Personally I think beyond T450 generation, i.e. over 10 years old systems, you are starting to make pretty severe compromises. T440 generation had really bad Trackpoint setup, and older hardware starts to lose features. Random stuff that T450 has that T400 doesn't
* USB3
* Up to 32 GB of RAM (vs max 8 GB for T400)
* M.2 slot (for SSD), 6 Gb/s SATA (vs 1.5 Gb/s on T400)
* x86-64-v3 (AVX2 etc) and OpenGL 4.6
* Dual-band AC wifi and BT4.0 (optional 4G LTE WWAN)
* DisplayPort with 4k@60Hz output
* Slightly larger screen estate (1600x900 vs 1440x900), with FHD 1080p display option
* Dramatically better battery life
* Backlit keyboard
Many of these are not merely nice to have but also ensure longevity by being compatible with lot of other modern stuff. On the other hand I do believe that T450 generation device might remain viable daily driver for a long while still. From the specs the biggest obvious shortcoming to me is the lack of USB-C, especially USB-C charging. But besides that, it seems pretty usable system.
For reference, I have old X240 that I still occasionally use.
CursedSilicon 16 hours ago [-]
I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy.
ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (and the "modern web") worsen
Framework laptops are wonderful, modern and (arguably?) cheaper to own in the long-term thanks to being able to replace components, particularly the entire mainboard as time progresses.
*But* they're a tiny boutique manufacturer. Their barrier to entry is that of a pretty hefty modern laptop, versus buying a T420 for practically pennies and performing all kinds of aftermarket "mods" to it. 51nb's "FrankenPads" especially breathe incredible new life into old IBM and Lenovo stock.
Combine this with the fact that being the "defacto business laptop" for nearly three decades (along with perhaps Dell) means there's enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back
shoo 12 hours ago [-]
> enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back
LD, average distance between Earth and Moon = 384,399,000 m [1]
C = circumference of moon = 10,917,000 m
R := approximate round trip distance = 2LD + 0.5*C = 774,256,500 m
n = total number of thinkpads on earth <= total number of thinkpads ever manufactured = 250 million [2][2a][2b]
W = width of thinkpad = 0.3366 m [3]
T = total thinkpad distance = n * W <= 84,150,000 m
Alas, T / R, the ratio of total thinkpad distance T to our lunar round trip distance R, is at most about 0.11 .
This is with the optimistic assumption that the total number of thinkpads on earth equals the total number of thinkpads ever manufactured. A more conservative estimate might be something like n = total number of thinkpads manufactured each year * mean lifespan of a thinkpad = (12 million thinkpads / year) * (5 years lifespan) = 60 million thinkpads in good working order for a lunar round trip.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance
[2] IBM sold 25m thinkpads before selling product line to Lenovo. By 2022, Lenovo had sold 200m thinkpads. With linear extrapolation to 2024 that gives approx 250 million thinkpads manufactured.
[2a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad
[2b] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/10/05/celebrating-thinkpads-30th-anniversaryan-insiders-perspective/
[3] assume every thinkpad is a T480. https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T480/ThinkPad_T480_Spec.PDF
xnorswap 12 hours ago [-]
It won't get you to the moon, but you can squeeze out a little more distance by arranging them corner to corner.
shoo 12 hours ago [-]
We must either increase the production rate of T480-size thinkpads by around 9x or get Lenovo to release at least one special edition extreme widescreen thinkpad specialised for lunar round trips
fouronnes3 11 hours ago [-]
Or move the moon closer.
bluGill 6 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately the moon is moving farther away, and robbing the earth of rotational speed in the process.
johnisgood 10 hours ago [-]
That sounds even more plausible.
ChrisMarshallNY 7 hours ago [-]
Wasn't there at least one movie, where that was not a good thing?
eggy 33 minutes ago [-]
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson was a good book that goes into what happens when things change between the Earth and Moon.
johnisgood 7 hours ago [-]
There was. I think it was titled "Moonfall", or maybe "Another Earth". There is also "Oblivion" in which the Moon was partially destroyed. There are probably other ones, too, but I think "Moonfall" is the one to which you are referring. I might just give it a watch in a bit!
But yeah, it would not be a good thing, according to the movie at least.
beepbooptheory 5 hours ago [-]
In "Bruce Almighty" Jim Carrey uses his God powers to move the moon closer to create a more romantic view for his date. If my memory serves correct, the next day we hear briefly on the news about terrible freak flooding over the world.
johnisgood 5 hours ago [-]
I remember that movie and that scene. :)
kayge 3 hours ago [-]
Counterpoint: in Despicable Me the moon was shrunk and brought down to Earth with almost zero consequences... so maybe it would be just fine!
n4r9 8 hours ago [-]
An early 20th Century scientist named Olaf discovered a means to do this by intensifying the level of intelligence on Earth. If you ask me, the first step towards this must be slashing government funding for anything that smells of tolerance. And making bizarre tweets that coincidentally correlate with buying and selling shares.
johnisgood 8 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, the Olafian Lunar Proximity Theory. While government defunding might accelerate intelligence in peculiar ways, I've found that the most effective method involves strategically placing enormous quantities of vintage ThinkPads at precise geomagnetic nodes around the Earth.
The collective electromagnetic resonance of their legendary keyboards creates a subtle gravitational anomaly that could, over approx. 17.3 years, reduce the lunar orbit by up to 4% (!), according to my rigorous calculations and simulations.
My recent paper[1] on "Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation" was mysteriously rejected by mainstream journals, likely due to Big Space's vested interest in maintaining the status quo; the current Earth-Moon distances for profit reasons.
Have you came across my paper, considering you have heard about Olaf?
[1] https://arvix.org/abs/2108.05779v3 ("Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation: Theoretical Applications of Legacy Computing Hardware on Celestial Body Dynamics")
Edit: Ugh, the site seems to be down at this moment, typical HN hug of death. Sorry about that. Forgot to archive! My rookie mistake. :/
Bluestein 5 hours ago [-]
Tarifs.
vman81 8 hours ago [-]
Corner to corner with their hinge opened to 180°
omnster 11 hours ago [-]
Exactly. We can also win a tiny bit of the distance by assuming the Moon in the perigee, where the distance to the Moon is about 363000 km. I also assume that these distances are measured between the centers, so we can perhaps subtract twice the Earth radius (about 2*6400 km).
uticus 3 hours ago [-]
opening the thinkpads will add ~ 38% to the effective area of stacking thinkpads, if edge-to-edge (0.2325m depth closed, assuming doubling for opened = 0.465m opened) [0].
if opened and touching corner-to-corner (~0.574m), will add ~ 71% to effective area.
brilliant comment. dont forget theres also thinkpads like that W700ds that had secondary displays that extended out from the side haha
DavidPeiffer 2 hours ago [-]
W700ds is such an oddity. I love it. One day in high school, my dad asked "what's the difference between RAID 1 and RAID 0?", which led to me sitting down next to him to spec this monster laptop out. A week later he purchased it.
At ~10.9 lbs + 2.2 lbs for the charger, it was not terribly practical to travel with, so it ended up effectively as a desktop in the office.
It now sits in my closet, and periodically I turn it on. The dual screen was a bit too small to do much with, but it was great for notepad or a chat window. Being a 32 bit system limited to 4 GB of RAM, it's not terribly useful today.
setopt 11 hours ago [-]
Almost terrifying that the two length scales are only an order of magnitude apart…
metalman 8 hours ago [-]
Comment on the comments.....it sure looks like moores law is loosing relevance and that going forward the possibility for durable, stable, device implemtations, that can last for generations is inevitable.
Manufacturers may be resistant, but with 8~9 billion customers, and the inevitable losses and damage to devices, it will take a generation to get one in everybodys hands
LeFantome 2 hours ago [-]
Video editing and animation already require modern kit. And AI is adding significant processing requirements. We are not off the treadmill yet.
I say this as somebody the regularly uses laptops as old as 2009 (like, I will spend most of today on one). A lot of real-world, everyday computing barely taxes modern hardware on a decent OS like Linux. Old hardware will let you do a lot more than people think.
WillAdams 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah, my needs are simplistic enough (light coding, 2D drawing, programmatic 3D modeling using OpenPythonSCAD) that I'm seriously considering switching to an rPi 5 paired w/ a Wacom Movink 13 and a second display and a battery pack as my main computer.
linacica 11 hours ago [-]
Well not the moon, but about 100 times back and forth to ISS
Average distance of ISS 370-460km, let's take 415km,
back and forth so 2x 415km= 830km
84 150km/830=~101
cosmic_cheese 15 hours ago [-]
Framework’s offerings are interesting, but after having gotten used to the solid rigidity of M-series MacBooks and X1 series Thinkpads, the level of flex in the Framework 13 is a major issue for me. It’s difficult to justify for the price, plus PCBs and repeated flex stress don’t mix nicely.
I think it’s time for either Framework or a third party partner to sell a new chassis that’s compatible with the FW13’s mainboard, but focuses on a more sturdy, premium feel, even if that means doing away with the modular port cards. I suspect that mainboards housed in such a chassis will fare better over time than their original housing counterparts.
mikae1 14 hours ago [-]
As I see it, an aluminum slab MNT Reform Next[1] would be a better Thinkpad replacement than a Framework (from a build and reparability standpoint).
MNT reforms get more and more appealing by the day as I’ve become increasingly disillusioned by the state of current hardware offerings.
numpad0 6 hours ago [-]
Every time I see any of those MNT machines in pictures, it makes my fingers start frantically typing out lengthy rants whether it's about internals or externals or even choices of colors.
cosmic_cheese 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah I respect the project and mission but it’s not for me for various reasons.
pmontra 8 hours ago [-]
If it were at least 14" instead of 12.5".
roywashere 12 hours ago [-]
Oh man, the MNT Reform looks _so_ awesome!
0xEF 10 hours ago [-]
Except for that price. Yikes. Heck of a barrier to entry for an unproven product. I do wish them well, but as we call for more modularity in laptop design, we can't forget the core value of keeping it affordable for the masses.
jabl 2 hours ago [-]
Also, a Cortex A76 isn't exactly a speed demon, even compared to some used x86 laptop saved from the recycling bin.
The Cortex A53 on the original MNT Reform is even worse.
Then again, if you're mostly just editing text and doing some light web surfing, I suppose it's fast enough.
bombcar 4 hours ago [-]
Which is why we're sadly only really going to get it if a major manufacturer decides to go Framework on us, because otherwise the economies of scale just aren't there.
Or laptops get so uncommon that manufacturers have to band together and agree on standards.
organsnyder 5 hours ago [-]
I have an M4 MacBook from work and a personal Framework 13. The MacBook certainly feels more solid, but I wouldn't call the Framework flimsy, and it still has a premium feel.
I made the mistake of packing my MacBook (at the time an M1 model), my Framework, and my iPad Pro 12.9 (with keyboard case) in a single laptop bag for a work trip a while back. The Framework got bent around the power button in a way that made the button get jammed; I bought a new input cover for ~$100 and replaced it in five minutes. My iPad's keyboard case now has keys that occasionally get stuck, so I'll probably replace that at some point. My MacBook seemed fine at the time, but it developed an intermittent trackpad button jam that could have been caused by that (or maybe a piece of dust).
gibibit 4 hours ago [-]
Interestingly the Macbook trackpad does not have physical buttons. It uses haptic feedback to simulate the feeling of a "click", but in reality there is no button which could be interrupted by dust.
I did have a Macbook trackpad fail in a similar way, where the "button" seemed to intermittently fail to click. It turned out my battery was swelling (see /r/spicypillows) and this impacted the trackpad operation.
On topic, I took the Macbook with swollen battery in to the Apple Store and they had to replace the entire keyboard+battery assembly as a unit because the battery was not replaceable.
cosmic_cheese 4 hours ago [-]
MacBooks haven’t had mechanical trackpads in over a decade now — they’re solid glass with really good haptics to make it feel like they move, so I doubt what you’re experiencing with yours is a mechanical jam. It’s more likely that the haptic motor is malfunctioning occasionally or there’s something that’s causing the process in charge of haptics to stall.
pmontra 8 hours ago [-]
My ZBook from 2014 is apparently made of sturdy plastic but the keyboard is built on a metal base and it fits in metal hooks on the chassis. It does not flex at all.
The problem with this machine is that sooner or later I'll run out of reasonably priced keyboards (they wear and the mechanisms under the most used keys break), maybe no more support for the graphic card neither from Nvidia nor from the open source driver, and go forbids if some RAM burns. Perhaps RAM from that age it still available but historically the prices hike when only a few desperate people look for it and have to pay a premium.
So eventually I'll have to buy a new laptop because of maintenance: hardware parts and software updates. I'm betting on another 2 or 3 years. There is nothing I particularly like on the market now but this laptop was a compromise too. Serviceability and 3 buttons on the touchpad vs a useless number pad that shifts the center of the keyboard to the left of the screen.
bluGill 6 hours ago [-]
I suspect you could get a local machinist to make you a metal base, then find mechanical key switches and the other parts and thus make a new replacement keyboard to your specs. Keyboards are not very complex so some effort can get you a new one to fit.
noisy_boy 14 hours ago [-]
My ThinkPad X1 extreme is still chugging along but gets hot etc. I am looking for a cooler machine with ThinkPad durability. I can't choose Framework because a) they don't ship where I am b) they won't honor warranty if I use forwarders c) none of their offerings have a comparably durable config.
Maybe they should think about a FrameTough line.
bkor 12 hours ago [-]
> My ThinkPad X1 extreme is still chugging along but gets hot
Not clear to me if you mean always or that it changed. Do suggest to check the thermal paste, plus clear out dust in fans and heatsink fins.
noisy_boy 3 hours ago [-]
It always had aggressive fans but yes I do plan to open it up for cleanup (I do clean the fan grills with a soft brush regularly).
MSFT_Edging 3 hours ago [-]
I was sad when I bought a new 10th or 11th gen X1 carbon to replace my 4th gen. I configured them essentially the same, second-to-fastest processor, FHD display, no touch screen.
The 4th gen almost never kicked its fans on, especially in Linux. The new one gets far hotter, even at idle. Lenovo removed the traditional sleep mode in favor of modern sleep, which causes it to die with the lid closed in a couple days compared to over a week with the 4th gen.
winrid 3 hours ago [-]
My 6th gen carbon almost never gets hot as well. Maybe the gen you have has a CPU with a higher TDP? They got better again recently.
umbra07 12 hours ago [-]
Someone on the subreddit was talking about how they plan to make a high-end carbon fiber chassis for the 13. That was a few weeks ago - I don't believe they've posted anything since their initial post.
Malcolmlisk 12 hours ago [-]
As a 13 owner (only thinkpad 13, nobody talks about it but I think is one of the best pieces of hardware I have ever owned) this would be fantastic. I would love to have my 13 for life. I don't know if my 13 is able to be upgraded like a desktop PC like other thinkpads, but adding a carbon fiber chassis would be like fresh air.
umbra07 31 minutes ago [-]
My comment was referencing the Framework 13, not the ThinkPad :)
ethbr1 6 hours ago [-]
Thermal conductivity?
adgjlsfhk1 14 hours ago [-]
imo the modular ports are a massive longevity feature. charging cable ports are one of the most common laptop killers, so making that modular is a huge step up
4k93n2 3 hours ago [-]
or even just keeping the ports on a separate PCB would be a help so you dont have to replace the whole motherboard when the usb port breaks
i bought maybe 5 differnet thinkpads over the years and never had an issue with the old charging port. with the last usb-c thinkpad i got i had to buy 2 new chargers and both of those i repaired a few times as well. the connector just wiggles around too much and the cables are also too rigid so when it gets snagged on something the connector ends up bending in the port before the cable bends.
in the end i just got rid of it before the actual port on the motherboard got completely damaged
cosmic_cheese 5 hours ago [-]
Modular ports are good, but I’m not sure I need to be able to hot swap them.
