On a tangential note, I recently switched from an XPS 15 to a X1 Carbon. The thinkpad is a completely uncompromised device. It feels like a laptop from the future, where nothing sucks. The keyboard is great, the screen is great, the touchpad is great, the keys are all there, it's super light, but super solid, there's a bajillion ports. Anyone considering a new laptop should give a good look at thinkpads. They also have ridiculous sales from time to time - I got my X1C for about 50% of retail price.
I have a X1 Carbon that is a few years old now. About 2 years ago I dropped it (lid closed) from about 2 feet up (70cm). And it hit the tiled floor, pointy corner first. I thought "welp here go $2000". But no! A 2x3 mm part of the black surface finish chipped of and I see the bare silvery metal now. Oh and the tile cracked.
Have a similar, but slightly more horrific, story with a Thinkpad X230T. I was working from home after the birth of our first child (so... clearly not in my right mind...), and I decided it would be a good idea to carry my laptop on top of a way too full basket of laundry up the stairs to save an extra trip. I wasn't paying attention... tilted the basket at the very top of the stairs... and my Thinkpad rolls down the stairs along its edges... full steam ... and slams into the wall at the bottom.
I pick up the Thinkpad expecting the worst... and the only damage was a very slight opening along the seam of the external battery... not a scratch on the actual unit itself... no components jarred free... nothing...
Of course these are anecdotal. I got my IdeaPad U430 in 2014. Same year it slid off my bunk bed (6' high), first hitting the corner of my dresser before it fell on the hardwood floor. It cracked its spine in half and got a dent in the back of the screen so deep that part of the screen is bulging out. I was sure I would be buying a new laptop. To my delight, there was no functional damage to it, it's still my daily laptop today. My next one will be a ThinkPad when one of the components fail.
Had thinkpad for years as an office laptop earlier when it was IBM and then a while after it became Lenovo. Have Dropped them many times, no issues. They had a sensor where it will detect motion while you drop and park the hard disk head before it hits the ground, Also configured the sensor to use it like WII once. It was one of the best laptops i've ever used.
I've got multiple laptops -- including multiple ThinkPads -- and my 7-year-old W530 is still my favorite out of all of them.
The W530 was dubbed a "mobile workstation" (by Lenovo) and it really is a beast (hell, it's had 32 GB of RAM since day one, which is still more than what you can put in many laptops even today!).
At my previous job, I primary worked from home but when I did go to $work (the office, a customer's site, or one of our PoPs), I would often ride my Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special (midwest weather permitting). That machine -- which was also a beast, by the way -- vibrates like nothing you've ever seen! The W530 would get shoved into my backpack, which just barely fit in the saddlebags. Then, after arriving at my destination, I'd grab it, flip it open, and get back to work. Not once did I have an issue with it failing to do anything. It even accompanied me, in the saddle bag, on a 2,000 mile round trip!
I've had at least two (and perhaps three) MacBook Pros during the same time period but I would never have been brave enough to take one of them for a ride on the bike. I've got a feeling that many lesser laptops would not have survived.
(My next ThinkPad will almost certainly be whatever the current "mobile workstation" is, whenever the W530 finally gives up the magic smoke.)
A client once brought in a Thinkpad they ran over with a truck and the only damage was the soft copper heatpipes and fins were bent. I bent it back a little so the fan wouldn't scrape and it ran perfectly fine.
I used ThinkPads exclusively since 2000 but had a very bad experience around 2011 when the whole office upgraded to T410s machines and every single one (about a dozen) would die within a year the exact same way. They all got replaced and all died again, the second time out of warranty.
Something wrong with screen or the ribbon cable connecting the LCD screen caused the screen to die in a vertical strip about two inches from the left side. [1] You could press down on the bezel just under the distorted/dead strip to try to bring it back, but eventually even that would stop working. Referred to as MIGR-76367.
I actually haven’t bought a ThinkPad since that one. I switched to a MacBook Air running Bootcamp. I do miss the keyboard.
Had an x1 yoga in my backpack, padded backpack. Backpack fell off the desk and fell like 4 feet to the floor. Laptop was totalled - screen totally trashed etc. Was under warranty so got the whole thing replaced so it was back to like new within a week. But anecdotes are still just anecdotes lol.
I've fried two Macbook Airs by spilling drinks on them.
I've spilled more drinks on a single Thinkpad than all the other laptops I've owned combined. Everything just kept working.
Thinkpads are (/used to be) exceptionally well built. Including under-keyboard drainage.
(Typing this on a Pixel Slate with the Brydge keyboard, which leads to an interesting though: If I spill a drink on this keyboard, at worst I'll fry a completely separate bluetooth keyboard.)
My X1 Yoga too survived a fall that would have incapacitated any sane laptop (but Thinkpads are insane like that).
It's a good laptop and its performance remained snappy until recently (for a Gen 1 X1 Yoga). Still, I just switched... to a MacBook 12.
