forms, in which you could buy a different brands keyboard to suit you.
badsectoracula 8y ago
Probably the same person who came up with the idea of using widescreens on laptops. At least with keyboards, if you have enough money, you can buy a brand new laptop with mechanical keyboard. Nobody is even making 4:3 monitors anymore, laptops or not.
- Jach 8y ago
  Microsoft's been on the 3:2 ratio since the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Book, which is pretty nice.
- random878 8y ago
  Not quite the same, but Eizo have made a 27" 1:1 (1920x1920) monitor. Looks fantastic.
8y ago

eggy 8y ago

I have a Lenovo T430u running Kali, and it is rock solid. I love the keyboard, and I use the TrackPoint for CAD work in FreeCAD. I never feel like it is going to slip from my hands when I pull it from my backpack. It is so easy to open up, that I open it twice or more a year to clean out the fans, which are usually clean anyway; I like seeing the internals like a car mechanic who likes to check under the hood ;) I considered the Lenovo Carbon X1, but it is pricey, doesn't have a number pad, and is at the ultra-slim form factor of a MBP or other similar notebook form factor. The Lenovo T580 has the num pad, but the graphics card is the NVIDIA MX150, a mobile but faster version of the GeForce 1030. Not really an issue for me, but my son's Lenovo Yoga came with a 1050 two years ago. Anyway, I've owned all sorts of notebooks, including MBPs, and have found the Lenovos to be my workhorses, and getting out of my way to get things done. Yes, the battery is only 4 to 6 hours, but for me, even traveling and living all over the world, it has never bit me work wise, only when playing.

linuxlizard 8y ago
Lenovo/Thinkpad + Kali sounds like a match made in heaven. May I ask what wifi chipset is on board? 'lspci | grep Network' should show it. The product page just says a/b/g/n which isn't terribly useful.
- eggy 8y ago
  It's a 2013 T430u with an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 chip. It only supports 2.4 GHz, and not 5 GHz. I use a second, external USB WiFi dongle for Wireshark and other uses. It's six years old and great to use for more than I thought it would be.
  - kortilla 8y ago
    What WiFi dongle do you recommend for good Linux wireshark support?
    - wibble10 8y ago
      If you’re looking for something bigger for aircrack etc I use al alfa networks “AWUS036NHA” which is 5dB and you can pick up off amazon for about 30 euro. For normal dongles a search for “Anadol Gold Line Wifi AWL150 Micro 150Mbit/s USB WLAN S” shows the one I use in various bsds/linuxes with no problems. Both re0/run0 chips.

setquk 8y ago

I keep seeing these and going ooh and ahh and then I realise I’m happy enough with my hack job T440/450 hybrid frankenpad which cost pocket money in comparison.

aquabeagle 8y ago

It can run coreboot, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652584

0w4u2a 8y ago

Please, allow me to hijack this thread. What's the best Thinkpad I could get in Europe for ~200€ right now? (Off eBay of course). I don't care whether it's 13" or 15". Edit: thanks for all the replies.

wiredfool 8y ago
I’ve got a T410 and a T430s. Keyboard on the 410 is way better, but I upgraded because I needed more memory and a stouter processor to do webpack compiles. They’re kind of a pain to disassemble, but it’s doable.
- systemBuilder 8y ago
  T430s is a horrible design mess. there is a middle layer of magnesium and all the wires go through random holes drilled in this magnesium and if you go through the wrong hole you will never get it back together again. the fan is on the bottom of the motherboard on the bottom of the computer and it takes 12 disassembly steps and 12 reassembly steps to fix the most commonly broken part which is the fan. Die T430s, die!!!
snazz 8y ago
You could most likely get an X220 for that amount. It has nice old non-chiclet keyboard (I like it even more than the X201 keyboard because it has big escape and delete keys) and is still plenty powerful.
- clydethefrog 8y ago
  I love my original X220 but it's just a bit too slow sometimes. Definitely would get one with a upgraded SSD and more RAM if you see one.
  - systemBuilder 8y ago
    You can put an msata drive into a sata 2.5 enclosure and stick it in your laptop. There are also pata ssds from kingspec

jokoon 8y ago

I have a L450, it might not the top-notch quality thinkpad, but it's still pretty good. I have a chiclet keyboard, seems preferable. I had to manually remove the FN, INS, PGDN and PGUP keys though, for more comfortable typing. Also choosing a graphic chipset instead of a laptop GPU seems like the best option.

keithpeter 8y ago

"The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack." Things like scrolling down a recent issue Web site are the main reason I'm not still using a vintage unmodified X200. I realise that the OA quote was probably tongue in cheek but I do find that surfing the Web has become a processor intensive activity!

