4 ms·

It flat out amazes me that there are not replacement motherboards or Pi upgrade kits for older Thinkpads and MacBooks. They have a huge following and many amaz

It flat out amazes me that there are not replacement motherboards or Pi upgrade kits for older Thinkpads and MacBooks. They have a huge following and many amazing features as you say. The MacBook screens, trackpads, keyboards, and speakers are still top shelf. I have a couple of old MacBooks (and a Thinkpad) that I would upgrade for sure. A Snapdragon X Elite would be great. The thing about a Pi 5 though is that it is really not any faster than the X220 natively.

boogsbyte 1y ago
That's not true. There have been modded ThinkPads with modern motherboards for many years now. https://www.tpart.net/product-category/all-products/ https://www.tpart.net/product-category/all-products/
- justaj 1y ago
  But only on the original can you install Libreboot (currently, at least)
- camgunz 1y ago
  Fair but they're very small batch.
camgunz 1y ago
I had an X62 (upgraded motherboard in an x60 shell from 51nb) and my brother had whatever the upgraded X220 was, but they were a little flaky. Super cool though. AIUI the thermal design is the blocker with modern chipsets. Usually it's really carefully tuned along with software to dial in the right performance/battery life/longevity/safety metrics, and that's a different skillset than EE'ing a new board. > The thing about a Pi 5 though is that it is really not any faster than the X220 natively. It's generally faster [0] but I mean, it's the Raspberry Pi experience. Battery life would be much better, though. I understand people wanting a "modern" X220, but a big benefit for me is that I can't write junk slow software on it, so something circumspect like an SBC is ideal for me. Plus I love the idea of slapping a new CM in there and everything getting better. > speakers are still top shelf I'll confess to apostasy: I bought a 14" M1 Max at the end of 2021. Although it's quite different than the X220 it's a great machine in its own right, and one of the ways it's objectively better is its speaker system. It's bananas how good it sounds. It's a computer I hate to love, but I agree the Apple Silicon laptops are probably all time great laptops. I"m tempted to say they're maybe even on par w/ the X/T series 2005-2012, but they're essentially not user serviceable, and in particular I'm skeptical the keyboards and storage hold up over time, so we'll see what the used market looks like in a few years. [0]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/12009065?baseline=8981415 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/12009065?baseli...

boogsbyte 1y ago

That's not true. There have been modded ThinkPads with modern motherboards for many years now. https://www.tpart.net/product-category/all-products/ https://www.tpart.net/product-category/all-products/

justaj 1y ago
But only on the original can you install Libreboot (currently, at least)
camgunz 1y ago
Fair but they're very small batch.

camgunz 1y ago

I had an X62 (upgraded motherboard in an x60 shell from 51nb) and my brother had whatever the upgraded X220 was, but they were a little flaky. Super cool though. AIUI the thermal design is the blocker with modern chipsets. Usually it's really carefully tuned along with software to dial in the right performance/battery life/longevity/safety metrics, and that's a different skillset than EE'ing a new board. > The thing about a Pi 5 though is that it is really not any faster than the X220 natively. It's generally faster [0] but I mean, it's the Raspberry Pi experience. Battery life would be much better, though. I understand people wanting a "modern" X220, but a big benefit for me is that I can't write junk slow software on it, so something circumspect like an SBC is ideal for me. Plus I love the idea of slapping a new CM in there and everything getting better. > speakers are still top shelf I'll confess to apostasy: I bought a 14" M1 Max at the end of 2021. Although it's quite different than the X220 it's a great machine in its own right, and one of the ways it's objectively better is its speaker system. It's bananas how good it sounds. It's a computer I hate to love, but I agree the Apple Silicon laptops are probably all time great laptops. I"m tempted to say they're maybe even on par w/ the X/T series 2005-2012, but they're essentially not user serviceable, and in particular I'm skeptical the keyboards and storage hold up over time, so we'll see what the used market looks like in a few years. [0]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/12009065?baseline=8981415 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/12009065?baseli...