The killer feature for me is its silent operation - with better performance than my X1. Silence is such an overlooked design aspect, though perhaps I'm particularly allergic to fan noise. With current processor gens a fanless design is a must for any ultraportable that doesn't have a dedicated GPU. That's a relatively new development - the 2015 Macbook 12 was under-powered for some daily tasks but the 2017 is more than fine for those. Shame they stopped making them that year.
The screen is also a significant improvement (though I'm guessing Thinkpads screens have advanced since I bought mine) and the trackpad is no competition.
I'm worried about keyboard reliability but the typing experience is fine. I get along with most keyboards, with the strong exception of one pet peeve - mushy keys. The Macbook certainly doesn't have these.
My T530 survived flying off the roof of a car (in my unpadded backpack, to be clear) at 80mph when the straps for the roof bag ripped off cruising through Iowa. There was a small bit of plastic missing in one corner, otherwise nothing! To date that’s been my favorite laptop (aside from the bad screens thinkpads used to have).
I’ve dropped my 2018 MacBook Pro 13 at least 3 times, twice with the lid open, from a height of more than a meter (though onto a vinyl floor). It developed only a hardly noticeable dent.
I've been using Thinkpads for close to 20 years now, and it's more correct to say that their greatness comes from feeling like a laptop from the past: excellent ergonomics, upgradability, durability, ports. Indeed, my current machine (X230, 2012 model) already inspired some criticism for deviating from the IBM-style keyboard of its predecessors. Newer models like the X280 have even more complaints arising from the unswappable battery, soldered RAM, and lack of Ethernet port. Lenovo apparently faces the same thinness-over-usability marketing focus that afflicts all electronics today.
Hilarious. Long time Thinkpad fanboy here until I finally needed Lenovo support and it took 1 month to get a faulty part fixed under a next business day support plan.
The replacement was faulty. Replaced again (a little quicker this time) but there were still problems. They consider their job done. Never shopping Lenovo again.
Then for a new role I got a brand new XPS 13. Put Ubuntu on it and everything Just Works(tm). Very happy Dell user now. (Shame the sticker price is so high but it is a quality system.)
Also the Lenovo performance was never as good as it should have been. It turns out while it had a then current generation CPU it was a cheaper version than the competitors.
Yeah, I bought an X1C Extreme last year, part of the screen casing tore to the left of the screen, a freak issue I’m convinced was a defect. I tried to get a quote so my accidental damage insurance with my credit card could kick in for the repair—Lenovo wouldn’t give me a quote without paying because I didn’t have their support plan (this was like 3 weeks after I bought it).
The laptop still works fine, but I’ll never buy Lenovo again. Terrible company to deal with.
Same experience with the X1 Yoga. Power board issue. It took 6 weeks for them to finally tell me they couldn't fix it. They just refunded me, which was nice.
I just had a look (in the UK), and it doesn't look possible to go higher than 16GB of RAM, which is a deal breaker for me - I regularly go above that when running VMs and containers for dev and test work.
For such an otherwise powerful machine, I don't k ow why they'd limit it?
The X models are designed to be ultraportable, aka as thin and light as possible. As a result, they're not great machines for people who need lots of RAM, storage, etc.
Didn't fit their desired form factor for the X1, maybe. Their P53 line goes up to 128GB RAM and may be more suitable for your worklaod (I use an X1 but mostly use remote machines and don't need local VMs). I believe the construction is mostly the same as the X1 and T series Thinkpads, it's just bulkier and heavier.
I believe Intel had some limitations on their support for the LP-DDR (low power) memory and that's why so many systems had the 16GB limit.
On light road-warrior machine like X1 they likely wanted to maximize the battery life. And supporting many types of memory on same model was not likely an option.
If you're interested in Thinkapds but find the X1 a bit limiting, check out the T-series or the P1. They're only slightly thicker but often have a much higher RAM headroom (and often can be easily upgraded by the user).
I use an x1 and this is my biggest issue with it; mine is from 2017 maxed out from the factory at 16gb and it’s amazing the ceiling has not been raised even three gens later.
That said, the forthcoming x13 mentioned in the linked piece goes up to 32gb, looks like. It’s only 0.25lb heavier and looks to be much less expensive. The catch is a smaller screen :-\
I do development work on it and haven't ran into any issues. That being said, if you need something a little more beefy, and a little less lightweight, the T line is the next place to look. There's also the X1 extreme. However, after the XPS15 I wanted something a bit more mobile.
I think the price is too high especially as you can still buy gen 7 which came out last summer fully loaded with 4K screen, 16GB ram 1TB ssd for about 2K. 32GB ram nor 2TB ssd are an option.
The highest end 13" with 2TB of SSD and 32GB of ram actually costs 3000
Reducing it to a TB SSD and 16 Ram leaves it at 2200 for the mac.