0x03 8y ago
Only if you enable JS ;)

WebDanube 8y ago

Curious about the weight of X210--couldn't find it mentioned anywhere. I'm guessing such a feature-packed device must greatly compromise on the portability factor.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
keithpeter 8y ago
Probably works out a tad lighter than the X200 with whichever battery the user decides to use. The unmodified X220 I'm writing this on weighs 1.6 kg with the 'stick out' battery and I recollect that my old X200 was about the same.

shasheene 8y ago

This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-end components can be selected with the knowledge that the cost can be spread out over a longer period. For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end gaming PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. A 2007 Lenovo ThinkPad X61 chassis is not that different to a 1997 IBM ThinkPad chassis (or a 1997 Dell Latitude XPi chassis). If the laptop industry standardized, manufacturers would produce a vast ecosystem of compatible components. Instead we got decades of incompatible laptops using several different power supply voltages (and therefore ten slightly-differently shaped barrel power plugs), many incompatibly shaped removable lithium-ion batteries, and more expense and difficulty in sourcing parts if and when components break. A little bit of forward thinking in the late 1990s would have saved a lot of eWaste.

O_H_E 8y ago
Maybe we could try and write an open letter to companies and promise support even for less value at first. Chances are slim, but at least we would have done our part.
saagarjha 8y ago
Nobody is going to do this, because good components are a competitive advantage. I can’t see any good manufacturer wanting their good {trackpad, keyboard, case} either being put in a computer that undercuts them or being forced to dumb down their computer to fit the “lowest common denominator”.
- shasheene 8y ago
  To successfully define a laptop standard, it would have taken a consortium of companies. Likely companies which aren't necessarily in the business of selling integrated laptops themselves, but would benefit from the existence of a laptop standard. It's likely companies like Microsoft (pre-Surface), peripheral manufacturers (eg, Logitech) and motherboard manufacturers (eg, Gigabyte) would have gladly got on board in that era. It's likely too late to start this in 2019 (but I may be wrong). Certainly the late-1990s would have been the ideal time for this.

pixelmonkey 8y ago

If you can still find one on then used market, I'll put in a plug for the Lenovo X1C 4th Gen (2016 model) as an ideal Linux laptop. It's what I switched to after the x220, and I describe it here: https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux Fan never turns on, matte display, awesome connectivity, great battery life, and everything on Linux just works.

sigil 8y ago
Seconded. I had an X1C2 and am currently on an X1C5. Everything works out of the box on linux and the performance is crazy for something so thin & light (2.8lbs).
kjaer 8y ago
I recently switched to a X1C6, and I wholly agree. It's an amazing laptop in terms of hardware and build quality, but it does have a bunch of Linux compatibility problems.
- olivil 8y ago
  I have an X1C6 on Linux as well since launch, but since they added s3 sleep support it's been 100%. What compatibility issues are you having?
  - kjaer 8y ago
    The trackpad didn't work out of the box, I had to change some settings; annoying, but no big deal. What's a bigger problem is that the trackpad buttons don't work after suspending/hibernating, and I still haven't been able to fix that. Also, the fingerprint reader and NFC do not have any drivers on Linux. The Arch wiki page[1] has been tremendously helpful in getting set up. However, I think the length of the article goes some way toward showing that compatibility is far from perfect. The trackpad / NFC issues seem to only be present on laptops with NFC behind the trackpad, so my recommendation would be to avoid that one if it's possible to get a similar model without. [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_6) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...

ahstilde 8y ago

Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine? Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?