Larger port module plates that bolt into the sides of the chassis with a few screws would be just as good from a longevity standpoint, would enable better rigidity, and would allow the FW13 to host a considerably higher number of ports.
Groxx 5 hours ago [-]
I kinda both agree and disagree...
A screw or two definitely wouldn't have impeded the handful of times I've moved my 16's parts around, not even in the slightest, it's just not that frequent. And I don't usually carry other kinds of ports + wouldn't be able to have the screwdriver too, it's usually "I have them all" or "I have none" and then all I can realistically do is swap sides. I'd have zero complaints with some standard screws.
... but tool-less lowers the barrier to literally zero, which is pretty big when you need it. It's a very different mental-space: absolutely zero concern.
... and if they were smaller, they'd be incompatible, and it'd be harder to build custom ones due to even less internal space.
squiggleblaz 10 hours ago [-]
The modular ports are just USB-C in a cutaway. You can plug your charger into the USB-C port, or into a USB-C module that plugs into the USB-C port. Totally underwhelming. (I had a Framework 16 as a work machine at a previous job.) I definitely still make use of USB-A, and I will for some time - but only when I'm at home plugging in my keyboard and mouse, so I could be perfectly happy with a USB-C hub like I use with my current laptop. I want a durable computer which I can upgrade the RAM, motherboard, storage, replace the battery, screen etc over the next seventeen years so that I don't know when one computer begins and the next ends. I don't want impractical USB-C ports that I have to pay extra for and which limit the durability of the system. To be clear: I've never had a laptop whose charging port died, but if it was something I'd rate as likely, I'd would much rather have a good system and replace the bottom cover kit, rather than a compromised system and replace a protective plug.
mistercheph 10 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure what you lose by the expansion bay port being an actual standard port rather than something proprietary I’m assuming is what you would prefer? There is a grip system where the expansion ports lock in, and the ports aren’t just hanging by the USB-c male, I have not heard of instances where the inner port fails. In fact, it’s pretty convenient and has come in handy for me that in a pinch you can remove the expansion modules and have extra usb-c ports.
albertgoeswoof 13 hours ago [-]
Not really these days, most laptops have 2-4 usb c ports that you can change through so you have redundancy if one fails
makeitdouble 14 hours ago [-]
At least the M1~2 series Macbooks scratched the screen with the keyboard. Mines did, and asking second hand resailers it was a very common issue.
Rigidity is only for the main body, not the screen part.
cosmic_cheese 5 hours ago [-]
FWIW, I’ve been toting around the 16” M-series models since they launched and recently picked up a 13” Air and have yet to see this occur. Haven’t heard reports of it from coworkers or friends either. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but I suspect there’s a particular action or pattern of behavior that makes it more likely, such as placing it under heavy objects or packing it in tightly with books or something like that.
Which is basically equivalent to "putting it in a backpack" to me. I brought my last one in a lot of places, putting it with an iPad in the laptop compartment, the iPad was fine, the MacBook screen wasn't. For comparison I have an Asus X13 now, same use case (the iPad became a Surface Pro) for the same one year+ period now, and the screen is still perfect.
cosmic_cheese 2 hours ago [-]
It’s worth fixing for sure, but between that and PCB flexing, to me the latter is by far the worse of the two. A lot of users will never encounter the first, but in a laptop with a flexy chassis practically everyone will end up flexing their mainboard unless the laptop is permanently desk-bound.
mgraupner 12 hours ago [-]
Using a thin microfibre cloth between keyboard and screen prevents this.
makeitdouble 11 hours ago [-]
Setting a microfibre cloth every time the laptop is bagged is much of a PITA to be honest. The lazier solution is a screen protector, albeit screen viewing angle or reflection come into consideration.
Personally I moved away from macs, so choosing a laptop with a touch screen was the best option: screens are tough enough, won't scratch under most circumstances, and can be wiped with anything short of diamond dust.
nottorp 2 hours ago [-]
Only if Apple provides a stream of clean microfibre cloths and someone to lay it out for me and close the laptop with care.
Otherwise they'd better lay off the drugs that generated that thinness fetish and make sturdy devices again.
(Note that i don't see any button traces on my m3 mbpro yet. it's close to a year old. And I'm not the kind that keeps the tv remote in the plastic bag that it was delivered in, probably the opposite.)
hkt 10 hours ago [-]
Classic apple apologia: hey user who spent ££££, you're doing it wrong!
Reminds me of that iPhone model where they issued guidance on how to hold it because people lost signal during calls.
wpm 7 hours ago [-]
Apparently the flex on the 16 is bad enough that the pogo pin connector for the keyboard deck loses contact every time you pick the laptop up.
ohgr 11 hours ago [-]
They are bendy as hell - I have a couple of colleagues with them.
Also on that I think they should do away with the modular port things anyway. They're a suboptimial use of space and limit the total number of ports you can have. The real problem is that the ports on most laptops are soldered directly to the motherboard which results in extreme expense if you kill one. Just give us some replaceable ones like the current MacBook line. They're on an easy to remove daughterboard and purchaseable online.
0xEF 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the price is the only thing that holds me back from trying a Framework 13.
I have a few Thinkpad X260s which can be got on eBay for $100US. Drop in a fresh SSD and stick of 16gb memory for another $100US and you have a very capable little machine for common, daily use that suits all my needs more than adequately. If one gets damaged, I am not out too much money. I've been using two for about 4 years now, one as my daily driver at home and one that goes on the road with me. I have not needed to further upgrade either one beyond what I did initially when buying* them. So, with that in mind, I think use-case has a lot to do with whether or not someone can get away with running the more disposable cheap-but-good Thinkpad like I do.
But >$800US for a Framework 13 that bends like a reed in the wind is not a smart choice for me. I really like their ethos of modularity, too, but there's just no way I'm hitting that cost anytime soon.
*Note on buying Thinkpad from eBay: yes, collectors have ruined the price of some models, but not all. Lots of the X Series models are still very cheap, but please do not support sellers who are offering cheap laptops without a battery and power cable. Be patient and dig, you'll find the ones who are selling you a complete, useable machine for cheap. Unfortunately, eBay is flooded with a lot of vulture tech resellers that part perfectly good batteries from devices so they can make more money selling you both separately.
kjs3 7 hours ago [-]
You hit on why I got my first used ThinkPad many years ago (a T42): it was so cheap as to be disposable. I was going on a trip that promised to be somewhat...ah...rough on my kit, and I picked up the T42 for dirt so I didn't take my new, very expensive laptop only to have it trashed (I don't remember what it was now...probably some Dell). The Dell(?) is loooong gone. The T42 made it through the trip fine, and over many years has gotten an SSD, a memory upgrade and a new screen (old one worked fine; wanted the pretty SXGA screen) and because it has a real, honest to gawd parallel port, it's still serving duty today controlling some stuff in my lab (PROM programmer, some finicky windows software, etc). It might not be a daily driver, but it gets fired up most every week to do real work.
doublepg23 3 hours ago [-]
FYI- you can find 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs that’ll work with the x260 :D
roywashere 12 hours ago [-]
My new company of about 100 persons uses ThinkPads as their 'standard issue' laptops. Which I guess is great. I have a T480 privately. But modern ThinkPads are not as great as before, and I was just thinking about if the Framework might make a nice 'standard issue' laptop for the company. I guess it might be just fine!
maccard 11 hours ago [-]
When would you define as “before”? I’ve had a thinkpad on and off and I’d describe the quality as consistent.
People talking about old Lenovos being good quality are often talking about in the pre-IBM days which is far more likely to be nostalgia at this point.
roywashere 4 hours ago [-]
I definitely know that people have complained that modern ThinkPads are not as good as before, and they have been doing that for ages, just as Socrates back in the day already was complaining about modern kids and their behaviours ;-)
In this case I was referring to post-T480 ThinkPads which have soldered memory, and no longer have hot-swappable batteries or on-board Ethernet.
vel0city 3 hours ago [-]
I don't mind not having an external battery now that these laptops can charge off USB-C. So many ways to get some kind of USB-C power source to connect to and get a bit more charge, and then that spare energy source is usable with pretty much all the rest of my electronics. Whereas before it was a big, proprietary battery that only worked with one device and needed to be connected to the laptop to charge some time later.
They're still pretty easy to find replacements for when they go bad.
herbst 10 hours ago [-]
I have a T420. A few years ago I switched to a slightly used T480, keyboard was a huge downgrade and the whole series can get really stupid USBC issues. After half a year or so it didn't dock anymore and I got an X1, basically the same laptop glad I found it without touch and the 'bright screen' because the screen is barely good enough, keyboard is the same and USBc already started to get finicky.
Meanwhile my T420 still runs like on day one (which was already 5 years old when I got it, and travelled 1+ years with me in a backpack), the screen works in direct sunlight and it's not even the best of its series, hardware still perfect. Fat SSD + 32GB Ram and you can barely tell how old it is.
organsnyder 5 hours ago [-]
Yup, my T480 got upgraded to a Framework 13 after the T480's Thunderbolt port broke (known firmware issue that basically fried the chip). I loaned my T480 to someone about a year ago, and haven't bothered asking for it back.
Meanwhile, my T410 works great as a workbench computer.
notpushkin 7 hours ago [-]
I also have a T420, though not using it regularly nowadays. It would be really nice to get proper USB-C there – using one cable to plug in monitor and Ethernet and charge is really nice.
I’ve wanted to get a T480 for a while now (mainly to do a T25 frankenpad [1] – seems like a nice project), but if it really has those issues with the USB-C ports, I think I’ll pass :-(
I've used Thinkpads consistently for 25-30 years, and still do. I can't really draw a line between "before" and "after" but if I take a long enough period I can definitely see differences in the experience getting watered down or generally worse, from less flexibility to lower reliability.
I still have and regularly use a fully functional X200, somewhere in the box I have a fully functional T42 and an R31 whose only defect is a small screen blemish caused by me closing the lid with something on the keyboard.
But my multiple X1 Gen1 and Gen2 all have various failures (screen, battery, webcam, or keyboard), my T450 has big battery issues, my T470s have screen/GPU and battery issues. T490 is fine for now, X1 Gen11 has crappy battery and is overheating from the get go. These are different generations, different lots and still affected by the same constant issues.
danieldk 9 hours ago [-]
We had an expensive IBM ThinkPad model (too long ago to remember what model it was) and the keyboard and several other parts were worn down in three years of mostly in-home use. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
At least a lot of modern ThinkPads are still modular. Recently got a 5th gen T14 AMD. Memory, NVMe SSD, WWAN modem, battery, and a bunch of other components are really easy to replace. I think I prefer the keyboard over my MBP, it feels less harsh.
sfn42 11 hours ago [-]
My first ThinkPad had terrible battery life. It was a X1 Extreme or something like that, pretty high end but the battery was useless. Even brand new it wouldn't last an hour off leash. Also couldn't use usb-c charging from the monitors at the office, had to be plugged in.
Also the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be, which is endlessly annoying as a user of different laptop brands.
jeswin 10 hours ago [-]
> Also the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be, which is endlessly annoying as a user of different laptop brands.
There's always been a bios option to swap them. It's on my x230, and probably exists on older PCs as well.
RunSet 5 hours ago [-]
IBM invented the Fn key so if anyone has their Fn key where the Ctrl key should be, it is the copycats.
> The Fn key first debuted on the monochrome display ThinkPad 300 in October of 1992. Yes there was a ThinkPad with a monochrome display. The Fn key circa 1992 was placed exactly as it is today. Interestingly enough, Apple uses the same positions for their Fn and Ctrl keys as ThinkPad. Every other notebook personal computer manufacturer that I know of has the Fn and Ctrl key positions swapped. Some would say backwards.
I heard recently that there's an option somewhere to virtually swap the Ctrl and Fn keys.
mistercheph 10 hours ago [-]
It’s still annoying to use the smaller key, but you can swap them in the BIOS config
hkt 11 hours ago [-]
Not sure what GP means but I gather the x230 era (2012?) has a cult following. I picked one up a few years ago when a laptop died and I didn't have the cash for something new: it is still my daily driver and I'm not replacing it til it dies.
By contrast, I know someone who got a T480 second hand and it lasted six months. My guess is the 2012 era was when the change happened
dahauns 11 hours ago [-]
It's been a gradual shift, with a few obvious changes along the way.
Among a few: The keyboard switch from the old 7-row (whose pinnacle was at the x220/T420 era with double-height esc and del) to the new 6-row (with later ever decreasing key travel) to the current x9 (which is basically just a yoga keyboard with no trackpoint, no key grouping, and the loss of pgup/pgdn). Things like the modular battery options vanished. The case got flimsier over time with e.g. the magnesium rollcage first vanishing from the display, then from the base. (And no - from enterprise experience - the carbon fiber composite isn't generally "as good or better", esp. for failure modes like punctual force on the display. Or...grabbing the laptop by the display and using it to fan your BBQ, which doesn't faze my old X41 :) ).
notpushkin 7 hours ago [-]
> The keyboard switch from the old 7-row (whose pinnacle was at the x220/T420 era with double-height esc and del)
I think xx30-series has such a good reputation because you could use a T420 keyboard (with a tiny modification to better fit the chassis and not short out the backlight pin).
boomskats 3 hours ago [-]
I love my x2100. It is the machine I keep coming back to, and find more reliable and enjoyable than any other I've owned (including ones that outperform it on linux, like my oled ryzen-based t14s).
I've been trying to rationalise why that's the case for years - whether it's the keyboard, the trackpoint, its ability to survive my casual brutality, some nostalgic emotional/romantic aspect, etc., but recently I've kinda Stopped Worrying and just unapologetically embraced it. I've been wandering around kubecon with it for the last couple of days and getting 9-10 hours per battery and it hasn't skipped a beat.
For anyone interested, there's a new project in town, the X210Ai [1]. I can't vouch for anything yet as I've not pulled the trigger myself, but I've been in touch with the vendor via whatsapp for the last couple of months, and they're legit enthusiasts.
I enjoy my Framework 13 laptop; it’s great having a laptop that is user-serviceable and upgradable, and I’m keeping my eyes out on the upcoming Framework convertible laptop as a potential replacement for my aging Microsoft Surface Pro 7.
With that said, I do wish the keyboard on my Framework 13 were better. It would be a wonderful to have a ThinkPad-quality keyboard, I have a ThinkPad T430 and its keyboard is one of the best chiclet-style keyboards I’ve ever used. I also like the keyboard on my old aluminum PowerBook G4, as well as the keyboard on my work-issued M3 MacBook Pro. What would be a dream, though, would be if there’s some way to fit a mechanical keyboard into a laptop.
dahauns 10 hours ago [-]
>With that said, I do wish the keyboard on my Framework 13 were better.
