• CIPWTTKT&GC V43 - WHERE IS MY THINKPAD?
    5,002 replies, posted
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52164913]Legit question, but why are you guys still refuse to move on from a 5+ year old laptops?[/QUOTE] For me it's a mixture of the fact that my X230 just does everything I need and want it to. I have no reason to. That and the fact that upgrading makes certain things more difficult. I have a decent degree of control over this laptop that is lost in newer generation. I don't want soldered [b]single-channel[/b] RAM, I like having DIMMs that I can actually have in dual-channel. I also like having Ivy because it's a generation I can reliably nuke the ME on and have coreboot with. There's not really any better options for me right now. I'd love something like an XPS 13 but there's just too many compromises there that I don't want to make. Plus, I don't want to give Intel new money while they're doing the shit they are with the ME, nor do I want to with AMD right now with the PSP.
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52164913]Legit question, but why are you guys still refuse to move on from a 5+ year old laptops?[/QUOTE] I will never find the features my T30 has anywhere else.
I was a college student on a budget so I bought one of my school's old T400s so that I can watch Netflix and YouTube when I'm not projecting half-assed group projects to a screen. Speaking of which, an update for Power Manager recently broke my ability to switch between integrated and discrete graphics so I had to roll back :hammered:
[QUOTE=nikomo;52164918]I just did? My previous laptop was a ThinkPad Edge E325 purchased in 2012.[/QUOTE] Your "new" laptop has a Sandy Bridge CPU. It's still 5 years old [QUOTE=wingless;52164941]For me it's a mixture of the fact that my X230 just does everything I need and want it to. I have no reason to. That and the fact that upgrading makes certain things more difficult. I have a decent degree of control over this laptop that is lost in newer generation. I don't want soldered [b]single-channel[/b] RAM, I like having DIMMs that I can actually have in dual-channel. I also like having Ivy because it's a generation I can reliably nuke the ME on and have coreboot with. There's not really any better options for me right now.[B] I'd love something like an XPS 13 but there's just too many compromises there that I don't want to make.[/B] Plus, I don't want to give Intel new money while they're doing the shit they are with the ME, nor do I want to with AMD right now with the PSP.[/QUOTE] What compromises are you thinking of? I just recently bought a Dell XPS 15 last week and it's honestly the best laptop I've laid my hands on. Just like all ultrabook-grade laptops nowadays, it doesn't have a NIC. This doesn't really bother me that much though, but it would be nice to have. Also I feel like the ME/PSP conspiracy is too far fetched. It's very unlikely for it to serve the roles of spying on your computer for NSA, or allowing Chinese hackers to get into your system. Both Intel and AMD describes as ME/PSP to provide integrity to system security, including active protection to prevent low level hardware attacks, and supporting other security related tasks such as secure boot from what I remembered. I don't see how this is hard to believe. [QUOTE=pentium;52164964]I will never find the features my T30 has anywhere else.[/QUOTE] And which obsolete features are you thinking of?
*Obligatory Dell shill for 7 series latitudes that are ultrabooks and serviceable and have ports*
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52165040]Your "new" laptop has a Sandy Bridge CPU. It's still 5 years old What compromises are you thinking of? I just recently bought a Dell XPS 15 last week and it's honestly the best laptop I've laid my hands on. Just like all ultrabook-grade laptops nowadays, it doesn't have a NIC. This doesn't really bother me that much though, but it would be nice to have. Also I feel like the ME/PSP conspiracy is too far fetched. It's very unlikely for it to serve the roles of spying on your computer for NSA, or allowing Chinese hackers to get into your system. Both Intel and AMD describes as ME/PSP to provide integrity to system security, including active protection to prevent low level hardware attacks, and supporting other security related tasks such as secure boot from what I remembered. I don't see how this is hard to believe. And which obsolete features are you thinking of?[/QUOTE] The problem with the ME or PSP isn't necessarily what is or isn't going on. It's the fact that there is no transparency in a system that can have effectively full control over your system. It's the fact that we don't know. It's the fact that no matter what they refuse to let us know. There is no trust. It means that no matter what we cannot, at the most fundamental level, trust our systems. That's regardless of what it's actually doing. In terms of stuff missing, what I mean is in the case of my Thinkpad, I can easily replace the keyboard in 3 seconds, I can do the display in 3 minutes, SSD in 5 seconds, etc. It's more about the design. Nothing is soldered, everything is replaceable and everything is easy to. To me, that is lustworthy. I still love the XPS 13 and 15 but there's just a few things there that break it for me, unfortunately. They are a sexy machine though.