ilrwbwrkhv 8y ago
exactly and thinkpads especially. they are usually used in critical places.
elagost 8y ago
There's more or less a cult around using Linux on older Thinkpads. They're so widely available for so cheap, and since so many people use and test software with them, pretty much every Linux distro works out of the box. The older models are coreboot and libreboot-friendly, the keyboards are amazing, and almost every single part is replacable (the older 14" models have socketed processors even). Many still enjoy the old IBM models. I'm typing this on an X220 model, and I do understand the risks associated, which is why it's running coreboot, a stripped-down Intel ME, and GNU/Linux (as opposed to original firmware and Windows). The X220 that I'm using has run every Linux distro I can think of with zero modifications, and I even had macOS on it as a hackintosh for a time. I've replaced the wifi card, I have two hard drives in it and two batteries for it, and it still does everything I need a computer to do with zero fuss. Even without Coreboot and Linux, many still find the risks don't outweigh the rewards. Same reason people buy newer Macbooks that lack magsafe, sd card slots, USB-A, Ethernet, a decent keyboard, an escape key, replaceable disks/RAM, etc. For Macs, it's form over function. For Thinkpads, specifically the older ones, it's the exact reverse.
camgunz 8y ago
You don't buy the new ones. You buy at latest an X230 and put Linux or BSD on it. All the excitement around 51nb is that you can upgrade to modern hardware if you think the X220 is the last good notebook ever commercially produced. A lot of people (disclaimer: including me) think that, which is why you see them as targets for things like OpenBSD and Libreboot. But you're right, I would never buy a "modern" Lenovo though. But in fairness, I don't know that I'd buy a modern notebook at all.

tbrock 8y ago

These are awesome. For a long time I’ve thought a 13.3 X thinkpad like the 2X0 series (a proper successor to the x300/x301) would be the best thing ever. You take the x2X0 chassis, renowned for portabiltiy, battery life, and repair ability and shove a 13.3 inch screen in. Just like how the 13 inch class chassis on the x1 has a 14 inch screen. Well it’s happened: the x390 now exists. Maybe ever better would be a thick X1. Not larger or wider but thicker so the battery life was insane and you could upgrade the ram to 32/64gb.

jpalomaki 8y ago
X390 looks very interesting indeed. Did not at first realize that they have actually put the larger screen to the small chassis. Lack of swappable battery is annoying. Maybe I belong to the minority, but battery life is still one of my main problems with laptops. Just so annoying to have to constantly look for an outlet in meeting rooms or conference places. I guess external USB-C batteries are the way to go.
driverdan 8y ago
The x390 screen is only 1080p.
1986 8y ago
I've seen a few people on /r/thinkpad trying to do the former, actually - modifying the bezels on an x2X0 to accommodate a 13 inch screen. One example: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/akm76s/another_x250_133_mod_in_progress/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/akm76s/another_x2...
arebours 8y ago
> Maybe ever better would be a thick X1. T480?
- tbrock 8y ago
  No, that one has stupid large bezels. You don’t get much for the thickness.

kensai 8y ago

I am happy to read this review a couple of days after I saw a video of this Unboxing guy evangelizing the use of other Thinkpads. Lenovo is definitely making nice machines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k "Unbox Therapy After many years using MacBook variants I've made the switch to Windows. I've used every version of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that have been released. My current laptop of choice is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon / Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme.Turns out switching from Mac to Windows isn't as painful as I expected."

luxuryballs 8y ago
when I watched this video a few days ago all I couldn’t get over how disingenuous he seemed, like he was just getting paid to make the video and didn’t believe anything he was saying
theshrike79 8y ago
He's been salty at Apple for years since he made a big fuss about Bendgate (pretty much started it). Hasn't been invited to an Apple event since. To the surprise of no one.
vxNsr 8y ago
Wow, how do people watch this format. Also why does he keep looking to his right off camera? I feel like I'm missing something that's happening.

testacc432 8y ago

What laptops currently out in the market have a trackpad comparable to the Macbook Pro's?

shkkmo 8y ago
Most of the good ones. Manufacturers finally realized it was a stupid detail to fail at.
- vernie 8y ago
  Be more specific.

airstrike 8y ago

> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. There's something terribly wrong with this statement

sgc 8y ago
It's a joke.

supernintendo 8y ago

Another caveat worth mentioning is that this device does not support Libreboot. That’s one the appeals of the original X200 series IMO.