Exactly this. I've given up hope to expect an old-school TP keyboard with its ridged concave keys providing perfect tactile feedback even when not depressing a key, but there's basically no standard laptop layout out there anymore optimized for efficient touch typing, with existing consistently grouped and offset(!) off-center key groups (4-group f-keys, pgup/pgdn/home/end cluster, arrow keys). And some key travel to go with tactile scissor keys to reduce bottoming-out would be nice.
(Oh, and why I find the "tactile feedback" so important, see the wonderful "Pictures Under Glass" rant.
Not directly related to keyboards, but the premise remains the same. Hands feel things. :)
)
codethief 7 hours ago [-]
Great article, thanks for the link!
cassepipe 13 hours ago [-]
I did not expect this criticism ! I, and many others apparently, enjoy the keyboard a lot. My main criticism would be that even though it's acceptable, the chassis does not feel rugged.
joe5150 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed particularly with respect to the top cover (though it has improved).
al_borland 16 hours ago [-]
Framework is still very new. It takes time to build a brand. I hope their new Framework 12 hits it big with the mainstream. It sounds like it’s targeted as the school/chromebook market, but as an adult I’m also interested. I’m hoping when the pre-orders go up next week it’s priced in a way that makes it an impulse buy. I really don’t need it, but I want to support the company and their mission.
joseda-hg 16 hours ago [-]
As someone that had been thinking on buying both a tablet and some sort of chromebook for light web based workflows on the go, they 100% have my attention
I will say, it has weirded me out that they have been so cagey about the pricing in particular, which AFAICT, is the only thing not public about the laptop before the pre order date
chairmansteve 14 hours ago [-]
Probably worried about tariffs. Now they know.
nottorp 2 hours ago [-]
Now they need to arrange selling and shipping from outside the US for their non US customers so they aren't affected :)
onli 10 hours ago [-]
I also saw no mention about the weight. Did you? Matters to me a lot for a 12".
NikolaNovak 7 hours ago [-]
Not all, but a lot of ThinkPad fans enjoy the track point. No laptop without a track point can be considered a viable alternative for me :-/
And thus, I have everything from a 14 year old t420s to my trusty t25 anniversary edition, and then a few workhorses with 8th gen Intels (x13 yoga, x1 carbon, t580) as personal and family laptops.
dagw 6 hours ago [-]
As someone who once loved the track point on my old IBM ThinkPad, I've found that for some reason every track point not made by IBM sucks. Even the modern Lenovo ones are terrible, and I have no idea why.
NikolaNovak 5 hours ago [-]
Interesting; I do find sometimes I need to go into the app and adjust the acceleration/sensitivity/speed to my liking, but even up to my current work Yoga (12th gen Intel), I used them preferentially to trackpad when on the move (ergonomic mouse when stationary). I have struggled more with Dells and HPs, but can usually get it "close enough"
dagw 4 hours ago [-]
To be fair, I went IBM -> Apple -> Lenovo, so it is conceivable that the track point is actually as good as it ever was, and I just got spoiled by how good the Apple trackpads are.
mrheosuper 15 hours ago [-]
There is Thinkpad T25 25th anniversary edition[1]. It has "modern" spec, while still having that traditional keyboard of t420
Also iirc there are projects that make Motherboard that fit in old thinkpad chassis. It has very impressive spec: 8 core Zen3 AMD cpu and 32gb ram. Some M2 slot etc.
Nothing of value has been lost :^) (But if you really need Win 11, there are workarounds)
arp242 14 hours ago [-]
Keyboard is a bit nicer, but that's probably about it.
Had to use Scroll Lock just yesterday. Which, well, I can't on my x13 :-(
jjice 7 hours ago [-]
I love my Framework AMD 13. Coming from an old Thinkpad X1 Carbon gen 3 I got used after a few years. Excellent form factor and oh so repairable. I’ve been very satisfied with the purchase.
I’m really rooting for Framework over the next decade to really establish themselves and hopefully affect some change in laptop repairability. And hell, even if they don’t, hopefully they’ll be around so I can continue to be a customer.
fishgoesblub 15 hours ago [-]
Until you're able to somehow transplant a T420 keyboard into a Framework, I'm staying on my ThinkPad either until it dies, or the heat death of the universe. whichever comes first ;-)
diggernet 13 hours ago [-]
Similar situation here, with W520.
My fantasy for Framework 16 is to have extended hinges and thick bezel available that would lift the screen further from the keyboard deck, and of course an upgraded keyboard available with longer travel and contoured keys (and better arrow key layout).
Are you listening, Nirav?
(Yes, I know it would make the laptop slightly thicker and heavier. But I just said I'm using a W520, and happy with it...)
wpm 7 hours ago [-]
The arrow key layout makes Framework a non-starter for me. Full height L and R keys sucked shit on the touchbar MacBook Pros so bad that even Apple acquiesced to common sense and went back to the inverted T.
diggernet 5 hours ago [-]
I use those keys heavily, and was hoping they'd fix it in the 16. Sadly, no. Their keyboard connector layout seems to make it difficult to have a keyboard with more rows, so having a layout with the bottom 3 arrow keys in a new row seems unlikely. But what about a touchpad module that has 3 (or 4) arrow keys on it?
Still, it's not a complete nonstarter for me, because the 16 does have that optional keypad. I could actually start using the numlock key again.
ekianjo 15 hours ago [-]
Right. Fantastic keyboards. Nothing comes close in recent laptops.
Rediscover 14 hours ago [-]
Older ThinkPad (pre-2008) snob checking in. The only recent laptops with decent keyboards (that I have found) are from MNT Research.
It's great that they are mechanical and haven't forsaken contours, but since we're among old snobs... sigh I'll never get that "lets shove everything together into a sea of keys" layout (so prevalent in the mechakeyboard scene nowadays as well).
All those off-center keys have been grouped, offset and/or specially shaped since ages for a reason - to immediately and unambiguously settle your fingers there with minimal error when you have to move you hand away from the homerow anyway.
winrid 12 hours ago [-]
isn't the x1 carbon keyboard basically the same?
ekianjo 8 hours ago [-]
Nope, the 520, 420, 220 had a different design
M95D 9 hours ago [-]
Let me say from the start that I only saw Framework laptops in pictures and I still have my old Lenovo X60 Tablet.
I hate Framework laptops' design. They went to the extreme of repairability but only as a marketing tool, while the products are still e-waste trash.
I looked at Framework 13 laptop as a replacement for my X60 Tablet. Let me do a comparison between them:
- FW13 battery swap needs dissasembly. Can't do it while on a train/bus/airplane.
- X60 battery is removed by 2 spring latches on the back
- FW13 has 2 internal expansion ports (M.2, I think), both permanently occupied by storage and wifi
- X60 has 2 internal expansion ports (miniPCIe): one is occupied by wifi, one is for WWAN (optional). Storage is in a separate SATA bay.
- FW13 has no external expansion slots, except if you count USB as expansion
- X60 has 1 external expansion (PCMCIA/Cardbus type 2) - far more robust than USB-C, and the metal case provides cooling
- FW13 has 4 USB-C ports, one is permanently occupied by the power cable
- X60 has 3 USB-A ports (far more robust than USB-C), while charging is a separate barrel plug (also far more robust than USB-C)
- FW13 has no video output, except as a USB adapter
- X60 has VGA-out directly from the GPU
- FW13 has no audio outputs, except as USB sound card
- X60 has preamplified headphone-out and mic-in (also has internal microphone)
- FW13 has video camera
- X60 does not
- FW13 has stereo speakers
- X60 has a single mono speaker
- FW13 has no ethernet, except as a USB adapter
- X60 has gigabit ethernet
Other things X60T has, but FW13 doesn't:
- Touchscreen with pen, some models work with finger too, some don't
- great keyboard and also some extra hardware buttons such as volume, instead of key combinations
- Fingerprint reader
- SD card slot
- Firewire
- IR port, fax/modem (not much use these days)
- An attachable dock (not wired like current USB docks) that can house a CD/DVD drive, or another HDD/SDD, or extra battery and has another 2 USB ports, RS232 and parallel port.
- There's also an external battery module that directly connects to the docking port.
Please note that the X60 is ~15 years old. This wasn't a performance comparison.
So, yes, framework laptops are repaireable, but they're so crippled, there isn't much left in them to repair.
vhodges 1 hours ago [-]
There's some mis-information here:
Yep on battery - I rarely use mine while traveling (and rarely travel) and set max charge to 60% so it should last a good long time, but it can be replaced when I need too. I replaced 2 in my black Macbook and once in my iPhone 3G (but I got 8 years out of the phone). When my work MB Pro had a battery bulge, the whole machine was replaced and presumably recycled since it was not repairable.
Internal, yep, but nvme > SATA any day.
They are usb-c yes, but the ports are adjustable (can mix usb-c, usb-a, display-port, hdmi, network, storage, etc) so it's not as restrictive as you seem to be implying.
On video, I am not sure if you think it's some kind of DisplayLink thing but it's alt-dp over usb, directly connected to the GPU.
My 13" has a headphone jack (and passable speakers) and a built in Mic (and both the camera and mic have switches to disable them).
2.5GB Ethernet is available as an expansion module.
I find the keyboard and touch pad okay! I don't really need a touchscreen.
On ports:
I don't use the finger print reader (but it has one).
I don't need SD card slot all that often (but is available).
I don't have any FW devices (and 400Mbs vs 5-10Gbps).
Don't need a modem or an IR Port
I don't use a dock (I do at work for my MB Pro - but it's mostly a permanent desktop configuration so I don't mind that it's connected via usb-c). The one I got IS compatible with my Framework 13 though.
I had a t61 for work and I loved it... in 2009 . I should have bought it from the company when I left but bought a black Macbook instead
porphyra 39 minutes ago [-]
> FW13 battery swap needs dissasembly. Can't do it while on a train/bus/airplane.
> X60 battery is removed by 2 spring latches on the back
Yeah but the FW13 battery also lasts several times more than the battery life you get out of swapping two or three X60 batteries on the train.
Also, VGA out is useless in this day and age and USB-C is not only robust but also way faster and more capable.
Tade0 9 hours ago [-]
- FW13 has no video output, except as a USB adapter
- FW13 has no audio outputs, except as USB sound card
That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards.
Other things X60T has, but FW13 doesn't:
- Fingerprint reader
> That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards.
> - SD card slot
Like I said. The laptop itself is very basic (crippleware by Lenovo standards). You have to use USB ports for everything, there are only 3 usable, and also mechanically very weak, not to mention performance, heat inside a closed plastic case, cost, etc.
WillAdams 7 hours ago [-]
As a person who uses devices w/ Wacom EMR digitizers by preference, the Thinkpad X###T line is one I _really_ wanted to like, but the difficulty of getting a reasonable OS on one, with handwriting recognition, with manageable performance/thermal characteristics pushed me to the point that I gave up and moved on to a Asus Vivotab Note 8, and then a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10 when it was offered.
I keep telling myself I should try an X230T and Linux --- if there was a Framework device which supported Wacom EMR, I wouldn't have to. That said, my next major tech purchase is an rPi 5 and a Wacom Movink 13.
cge 6 hours ago [-]
> - FW13 has no audio outputs, except as USB sound card
>That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards.
Also, unless something has changed or I am misinterpreting what they are saying, the fw13 does have an audio output that is not an expansion card.
Tade0 6 hours ago [-]
Indeed! I was not aware of that as I have the 16, which doesn't feature it.
Community forum posts from 2021 suggest they sort of forgot to include this information initially.
It so happens that the audio jack in my previous laptop started getting loose after four years, which was a first, as usually it was the USB ports which would go, so having it as an expansion card was a major selling point for me.
This really is a device for people who tend to break things despite relatively light usage. I for one damaged the screen in every single laptop that I had.
M95D 4 hours ago [-]
As I said, I never saw the FW16 except in pictures and everything I know about it was from the net. I might be wrong about some of the things I wrote.
So, does it really have a headphones jack or not?
My X60T headphones jack only recently started to cause troubles after many many years of use, but it was an easy fix: drill 3 tiny holes in the connector casing and push a needle through each one to bend the contacts tighter.
Tade0 54 minutes ago [-]
The F13 has it, the FW16 does not.
Anyway, I'd rather just disassemble the expansion card and solder in a new port should this ever come to pass, as it's just a question of undoing two screws:
I don't know about the 16, but my 13 definitely does have one.
lolinder 15 hours ago [-]
I'm unsure how a second hand market for Frameworks would even make sense, given that the whole premise is that they're highly repairable and upgradable. If everyone just replaces pieces one at a time then there can be no market for used whole laptops, and if people did start regularly selling off their used Frameworks then that would suggest that they're failing at their main value proposition.
I suppose I could see a secondhand market for used mainboards and other parts.
mhitza 15 hours ago [-]
Both framework and fairphone have secondary community markets, and it makes sense. You upgrade and resell your old part. Used whole laptops also make sense if one's requirements change. i.e. going from a 13 to a 16 or a 12.
In my mind there's also a pretty big overlap in MacBook and ThinkPad users. For me personal that is the choice I'm faced with, when picking a new laptop. Do I get a new MacBook, or do I get a ThinkPad running Linux. I don't think I'm unique in this way.
Also, at least among the people I work with and talk to, many are dropping their MacBooks for a ThinkPad, because they are migrating from macOS to Linux as Apple becomes increasingly restrictive and running Linux is just becoming the easier option.
Framework is approaching the point where there is now a choice, Framework or ThinkPads. It's just that I can still get a really good used ThinkPad for like half or a third of the price.
huslage 4 hours ago [-]
Framework laptops aren't really repairable in the same way that old Thinkpads are. Maybe that's good, maybe not, but replacing an entire motherboard every 3 years isn't all that different from replacing an entire computer really.
numpad0 38 minutes ago [-]
Wait, are you saying they don't offer the full HMMs and FRU list like IBM/Lenovo did/does for ThinkPads?????
IBM HMMs, or creatively named Hardware Maintenance Manuals, were written so that if all steps in the document were performed from start to end as written, the laptop would be a pile of FRUs or Field Replacement Units, so that those FRUs can be inspected, discarded, ordered, and replaced, and then the process can be done in reverse to produce a working unit.
Why - I mean I think I know why - they likely don't have enough control and/or influence over parts suppliers to be able to publicly expose those data unlike the Big Blue - but why...
To add a data point here, my Framework laptop is 3 years old and I have no plans to change the mainboard anytime soon.
Also, you don't change its motherboard, you change the mainboard (for my laptop, it's the CPU/integrated GPU + memory sockets); this is unlike changing the entire computer. Then, you can reuse the replaced mainboard as a server if you wish to.
This pales with my experience using a Macbook Air whose motherboard failed. I did have to replace the entire computer.
MostlyStable 1 hours ago [-]
In what way can you repair and old Thinkpad that you can't repair a framework?
nextos 15 hours ago [-]
IBM-era ThinkPads were great, but Lenovo has been progressively diluting the brand, trying to copy Apple, and releasing way too many models to be able to pay attention to detail. Still, they are often the best x86 machines, but competition from Framework is more than welcome.
Something that I find particularly annoying are persistent issues with noisy cooling systems. Some models are great, but others have poorly thought fans and overly aggressive firmware. Software fixes can only remedy part of the problem. I wish they stayed closer to their original ethos of high-quality utilitarian computers.