Unlike Apple, where sales are infrequent and minor, the prices on Lenovo's site are much higher than you'll end up paying if you wait for a deal (even from Lenovo).
edit: My X1C gen7 with 1080p screen, 10th gen i7, 16GB ram and 256SSD was the equivalent of just under $1200 USD
i have an x1 carbon and i hate it. There is an bug with the trackpoint and mouse pad that makes the pointer drift randomly. I have had my computer back and forth and replaced everything. It still drifts
Maybe new thinkpads are exceptionally bad, because I've used thinkpads daily for decades now and have never had this problem. X40, X61, numerous X61S's, X201S, X220, X230, X250, and mix of T-series machines back in the day, not once has this been an issue for me. And I abuse these machines to the point that I replace the worn-polished and sloppy keyboards, and often crack the chassis, they don't live an easy life under my hands.
The only remotely related phenomenon I've seen is after resting on the trackpoint steadily long enough, it learns that to be the new center as it's constantly adapting. So upon finally removing my resting finger, it will drift just long enough for the adaptive centering to update and the drift stops. But that's perfectly normal and very short-lived.
That's something that plagued my ThinkPads since forever, made worse when they moved from the rounded trackpoint nub to the flat one. Easy fix, take out the rubber trackpoint nub and put it back (maybe clean the area a bit). Or disable it if you're more productive with the touchpad.
This has been a problem with trackpoints since as long as I can remember. Definitely saw pointer drift on a thinkpad running XP, and see it today on their latest. Wonder if they'll ever actually solve it.
This is a known quirk of Thinkpad trackpoints. Once in a blue moon, the mouse pointer drifts randomly; touching or nudging the trackpoint usually makes it stop. Regardless, it stops doing it on its own after a minute or two.
My old IBM 600X (1998 era) had this issue, as did my 2013 T430 and my current 2017 T470, although it hasn’t happened for a long time.
This was an eventual issue on my X61 in 2008 and on my T4something in 2018. It's a shame. I had to just apply a lot of pressure in random directions to the trackpoint to get it to stop, periodically.
Based on personal experience from using both Thinkpad T series and MS Surface Book, keyboard on Surface Book feels even better than the one on Thinkpad.
Exacty! The build quality on this thing is out of this world. Any time I unplug it from the dock and use it in more of a laptop mode, I get little dopamine hits all around.
I also love my X1 Carbon. Fantastic machine, and extremely affordable on the used market. The only reason I stopped using mine is because the BIOS is locked and I wanted to run Linux full time, and my model (gen 3) can't be reset like a lot of the other models (I can't remember what the process was). It's a great machine and after resale value, I spend ~$200 for two years of a solid machine, which I consider a win.
Are you saying you sold a two year old machine for $200 less than the price you paid for it when it was brand new? How is that possible? Even MacBook Pros don't have that good of resale value.
That may be the way to go but our office cheaped out and got discounted T490s. It's a great laptop minus the screen and trackpad...but management doesn't want to spend more than $800 on a laptop
Thinkpad range is great. But I made the mistake of getting one of Lenovo's desktop machines (Lenovo Yoga A940) to replace our dead iMac, and to give my daughter a system with a stylus etc. for doing artwork. On paper it looks good. In practice there's been issues. Bleed and dead pixels on the screen, occasional reliability issues. Didn't want to pour out the cash for the Surface all in one, but kinda wish I had.
Wish the Thinkpad quality would extend to their other products.
I bought an X1 carbon about a year ago and it has been an absolute nightmare for me. It's true that the keyboard is nice, the display is good etc. basically it is perfect on paper, but I have had so many issues caused by bad firmware from Lenovo (thunderbolt/HDMI failures, bluescreens). I've had the mainboard replaced 5 times, the trackpad replaced twice, and I am currently using a laptop with a trackpad I am not happy with and speakers that are broken and I'm genuinely afraid to let lenovo touch it again because it always comes back with some new issue. If you use the physical trackpad buttons to click, it causes the pointer to stop dead for a second or more, which means no drag and drop, no text selecting etc. Not a massive issue, but I bought the laptop partly for the good inputs, and now it is no different to any other laptop with no physical click buttons because I can't really use them the way I like. I'm lifelong windows/linux, so really don't want to go mac if I can avoid it, but it just doesn't seem like there is a single windows laptop manufacturer that focuses on quality or reliability. most surveys I see put the failure rates at double mac level.
mac simply won the laptop war. no contest. the only people using anything else haven't tried one or have no choice (my linux homies waiting for system76 to catch up get a pass). at least that was the case until apple went all in on usb-c :/
been buying nothing but Thinkpads for years now, after a very positive experience with the X220 in the first place. My last thinkpad is a X1 carbon, and while it's a trade-off (thinner, less ports, no upgrade possible for RAM), the build is really solid (the keyboard is almost just as good as any other thinkpad's), and the case is a mix of metal and carbon fiber and feels extremely nice all around. It's also trivial to change the battery by yourself, this thing opens up for servicing with just a few screws. Really happy with my purchase.
I only run Linux on it, and I have never had any issue with hardware support (except fingerprint sensor which I do not use anyway). Note that I have heard that Linux support on X1 Carbon Gen7 is somewhat poor (the only one so far with such issues).