GordonS 8y ago

Is anyone happy coding on such a small screen, even if it is high-res? I have a 2016 13" MBP, and find the screen too small for coding. It's high-res, but that means everything is super-small unless you increase the scaling, which of course reduces the available screen real estate. The screen is annoyingly reflective too, but that's another problem entirely. My daily driver is a 15" HP Zbook G3 with a 1080p display, which I also find too small. I'm thinking a 15", high-res display would probably be ideal for portable coding?

chronogram 8y ago
I use an external screen on my 12" laptop. Obviously not useful for coding on the train, but for those short periods the 12" is fine.
- GordonS 8y ago
  I also use external monitors during the day (27" QHD in landscape as the main one, 24" FHD in portrait as secondary), but when travelling, and in the evenings where I try to be more sociable that shutting myself away, I find the lack of screen real estate a real PITA.
mikkelam 8y ago
I once tried 15 and severely hated carrying such a huge device. I mostly dock my laptop so i dont mind the screen. I love the 13" size
- GordonS 8y ago
  The weight issue I certainly agree with - my G3 is big and heavy, whereas my MBP is small and light. I also mostly dock my laptop, but I still spend a lot of time undocked (probably 15-20 hours a week).
efficax 8y ago
yes
josteink 8y ago

zamadatix 8y ago

Mini DP -> HDMI is possible you just need to buy an active one instead of a passive one.

gesman 8y ago

Nvme SSD slot + plenty of USB 3 slots + ability to plug in 32GB RAM easily is great. Any company reducing physical peripherals slots on their devices should be publicly condemned!

GuB-42 8y ago

What about the GPU? I wanted a ThinkPad but while they were overall good laptops none of them offered a decent GPU except for the very expensive and massive "workstation" models with Quadros on the level of a mid range GTX. I get that these aren't gaming laptops but why not give us the option of doing at least some gaming. And GPUs aren't just for gaming we did some projects at work that involved 3D rendering, plus there is all that GPGPU thing. In the end I got a light gaming laptop, and at work, they also got gaming laptops for these projects that involve 3D. With RGB and all that, something I find kind of fun in a "serious business" environment.

alipang 8y ago
Depending on what you want, a gaming box like https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N1070IXEB-8GD#kf https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N1070IXEB-8GD#kf might do the trick. There's a lot of great laptops like the XPS13 that won't do gaming, but can do so with an external box.
disconcision 8y ago
The P1/X1e is 3.7 lbs and has a P2000/1050ti
Improvotter 8y ago
It'd be neat if this had thunderbolt (or wait for USB4) so you could use an external GPU. I've heard that it works for some people.
nl 8y ago
You can get Surface Laptop 2 with a GTX 1060, and Razor has some nice looking, non-huge laptops with RTX-series. I'm mostly interest in running ML on them, and Linux support is somewhat spotty though.

noir_lord 8y ago

I wonder why Lenovo doesn't lean into this. Clearly there is a market for people wanting this kind of machine to the extent they are jumping through hoops for it. I have a maxed out T470P (stock) and it's a cracking little machine and while the keyboard is by modern standards excellent that's because the bar shifted, it's still not as nice as the one on my old R50 was.

intopieces 8y ago
I suspect that their primary market is corporations, who have the resources to repair Lenovo's newest models or else have contracts for replacement.
efficax 8y ago
Lenovo knows about the love for the retro Thinkpads, and even tried to take advantage of it: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/ThinkPad-25/p/22TP2TTTP25 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser... It was a decent showing, but not what I wanted (an X60 form factor with a 4k 4:3 screen)
- systemBuilder 8y ago
  A friend of mine who loves thinkpads bought two of those T25 anniversary models (2017). Sadly the only thing that was ThinkPad about that model is the keyboard. The CPU was a meh i5-7200. The motherboard was stupidly designed and the power switch had to come up through a hole in the keyboard. That's not how T4x/T6x series thinkpads work. Also there was no thinklight. Overall what they did was bring back the keyboard and then quit.
chx 8y ago
Hell if I know. On various forums we have raised the idea but I guess it just doesn't get through they should run a Kickstarter for the classic keyboard in the, say, successor of the T490 (because the 10nm is going to be a huge change so ppl want to buy that more). If successful, Lenovo adds this option while people front the cost of creating it -- new plastic mould for the palmrest etc -- and get a discount code they can put in when ordering the new machine with the classic keyboard. All this takes very little effort from Lenovo -- all their backend system needs is a batch entry of discount codes. They don't need to ship anything separately and if the Kickstarter fails, they spent very little money.