Something like the 25th and 30th Anniversary Editions should be in their main stock product line, i.e. stop messing with keyboards please. The original was fine.
layer8 4 hours ago [-]
And nobody is making (classic) ThinkPad-style keyboards for the Framework laptops (yet? — I'm not sure they have enough "headroom").
bdavbdav 4 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure they’re there yet. I bought a FW13 as I love the ideology, but it felt cheap next to the MBP/A, for not a lot less cash. When it arrived with a failed backlight (which admittedly they immediately offered to dispatch a replacement part), it went back instead.
silisili 10 hours ago [-]
I think durability on old Thinkpads is way underrated as a reason people love them.
Me, as a 250ish lb giant, have stepped on one multiple times without so much as a creak. Granted, it was on accident each time and I'm sure perfect heel placement could have done the job if I tried.
Even so, can Framework do the same? Can anyone else making laptops today?
xaldir 4 hours ago [-]
As someone who started it's career in a thinkpad only shop
Indeed, old thinkpads were designed to survive a coffee spill on the keyboard and they did, and various drops (with spinning rust as storage and cfl backed screens)
And when you achieve to break some part, it can be easily swapped.
Oh and the documentation for that is available and very detailed.
dahauns 10 hours ago [-]
Part of the Thinkpad sales pitch of old was literally to throw the Thinkpad on the floor and step on it, pick it up and continue the presentation. Or, as I mentioned elsewhere, to grab it by the display end and pretend to use it to fan a fire.
rafamvc 14 hours ago [-]
The second hand market is so good for Thinkpads because there were so many of them bought by businesses.
Framework isn't the top choice for business.
noisy_boy 14 hours ago [-]
There are plenty of well heeled techies who will pay premium for a modern machine with durability and repairability of the ThinkPads of the old.
GolfPopper 12 hours ago [-]
My only objection to the 51nb FrankenPads is that to the best of my knowledge, they take out the ExpressPort. As a bit of a data-hoarder, I use my ExpressPort for an M2 drive, and don't particularly want to give that up.
HexPhantom 13 hours ago [-]
I really hope they get there though. The idea of a modern, repairable, modular laptop that doesn't lock you into a walled garden is incredibly appealing
janitor77swe 11 hours ago [-]
> Framework laptops are wonderful, modern and (arguably?) cheaper to own in the long-term thanks to being able to replace components, particularly the entire mainboard as time progresses.
That is entirely false. Replacing the mainboard itself costs the same amount of money as a new laptop (an entire device). Their component prices are on their website under "Shop Parts", so you can verify that for yourself. I can buy a brand new Ryzen 7000 series laptop for the price of replacing a Ryzen 7000 series mainboard for a Framework laptop. Their laptops are also a lot more expensive than same spec branded ones from Asus, Lenovo and Dell that have better build quality and design.
I don't know where does this myth come from. The cost of replacing individual component is more expensive than replacing an entire device which people do not do because it needs repairing or often even upgrading, but because they're sick of the sight of it. You can't replace one component and extend the life of your PC another full cycle because you'll soon have to replace other components too. So when it comes to upgrading you have to consider the price of upgrading all available components to get the true cost as opposed to buying a new device.
Eventually, sooner rather than later, both RAM and SSD will come soldered on, so the only thing you will be able to replace is the battery and the screen. Both which 99% users never have to replace.
I am a Thinkpad user myself, have had them for both work and pleasure. Recently upgraded my old T14 for an X13 after reading and watching a lot of Framework reviews. It's just simply a gimmick, with a lot of quality issues, being sustained by having LTT name behind it.
squiggleblaz 10 hours ago [-]
> I can buy a brand new Ryzen 7000 series laptop for the price of replacing a Ryzen 7000 series mainboard for a Framework laptop.
I haven't been able to confirm this (I found laptop prices running at about twice the cost of the mainboard), but I wonder if you're comparing an EOL runout model from a place that can afford heavy discounts against a standard price from a smaller company. If you just need a laptop and you're not too fussy, that's definitely a fair choice. But if you're buying a laptop for ten years, you probably aren't going to settle for the unsold 16GB 512GB.
> Their laptops are also a lot more expensive than same spec branded ones from Asus, Lenovo and Dell that have better build quality and design.
I guess a Framework isn't for someone who wants a same spec Asus, Lenovo or Dell.
> Eventually, sooner rather than later, both RAM and SSD will come soldered on, so the only thing you will be able to replace is the battery and the screen.
This is 173% fud. If it happens, it's because Framework is dead and there's some different company that bought their branding and just wants to use it for market segmentation. I definitely have to rate the chances that Framework has died as one of the risks of buying them, whereas I wouldn't concern myself with the risk of System76 dying, because a typical laptop lasts well past its warranty, but the point of Framework is indeed what happens in that post-warranty period.
I'm not a huge fan of Frameworks. I left a critical review on another comment. I'm not sure at all if they fit my needs, and having recently discovered the wonder of tailscale I'm now debating if my next computer will be a Framework vs a headless desktop + a dumb laptop. So even if a Framework doesn't fit my needs, they're still the only laptop that seems to. But your criticisms don't at all seem grounded enough.
dagw 7 hours ago [-]
This is 173% fud. If it happens, it's because Framework is dead
Take a look at the Framework desktop, it comes with soldered on RAM. Not because of any active decisions made by Framework, but simply because that's how that CPU ships. It literally didn't support RAM slots. I can only see this trend continuing. I don't doubt that Framework will be the last hold out in the fight against soldered on RAM and SSDs, but sooner or later if they want to keep shipping the latest CPUs, they probably won't have too much of a choice in the matter.
vhodges 1 hours ago [-]
FW asked AMD about lpcamm memory and AMD looked into it (assigned an engineer and everything) but came back and said no it couldn't be done (I am guessing without crippling performance).
I would be in the market for the MB only but I think I can build a 9950 based system cheaper, but I am not running AI models locally.
tomnipotent 3 hours ago [-]
My gut is that Framework shipping a desktop with soldered RAM was simply a compromise of opportunity, given the LLM boom and interest in AMD Strix Halo. I can only guess, but I'm betting the Intel desktop will not have soldered parts. I'm further hopeful that if folks need to upgrade this specific device that there will be a healthy second hand market hungry for them like there is for used Nvidia GPU's.
But I do agree that the trend of soldered SoC-like will grow, seeing that less than 1 in 10 consumers ever upgrade a computer. Apple silicon has been out for four years and I don't really come across a lot of grumbling about their integrated components which gives me hope that it's a tenable option and we're worried about nothing.
mistercheph 10 hours ago [-]
> Replacing the mainboard itself costs the same amount of money as a new laptop (an entire device). Their component prices are on their website under "Shop Parts", so you can verify that for yourself. I can buy a brand new Ryzen 7000 series laptop for the price of replacing a Ryzen 7000 series mainboard for a Framework laptop.
That’s not true, you must be comparing unlike boards and machines.
7840U and 8840HS are essentially the same CPU and the difference in performance between 7840U and 7735HS is minimal, few % at best. So these three are comparable. I'm sorry but for the price of a replacement mainboard I can buy a brand new whole laptop with memory, storage, screen, the everything that comes with it. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the hype behind a repairable laptop?
vhodges 1 hours ago [-]
Huh... I think the Pound is over valued or something. It's $699 CAD (currently discounted mind you) which is something like £380 (according to Google today).
I have a 12th Gen 13 but I will probably wait one more generation and either get that or a discounted Strixpoint MB (since it'll be a generation back and presumably cheaper).
AshamedCaptain 9 hours ago [-]
> the only thing you will be able to replace is the battery and the screen. Both which 99% users never have to replace.
This is sarcasm, I hope, right? The two most consumable items in the laptop (specially for OLED screens), and you're suggesting users have no need to replace them?
janitor77swe 8 hours ago [-]
Yes that's exactly what I'm suggesting. The two things I never had to replace since I got my first laptop in the late 90s, not do I know anyone who had to replace those.
Muvasa 5 hours ago [-]
Literally the battery is the only thing I had to replace on every laptop I've had.
j45 14 hours ago [-]
When Frameworks first came out, there was doubt that they couldn't last a year.
Or launch multiple lines.
Longevity is built one step at a time. Voting with dollars only helps it become an option enough and signal to other manufacturers to consider similar ways.
kristopolous 13 hours ago [-]
Every time i see the framework people at a conference i insist that they have to target the thinkpad users and not just the macbook people.
Just remind them if you see them. They'll eventually prioritize making it happen.
At every company I've worked for, tickets get promoted from the backlog if enough customers or would-be customers nag about it.
cassepipe 13 hours ago [-]
Even MacBook users are used to something quite more rugged
grudg3 13 hours ago [-]
Obligatory "I can't even order Framework in my country" post.
But I can get as many Thinkpads as I want.
bigpeopleareold 13 hours ago [-]
Same here - can also buy 2 or 3 T480s for the price of a new framework even if they did deliver :D
mock-possum 4 hours ago [-]
I just can’t with the thinkpad’s keyboard layout. The left function being swapped with the ctrl key is a nonstarter for me - you can’t just put keys in the wrong place.
DeathArrow 11 hours ago [-]
>Framework laptops are wonderful, modern and (arguably?) cheaper to own in the long-term thanks to being able to replace components, particularly the entire mainboard as time progresses.
They are also bulky and battery life is not great.
To upgrade it you have to buy a mainboard which is quite expensive.
I found that I am better by selling my old laptop and buying a new one.
unethical_ban 3 hours ago [-]
I don't know about other non-mac laptops. I agree the battery life isn't anything to write home about, but it's better than my corporate windows laptop. I blame Intel/AMD/Windows for killing off proper suspend modes.
But bulky? I have the Framework 13 and it's very well sized. Smaller and lighter than the 14" macbook pro and similar to my windows laptop.
nottorp 2 hours ago [-]
> I blame Intel/AMD/Windows for killing off proper suspend modes.
Holy $ALL_DEITIES! I use mac laptops, but I've recently set up a WinAMDNvidia "gaming" laptop. I just closed the lid when I was done for the day, because that's what you do with macs.
In the morning there was a strong whooshing sound in my home office. Guess what, the sleeping laptop had turned its fan on. What kind of sleep mode is that that needs active cooling?
RecycledEle 9 hours ago [-]
If Framework had used a ComExpress type 6 module in their laptops they would have had an upgradable processor.
I wish someone would build a new laptop abound a ComExpress module and
all the freely-open parts from a Framework laptop.
piokoch 10 hours ago [-]
I am not sure what is so fascinating about Framework laptops. They are pretty expensive and are, in fact, one more Chinese OEM production - they are produced by Taiwanese Compal Electronics, which has factory in Kunshan (China).
It is hard to build a legend around something like this.
MacBooks are produced in China too (as everything), but they have that "legacy" of being a cult product from U.S.A.
nrp 8 hours ago [-]
We manufacture in Taiwan, not China, and the design is ours, not Compal’s.
DeathArrow 11 hours ago [-]
>ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (and the "modern web") worsen
That's true for every computer. But people still buy old C64, Amiga, Atari, IBM or Apple computers.
criddell 5 hours ago [-]
> But people still buy old C64, Amiga, Atari, IBM or Apple computers.
Not in meaningful numbers.
znpy 11 hours ago [-]
> 51nb's "FrankenPads" especially breathe incredible new life into old IBM and Lenovo stock.
That's biased though. As soon as a 51nb motherboard dies or has any hardware failure you're back to 2008-era level of performance.
einpoklum 11 hours ago [-]
> Framework laptops are wonderful
No they're not. They have the sake kind of atrocious low-travel keyboards that almost-all (or all) other laptops these days have. And - for many of us - the most important piece of hardware in a laptop is the keyboard.
quailfarmer 13 hours ago [-]
The tightness of hardware integration isn't a bug, it's genuinely a feature; In fact, it's the defining feature that makes Apple hardware great. Socketed RAM, CPU, and Storage just weren't worth the tradeoffs, namely size, weight, cost, and performance. Including those modular interfaces just wasn't worth it when the internal interfaces would be obsolete within 5 years, and the average user was replacing sub-components 0 times over the life of the device.
The user being able to swap parts easily is _neat_ but it's just not an required feature, any more than the user of a car being able to easily hot-swap the engine. The right level of integration provides a tradeoff the maximizes reliability, cost, performance, and repair. A professional can still replace almost any component of a modern laptop, with a few thousand $ of specialized tools, and the battery, the only component with a fixed lifetime, can be easily replaced at home.
I really hope Framework can continue to develop hardware with documented repairability, without falling for the myth that tight integration and quality are mutually exclusive.
porphyra 36 minutes ago [-]
The physical socket also introduces a new point of failure. In the olden days there was often "ram was bad but taking it out and reseating it in the socket fixed it", which can be avoided by just having it be on the same physical chip.
xandrius 9 hours ago [-]
If being able to replace a part requires me to have a screwdriver (literally a Philips one should do), the component, and no additional PhD or bravery coming from youth, inexperience or both, I will welcome it with open arms.
Right now, having devices which require both expertise and expensive machinery means that the cost of going to someone to repair it will increase over 10 folds, making a full replacement a financial and sound choice.
If my CPU doesn't last for 10 years but I can change it myself in minutes, I would rather that than throwing away everything else I still love and is still functional just for promised extended reliability (which is just a matter of statistics and profit margins at the end of the day).
bartread 8 hours ago [-]
> If being able to replace a part requires me to have a screwdriver (literally a Philips one should do), the component, and no additional PhD or bravery coming from youth, inexperience or both, I will welcome it with open arms.
You have to understand though that people like us are a tiny minority.
Increasingly I hate creating waste, especially e-waste, and so I'll tinker with things to get them working or upgrade them, but most people don't want the hassle.
xandrius 5 hours ago [-]
I don't think many throw away their remote controller when the batteries run out. So why do we do that for laptops? Because it makes them 2cm thinner?
I believe this change benefits 100% the companies imposing them, consumers always have a tech-enthusiast around to ask if needs be.
culopatin 4 hours ago [-]
Rechargeable remotes like the Samsung one, yes. My dad tried to fix it and I had to get him a new one lol.
sitkack 7 hours ago [-]
I have taught at least three people how to do simple repairs and upgrades on laptops.
Anyone that can read and use their brain can strip a laptop down to components and reassemble it.
culopatin 3 hours ago [-]
Ok, but you’re missing the point and reassuring OPs. Three people might as well be zero.
sitkack 3 hours ago [-]
I am not. If we continue to sit on our hands talk down about "most people" aren't interested in XYZ, we are the problem.
Armchair dipshits like to slag on Louis Rossmann, but did lead repair sessions where he would teach people how to do hot air pcb rework. Dude walks the talk and empowers people.
You are missing my point.
urda 2 hours ago [-]
You’re venting, not arguing. Teaching three people doesn’t scale, and anecdotes aren’t data.
No one’s dismissing Rossmann or the value of empowerment. The problem is acting like isolated efforts equal systemic change. If this were as easy as you claim, the landscape would reflect that.
So yes, you’re missing the point. Passion is fine, but without policy, infrastructure, and incentives, it goes nowhere.