Lenovo frequently runs significant sales on their own site, often focused around holidays. I'd expect to see a significant sale for Memorial Day up next.
Seconded (well, eighth'd, if the rest of the comments are any indication). I got a 6th gen X1C at the end of '18 and it's brilliant. It'd be neat to have a Ryzen option on them in the future, as I have a desktop I build with an AMD CPU and love it.
What OS are you using? How was the switch from 15" to 14"?
I've had an XPS 15 running Ubuntu for about 2.5 years, and while it's certainly got a lot of objective things going for it, it's my least-favourite computer in the last ~15 years and I'm considering an update.
the XPS I had felt like a laptop from the past, the X1 feels like a laptop from the future.
The XPS's keyboard would multi press, the touchpad didn't work great, the hinge made it difficult top open the screen, the speakers kinda sucked. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice laptop, but felt very over hyped. A death by a thousand cuts. I felt a bit let down from what I expected after reading a bunch of reviews.
On the other hand, when I finally got the the X1C, I couldn't believe that there was so little hype about this laptop. All I would ever see online is stuff about macbooks and the XPS line, nothing about the X1C.
The X1 is such a solid machine. The interface is completely uncompromised, yet it is so light, it feels like I've just got a spiral bound notebook in my bag when I'm carrying it around. Feels like a leap ahead, rather than two steps forward, one step back.
No op but for me the clincher was vastly superior keyboard and the expansion capability with dual ssd/dual ram slots that made me go for X1 Extreme Gen 2. I have used Dell in the past and after using this Thinkpad, I have to admit that I find the latter to be of better quality overall.
Long time XPS customer. My last one had the very famous battery swelling in just a few months and Dell refused to replace the battery. On previous models for other customers they replaced it for free for what it is: a manufacturing defect. The keyboard and touchpad are also finicky, but that's not a deal breaker for me because I'm mostly on external.
i sold my xps because the trackpad was glitchy. go to dell and count the number of driver revisions. its like a perpetual beta product. the nosecam lol. the bezels on xps are purdy tho.
Black Friday is a good time. This past November I picked up a ThinkStation p720 for like 60% off. Not sure whether laptops are discounted to the same extent, but it's worth investigating.
At any time of year, see if you are eligible for their "Tickets At Work" program which offers sizable discounts. They sometimes even stack with seasonal sales...
what screen? i keep reading anything but the basic 1080 nukes battery life? i just cant imagine a laptop in 2020 doing 3 hours after having a mbp retina for the last 5 years which is capable of running all day
I would recommend the 4k panel. 4k in a 14" screen is overkill, but compared to other options the 4k panel has a wider color gamut, higher dynamic range, and higher brightness (500 nits). You can easily use it in direct sunlight. I'm writing this comment in a sunlit room and my brightness is at 34%.
Most of the complaints about battery life seem to be by people who keep the screen at a certain percentage instead of keeping it at a certain brightness. eg: There are reviews where someone keeps the screen at 70% brightness instead of 200 nits. That's like a car reviewer keeping the gas pedal pressed down 70% of the way and then complaining about fuel efficiency.
Edit: Oh and if you're curious about battery life, see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23106156 You should expect 5-12 hours depending on what you're doing. You could go as low as 2 hours if you stress test the CPU while at max brightness.
I've been issued MBPs at my past few jobs. On each of them "all day" is about five hours, tops. You must not be doing a heckin lot of dev work if you actually get all day out of a single charge of an MBP battery.
I'm wondering how long, or if ever, it takes for reasonable people to resume buying Lenovo products after they got busted using a firmware-based rootkit to reinstall their manufacturer spyware onto a freshly formatted OS install (the same year they got busted preinstalling third-party adware, which resulted in an FTC settlement/fine).
Do you wait like a year or three? five? Do you never buy Lenovo again? What's reasonable? This isn't rhetoric: I'm legitimately asking for a figure, as well as a rationale, because I don't know the answer.
Personally I'm in the market for a high end laptop for running Linux, and I just couldn't see myself buying something from them ever, no matter how good their machines are, because I just don't trust the people in the organization who develop products to take system integrity seriously enough.
I don't like Lenovo. Their laptops have steadily declined by every metric I care about since the X220. But Thinkpads are still better (by those same metrics) than anything else I've come across.
Would be willing to buy something else. Anything else. But most other laptops out there have even worse keyboards (which I deeply care about), terrible form factors, specs that are stuck in 2010, awful support/warranty, no Linux support, or all of the above!
If someone builds something I'm happy with, I'll buy it. Price is not an issue. My laptop is my toolbox. I want it to work the way I like it. If it breaks, I need to have fixed preferably today, but tomorrow or the day after can be acceptable as well. That basically leaves Lenovo & Dell.