TheCowboy 8y ago

It's a shame the Thinkpad Retro / 25 Anniversary Edition was released as a one time thing. I think it likely hurt the excitement behind buying one as you could end up with a machine that would be hard to find spare parts for in the future. I never got a chance to buy one because they sold out and didn't release more.

systemBuilder 8y ago
My friend bought TWO and it was totally meh. Yes they did put a nice retro keyboard on that thing. It had the same horrible scratchpad as other thinkpads. No thinklight. Basically it was just a t440 with a nicer keyboard. The CPU (I5-7200) was crap. NO GRAPHICS ACCELERATION AT ALL.

cpburns2009 8y ago

"The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack." That's amusing and sad.

leiroigh 8y ago

I am a happy owner of an x62. This article almost convinced me to buy an x210 next. Minor gripes: (1) The dispayport-hdmi thing, (2) the mainboard is split (sound + rhs usb are on a separate board) and the small part has pretty flimsy attachement inside the case, (3) the CPU (i5 broadwell engineering sample) is pretty lackluster but perfect for development (no turbo, no throttling, no surprises), (4) finding an ok screen is hard, (5) nobody told me that I have to buy a separate wifi card. There is a free mini-pci slot, but 51nb could have been clearer on their online description, (5) the old x60 speakers suck. Overall, it is an awesome machine (trackpoint, ibm keyboard, beautiful rubberized metal case). And shockingly cheap: An x62 mainboard, plus an old x60 chassis from ebay and battery from amazon, plus screen from alibaba, plus SSD, wifi-card and ram comes at ~$600 (I think?), cheap enough to buy as an experiment. I can definitely recommend to anyone who is ok with a little tinkering and the small adventure of ordering this from China (best approach: have Chinese colleague). edit: Linux drivers work perfectly. Really, the ram was the most expensive component of this build. To expand on the no-surprises advantage of the CPU: To me it is more important to effortlessly benchmark small code changes than to quickly compile large codebases. And the weird engineering sample CPU that the 51nb guys sourced somewhere is absolutely perfect for that: Timings reliably match up with Agner Fog's instruction tables / iaca, without anything getting into the way (after the kernel cpufreq manager adjusted).

ggreer 8y ago
I'm not sure what screen you got off Alibaba but if you want something better, you might want to try the daylight LED mod.[1] You won't get better color gamut, but you will get insane brightness and better battery life. I did that mod to my X62 and it made the screen actually usable. 1. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml
- xiphmont 8y ago
  It'll be a little while before I'm offering them again. Still clearing new projects out of the way.

subway 8y ago

and sound like jet engines..

xiphmont 8y ago

Echoing Geoff's article, I'm a big fan of the 51nb mobos from the X62 on. The X62 was very very good, and the T70 and X210 are even better. Can't wait for the X63. One reason I'm taking time off from making X62 backlight kits is to make some new mods for the latest machines-- a 13" 3k screen and internal battery. I've gotten both running, but it takes time to work kinks out of production. It's also why I've been working on my microscope. :-)

swiley 8y ago

Not an X210 but you can get refurbished X201s for just about nothing. They suck for games but I don't really know how to improve them as a homework/development computer (maybe EFI would be nice but that actually exists as part of the open source replacement firmware.)

EdgarVerona 8y ago

I'm sold on 3:2 aspect ratio, and wish there was a wider variety of modern laptops available possessing that screen ratio. I hate looking for laptops and finding the only ones with reasonable specs to have widescreen aspect ratios. I feel noticeably constrained using them for anything other than playing games and watching videos.

mtw 8y ago

> doing something intensive like... scrolling in Slack There's something wrong if you go thru all of this and Slack consumes significant resources on your laptop.

dangban 8y ago

It looks like the 13 year old Thinkpad R60 I keep as a backup (mine also has a mini trackpad). With 3 gigs of RAM and a 480gig SSD. The first version of Windows 10 Pro works on it, but I can't get the Windows 10 Pro product key to work on it. More recent versions of Windows 10 Pro do not install on it. Anyone know how to get a legal Windows 10 Pro product key working on the first (July 2015) version of Windows 10 Pro?