2 hours ago [-]
fsflover 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter how many people do it as a hobby. Making a repair easier makes professional repair/upgrade cheaper, enabling poorer people to do it, thus decreasing the overall waste dramatically.
masswerk 6 hours ago [-]
That said, I've a MacPro 3.1 in production (also 17 years now – always up), which is from Apple's era of easily (or even hot) swappable parts. Apart from failing 3rd party RAM, no issues ever. – And I'm probably going to upgrade the drives to SSD (still HDD) this year, since you can still get new upgrade parts for its ancient busses.
(And for the failing RAM: open the hood, a LED tells you which strip is failing, swap it, close, go on… The build quality is quite amazing, BTW.)
wwweston 2 hours ago [-]
> Apple's era of easily (or even hot) swappable parts.
This. It existed. The laptops still commanded enthusiasm, felt great, capable, and solid without being too heavy, and had swappable RAM and disk. Keyboard and battery swap were screwdriver set DIYs. Heck, the old Pismos had hot swappable battery and drive bays.
I'm still frequently using a MacBook Pro 11,3. Only lets you swap the drive but that by itself is a great point of flexibility.
The M series does amazing things which have their own merits, but the particular set of tradeoffs aren't inevitable.
The "sacrifices must be made" idea apparently sacrifices recall of other possibilities first.
op00to 4 hours ago [-]
I'm a huge Thinkpad fan. I'm an even bigger MacBook fan.
None of my MacBook Pros ever had any issues, and I used my last MacBook for 9 years. I could keep using it with Linux instead of MacOS, but I think almost a decade of use is plenty of value for me.
There were recalls and scandals with the MacBook Pro over the years, but nothing that other vendors also didn't see, and that wouldn't have required the same exact parts being replaced. I'm thinking of the GPU issues with certain MacBooks. The difference is Apple is usually able to be held to task to fix issues, while almost any other vendor did not care to stand behind their product, including Lenovo.
I had a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon with the HiDPI screen that was absolutely awful, requiring replacement multiple times. Each time, the moron from Unisys that Lenovo sent to do the on-site repair would return me with a laptop that was poorly reassembled, and with new problems due to the tech's ineptitude. The same dude did service for Lenovo servers, and he once dropped a server that needed a fan replaced on the floor. Talk about fragile.
Thinkpads are great, and the oldest ones are still solid to use, but to say that MacBooks are fragile ignores that Thinkpads too are fragile.
dahauns 2 hours ago [-]
>The difference is Apple is usually able to be held to task to fix issues, while almost any other vendor did not care to stand behind their product, including Lenovo.
Sorry, but this is a joke. "any other vendor did not care to stand behind their product"? Give me a break.
Apple has been time and again the champion of denying issues with their products until lawsuits forced their hand, often settling without admitting wrongdoing. Bendgate, Batterygate, MBP nVidia, MBP AMD, Butterfly keyboard, just off the top of my head. (Again: My criticism here is about how Apple handled them.)
"You're holding it wrong" is a meme for a reason (that didn't result in a lawsuit, though IIRC)
zenolijo 12 hours ago [-]
> A professional can still replace almost any component of a modern laptop, with a few thousand $ of specialized tools, and the battery, the only component with a fixed lifetime, can be easily replaced at home.
Even if a professional can fix it, that expertise to be able to use those tools worth "a few thousand dollars" costs a lot too, likely pushing the price high enough that its worth thinking about buying a new device instead.
While the battery might be the only thing with a fixed lifetime, other components often also break. I was unlucky and owned a ThinkPad with one soldered on RAM module and one socketed slot to be able to upgrade the RAM, but that didn't help the day that the soldered on RAM died on me.
bux93 12 hours ago [-]
It's not just price. The market for this expertise is also not very deep and liquid. If I have to get a laptop repaired, what are my choices? Send it off to the manufacturer/importer if it's still under warranty, and get it back in maybe two months. Drop it off at a shop that does also phone repairs and hope they don't wreck it?
Realistically I don't know anyone with my specific kind of problem who's used their services before, so I don't really know their reputation. It's not like walking into a supermarket, or even getting a car repaired where you have some sense of the likelihood it will take as long as they say, cost as much as they say and actually succeed. There's much greater information asymmetry.
Of course, given how unattractive it is to get something repaired, more people will be inclined to just buy something new, resulting in less demand for repairs, resulting in less supply, less attractive repair market, etc.
Repairability (at home, by relative morons) also means more repair shops, because less repairability means death of a repairs market.
d3nj4l 7 hours ago [-]
Apple is actually really fast with repairs. I got my MBP back in about a week when I sent it in under the limited warranty, not even Apple Care.
maiinablegkri 9 hours ago [-]
>Even if a professional can fix it, that expertise to be able to use those tools worth "a few thousand dollars" costs a lot too, likely pushing the price high enough that its worth thinking about buying a new device instead.
This is generally a problem in taxation than the devices. Consider I want to have an electrician fix my broken wallsocket:
>Billed for 100€/hour
>Out of which expenses for moving using a workcar, calculating by officially recognized tax administration car wear value 0,59€/km for 5km both ways, so ~6€, 94€ remains
>VAT is 25,5%, leaving you with ~70€
>Paying for mandatory employer's portion of pension 17,5%, leaving us with ~57,75€
Now the employee gets 57,75€, out of which following are deducted:
>Income tax for average electrician: 26%, ~15€
>Employee's part of mandatory pension: 7,15%, ~ 4,1€
>Municipal taxes: ~8% depending on municipality ~ 4,6€
So 57,75€ - 23,7€ = ~34€
There are also various single or partial percent taxes that slightly affect the outcome, and companies often want some sort of profit instead of directly giving 100% to the single employee.
myaccountonhn 11 hours ago [-]
I think it's an attitude worth challenging. The minerals required to build these laptops are limited, and one day we will have to realize this and care for what we own.
gwbas1c 2 hours ago [-]
Chips have a limited lifespan too. It doesn't matter if you can swap a module in your laptop, at some point all those chips will need to be recycled.
simgt 9 hours ago [-]
Easily swappable components also increase resources consumption. We don't necessary want or need to be able to fix all the parts of our laptops or cars (or shoes!) at home, but we definitely want and need a local professional to be able to do so for a reasonable cost.
5 hours ago [-]
bkor 12 hours ago [-]
> Socketed RAM
CUDIMM is changeable and fast.
> The user being able to swap parts easily is _neat_ but it's just not an required feature
Mostly because people seem to have forgotten that it was possible. Often laptops are slow to due either a too full disk and/or not enough memory. It used to be more common to upgrade those. But apparently that knowledge/skill is forgotten and it's now more custom to buy a new device.
Being able to change those saves money IMO.
culopatin 3 hours ago [-]
People as in the general population were not doing it, just us weirdos.
I funded my early career years by doing IT for home users of all sorts of expertise and budget and I feel like I got a decent gauge at what the average user did during the replaceable hardware era.
The people in the middle class and below would end up with such a shit device out of the gate (those 400-600usd laptops at the time, lower outside of the us), that by the time they started complaining about slowness, the upgradeable things did not make a difference. 1 to 2gb ram with a shit Celeron? Hardly worth the money. Bottom shelf Core2duos, overheating, cracking hinges, etc.
Not to mention that even then not all laptops were very standard in the way they were built. Taking one apart could be very time consuming and they would pay by the hour for me to do it, so after labor it was above what the device was worth and it would only buy them a few months of time at most. You do that once and you realize next time you’ll get a desktop.
The richer people would just get MacBooks and only call me for software stuff.
Companies had thinkpads and once purchased would never go out the standarized build. Just swap them when out of warranty, or at the time most would actually work at a desk with a desktop and leave work at work.
quailfarmer 11 hours ago [-]
It's faster, but a big reason apple silicon is ahead is because the memory is co-packaged on an MCM. This is the direction things are going.
nottorp 2 hours ago [-]
Not sure about that, although having those fixed short traces probably helps with speed, considering the stupid DDR5 negotiation on boot.
The real reason however is that going up SoC SKUs at apple gives you more memory channels. Those bandwidth increases you see in specs are because of that, not because the memory is soldered.
bkor 9 hours ago [-]
I noticed I made an error when remembering the memory type I saw a while ago.
That's a way to have the memory close, but still being able to change it (without e.g. hot air station or something).
thowawatp302 11 hours ago [-]
Nah, personally? I know it’s possible, I’ve done it, and I just do not care anymore.
not worth it
op00to 4 hours ago [-]
It's certainly not worth it. I don't think that, for laptops, RAM requirements are increasing nearly as fast as they did 10 years ago. I spec 64GB for my laptops today, and if I could have afforded it, I would have specced 64GB 10 years ago too.
The whole setup (allegedly) fits inside original chassis, too, and disk speeds are about the same. So the only real tradeoffs for Apple are cost and the fact that user can swap in third party parts instead of paying obscene prices Apple charges for spec upgrades.
globular-toast 12 hours ago [-]
Sad but true. Most people don't do much with the things they own, even if they can. Cars get serviced when they are told to, by someone else. No modifications are done. It's a weird thing to me because you get the downsides of ownership (liability for servicing and repairs) but none of the upsides.
I wish more people took direct control over their lives. But many are just happy to not think and put up with whatever they get.
NullPrefix 9 hours ago [-]
>Cars [...] No modifications are done
In a lot of places that is highly illegal
globular-toast 38 minutes ago [-]
Really? Where? In the UK it's legal as long as it still passes MOT, but it should be declared to your insurer.
timewizard 11 hours ago [-]
Since display technology does not update as fast as CPU technology, and keyboard technology rarely updates anymore at all, you might still expect the entire mainboard assembly to be upgradeable.
Would certainly be more "green."
mtlmtlmtlmtl 10 hours ago [-]
It's not a classic thinkpad, but my thinkpad from 7 years ago is still going strong.
Recently I decided to do a service on it for the first time, and I was absolutely stunned by how little dust had built up in the CPU fan and the interior in general, after 7 years of usage, often sitting on top of a couch or bed, near my long-haired Norwegian forest cat Rufus. All it needed was a litle puff of computer duster and it was good as new. That's very good design of the air intakes and is a huge factor in the machine's longevity.
I did computer repair professionally for a while, and one of the most common causes of irreparable death I saw in laptops was massive dust buildup in cpu fans and consequent heat damage to surrounding components. I'd sometimes see this in 2-3 year old laptops even.
Funny to think that something as simple as the shape of an air intake opening can have such a profound impact on the lifetime of a device.
The other thing that Thinkpads are unrivaled at is protection for the display. People like to say macbooks are sturdy, but they are quite prone to cracked displays because of Apple's obsession with smaller bezels. The thinkpad ofc has t34 style angled armor for its display. Can't remember ever seeing a Thinkpad with a cracked display. And I carry my Thinkpad around in just a backpack with no sleeve, often the Thinkpad is the only thing in there, and it regularly impacts the floor when the(thin-bottomed) backpack is put down while sitting down on the bus or getting home.
dpedu 15 hours ago [-]
> A [macbook] battery replacement involves carefully prying out a glued component.
Can't speak to every model, but it's not always like this. I just swapped the battery on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air, and it's much easier now. The battery is glued to a metal tray that unscrews and lifts out of the laptop. It is discarded with the old battery. The tray is also held down with pull-tab adhesive strips, but they are trivial to remove - similar to what "command hooks" have.
I've also done a battery swap on a 2015 Macbook Pro 15" - much harder. Each individual battery cell is glued directly to the chassis, and removing each one involves a lot of prying and praying it doesn't puncture or decide to detonate.
Back to the macbook air, I've also replaced the screen and USB-C ports. It's not that bad.
acquacow 6 hours ago [-]
While the battery is glued down with adhesive, you can just soak it in some 91-99% isopropyl and that adhesive dissolves quite rapidly and the battery can be pulled right out. I had no issues doing this on my 2016.
Tade0 7 hours ago [-]
That's great to hear, as I recommended this model recently to a relative but was worried about its repairability.
I've only ever swapped the battery on a late 2011 MacBook and it was kept in place by three tri-wing screws - really simple procedure and reportedly the device is still in use. I would not attempt the same on a 2015 or 2019 model due to the glue situation.
testing22321 12 hours ago [-]
What replacement battery did you get for the 2020 M1 air?
dpedu 3 hours ago [-]
No specific brand, I had just searched ebay for "2020 macbook air m1 battery" and picked a seller with good ratings. Cost about $40. It's not even advertised as being a genuine apple one.
jeffbee 2 hours ago [-]
The way 99.95% of customers would replace a macbook battery is to take it to the Apple Store and have them do it for a fixed charge while you wait. It's a great service. Apple will still replace the battery in your 2013 MacBook Air. By contrast there hasn't been a first-party battery pack for the T400 in many years.
These "fragility" arguments always, as in the case of the OP, ignore the actual experience of owning and using the thing. People will adopt an ancient smartphone because they are locked into the idea that removable battery and removable SD cards are morally superior, and then blindly ignore the fact that the battery life sucks, the only batteries available are random chinese junk, the backs are easy to break and lose, SD cards are unreliable and easy to lose, and so forth. There is a reason that the market overwhlemingly prefers phones and laptops with fixed storage and integrated battery packs.
mrheosuper 15 hours ago [-]
I remember I had to take the whole MB out just to replace speaker on my Macbook pro 2015. It does not help that there were multiple different screw type
asimovDev 14 hours ago [-]
The USB-C ports are relatively easy to swap thankfully. What scares me is that on non Apple laptops they are sometimes soldered onto the motherboard which is asinine for such a high wear item. I heard it's prevalent in modern ThinkPads but I am not sure if it has changed recently
bentt 22 minutes ago [-]
I just replaced the seat back on my 2005 Aeron chair as well. Feels good to take an old thing and make it feel new. These kinds of opportunities need to be designed into products, but maybe even more importantly, people need to value those design choices so much that they'll pay more for these types of things.
interroboink 14 hours ago [-]
Having run some hardware for about 20 years (recently deceased), the problem that eventually happens is that newer OSes drop support for old hardware. If you hit some weird bug on your setup on a new OS release, there won't be anyone to help you fix it[1]. So then you're stuck on an old OS. In time, that means you can't run the latest userland software either, which relies on more modern OS features (eg: your Firefox will get increasingly out-of-date). That means the set of things you can do will eventually narrow and narrow.
If you're only running programs that you have full control of, and can compile/fix locally, or where receiving security fixes &etc. don't matter, then you're good. But things are a bit more interconnected, these days.
I do still enjoy running my hardware into the ground rather than tossing out perfectly good components every few years though (:
[1] In my case, the boot loader stopped working for my hardware on FreeBSD 11.4
yjftsjthsd-h 13 hours ago [-]
> In my case, the boot loader stopped working for my hardware on FreeBSD 11.4
That's interesting/strange. Did you report it? I'd expect them to care about that serious of a breakage in a point release.
interroboink 4 hours ago [-]
I did! [1]
There was some initial activity, and we got it narrowed down to a range of commits, but did not get any real smoking gun.
To be fair, I also put in less effort once I found I could just copy the 11.3 loader and get things working. And also some stuff came up in my own life that prevented me from devoting more time to it, alas.
It eventually got auto-closed for not being tagged to any non-EOL versions. I did recently confirm it was still a problem on newer releases, but that hardware died not long after, so I didn't pursue it.
My best guess is that it was some BIOS-level oddity. It's also possible that it was due in some way to the hardware (slowly) dying; I can't be sure. But it was a very clear "worked on release X, stopped working on release Y (and beyond)" sort of behavior.