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52164913]Legit question, but why are you guys still refuse to move on from a 5+ year old laptops?[/QUOTE] Same reason /o/ refuses to move on from 20 year old shitboxes It's cheap, they work, and they have [I]soul[/I]
Also not all of us can afford to justify spending a lot on an item that will depreciate in value ridiculously fast.
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52165040]Your "new" laptop has a Sandy Bridge CPU. It's still 5 years old[/QUOTE] It's a 2x CPU performance improvement with better display drivers available (old AMD APU -> Intel CPU) and a bunch of Intel-specific extensions that help a lot with performance, and it's just a better-built version of my old laptop. And it cost [B]130€[/B] If you gave me a Carbon X1 for 130€, I'd have taken that, but I have no reason to pay that kind of money for a laptop since 1) I don't have that much to spend on a laptop. 2) This thing's running GNOME and a bunch of shit at the same time fine. The laptop is supplementing my desktop, which is fairly up-to-date if you disregard the CPU, so I don't exactly need a desktop replacement laptop. Edit: When I get my SOIC8 clip through eBay, I'll probably be throwing coreboot with SeaBIOS on this laptop. It's not exactly a critical requirement for me, but a lot of BIOSes have blacklisting in them, including the one in X220. With coreboot and SeaBIOS, I can run whatever I want in the extra mini PCI-E slot, I'll probably be throwing in a cheap 3G modem instead of the one that's officially sanctioned by the default BIOS.
I've just had a rather stupid thought, has there been like any like top end laptops as of the last say, 5 years that use a mini trackball instead of a trackpad or other types of mouse devices. Like you'd think a trackball would kinda work, other than the bulk it adds to the whole device, but say a high end laptop, they normally can be quite thick and a trackball is a lot nicer to use than a pad. But then again if you're buying one of those laptops you're likely going to be using it with a mouse and keyboard hooked up to it and just using the laptop as a base unit replacement with built in screen so it kinda makes it all pointless in the end. I miss trackballs.
[QUOTE=Reagy;52165193]I've just had a rather stupid thought, has there been like any like top end laptops as of the last say, 5 years that use a mini trackball instead of a trackpad or other types of mouse devices. Like you'd think a trackball would kinda work, other than the bulk it adds to the whole device, but say a high end laptop, they normally can be quite thick and a trackball is a lot nicer to use than a pad. But then again if you're buying one of those laptops you're likely going to be using it with a mouse and keyboard hooked up to it and just using the laptop as a base unit replacement with built in screen so it kinda makes it all pointless in the end. I miss trackballs.[/QUOTE] I'd love more trackballs in laptops but the problem is they're kinda a problem in that you need a good amount of hard space between the display and keyboard, otherwise you close your display a little to hard once and it's cracked.
[QUOTE=Reagy;52165193] I miss trackballs.[/QUOTE] i sure as hell don't miss my trackball those were dark days
[QUOTE=wingless;52165206]I'd love more trackballs in laptops but the problem is they're kinda a problem in that you need a good amount of hard space between the display and keyboard, otherwise you close your display a little to hard once and it's cracked.[/QUOTE] True, it'd have to be recessed into the frame or be on a spring system at least so it can be pressed down into the frame. But then again if it was put onto one of those laptops which basically has a cherry based keyboard thrown into it, it should have enough height from the keys alone to allow putting in a trackball instead of a pad. But then again that's getting a bit silly in its self, mechanical keyboards in laptops are really not viable at all.