trollied 8y ago

> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. Made me chuckle :-)

pascoej 8y ago

I went and visited their office in SZ last summer to buy one of these motherboards. I was amazed that it seemed like a 5-7 person operation and they designed a modern laptop motherboard. Maybe they contracted out some work and the office was mostly just operational people, but it was really cool to talk to a bunch of retro thinkpad enthusiasts making what they love.

daveheq 8y ago

That is beautiful... I loved those old 4:3 high-res laptops with big arrow keys. Now standard laptops are small-screen low-res tiny-keys... pain in the ass.

spion 8y ago

You know you're doing something wrong when a company that sells alternative parts for your old products is doing better in the news.

fao_ 8y ago

> You can even replace the Trackpoint and the little rubber feet without much trouble. I've been trying desperately to source rubber feet for my X200 but can't find them anywhere.

qwerty456127 8y ago

So sweet...

umvi 8y ago

I noticed the author names his computers after elements (iron). I do that too! I was taken aback because I have a box named "iron" also (as well as cobalt, oxygen, and helium)

ggreer 8y ago
I name all of my computers after elements. I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc. I also tend to categorize machines by elemental classification. Servers are alkalai metals, laptops are nonmetals, consoles are halogens, etc. I didn't have any neat nonmetals left, so I just called my new laptop "iron". I describe the whole scheme in a blog post I wrote long ago: https://geoff.greer.fm/2009/06/17/hostnames/ https://geoff.greer.fm/2009/06/17/hostnames/
- umvi 8y ago
  > I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc. Ok, that's definitely a step farther than I've ever taken it. Ingenious though, I'm stealing that idea!

b3b0p 8y ago

I have a MacBook Pro (2017, 15" top model). I came from a Thinkpad running Red Hat and FreeBSD later. I have been for the last couple years putting a Thinkpad (P52 or X1 Carbon/Extreme or P1) I'm lusting over in my cart, but not hitting the buy button. After owning this MacBook Pro, my first question is how replaceable are the keyboards? I want to have a spare in the case of spills, crumbs, dirt, etc and so forth. It's piece of mind at this point. From my quick and dirty research, they aren't as replaceable as they used to be, but still able to be done by the user. The P52/72 seem to be the only easy option like the, "good old days." While the X1/P1/X series require the entire top palm rest replaced, which is costlier, but it's an option none the less. I'm eyeing either an X1 Extreme, P52, or maybe getting something slightly more portable like the X390. I feel this is the year I'm finally going to hit that buy button and at least test the waters if I can get myself out of the Apple Ecosystem and survive without regrets using Linux, even so, it will be a fun experiment.

systemBuilder 8y ago
MacBook Pro keyboard replacement is a nightmare it's a 3-hour process search up the videos on YouTube you have to undo about 50 screws. The sooner you realize that Apple only makes throw away shit the better off you'll be in life!
ww520 8y ago
I stocked up thin silicon membrane keyboard covers, put one over the keyboard, and replace it every 6 months. It prevent spills and scratch. Keyboard can get really dirty. Replacing it once a while is like getting a new keyboard.
- b3b0p 8y ago
  This is what I have on my MacBook Pro now, since the millisecond I took it out of the box. It's just not as pleasurable to type on, especially comparing to say, a Thinkpad keyboard. I was thinking how much peace of mind I would have using a bare Thinkpad P52 keyboard with a spare in the closet and knowing I can just go to Lenovo's parts site and order up a new one for a reasonable cost.

keyle 8y ago

The irony is not lost on me... > The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

I hadn't realised about the (lack of) HDMI over DisplayPort - now I don't feel so bad that I can't afford one - this would render it much less useful to me.

systemBuilder 8y ago

You guys thinking ATX is a standard has me laughing my head off. On those motherboards we had 6 bus 'standards', 6 video card 'standards' (AGP, AGP 2X, AGP 4X, ...), 6+ disk 'standards' (IDE, EIDE, PATA, SATA-1,2,3, M.2, PCI, and the list goes on). the biggest joke is that CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years and yet we are still fooled into buying entirely new systems every two or three years by the Intel-Microsoft-Dell-Motherboard Cabal.