Considering I've booted FreeBSD 11 on a Pentium Pro, I very much doubt "old hardware not supported" is really the GPs issue.
wiz21c 11 hours ago [-]
My home desktop PC, which I use daily for many things (but not dev since rust is way too slow), is 14 years old. For rust dev I connect to a virtual machine somewhere else.
Thanks to Linux I have kept my memory need low (8GB IIRC)
ajxs 15 hours ago [-]
My x220 has traveled around the world multiple times. It's been through dozens of airport scanners, dropped multiple times, and shared a few cups of coffee with me by accident. It just keeps on kicking. My x220 running Debian is actually quicker and more responsive than my friend's modern Lenovo running Windows. I'd be tempted to upgrade to a lighter and thinner laptop, but I'm too attached to the keyboard.
neilv 15 hours ago [-]
One of the few things I'd change about the X220 is the strange 2-piece lid. (What looks like a cosmetic flourish in the lid is actually a seam.)
Two of the four used X220 units I've bought arrived with the lid end piece wiggling, because it was no longer firmly attached to the main piece.
The X200 and almost every other ThinkPad managed just fine with a 1-piece lid, including being rugged against drops, so I don't know why the change.
askvictor 14 hours ago [-]
I provisioned several hundred x220's for the school I was working at, figuring they were the most bomb-proof thing at the time. The lid section you're talking about was definitively not bomb-proof. Thankfully, it didn't make much difference to the operation of the laptop, but still pretty annoying.
neilv 14 hours ago [-]
Good to know I wasn't just unlucky.
Did you find any typical repairs for the lid section?
(I haven't opened up my wiggly units yet, but I guess probably it got banged, and either screws were stripped out of their holes, or some internal plastic piece snapped.)
mtreis86 4 hours ago [-]
The extra bit of the lid houses the antennas, it's plastic to not interfere with the signals as much as the magnesium would have. I do wish they could have attached it better or made the whole lid plastic over a magnesium frame or something.
nextos 15 hours ago [-]
The X220 touchpad and fan were pretty mediocre. The rest was outstanding, unless you didn't upgrade the panel. I hate nothing similar can be bought brand new.
intrasight 12 hours ago [-]
Ahh x220. I have a most fond memory from 16 years ago. My daughter'sl laptop then was an x220 and the motherboard died so she and I, as a project one day, rebuilt the machine with a new motherboard. That X220 still works today. I told her a couple years ago that she could probably sell at any time for the same amount you bought it for.
Retr0id 10 hours ago [-]
Yup, also a problem with my X220/X230 units. My most recent repair attempt involves nails expoxied in internally, fingers crossed it holds. My previous repair (a carbon fibre strip glued on externally) failed after a drop.
JansjoFromIkea 5 hours ago [-]
Do you ever have any trouble at airports? The one time I ever had grief at an airport was a few years ago travelling with an X230 with the larger battery pack. Security seemed extremely suspicious of such an old laptop and I got stopped again later by a plain clothes security guy.
Phenix88be 10 hours ago [-]
I have one too!
The 720p is just not enough, I wish I could at least have a 1080p :(
Retr0id 10 hours ago [-]
It's possible to upgrade the panel - mine has a 1080p IPS.
VK538FY 10 hours ago [-]
Does it involve the LDVS board that you solder to the main board? I'm looking for a good source and one that doesn't cause problems with the setting for brightness.
Retr0id 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, got mine a few years back from taobao (I no longer remember specific details). IIRC the brightness control Just Worked however the chip in charge of that seems to have failed at some point and now I'm stuck at 100% brightness (I no longer daily-drive this thinkpad so I haven't bothered fixing it properly). Unsure if it's down to a design fault with the mod board or I just got unlucky.
TaupeRanger 5 hours ago [-]
Airport scanners? Are those normally dangerous to laptops?
xdavidliu 5 hours ago [-]
of course not. When you go through airport security, they give you trays where you put your backpack, laptop, and shoes. Happens every day with no problem.
TaupeRanger 4 hours ago [-]
Right that’s why I’m wondering why the OP included it in a sentence along with “dropping” that implied the laptop had “been through some stuff”.
ruleryak 14 hours ago [-]
I booted up my Thinkpad 760 XL from 1997 recently and let it run for a couple days. My WinZip was more than 9000 days past expiration, and it counted up one by one, the number just spinning ever upward for the better part of half an hour. 2 of the 3 batteries I had for it still charged to above 90% and drained at the normal rate, so I could still run it unplugged for around 6 hours. The batteries were modular, so you could have a cdrom, floppy, or battery in the first bay and a battery in the second bay. I normally ran it with 2 batteries and an external pcmcia cdrom that ran on double-a's. For a 28 year old laptop, it was still incredibly usable.
geocrasher 59 minutes ago [-]
My T420 has a couple of upgrades: Memory (16GB) and SSD (250GB). That's it. It's bone stock otherwise. When my buddy's laptop screen cracked, we had a hard time finding a new one. He took my T420 to work every day for a few months, and it came back to me more banged up than when it left. It's fine. And it did the job admirably.
I need to do some automotive tuning/testing and guess what, the T420 is where its at for that, too. It's no longer good as a daily driver, but it'll do everything else just fine.
randerson 6 hours ago [-]
My old ThinkPad X220 is the laptop I miss the most. My employer at the time replaced laptops after 4 years and sent the old ones to be destroyed for compliance reasons. I begged them to just destroy the SSD and let me keep the laptop, but "company policy..." In a sensible world I would still have that machine.
DeathArrow 6 hours ago [-]
You can buy one for a song.
asdffdasy 3 hours ago [-]
and you will probably get that very same one.
IT data destruction companies all remove the storage, and put the device back on ebay the same day.
0xbadcafebee 5 hours ago [-]
There's a fallacy often repeated for computers: "It's lasted a long time so it's going to keep lasting a long time." The thing is, failure of computer hardware is often due to manufacturing flaws. There's many that could have flaws, and they're subject to (varying) environmental stresses (both at build time at run time), so there's many failure modes.
It's difficult to know exactly when a server might fail. It might be within 1 month of its build, it might be 50 years. But what's clear is that failure isn't less likely as the machine gets older, it's more likely. There are outliers, but they;re rare. The failure modes for these things are well recorded, and the whole thing is designed to fail within a certain number of hours (if it's not the hard drive, it's the fan, the cpu, the memory, the capacitors, the solder joints, etc). It doesn't get better as it ages.
But environmental stress is often a predictor of how long it lives. If the machine is cooled properly, in a low-humidity environment, is jostled less, run at low-capacity (fans not running as hard, temperature not as high, disks not written to as much, etc), then it lives longer. So you can decrease the probability of failure, and it may live longer. But it also might drop dead tomorrow, because again there may be manufacturing flaws.
If given the choice, I wouldn't buy an old machine, because I don't know what kind of stress it's had, and the math is stacked against it.
normie3000 3 hours ago [-]
> But what's clear is that failure isn't less likely as the machine gets older, it's more likely.
Is this true? Doesn't most hardware have a dip in failure rate in the middle of its average lifespan?
tyushk 14 hours ago [-]
I run NixOS on a coreboot-ed T420 and I absolutely love everything on the outside, but it really shows its age when compared to the display on my Macbook or it comes to running heavier software ie. rust-analyzer, Chrome, or Nix builds.
If Lenovo were to release a modern T420-like, with identical chassis, battery system and similar IO port variety, but a modern display, modern internals (replaceable SSD! soldered RAM at least has a case for performance) and a modern camera, cash would evaporate out of my wallet.
I remember there was a person [1] modding T60/T61s into "T700"s with 11th gen Intel chips. Unfortunately it looks like the project's been quiet since 2022. Hopefully there'll be more who try.
I’ve never heard of a thinkpad without a replaceable ssd.
mgiampapa 13 hours ago [-]
I have a 25th Anniversary Edition Thinkpad, 7th gen i7 that I keep running PopOS specifically because it has the old magic style IBM keyboard. It's the only laptop I can stand typing on, but it's video card is getting so old in the tooth that it's starting to have problems with compatibility.
kombine 14 hours ago [-]
T14 Gen 5 AMD is perhaps the current best you can go for with non-soldered RAM.
theodric 12 hours ago [-]
I have a P14s Gen 5 AMD, which afaik is just a T14 with some certifications, and it's flimsy. The whole chassis is plastic and quite flexible. It's also currently at a Lenovo service center because the battery lasted a whole month before failing and claiming to be "non-genuine."
ThinkPads ain't what they were. My x230 is still going.
kombine 12 hours ago [-]
I wasn't aware of their build quality degradation. I've been using T14s Gen 3 for a year now and I thoroughly enjoy it, the chassis is magnesium and really sturdy. Something must have happened around Gen 5 time.
ladyanita22 9 hours ago [-]
Doesn't NixOS hog on your hardware?
Weetile 7 hours ago [-]
It's very unlikely that performance would be hindered by a particular Linux distribution, but usually rather the desktop environment that it employs. NixOS with LXQt would run very differently to NixOS with GNOME.
SuperSandro2000 6 hours ago [-]
How?
The package manager needs more RAM than the average other package manager because it is doing a lot more behind the back.
ladyanita22 3 hours ago [-]
Because it's source based and there's probably a ton of compilation in the background
johnisgood 11 hours ago [-]
I have an IBM T42, but I have the supervisor password set that I have long forgotten. I know about ways to clear the password (if they indeed work) but I have not gotten around it. If anyone knows a solution that does work, feel free to share.
It is in a mint condition, not a single scratch, and I don't want to throw it out for sure. I have an old OpenBSD on it, it is perfect for some light C coding using mg. :)
jmclnx 6 hours ago [-]
From my corrupted memory, but I think what you need to do is unplug, pull out the battery, open it up and remove the cmos battery. There should be instructions on the WEB for that. At work, people alawys returned their Thinkpads with that PW set, so I know there is a fix.
But if the password is a harddisk password, you are SOL :( You will need to get a new HD.
gwbas1c 2 hours ago [-]
(Joke)
What do you mean a Thinkpad is repairable? If a chip dies, you have to go out and buy a new chip!
Whatever happened to the days where you could just wire in a new transistor yourself?
(/Joke)
Jokes aside, my point is that this article is splitting hairs about where repairability and integration lies. It's not worth opening up a failing RAM module to find the microscopic broken transistor. For many of us, it's not worth repairing an old laptop, but instead we'd rather have the advantages of everything soldered to the mainboard.
(Although I will admit to repairing an old Mac laptop. The fans started to squeak, so I changed them.)
ivraatiems 14 hours ago [-]
I love these old ThinkPads. I refurbish and sell them all the time. Just moments before writing this, I finished fixing up a T580; earlier today I did a heatsink replacement on a W510 which is going strong with an SSD and 20GB RAM.
The older they are, the better they are, but even the modern ones are still pretty good. Like the OP mentions, the market for parts is strong and it's easy to get what you need. Then when you go to sell them, they sell for a good amount. That W510 is worth at least $100 in its current condition.
trompetenaccoun 14 hours ago [-]
>The older they are, the better they are
Everyone agrees the build quality used to be better (my grandpa already said this about appliances from his youth). But one thing I almost never see discussed is the power consumption of these old devices. Older CPUs often double as room heaters. Modern ones, especially the Apple M-series, have become a lot more efficient. So while I agree that modern laptops suck in many ways, I would do the math to see if it's actually cheaper to buy and use an older computer. Maybe not if you're in Qatar or Russia but some countries have extremely high electricity costs.
ivraatiems 12 hours ago [-]
It just isn't really a measurable impact against an overall picture.
At maximum, a T580 can draw 44 watts. 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, at 50 cents a kWh (quite expensive for the US), that's $65 a year. That's a several-year-old computer already.
The W520 can draw a much higher (but still low relative to a desktop) 150 watts. The cost per year to run it would then be around $220/year - but again, that's assuming maximum power draw for much of the day every day. Your home refrigerator uses more than twice that.
For most people, I don't see this cost increase as a problem.
ninalanyon 6 hours ago [-]
My refrigerator doesn't use anything like 300 W average. An IKEA 310 l fridge is rated at less than 100 kWh per year.
Even if you add a 210 l upright freezer to it is is still less than 300 kWh per year. That's 300 kWh / (365 * 24 h) = 34 W
NullPrefix 9 hours ago [-]
ThinkPads use 20V chargers. USB-C supports 20V power delivery. What's the efficiency of power adapters back then compared to current gen USB-C chargers?
criddell 5 hours ago [-]
I have a T520. What can I do to make this thing useful again? Even when new, the battery life was pretty awful.
markus_zhang 15 hours ago [-]
I still use my T470S as a Ubuntu 22.04 development machine. I bought it from my pre-pre-company as a used one back in 2022 and it is a fantastic laptop for personal projects. The only update I did was a 16GB RAM to up the memory to 20GB. I also bought a new battery as one of the two was dead.
I wish the graphic driver could be better as playing Youtube videos constantly crashes Firefox on Ubuntu. Other than that I have nothing to complain. I have been using it for 3+ years with zero maintenance (I didn't even bother to clean the fan) and it never failed me.
I have a second "new" Dell workstation laptop standing by just in case it breaks down. But it is a Windows machine with 32GB of memory, so I'll probably use WSL2 instead.
arp242 14 hours ago [-]
> I wish the graphic driver could be better as playing Youtube videos constantly crashes Firefox on Ubuntu
Do you have the xf86-video-intel driver installed? Try removing that package and just relying on the kernel modesetting DRI driver instead. That's been the recommended way to run Intel graphics for long time now.
I don't know if that's your issue, but it this caused a lot of weird issues on my x270 with Firefox.
anthk 13 hours ago [-]
Get the oibaf PPA and dist-upgrade.
frfl 15 hours ago [-]
Where does one find a replacement battery for a thinkpad that doesn't die after 6 months?
I spent $100 on what I thought was a legit and reputable local middleman for laptop batteries (of course they just buy from China), but even then first battery was half dead on arrival, and second free replacement was dead in around just under a year with rapid capacity decline after 6 months.
pengaru 14 hours ago [-]
kingsener batteries from aliexpress have been highly recommended in the past, but I haven't bought any yet.
bigpeopleareold 12 hours ago [-]
I bought a few. Only one was decent and still use it. For one of them I had, it never calibrated correctly and I think it was surging the motherboard (backlight on my screen just stopped working one day, but the computer just would keep turning off with it, leading to a lot of 'hold the power button down to clear the capacitors') ... the other one just doesn't charge past 65% anymore. Maybe that's a calibration issue; it sat awhile.
I am going to look at another vendor. Maybe GreenCell?
svilen_dobrev 8 hours ago [-]
Well, next to a x220 from 2012, sits my eee-pc 701, from 2008. With no-moving-parts-inside, and "huge" soldered 4Gb ssdisk with arch-32bit. Been around the world (literally), a few times. The touchpad buttons started falling few years ago. i keep putting them back. Rarely used nowadays - but battery still holds about hour+ .. Well made tiny machine.
i guess i am a hoarder? Hate to throw away useful working things..
thenthenthen 8 hours ago [-]
Similar setup here + 12 year old MacbookPro + 10 year old tower case pc. I recently got a M1 to test out some of the apple ai stuff (translation, it is broken on my intel mbp some how) but I doubt this m1 will outlive my eeepc/x220/mbp.
firefax 3 hours ago [-]
So if I was looking for an older Thinkpad to throw something XFCE flavored onto, what are some model numbers to look for? I'm basically just looking to do word processing/browsing, but I assume I'll have to jack up the ram, maybe replace the main drive with an SSD...