My understanding is that the Thinkpad line is a bit segmented from the rest of the company. As a result, those poor decisions haven't effected the Thinkpad line. It helps also that I immediately switch everything over to Linux
I do understanding that it's entirely feasible for them to rootkit Linux from the BIOS and install malware onto their Thinkpads but I just haven't seen it happen yet
> I do understanding that it's entirely feasible for them to rootkit Linux from the BIOS and install malware onto their Thinkpads but I just haven't seen it happen yet
It’s not actually, because the mechanism which allows a vendor to provide “drivers” via UEFI is used by Windows only and nobody else. Windows exclusively is the target of such UEFI abuse.
Lenovo can put as much garbage and bloatware they want in the relevant UEFI firmware-sections, and Linux will simply ignore it, like it always have. No root-kit will be triggered.
As a Linux-user you are actually 100% immune against this abuse. As a ThinkPad-owner doubly so, since this major fuck-up only affected budget/non-Thinkpad product-lines.
I'm in the security industry and bought a ThinkPad (X1 Carbon) 6 months ago. It has the form factor and specs that I want.
What is the threat model? They will not be using the rootkit for hiding useland malware. Are they extracting my documents and misuing them? Are they performing MITM on my connections and doing something harmful? While the capability is there, I don't see the software being used in a way that will inconvenience me.
It is a weak point in the system, maybe someone else exploits it, but I have so much software that I can say that about. When looking at threats the question for me is what is most likely to get me owned. It will probably be phishing or a malicious document. That's not going to change based on the manufacturer I buy from.
If I do get owned by some targeted malware that uses a Lenovo driver for priv esc, well they were probably going to get me with or without that. As good as it would feel to boycott a company with poor security practices, I'm over running unrefined System76 laptops.
It did MITM to inject ads, including adding their cert to the trust store to MITM SSL connections.
Of course the software needed the private key to work, which they shipped to every laptop and was quickly put online.
All of the sudden banking at coffee shops on a lot of Lenovo models was no longer private.
I'm not sure if captured traffic could be retroactively decrypted, but I wouldn't doubt it. PFS support probably wasn't high on Superfish's priorities.
“ Are they extracting my documents and misuing them? Are they performing MITM on my connections and doing something harmful? While the capability is there, I don't see the software being used in a way that will inconvenience me.”
It seems to me this would be a function of available alternatives more than anything else. Some Lenovo products, as best I can tell, make for excellent Linux machines. What are the alternatives if that's your criteria? There are alternatives which might be acceptable depending on your other requirements for hardware, form factor, price, or geographic availability. But for some subset of requirements, Lenovo is still going to be the best option by a wide margin which is going to push someone to making that tradeoff. I don't think it's a function of time.
For me, it is never. I tend to trust people and companies to do the right thing, but when they violate that trust, they get on my permanent blacklist. I also don't fly United or park in Impark lots for the same reason. And I will never again turn off my ad-blocker after the Forbes fiasco, despite sites begging me to do so.
Until upper management changes. They are the ones who encourage this behavior (if not directly, then indirectly so they have plausible deniability - see Wells Fargo - but still intentionally). Only when they change is there a hope of this sort of behavior changing.
I should be bothered in a theoretical sense, but I'm just not in a practical sense. I just bought a Legion series because it was the best deal (because Asus doesn't sell in my country). If I'm running Windows, I'm going to get random arbitrary bloat anyway, so I don't really see the mechanism as important.
The odd thing is that I don't remember this, do you have a link. I mean, I remember the Bloomberg article that claimed unauthorized physical embeds on PCBs from China. But I don't remember the Indestructible Lenovo Spyware scandal!
The trend seems unstoppable, windows telemetry is not optional, apple owns your system, google reads theough your personal information, etc. Pointing only to lenovo isn’t better than pointing to this general tendency of collecting our data non-optionally
It's a non-issue if you're not using windows. Basically it's a windows "feature" where if a certain ACPI table is present in the firmware, it will download and execute it. There isn't actually any malware/spyware executing on the firmware itself.
I wipe machines on arrival as a matter of course, so I never stopped buying Lenovo machines, but I only buy Thinkpads and AFAIK they were only pulling that shit with consumer-level machines (which are already a wasteland across most manufacturers—not an excuse, to be sure).
Thank you for the reminder; I firmly believe in voting with wallets, and they haven't done enough to regain my trust after Superfish and the BIOS bloat installer fiasco.
The very first thing I do after buying any laptop is completely wiping everything and installing Linux or re-installing Windows.
I think it's best to always start from clean slate because even 'good' manufacturers put a tonne of shit in there. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter what the manufacturer does, apart from the terrible decision making that they should learn from.
They used to use firmware-based rootkit to reinstall their manufacturer spyware onto a freshly formatted OS install. So, not matter what you do, they will reinstall even if you format the hard drive.
For all of its quirks, I love having a 3:2 display on the MateBook X Pro. Besides the Surface Laptop and Surface Book, there's not much else on the market with this aspect ratio.
Am I the only one who is upset that Lenovo T series has dropped external battery ? I am running Ubuntu on a T480 with an extra battery in my bag. I don't think any other laptop has ever given me as much joy. And I almost never run out of juice even though I always code without being plugged into a power source.