tbolt 8y ago
Can you provide some evidence that “CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years?”
shasheene 8y ago
Video card interface electrical standards may have changed, but GPU form factors have not. Electrical interface changes just need to be paired with compatible motherboards. Same with hard drives: the interface changed but the form factor has not. They are even compatible with their larger versions: a laptop 2.5" platter drive or SSD can fit in a 3.5" drive bay with a cheap bracket. The SATA versions were backwards compatible speed bumps. Performance was always the maximum supported on the motherboard. M.2 is just PCIe in a different form factor, so on desktops a $5 passive adapter allows NVMe SSDs to be used on any PCIe slot on even on relatively ancient PCs (though use as a boot drive dependent on BIOS support). Same with display interfaces. VGA is still supported on many systems, with DVI-I being backwards compatible with cheap passive adapters. DVI and HDMI are electrically identically (minus audio) so cheap passive adapters work. The broader point is that large incompatible electrical changes are possible because they only mean the new motherboard just needs to be paired with a compatible component. There's still market pressure for backwards compatibility unless the leap is large enough.
detaro 8y ago
> the biggest joke is that CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years 2009 high-end/enthusiast desktop CPU: Intel Core i7-975 2019 high-end/enthusiast desktop CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K Single-thread performance has doubled. And the i9 has double the number of threads. And uses less energy. > and yet we are still fooled into buying entirely new systems every two or three years by the Intel-Microsoft-Dell-Motherboard Cabal. The point is that you do not need to buy an entirely new systems every two or three years (and I personally know few people that do), but can comfortably upgrade parts. CPU upgrade compatibility has sometimes been annoyingly short, but most of time you can easily extend the lifetime of a system by buying a former high-end CPU for cheap, and for other pieces compatibility is way longer. SATA drives from 10 years ago still work with modern PCs if they survived (or your PC from 10 years ago you still use because "CPUs haven't become faster" can be upgraded with a SATA or PCIe SSD, which it can't fully utilize, but it'll work and make a difference. PCIe cards always have been compatible between versions, you had the choice between AGP and PCIe for quite a while (when that switch happened, like 15 years ago?), and technically can still buy boards with PCI ports today (although that's a market niche).

m0zg 8y ago

Just buy a Carbon X1 that's a couple of generations behind "current" - they're still being sold. Amazing battery life, trackpoint, high res screen (if you want it), super light, tough, good keyboard. And it's cheaper, too. What's not to like? Mine is 3.5 years old now, still going strong. Running Ubuntu since day one.

mberning 8y ago

I find it hard to believe they put a 2TB m.2 ssd and 32GB of ram in it for $1200. Surely that was added on top of the $1200 base price, which makes this much less attractive than it sounds.

paulddraper 8y ago

Interesting. What's the difference between this and the Thinkpad P-series? (That's what I use.)

kristianp 8y ago

Can they do upgrades of my old T410? Love the keyboard on that, I blame Apple for ruining the keyboard experience since the loss of separate pg up and pg down keys, and Intel for standardising that layout in the ultrabook spec.

bitL 8y ago

I can't comprehend why not a single company could do a notebook like this! Classical keyboard, hi-dpi 3:2 screen, centered trackpad (well, in this case not 100%), latest CPU/memory/SSD. Is it that difficult?

untog 8y ago
To sell enough of them at a price people want to pay? Sadly, yes.
- bitL 8y ago
  They can bump the price and it would sell like hot cakes among developers. There are simply no similar products on the market. If NUC is profitable, which is a niche product, I can't see how such a notebook couldn't be (given at least minimal marketing and not putting a product notice into a locked cellar).
iNate2000 8y ago
Isn't that Surface Book?

krick 8y ago

I don't get it. How is it Thinkpad X-something, and yet "made by a group of enthusiasts, not a big company"? Is it an illegal rip-off? Is it Lenovo lending their name to someone else? What is this 51NB exactly?

truth_seeker 8y ago

>> If the SSD fails, you can replace it. If the RAM fails, you can replace it. If the wifi card fails, you can replace it. If the screen fails, you can replace it. You can even replace the Trackpoint and the little rubber feet without much trouble. The laptop can be entirely disassembled with two Philips screwheads (#0 and #1). At no point do you encounter tape, glue, or pentalobe screws. I am sold, totally :)

danlan 8y ago

I'm still using a 2015 MBP and can't bring myself to upgrade. I'd love to see a service like 51NB for Macbook Pro's, does something similar exist? 2018 logic board internals in a 2015 logic board form factor maybe?