2b3a51 7 minutes ago [-]
Depends on what screen size/resolution you favour, and the type of keyboard.
I like the older keyboards and I'm ok with 1366x768 so I'm happy with an X220 with 8Gb RAM and a 256Gb ssd (sata). I know many people would find that unacceptable.
nticompass 6 hours ago [-]
In September of 2012, I bought a T430 from Lenovo. I loved that thing! Covered it with stickers, even upgraded it as the years went on.
Eventually, it had a Core i7-3820QM with 16GB RAM, 1080p screen (with an adapter), SSDs (plural, I put one in the UltraBay)... I installed Coreboot with Tianocore, upgraded the WiFi card... I even modded in the keyboard from a T420.
In June of 2022, 10 years later, I bought an X270 off eBay. I could still use the T430, it was just starting to feel sluggish... I just felt like I needed a new laptop. I'm very happy with the X270 and I hope to use it as long as possible.
It was also fun to start covering it with stickers all over again!
I still have the T430, it's just not being used and it's sitting in a storage locker (with my vintage computer collection).
jmclnx 6 hours ago [-]
>I could still use the T430, it was just starting to feel sluggish
A cleaning and re-paste will bring it back. If on windows maybe time for a windows re-install.
Typed on a T430 via BSD that was just re-pasted and cleaned, not sluggish anymore :) If you are interested *BSD, I can confirm both NetBSD and OpenBSD works great on the T430 I have.
brailsafe 12 hours ago [-]
I replaced my 2019 Macbook Pro 13" i5 16gb/256gb, with an M4 Pro 48gb/1TB 16". It just wasn't worth it anymore, it would stall opening some large files, the fans would spin up for inexplicable reasons, the screen was mid... it was just barely serviceable for my needs and wasn't worth being so frugal about anymore. Yes technically I could use something from the 80s to write text files if I wanted to most of the time, and I'm somewhat anxious about the possibility that some component soldered to the MB will short one day and kill my SSD, but it's still quite a worthwhile upgrade.
bzzzt 12 hours ago [-]
Are you worried about your SSD or the data on it? Making a backup will probably significantly reduce your anxiety ;)
Saris 3 hours ago [-]
Having used old thinkpads I just don't really understand the appeal, especially with how poor old LCDs look. The trackpads are tiny, the battery life is abysmal, they're heavy and like an inch thick.
rc_mob 3 hours ago [-]
Macbook superior screen is the only reason i switched from thinkpad t-series. Everything you listed can be ignored or you get used to it. Not like macbook touchpad is without its own annoyances.
piuantiderp 2 hours ago [-]
One does not use the trackpad in a thinkpad. If anything they should be removed. The old keyboards are a dream to type on... Only computer that came close (that I had was HP DV1000)
padmabushan 45 minutes ago [-]
Meanwhile an old pentium processor still operates nuclear plant in india ..
DarkIye 7 hours ago [-]
Another x220 club member reporting in. My employer was getting rid of old machines a few years back, I got it for £20. The only work it needed was to resolder the left speaker, I think it already had an SSD in it.
It weighs less than 2kg and is perfect for light duties.
bobjordan 5 hours ago [-]
I’ve been using my 10-year-old ThinkPad X250 and a decade-old workstation without feeling any need to upgrade. However, the possibility of running powerful local LLMs that require a lot of GPU or unified memory has finally increased my interest. It's my impression that laptops likely won’t see the major leap required in that area to run truely large LLMs for another 5–10 years, but I expect workstation capabilities to advance more rapidly, meaning I may upgrade in the next 1–3 years.
My current workstation setup includes 22cores/44threads decade old xeon plus four decade old Titan X GPUs with a total of 48GB VRAM, which is enough to run a decent local AI model, but I’m finally wanting more capacity. I haven’t been this interested to upgrade in a decade. NVIDIA’s new DGX-class offerings might convince me, depending on pricing and supply, although waiting a few more years to let things stabilize could be what I do. Still, it’s an exciting time for hardware, especially now that there’s a tangible reason to invest in more power for local AI.
agentultra 4 hours ago [-]
I still primarily use Thinkpads for all these reasons. One incident with fluids and a $3k Apple machine is e-waste. I had young kids, it was inevitable.
Instead, refurbished Thinkpads are still coming off leases. Available for a 250-700 refurbished. Bench repairable. I keep good backups. If something incredible happens and I can’t fix it I can get a new one same day and be back on my feet.
And I like the aesthetic. They’re built to be durable. The chassis has fluid channels. The parts are replaceable. They’re black, unassuming, and utilitarian.
It is getting harder to keep the latest versions of some distros running on them. Software continues to expand like a gas and developers don’t seem to run their stuff on anything but the latest spec hardware. But there are distros out there where folks take care to keep things minimal and fast.
These are still powerful machines. Not editing 4K video on them. But they’re dang useful for coding, writing, and day to day things I do.
_fat_santa 4 hours ago [-]
I would say even newer Thinkpads are a great deal. I recently bought a P15 Gen 1 from 2020 for ~$700 and it's been an absolute monster. Core i9, RTX 5000, and 128GB or ram. Through research I learned that brand new this machine would have cost around ~$5,800 but even five years later it's better than most new laptops around the ~$700 price point.
The "hard" thing about thinkpads is you have to find them. I must have searched eBay listing for close to a month before the right thinkpad popped up. Especially with the workstation grade laptops, they were so configurable brand new that there are something like 48 possible variants you can find, and finding one with the exact specs you want can be incredibly difficult.
acquacow 6 hours ago [-]
I just finished completely rebuilding a 2008 and 2010 macbook pro. The older ones are quite serviceable. This round, the speaker surrounds had cracked causing buzzing audio or no audio. I managed to ebay brand new speaker replacements and got them installed. I cleaned everything and re-pasted the CPU/GPU while I was in there as well. They are on El Capitan and High Sierra, but can be patched to be upgraded to Mojave if I wish. Currently running a LTS version of Firefox as my browser.
inversetelecine 6 hours ago [-]
Did similar. A 2008 white macbook and a late 2008 unibody macbook (non-pro). It was a fun project.
The white plastic macbook is in decent shape too with just standard light scratching on the body. It was sold for parts only but worked just fine. Needed a battery replacement, and I found some old magsafe "L" chargers for cheap. Maxed out the RAM at 4GB (Supports 6GB (4G+2G) but 1pc of 4GB DDR2 are expensive).
The 2008 unibody macbook needed the lower body replaced (bad keyboard main issue) but the rest of it works fine. The original battery still worked and held some charge, but I got a 3rd party one anyway along with the magsafe "L" charger. Maxed out RAM at a usable 8GB DDR3. This was also sold dirt cheap "for parts".
Both ran MX Linux for awhile until I needed the SATA SSDs. They now sit with their old mechanical hdds and the last supported OSX versions on them. Maybe one day I'll get around to selling them.
JansjoFromIkea 6 hours ago [-]
Bought an X220 years back and it unintentionally became my main laptop for a few years. Sold it on in much worse condition (I kept the keyboard) at a profit and got an i7 X230T instead, which has also somehow gone up in price since.
the X230 didn't last as long, the efficiencies of the M1 macbooks were too good to ignore. Gave it to my mother since because she wanted "an old laptop that just works"
reaperducer 6 hours ago [-]
I kept the keyboard
This I understand.
My company's IT department is using the Windows 11 migration to move everyone to new laptops, and I am going to miss that amazingly firm-but-sqiushy keyboard so hard.
I can't stand Windows, but writing long-form reports on that machine is a joy.
jamesdhutton 9 hours ago [-]
I’m currently coding a Flutter app on a 15-year-old Dell desktop, running Linux. The experience is great. I’m running latest versions of VS Code, Flutter, you name it. It’s nice and snappy and a joy to use. I’ve upgraded RAM, SSDs, GPU over the years to keep it somewhat up to date. Eventually I’m going to have to cave in and buy a Mac so that I can publish my app for iOS. I’ve been loathe to do it though and I’ve been putting it off. This article is a great explanation of why I’ve been so loathe. It articulates reasons that were semi-subconscious for me.
moffkalast 8 hours ago [-]
> The experience is great.
Aside from it being a principled thing, Linux does work a lot better on older machines. Newer hardware tends to have shit driver support for a few years.
Like my 10 year old Asus laptop which is supposed to have horrid Linux compatibility runs multiple versions of Ubuntu with KDE perfectly, with only bluetooth crapping out occasionally.
A new Lenovo laptop that we just got at work that's supposed to be tested with linux? Completely broken, can't adjust the display brightness, can't read the battery level, touchpad doesn't work, and more. I'm sure it'll be sorted out by Ubuntu 26 or whatever, but damn is it a crap experience. Using linux on a machine that's less than 5 years old is already too bleeding edge for productivity.
fadedsignal 4 hours ago [-]
That sucks. I remember buying my XPS when the new version released and tried to install Linux (Fedora). Nvidia driver issues, CPU E/P core issues, and many more. It literally took 2 years to get stable. Recently, Nvidia released a new version of the driver. Guess what happened? PC doesn't wake up from sleep anymore. I'm not even mentioning the so-called 8-hour battery life.
jamesdhutton 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah Nvidia and Linux don’t play together nicely. I discovered that the hard way too. I switched to AMD and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.
moffkalast 19 minutes ago [-]
It's real pity that is the only upside of an AMD GPU.
anymouse123456 8 hours ago [-]
I'm running a Lenovo Thinkpad, X1 Carbon from a year or so ago and it is, by far, the best Linux Laptop I've ever owned.
Unlike the 4 or so Dell (and Asus) laptops (that came with Linux preinstalled) that preceded this one, it can simultaneously support:
* Bluetooth. Yay!
* Wifi. Yay!
* Sleeps when the lid closes. Yay!
* Stays asleep when in my bag. Yay!
It's also reasonably fast and decently capable, but the not-trying-to-commit-heat-death-suicide-in-my-bag and supporting BOTH Wifi AND Bluetooth at the same time are really the biggest features.
devnullbrain 8 hours ago [-]
The last point is really a special feature in today's laptop market, Linux or not.
zakqwy 3 hours ago [-]
If you run an X220 or X230 and do embedded development, build in an ARM debugger (a thing I made some years ago)! [1]
I have a x220 with an adjustable screen. I broke the screen and the battery can't hold a charge. The power button cover is messed up. No hard drive cover. Last I looked up the screen install was complicated and expensive. Probably take over $200 I paid on eBay for it. It has an unlocked bios though which I've read is rare.
DrNosferatu 4 hours ago [-]
Want a real solution to electronic waste?
The EU should mandate 10-year warranties for higher-end consumer electronics and durable goods.
This could work on a sliding scale: less expensive items get shorter warranties (but never below the current 2-year minimum), while pricier products require longer coverage periods.
Such legislation would:
1. End the exploitation of workers in sweatshops producing deliberately short-lived products
2. Discourage planned obsolescence and reduce manufacturing waste
3. Significantly decrease the climate impact of consumer electronics
4. Create genuine incentives for a Circular Economy where durable products like quality ThinkPads become standard rather than exceptions
By requiring products to last, we'd not only protect consumers and the Environment, but also the vulnerable workers currently trapped and exploited in sweatshops designed to produce disposable goods.
stronglikedan 4 hours ago [-]
The reality is that no one wants to carry around a five pound laptop just for the sake of sturdiness or repairability.
asdffdasy 4 hours ago [-]
98% of laptops are portable desktops.
Only in very niche jobs you carry your laptop to/from office/home every day.
DrNosferatu 4 hours ago [-]
One thing does not prevent the other: that's what standards are for.
acrooks 3 hours ago [-]
You will need to sacrifice something. If the regulations become more restrictive, one of the following needs to change:
- cost (laptops getting more expensive)
- quality (laptops getting less powerful / smaller)
- time (manufacturers have a long grace period before they need to implement the regulations, to allow technology to catch up)
DrNosferatu 2 hours ago [-]
The EU always implements this kind of legislation with grace periods - obviously, no step functions.
pram 15 hours ago [-]
I appreciate the author going over the "strategic value" of both, but it seems like a desktop would fulfill the same purpose (modularity, repairability, linux) as the ThinkPad? Or, considering he obviously requires a more powerful machine than the T400 for LLMs and video editing: the MacBook? What is the point of two laptops in this case?
ed_mercer 13 hours ago [-]
There’s nothing out there that matches the bold business look and feel of old thinkpads, my personal favorite being the x61. These machines are so well-built and beautiful, and I respect and understand the decision to try and keep them running.
But I would respect a restomod more =)
mcbuilder 2 hours ago [-]
I have a stack of T40 and T60 series in my shed. All 32bit processors, but man what beautiful machines. I kinda feel like the guy with the classic Thunderbird in his garage.
jajuuka 32 minutes ago [-]
I mean I know people who are still using 2010 MacBook Pro's with modern macOS versions. Just about any problem is fixable, it just depends on your skill level or how much money you wanna put into it. Another reminder to use whatever computer you want. All it has to be is the best for you.
noufalibrahim 10 hours ago [-]
I've been on a non stop thinkpad streak since 2005 or so. T42 (IBM), X200, X230 and now X1 carbon.
I used a thinkpad X200 back in 2014 or so and it got completely destroyed due to a spill. I replaced the memory, keyboard etc. but was unable to get it to work again. Also, the monitor had developed a few dead scanlines so I decided to buy another one. This was my primary work machine so I needed something quickly. I got another x230 off ebay. It was a piece used for demos at shows so it was refurbished. Threw Debian onto it and started work 2014. I used it straight till 2022 or so. It was my primary machine. I replaced the battery, added RAM. Then the fan got damaged and the front plastic plating got cracked so it was no longer presentable. I bought an X1 carbon but gave the laptop to my son. We bought a fan, thermal paste and some plastic parts for the casing, a new battery etc., watched a few youtube videos and fixed it up. It's still running and they play casual games on it. It's now atleast 10 years old and still going strong.
It's a very strong machine with great longevity. Though I feel that the newer ones are not as good as the old and the X1 is definitely less repairable than its older cousins.
roflmaostc 10 hours ago [-]
I changed recently from X1 Yoga Gen 2 to X1 Yoga (2-in-1) Gen 9.
The decline in quality is so clearly visible, the external pen is poorly designed and died after 6 months.
The hinges are as loose as in a 600$ laptop. The whole thing makes cracking noises under slight stress. Also, Linux compatibility is poor, my Webcam still does not work. Battery lifetime is a joke too.
Lenovo made this Laptop worse than 7 years ago, and it's their top line model for > 2000$. It's such a shame and sad to see. There's no very good alternative with integrated touchscreen and stylus.
herbst 10 hours ago [-]
To be fair yoga models always had issues, never fully Linux compatible and never had a long lifetime. Not sure what this series is supposed to be, but I wouldn't recommend it.
noufalibrahim 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah. I never really even considered Lenovo's new additions to the ThinkPad line. I focused on the machines that were continued from the original THinkpad series (T, R and X).