The workaround for this is that you can now get external USB batteries that support PD, and most Lenovos use USB with PD for their main charging cable, which means you can carry around a device that can charge your laptop on the go.
It's not as slick as the "swap batteries, now you're fully charged", but on the other side, the USB batteries can charged without the laptop, and you can pick the size you're willing to carry around.
I find the battery situation very frustrating. They put in way undersized batteries on everything except macbook pro priced models. Spec-wise a T14 is more than fine, but a 50 Wh battery is not enough if you actually use it unplugged for software development. You go to the T14s and suddenly the battery gets a bit bigger, in a machine that is supposed to be thinner and lighter. And if you go to the X or P series it gets bigger again. I can’t help but think they deliberately handicapped the affordable segment of their line-up with tiny batteries to upsell people.
I agree that was quite disappoint as it was one of the large reasons I bought my T470. And for those who are saying hey just use an external, that's great until your internal battery starts dying and replacing it becomes a nightmare (which for less tech savvy people it's much easier just to swap the external than dealing with the internal).
It is a bit unfortunate that they don't support Thunderbolt though. The ability to add an external GPUs/PCIe cards widens the horizon a lot for desktop-replacement systems.
Yeah, I believe they're switching to branding similar to the X1 Carbons across everything, so it'll be T14 generation 1, generation 2, etc.
I just hope this doesn't imply they're going to start making laptops a lot like other manufacturers (e.g. less durable, more soldered down components, ...)
I can't make any statements regarding quality, but regarding soldered RAM, unfortunately this practice has spread outside of the X1 Carbon lineup. The ThinkPad X280 and X290 have soldered RAM with no DIMM slots, and the ThinkPad T490 has soldered RAM but with an extra DIMM slot for some upgradeability (compare to my T430, which has no soldered RAM and instead has two DIMM slots). There are still some ThinkPads that don't have soldered RAM, such as the P53 and the P1.
Regarding storage, on the other hand, I don't believe the ThinkPad lineup has gone down the road of soldered SSDs, not even in the X1 Carbon lineup.
The last AMD laptop I bought froze randomly every few hours on Ubuntu, and there is no way to turn on my keyboard backlight on my Thinkpad T480 on Ubuntu. I gave up trying to fix these problems a while ago, and last time I checked nobody had found a fix for either issue for my specific laptop models. I'd be very hesitant to buy AMD or Lenovo before I had strong evidence that there are no serious issues on Linux.
No they don't. The newest X1 Carbon didn't have a working microphone in the Linux kernel at release. It didn't work in Ubuntu until about a year after it started shipping.
Readit News
I pick up the Thinkpad expecting the worst... and the only damage was a very slight opening along the seam of the external battery... not a scratch on the actual unit itself... no components jarred free... nothing...
Been buying Thinkpads ever since...
unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a Macbook
That's what I would call pure satisfaction. Thanks for adding that detail. You made me smile.
The W530 was dubbed a "mobile workstation" (by Lenovo) and it really is a beast (hell, it's had 32 GB of RAM since day one, which is still more than what you can put in many laptops even today!).
At my previous job, I primary worked from home but when I did go to $work (the office, a customer's site, or one of our PoPs), I would often ride my Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special (midwest weather permitting). That machine -- which was also a beast, by the way -- vibrates like nothing you've ever seen! The W530 would get shoved into my backpack, which just barely fit in the saddlebags. Then, after arriving at my destination, I'd grab it, flip it open, and get back to work. Not once did I have an issue with it failing to do anything. It even accompanied me, in the saddle bag, on a 2,000 mile round trip!
I've had at least two (and perhaps three) MacBook Pros during the same time period but I would never have been brave enough to take one of them for a ride on the bike. I've got a feeling that many lesser laptops would not have survived.
(My next ThinkPad will almost certainly be whatever the current "mobile workstation" is, whenever the W530 finally gives up the magic smoke.)
Something wrong with screen or the ribbon cable connecting the LCD screen caused the screen to die in a vertical strip about two inches from the left side. [1] You could press down on the bezel just under the distorted/dead strip to try to bring it back, but eventually even that would stop working. Referred to as MIGR-76367.
I actually haven’t bought a ThinkPad since that one. I switched to a MacBook Air running Bootcamp. I do miss the keyboard.
[1] -https://youtu.be/rM9_ZM_8qkQ
I've spilled more drinks on a single Thinkpad than all the other laptops I've owned combined. Everything just kept working.
Thinkpads are (/used to be) exceptionally well built. Including under-keyboard drainage.
(Typing this on a Pixel Slate with the Brydge keyboard, which leads to an interesting though: If I spill a drink on this keyboard, at worst I'll fry a completely separate bluetooth keyboard.)
It's a good laptop and its performance remained snappy until recently (for a Gen 1 X1 Yoga). Still, I just switched... to a MacBook 12.
The killer feature for me is its silent operation - with better performance than my X1. Silence is such an overlooked design aspect, though perhaps I'm particularly allergic to fan noise. With current processor gens a fanless design is a must for any ultraportable that doesn't have a dedicated GPU. That's a relatively new development - the 2015 Macbook 12 was under-powered for some daily tasks but the 2017 is more than fine for those. Shame they stopped making them that year.