isostatic 8y ago

Why don't Lenevo build these types of laptops any more? There's clearly a demand for a laptop with a good keyboard and screen, but "wiring $1200 to someone’s personal bank account in China, then e-mailing a qq.com address." is something I'm not particularly happy with. I'll just stick to repairing my 9 year old t410s.

dotancohen 8y ago

> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. The next time somebody asks why everybody has a problem with Electron, I'm referring them to this page.

cztomsik 8y ago
I scroll a lot in vscode and it's fine... but yeah, it could be lighter
lucideer 8y ago
Electron is far from ideal, and it may be argued it's incredibly difficult to make a relatively efficient Electron app (vscode is often cited as one, but Microsoft has plenty of resources). However, for all the efficiency challenges Electron brings, Slack is universally cited in types of comments such as the above. This makes me highly suspect that—beyond being just written in Electron—Slack is actually an extremely poorly written app, and just the canonical example of overengineered inefficiency in general. Slack Web, for example, also does similarly draconian things to my CPU. Similarly, Riot.im—probably the most comparable app to Slack functionality-wise—is also built in Electron. It has some of the performance problems one would expect from any Electron app, but it is nowhere near as bad as Slack (and has a much much smaller development team with much tighter resources). In short: Electron may not be ideal, but it seems to get an unfairly bad name from Slack; we should be laying the criticism with the Slack dev team rather than with the Electron one.
- s_ngularity 8y ago
  I think the disproportionate noise about Slack is just due to it being (often without choice) used by so many people, and hence to cite that people only complain about Slack as evidence that Slack is worse than other Electron apps isn't very convincing.
  - lucideer 8y ago
    > people only complain about Slack as evidence that Slack is worse than other Electron apps isn't very convincing. Spotify is almost certainly used by many more people than Slack, and vscode's usage is probably at least within an order of magnitude. The general feedback in comments is that Spotify is bad but not exceptionally so, and that vscode is actually very performant (not when compared to Vim, but it seems to do fine in the context of GUI IDEs). The other app that there has been a lot of complaints about in the past has been Atom. These have declined recently due to improvements by the Atom team, but also: Atom being the very first ever Electron app probably didn't help here either.

mcv 8y ago

"Like the X62, the X210 is made by 51NB, a group of enthusiasts in Shenzhen." Is that normal? That a group of enthusiasts designs Thinkpad models?

0815test 8y ago
Is not officially Thinkpad model. Is "Frankenpad", made by combining parts from many Thinkpad model, in a creative way. This is what "group of enthusiast" in Shenzen do.

el_cujo 8y ago

It seems really counter-intuitive to me that you'd pay $1200 for a Thinkpad. Isn't their popularity largely because old models are widely-available, reliable, and most importantly, dirt cheap? I don't do anything on my T420 but use the terminal and the web browser and the hardware has been sufficient, though I guess if you're gonna be rolling with multiple electron apps, upgraded hardware might make all the difference.

anderspitman 8y ago

My 2011 X220 refuses to die. It's been tossed in bags, scuffed, cracked, and burned with a candle. The keyboard is perfect. Touchpad is fine. Wifi is excellent. Upgradeability unmatched. I'm running Linux with a tiling window manager, and performance is fine for pretty much everything I want to do, including compilation. It runs super hot (80C+ sometimes), but is always way quieter than my XPS15 from work. Only complaint is the low resolution of the screen (1366x768). 1080p would be perfect for the 12.5in screen.

dwhitney 8y ago
"burned with a candle" - nobody upvoted you for any reason other than wanting to know how this happened. Do tell, OP!
- michaelgrafl 8y ago
  I would guess he put his laptop close to a candle which was subsequently tipped over. But maybe there was Satanism involved. In that case please do tell, Mr. OP!
- anderspitman 8y ago
  My sister put a candle on the table and the rising heat was barely under the lip of my open laptop lid. It melted a bit of the plastic, but the damage was only cosmetic. Sorry; pretty anticlimactic I know haha.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

How does this compare to the 25th Anniversary Thinkpad that seemed to be produced solely to scratch this kind of enthusiast itch?