[QUOTE=Reagy;52165225]True, it'd have to be recessed into the frame or be on a spring system at least so it can be pressed down into the frame. But then again if it was put onto one of those laptops which basically has a cherry based keyboard thrown into it, it should have enough height from the keys alone to allow putting in a trackball instead of a pad. But then again that's getting a bit silly in its self, mechanical keyboards in laptops are really not viable at all.[/QUOTE] I'm with you, it'd be cute, just mechanically would be frustrating :(
I just want someone to make an adhesive bluetooth nub mouse Having a track nipple on the bottom lid of the computer would be nice for one-hand usage of a laptop while holding it
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52164913]Legit question, but why are you guys still refuse to move on from a 5+ year old laptops?[/QUOTE] You can get a 12" laptop with a 1st gen i5 and 4gb of ram (upgradeable to 8gb), some of which come with a 120gb SSD for ~$100 Used thinkpads are basically the perfect storm of high availability/low demand, good build quality, and pretty decent specs [editline]29th April 2017[/editline] Honestly build quality is the thing I like most, they're built way better than any of the $500 laptops I've owned
There's also the fact that a Thinkpad costs like $125 and does everything I need and want, compared to other laptops several magnitudes higher in cost with worse build quality that will only achieve the same amount of functionality. Also I love the expandability of ExpressCard and the best replacement for that is Thunderbolt, but I've only ever seen $1k+ laptops with Thunderbolt. [editline].[/editline] Ninja'd Certain Thinkpads also have great Hackintosh compatibility which is most of the reason I got an X220 in the first place. The X220's ability to run the latest version of all three major OSes with few issues makes it an extremely useful laptop. MacOS Sierra has been doing great as my daily driver and I didn't have to pay an absurd amount for a laptop that can run it. Legit the only issue I can think of on the X220 is the wimpy Intel HD 3000.
[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;52165443]Legit the only issue I can think of on the X220 is the wimpy Intel HD 3000.[/QUOTE] It does also have a 1366x768 screen and weighs more than modern 14" laptops though (especially the x220t) Not that that's a downside [I]for the price[/I] and the second part isn't an issue if you don't have wimpy arms but it's really a stretch to call those non-issues
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52165040] And which obsolete features are you thinking of?[/QUOTE] Dual PCMCIA slots, Ultrabay 2000/Ultrabay Plus support and the best fucking docking station around. Given that it is a laptop it has a ton of expandability and doesn't have compatibility issues with some of the order equipment I use that requires IEEE/EIA spec serial and parallel ports. But alright, if you want to fondle your Lenovo branded piece of creaky shit, all to you.
[QUOTE=fishyfish777;52165537]It does also have a 1366x768 screen and weighs more than modern 14" laptops though (especially the x220t) Not that that's a downside [I]for the price[/I] and the second part isn't an issue if you don't have wimpy arms but it's really a stretch to call those non-issues[/QUOTE] The 1366x768 screen is definitely an issue if it bothers you yeah, but I don't mind it. Weight really is a non-issue though the X220 does not weigh much at all. The weight difference between my Acer C720P Chromebook and my X220 in my bag is completely unnoticeable for me. The only issue being the Intel HD 3000 statement was about me specifically, as B1NARY's question was about why we don't get newer laptops, rather than why someone else might want to buy it :v:
The problem with trackball vs trackpad is, two-finger scroll is amazing. You could probably throw a mousewheel somewhere around the trackball if you really built enough space for it, but come on.
[QUOTE=pentium;52165569]But alright, if you want to fondle your Lenovo branded piece of creaky shit, all to you.[/QUOTE] I know arguing new vs old technology is a pointless endeavor with you but I'll mention this anyway :v: Lenovo only started to be shit post-2013ish and the X220/T430/others are fine Thinkpads alongside the older IBM ones. Sure a T30 is great for you, but I see very little reason for a laptop made in 2012 to include the older technologies you mentioned. [editline]29th April 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=nikomo;52165627]The problem with trackball vs trackpad is, two-finger scroll is amazing. You could probably throw a mousewheel somewhere around the trackball if you really built enough space for it, but come on.[/QUOTE] Trackpoint mustard race, forget trackballs and trackpads
[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;52165630]I know arguing new vs old technology is a pointless endeavor with you but I'll mention this anyway :v: Lenovo only started to be shit post-2013ish and the X220/T430/others are fine Thinkpads alongside the older IBM ones. Sure a T30 is great for you, but I see very little reason for a laptop made in 2012 to include the older technologies you mentioned. [editline]29th April 2017[/editline] Trackpoint mustard race, forget trackballs and trackpads[/QUOTE] Honestly after getting used to all of them, the only Lenovo / IBM generation that stands out as exceptionally shit is the T440 era T460s' and T420s' are quite nice to use in their own ways, but using that shitty clunkpad in the T440s for more than 2 seconds invokes homicidal thoughts in anyone
If my grandparents would want a new laptop, I would look at a 1366x768 screen just because DPI scaling is shitty enough on Windows to not introduce them to these problems that may occur. They don't need a high-res screen, because their vision is bad enough and I guess they haven't noticed pixels on their current screen too. My mothers laptop has a 1080p screen and win7 with DPI scaling set at 150% or so. Most things scale really well, but task manager for example doesn't. Haven't upgraded parents to Win10 yet because it requires learning something new and that disturbs their usual routine.