The screen is also a significant improvement (though I'm guessing Thinkpads screens have advanced since I bought mine) and the trackpad is no competition.
I'm worried about keyboard reliability but the typing experience is fine. I get along with most keyboards, with the strong exception of one pet peeve - mushy keys. The Macbook certainly doesn't have these.
I've been using Thinkpads for close to 20 years now, and it's more correct to say that their greatness comes from feeling like a laptop from the past: excellent ergonomics, upgradability, durability, ports. Indeed, my current machine (X230, 2012 model) already inspired some criticism for deviating from the IBM-style keyboard of its predecessors. Newer models like the X280 have even more complaints arising from the unswappable battery, soldered RAM, and lack of Ethernet port. Lenovo apparently faces the same thinness-over-usability marketing focus that afflicts all electronics today.
Also, as a former die-hard x201 user I actually like the new keyboard. Agree on the memory thought
The replacement was faulty. Replaced again (a little quicker this time) but there were still problems. They consider their job done. Never shopping Lenovo again.
Then for a new role I got a brand new XPS 13. Put Ubuntu on it and everything Just Works(tm). Very happy Dell user now. (Shame the sticker price is so high but it is a quality system.)
Also the Lenovo performance was never as good as it should have been. It turns out while it had a then current generation CPU it was a cheaper version than the competitors.
The laptop still works fine, but I’ll never buy Lenovo again. Terrible company to deal with.
For such an otherwise powerful machine, I don't k ow why they'd limit it?
The P series (https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p/c/t...) is more the "desktop workstation replacement" line; heavier and thicker, but with more room for components. You can get those with up to 128GB of RAM.
On light road-warrior machine like X1 they likely wanted to maximize the battery life. And supporting many types of memory on same model was not likely an option.
With 16 cores and 32 threads I'm able to use all 32 GB easily. I guess I should run more VMs to really understand where people need 32 GB in a laptop.
That said, the forthcoming x13 mentioned in the linked piece goes up to 32gb, looks like. It’s only 0.25lb heavier and looks to be much less expensive. The catch is a smaller screen :-\
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For that price you can get the highest end 13" macbook pro, 32gb of ram and 2TB of SSD. baffling
Pricing was announced to start at $1499.
The highest end 13" with 2TB of SSD and 32GB of ram actually costs 3000
Reducing it to a TB SSD and 16 Ram leaves it at 2200 for the mac.
edit: My X1C gen7 with 1080p screen, 10th gen i7, 16GB ram and 256SSD was the equivalent of just under $1200 USD
If it drifts in a single direction in that time, I found it was actually a physical problem and fixed it by cleaning around the trackpoint.
I haven't seen this in software though, I currently have the X1 gen 6. Which do you have? Which bug is it? I'd love to see if there is a way to help.
The only remotely related phenomenon I've seen is after resting on the trackpoint steadily long enough, it learns that to be the new center as it's constantly adapting. So upon finally removing my resting finger, it will drift just long enough for the adaptive centering to update and the drift stops. But that's perfectly normal and very short-lived.
My old IBM 600X (1998 era) had this issue, as did my 2013 T430 and my current 2017 T470, although it hasn’t happened for a long time.
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Long time ago the Thinkpad Keyboard was the closest thing to 2015 MacBook Pro Keyboard.
It is just sad in 2020 we have to look for keyboards with all the keys and companies dont mess around with the key travels.
Wish the Thinkpad quality would extend to their other products.
I only run Linux on it, and I have never had any issue with hardware support (except fingerprint sensor which I do not use anyway). Note that I have heard that Linux support on X1 Carbon Gen7 is somewhat poor (the only one so far with such issues).
Wow. What was the original price? ~$2k? Where did you get such a big discount?
My only complaint about my X1? Windows.
I've had an XPS 15 running Ubuntu for about 2.5 years, and while it's certainly got a lot of objective things going for it, it's my least-favourite computer in the last ~15 years and I'm considering an update.
The XPS's keyboard would multi press, the touchpad didn't work great, the hinge made it difficult top open the screen, the speakers kinda sucked. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice laptop, but felt very over hyped. A death by a thousand cuts. I felt a bit let down from what I expected after reading a bunch of reviews.
On the other hand, when I finally got the the X1C, I couldn't believe that there was so little hype about this laptop. All I would ever see online is stuff about macbooks and the XPS line, nothing about the X1C.
The X1 is such a solid machine. The interface is completely uncompromised, yet it is so light, it feels like I've just got a spiral bound notebook in my bag when I'm carrying it around. Feels like a leap ahead, rather than two steps forward, one step back.
My next laptop will be a Lenovo.
I also like the look and feel more and it’s always easier to upgrade Lenovo.
Give it a look, it's quite a marvel.
At any time of year, see if you are eligible for their "Tickets At Work" program which offers sizable discounts. They sometimes even stack with seasonal sales...
Could also watch or set up relevant alerts with model numbers on Slickdeals.
Most of the complaints about battery life seem to be by people who keep the screen at a certain percentage instead of keeping it at a certain brightness. eg: There are reviews where someone keeps the screen at 70% brightness instead of 200 nits. That's like a car reviewer keeping the gas pedal pressed down 70% of the way and then complaining about fuel efficiency.
Edit: Oh and if you're curious about battery life, see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23106156 You should expect 5-12 hours depending on what you're doing. You could go as low as 2 hours if you stress test the CPU while at max brightness.
Do you wait like a year or three? five? Do you never buy Lenovo again? What's reasonable? This isn't rhetoric: I'm legitimately asking for a figure, as well as a rationale, because I don't know the answer.
Personally I'm in the market for a high end laptop for running Linux, and I just couldn't see myself buying something from them ever, no matter how good their machines are, because I just don't trust the people in the organization who develop products to take system integrity seriously enough.
Would be willing to buy something else. Anything else. But most other laptops out there have even worse keyboards (which I deeply care about), terrible form factors, specs that are stuck in 2010, awful support/warranty, no Linux support, or all of the above!
If someone builds something I'm happy with, I'll buy it. Price is not an issue. My laptop is my toolbox. I want it to work the way I like it. If it breaks, I need to have fixed preferably today, but tomorrow or the day after can be acceptable as well. That basically leaves Lenovo & Dell.
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I do understanding that it's entirely feasible for them to rootkit Linux from the BIOS and install malware onto their Thinkpads but I just haven't seen it happen yet
It’s not actually, because the mechanism which allows a vendor to provide “drivers” via UEFI is used by Windows only and nobody else. Windows exclusively is the target of such UEFI abuse.
Lenovo can put as much garbage and bloatware they want in the relevant UEFI firmware-sections, and Linux will simply ignore it, like it always have. No root-kit will be triggered.
As a Linux-user you are actually 100% immune against this abuse. As a ThinkPad-owner doubly so, since this major fuck-up only affected budget/non-Thinkpad product-lines.
I know that's not feasible for their newer lines, which I also own
https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html?m...
What is the threat model? They will not be using the rootkit for hiding useland malware. Are they extracting my documents and misuing them? Are they performing MITM on my connections and doing something harmful? While the capability is there, I don't see the software being used in a way that will inconvenience me.
It is a weak point in the system, maybe someone else exploits it, but I have so much software that I can say that about. When looking at threats the question for me is what is most likely to get me owned. It will probably be phishing or a malicious document. That's not going to change based on the manufacturer I buy from.
If I do get owned by some targeted malware that uses a Lenovo driver for priv esc, well they were probably going to get me with or without that. As good as it would feel to boycott a company with poor security practices, I'm over running unrefined System76 laptops.
https://www.cnet.com/news/superfish-torments-lenovo-owners-w...
It did MITM to inject ads, including adding their cert to the trust store to MITM SSL connections.
Of course the software needed the private key to work, which they shipped to every laptop and was quickly put online.
All of the sudden banking at coffee shops on a lot of Lenovo models was no longer private.
I'm not sure if captured traffic could be retroactively decrypted, but I wouldn't doubt it. PFS support probably wasn't high on Superfish's priorities.
Please explain this further.
Not snark, genuinely curious.
edit: "some Lenovo products"
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https://www.howtogeek.com/226308/the-windows-platform-binary...
Re-imaging the OS would not help in this case, so you would only be protected if Lenovo did not, in fact, put the rootkit on the Thinkpad line.
I think it's best to always start from clean slate because even 'good' manufacturers put a tonne of shit in there. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter what the manufacturer does, apart from the terrible decision making that they should learn from.
Please, ffs, learn the difference.
When I was last in the market they were offering HP, so that’s what I got.
That Lenovo fucked up at some point in the past is immaterial to my purchasing decisions.
And I consider myself a fairly reasonable person.
I am however very pleased to see Lenovo embracing AMD in their high end products.
Bring back the external battery !!
It's not as slick as the "swap batteries, now you're fully charged", but on the other side, the USB batteries can charged without the laptop, and you can pick the size you're willing to carry around.
https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-c-battery-packs-a...
It is a bit unfortunate that they don't support Thunderbolt though. The ability to add an external GPUs/PCIe cards widens the horizon a lot for desktop-replacement systems.
T490 -> T14
T590 -> T15
..etc
I just hope this doesn't imply they're going to start making laptops a lot like other manufacturers (e.g. less durable, more soldered down components, ...)
Regarding storage, on the other hand, I don't believe the ThinkPad lineup has gone down the road of soldered SSDs, not even in the X1 Carbon lineup.
T420 - Sandy Bridge, 2640M
T430 - Ivy Bridge, 3340M
T440 - Haswell, 4300U
And so on and so on.
I love ThinkPad and planning to buy one soon, but reporters of problems with sound and WiFi drivers concerning.
[1] https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/commit/6385a5fd1b8a67c051b...