[QUOTE=nikomo;52165627]The problem with trackball vs trackpad is, two-finger scroll is amazing. You could probably throw a mousewheel somewhere around the trackball if you really built enough space for it, but come on.[/QUOTE] Good trackpads own Give me gestures or give me death
Is there something I'm just missing about using a 600 ohm microphone on a computer? I've tried four external DAC's and the front panel on my Sound Blaster 2ZS and I'm getting at least half the performance I should be getting. Too quiet and the response is ass. Yet if I plug this Audio Technica microphone into a karaoke machine it's fine and I can autistically screech like a madman on half volume. Do I just need a specific preamp or soemthing?
[QUOTE=B!N4RY;52164913]Legit question, but why are you guys still refuse to move on from a 5+ year old laptops?[/QUOTE] I got my x201t (which is like almost 7 years old) for free at a junk day at a hacker space, and it works pretty well with the mobile first gen i7 for messaging people on Telegram, browsing the Internet and normal office stuff. All I had to do was buy an SSD (tbh I could have cheaped out and used the free 2.5 inch hard drive I also got from the same junk day) and a battery charger for it. It also came with a dock which I really liked using. I still brought it around to places when I didn't want to bring around a higher end laptop (which was way too expensive) around, so this thinkpad was basically my beater laptop until it dies. Basically it does what I need it to do. Having an SSD, running Windows 7 and maxing out the RAM to 8GB makes it a very usable laptop, even today. Battery life is shit at 2 hours on power saver mode, because it's a battery with like 6 years of use on it. However it's good enough that I don't want to really get a new battery for it. Right now, it's a laptop I use to upload stuff 24/7 at home. I don't really bring it around but when I used to do that, the dock was a really neat and useful thing for it. No more plugging in and out the power cable, you literally just drop it on the dock and it's charging. Going back to the topic of the red nub/TrackPoint/whatever you want to call it, I typically use it because the trackpad on this x201t sucks. It's also really small and after some time, I got used to using it. I still sometimes overshoot it but whatever, it's alright. tbh nothing beats a mouse, unless you really need the mobility: trackpoint is really good as you don't have to position your hand on the trackpad. With the TrackPoint, it's right in the middle of the keyboard so it's super easy to access and it's more comfy to use when the laptop is on your lap. But nonetheless, laptops with Precision trackpads are amazing. If you care about good trackpads, the best you will get is either one on a Macbook or any with these. The rest are basically shit. YOU CAN CHANGE THE MOUSE MOVEMENT SENSITIVITY. No more having slow trackpads but perfect mouse sensitivity, or perfect trackpad but slow/too fast mouse sensitivity when using a physical mouse. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/rWaZ8T8.png[/IMG] You can customize the gestures and even do macros. I'm sure there's some other program that can make better use of it than Windows 10. [img]http://i.imgur.com/cDUdLf8.png[/img]
Oh you just reminded me to buy a 9 cell battery for my thinkpad :v:
I'll probably need to have a look at 9 cell batteries myself next month. But I'm letting the current one discharge right now so Linux can gather statistics on the battery.
The one I got with my X220 was a fairly decent 6 cell at around 70% capacity remaining, but macOS isn't as battery efficient as Linux so I've been wanting to get a 9 cell. There's a third party one on eBay for $25 and fast and free shipping so I figured I'd shoot for that. Capacity isn't as high as a genuine Lenovo 9 cell but it's cheap so :v:
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