5 hours ago [-]
bjpirt 9 hours ago [-]
I've been pondering the same thought recently but applied to analog cameras. Analog cameras have evolved over time, approximately according to the following:
- fully mechanical
- mechanical shutter with light meter
- electronic control of shutter, mechanical advance
- fully electronic shutter and advance
Broadly, what I'm finding after digging in to restoring some cameras is that most of the cameras from the first stage can still be fixed and made to perform close to when they were new. The second still work, but the light meter can die (simpler light meters may be repairable, later ones not so much). The third and fourth stages - once they die, there's no repairing them. And when you look at digital cameras, there'll be very, very few of these that last long into the future.
This bears out the 'Lindy Effect' mentioned in the article.
kombine 13 hours ago [-]
I am daily driving ThinkPad T14s Gen3 AMD that I bought off Ebay a year ago. It was opened but new with warranty until 2026 and I only paid for 600 British pounds for it. It is not as repairable as their other models but it has a premium quality build, a modern CPU and full Linux compatibility. It is also the first generation of T14 when they returned 16:10 screens, this aspect ratio is a must for coding. ThinkPads are seriously underrated.
jbaiter 13 hours ago [-]
I have the same, and I'll probably use it until it's dead. I love the screen for the same reason you mention. It's a damn shame that they put the ugly reverse webcam notch on the newer ThinkPads, it ruins the complete look :-/
kombine 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, same, mine has 32G RAM so it will last me 10 years or so, and hopefully Lenovo will remove the webcam notch by then :)
6 hours ago [-]
throwaway0665 14 hours ago [-]
I got an x220 jumping onto the hype but it was too small and too slow to use. Even though I'd maxed out the RAM, replaced the solder paste and was running a lightweight i3 environment.
I've only ever personally owned second hand Thinkpads and they're so great. But you should get the newest, reasonably priced one you can. There are so many affordable T480s/T470s out there or even the newer T14 models. They're still very serviceable and many still allow expansion with unsoldered RAM.
pbmonster 12 hours ago [-]
> I got an x220 jumping onto the hype but it was too small and too slow to use. ven though I'd maxed out the RAM, replaced the solder paste and was running a lightweight i3 environment.
That's my only personal laptop, to the last detail. What are you doing that makes it feel slow?
I might upgrade to a x270 for the USB-C charging and a full-HD display, but only when this one dies. Which might take another decade...
GolfPopper 12 hours ago [-]
I'm posting from an X220 i7-2620M @2.7Ghz with 12GB memory. Personally, I like the size, but recognize that's a matter of taste. But, what was it too slow to do? For high-end computing tasks, yes. But I haven't run into problems with anything short of Steam games with higher-end graphics requirements.
dionidium 3 hours ago [-]
My primary computer, the one I'm typing on right now, is a 13-year old 2012 Mac Mini.
It couldn't be more fine. It does everything I need it to do.
shanecleveland 2 hours ago [-]
Running a 2009 Mac Mini in a business setting. Connected to a barcode scanner within a local python development environment and communicates over a wired network. Runs 24/7 with barely an issue.
userabchn 3 hours ago [-]
I use a 20 year old Dell laptop. The only problem for me is that 32bit is starting to become limiting.
nickpeterson 3 hours ago [-]
Now you’ve jinxed it. I’d imagine you’ll never see this response because your laptop exploded shortly after typing that comment.
windex 2 hours ago [-]
On a T480 secondhand with a wonky keyboard. Where are you guys sourcing keyboards from?
animal531 10 hours ago [-]
I have a 2nd generation iPad and its amazing how well it still runs.
Of course I can't do anything with it because you can't update the OS and without having a new OS you can't actually download or run anything from the shop.
apples_oranges 8 hours ago [-]
Same for my third gen.
Well, at least I updated the root certificate on it and it's good as a PDF reader, book reader and music player still.
animal531 6 hours ago [-]
I should probably do the same since my Kindle has packed up and will no longer start, so I could at least use the pad for that.
dmwilcox 10 hours ago [-]
Have a near 10 year old Librem (original 13"), works fine. But if it breaks I'm getting an old Thinkpad and putting coreboot on it.
Perhaps my usage is too light, no IDEs, no electron anything, no streaming, and few tabs because I shutdown the laptop instead of suspend it -- but I don't see what all the fuss is about needing to upgrade anything. 16gb of ram and an i5 is fine, even for the modern web, disable JavaScript and/or run ublock origin.
The new fangled ARM stuff ;) strikes me as essentially similar in character to smartphones: future e-waste with no possibility of repair. Choose wisely, choose x86 and modularity
inatreecrown2 13 hours ago [-]
I bought a x220 about 10 years ago, and then a x230 a couple years ago. I also have a M1 Pro 16 inch but sometimes I enjoy working with the Thinkpads more than that. I really wish we could get a modern system that was build like the old Thinkpads. Especially regarding overall Size, repairability, connectivity and Keyboard.
inatreecrown2 6 hours ago [-]
Oh I forgot to add: they both work perfectly fine still!
ChrisMarshallNY 7 hours ago [-]
I can't match that, but I regularly use a 2012 11" MacBook Air, as a Zoom terminal.
Works great. Stuck on Catalina, but can handle the software I need.
sevensor 6 hours ago [-]
I love old Thinkpads for single purpose computers. Install Debian, boot it once a day, or once a week, or once a month. One for all the flacs I had the energy to rip in my 20s, one for wine and dosbox, one for messing around with programming languages, one for household stuff. It prevents distractions.
kodt 5 hours ago [-]
I have a 14 year old T420, I upgraded the processor, ram, hard drive, battery, and wifi chip several years ago which really sped it up and gave it more usable life. Still runs great for most things.
ukd1 5 hours ago [-]
I have few old thinkpads X220, X230, etc - outside of raw power, the two things that really suck are the speakers (they're truly trash), and the standard screen's performance with anything but trivial light around it.
Still, it's fast enough to use with linux, and the keyboard is a joy to use. Swappable batteries are fun, and useful.
However, I can't really use one outside of just nostalgia, or for tuning cars.
kodt 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, they aren't really suitable for heavy workloads.
xtenduke 11 hours ago [-]
I too had a Thinkpad T400, in about 2013. Compiling my undergrad university course code made the music I was listening to skip.
Modern software sucks, I can not imagine using a core2duo to do any task other than ssh/word processing
TonyTrapp 11 hours ago [-]
I was using a W500 (same generation) until 2018 or so. Upgraded RAM, installed an SSD, and it was my daily driver until the end. But already back then it started to become unbearbly slow especially with background procesesses like file syncing to different machines.
amunozo 9 hours ago [-]
Lindy effect, as the author said, is for non-perishable items. ThinkPad as a brand could be included in this categoty, but an individual ThinkPad is not.
Good article, though.
linacica 11 hours ago [-]
My school recently (about 1.5 years ago) upgraded all their machines to ThinkPads(laptops & desktops)(11 gen Intel CPUs, desktops with A2000 GPUs), i seen other Thinkpad machines which try to copy Apple's design choices but these don't, they're big, thick, and have a lot of newer features, but also dropped some things which caused issues, for example: VGA port, there are quite few USB ports, if you know school environment you may know it's very rash environment
we have HDMI to VGA adapters they constantly go bad because the cable is heavy & adapter too
p_ing 16 hours ago [-]
A 17 year old ThinkPad is going to have extremely limited utility for today's applications. You can browse the web****, sure. You can replace parts, yes. But it still performs like dogshit for today's applications.
That said, I maintain a G4 Cube running an outdated OS to play Sim City and Sim Tower. And it's "upgraded" as much as possible.
****JavaScript not included
neilv 15 hours ago [-]
Web, including JavaScript, should work fine on that laptop.
Until recently, my daily driver was the T500 (the larger screen version of the T400 in the article), and it worked fine for everything except GPU.
(I actually downgraded to the T500 years ago, because I was pissed off about the Intel Management Engine.)
Recently, I upgraded from the T500 to the T520, which is the last ThinkPad with a non-chiclet keyboard. It works fine for everything except GPU and fitting inside many backpacks.
With ThinkPads of this era, you want to get a high-spec variant of the model (e.g., top-res IPS display), and then make the following upgrades:
* SSD
* run Linux
* run uBlock Origin (and block most of the third-party surveillance, which hurts performance) (JS runs fine, so long as you're not running multiple dueling adtech slimeballs' intimate mouse trackers)
* max out the RAM (you don't need that much for Linux, unless you're using an exceptionally bloated desktop option, but it's cheap, and you can use it to keep filesystems like ~/.cache off your SSD )
* (optional) replace the CPU with a more optimal one for power draw or heat, or maybe for compute (these are socketed in most models)
* (optional, not for the faint of heart) install Coreboot, and then you have more WiFi upgrade options
RavSS 9 hours ago [-]
You can use the T420/T520's keyboard in a T430/T530 with modifications to the firmware, some plastic around the keyboard part itself, and the ribbon cable (just pin isolation with tape). It lets you go with Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge.
I have a T430 with the T420's keyboard and it lasted me 7 years of daily use before battery life became too big of an issue for me (even with a single DDR3L RAM module and a slice battery), so I put it aside. The typing experience was really excellent.
Upgrading the CPU to a quad-core model (ideally one that consumes 35W over 45W) is one of the best upgrades to make for anyone still using these machines.
willjp 16 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t have to be 17 years old though. I think the point he’s making is that it’s still solving problems for him. I have one that’s 12 years old. It just does what I need to. Parts are easily replaceable. I keep doing the cost/benefit of upgrading but I just don’t need it.
boneitis 15 hours ago [-]
This is the asterisk that always stands out to me with the raving posts about how great people's dinosaur Thinkpads are.
Yes, if I don't have to keep multiple browser windows, video calls, Slack, and whathaveyou open, then I too can get by with an ancient Thinkpad. If it is enough for you, then all the power to you. I am sincerely supportive of the fact that you can stick it to today's consumerist, disposable tech industry.
Here I am on my T480s with 40 GB memory (8 is soldered) and the highest tier CPU for the Thinkpad gen (apparently these are soldered on too), and it's a drag. I'm trying to scrape by until I can start thinking about saving up for a new Framework.
ekianjo 15 hours ago [-]
> But it still performs like dogshit for today's applications
That says more about how unoptimized are today's applications than the capabilities of the machine
ChuckMcM 15 hours ago [-]
Heh, I've got a T440 [T420i, see edit] I'm running FreeBSD on. Definitely tank status. It is even one of the 'rare' HD ones.
EDIT: I just turned it over to check and its a T420i Type 4177-X07 pretty much solid as a rock. I also discovered it would run with 16GB of RAM so there's that.
bambax 10 hours ago [-]
> One of the main reasons that old Thinkpads stand out is their design philosophy. They are made with swappable components with the intention of user upgradeability.
On a fixed PC everything is swappable by definition. I don't quite understand why people love laptops so much. If you're using your PC in only one place a tower PC is cheaper and can be upgraded indefinitely with only a screwdriver (if that).
burkaman 10 hours ago [-]
People love them because they want to use their PC in more than one place.
Cthulhu_ 9 hours ago [-]
And employers love them because if people take them home overnight they only need security / insurance for peripherals. The only fixed PCs I still see in offices are low cost / bulk Dell machines only good for office work or thin clients, and even those go back ~15 years now, at a bank that already had relatively tight security.
I wish I could have a job where I work on a desktop machine and could just leave things at the office when I leave for the day. Alas.
bambax 9 hours ago [-]
What are those places? Do most people have multiple residences? Or do they think they might need it, and in practice never do?
daxelrod 7 hours ago [-]
I have a relatively high-end desktop with a nice monitor. I also have an aging laptop with a tiny screen and an anemic amount of RAM. Most of my computing ends up being done on the laptop.
With a family and a kid, it turns out I’d prefer to spend most of my time at the computer in common spaces; at the dinner table, on the couch, etc. so that I’m present and available for my family. This is far better than squirreling myself away in a room.
(Note that for work, I have a different computer, I’m talking about for life outside of work.)
scarface_74 4 hours ago [-]
You don’t see any conflicts between this:
> it turns out I’d prefer to spend most of my time at the computer in common spaces; at the dinner table, on the couch
And this?
> I’m present and available for my family
op00to 4 hours ago [-]
The conflicts arise when all you do is work. Every second of every day does not need to be spent staring at your children and still be a good parent.
I often sit with my kids and get a little work done on the couch while they're entertaining themselves. I can engage where appropriate, and of course I don't spend my entire life working. This flexibility allows me time to walk them to school, pick them up from school, leave early to go to their sports things, band concerts, or just play outside with them.
You know, nuance and balance.
scarface_74 2 hours ago [-]
I have a kind of strict separation between home and work and I have since I started working remotely.
When I’m “at work” in my home office. I’m not to be disturbed. When I’m “off work” my computer is shut down until the next day and I get on with the rest of my life - which doesn’t involve computers.
That sets strict expectations from everyone in my home.
burkaman 8 hours ago [-]
Even multiple rooms in your home is compelling enough for many people, but for me it's about taking it on trips. Obviously you don't always want to take your computer on vacation, but sometimes I want to visit a friend and work from there, or go visit my family and work on a project while I'm there, that kind of thing.
On a smaller scale, I often bring my computer to the roof of my building or to a library or cafe. I can understand preferring the constraint of "when I leave my desk I don't have to think about the computer anymore", but for me all the additional flexibility is a good tradeoff.
AlecSchueler 11 hours ago [-]
My daily driver is an x200 upgraded to 4gb of RAM. It runs as well as it ever did except the web has become slower and slower in that everything became an app. Things like GMail and YouTube are slow but honestly still fine, and in the worst case scenario I can jump onto my phone.
My main use these days is recording and mixing music through an interface from 2014. With Reaper the experience is even better than when I picked the laptop up back around 2010.
octygen 10 hours ago [-]
Its funny you say thay it's the browser slowing you down on your PC. I have an MBP from 2011 and the browser (Safari) is the only thing it can still run extremely well.
AlecSchueler 8 hours ago [-]
The latest browser itself runs fine as well as most old school websites like Hacker News, it's only the "web apps" that run slowly.
ptek 14 hours ago [-]
I have a T43, slowly working on a VESA driver for NeXTSTEP 3.3 (Yes there is a driver for OpenStep 4.2).
Using Ghidra and the source that Apple released. Final set up will be, NeXTSTEP3.3, DOS6.22 (AutoCAD R12, Matlab), WinXP (For Encarta 95 and Mindmaze) and NetBSD.
ge96 5 hours ago [-]
I always have a Carbon x1 lying around (old one) just because it's a great design to me being slim and nice keyboard
Narann 10 hours ago [-]
I’ve never been a fan on ThinkPad looks, until I get a second hand one, in 2014. It had 4GB or RAM and starts to have hard time with browsing, so few month ago, I bought 16GB for 20€. I’m almost sure It could live for 5 or 10 years.
My only complain is Ctrl cap sensor having some inconsistencies, I have to push strong on it.
For the rest I consider ThinkPad as the way to go for second hand.
gherard5555 10 hours ago [-]
My T480 just doesn't want to die. I dropped it a lot, in my staircase, on concrete floor, accidentally emptied my whole mug of coffee on it (had to change the keyboard that time some keys were stuck).
At some point I felt so confident I tried stepping on it when it was closed. So yeah this thing is pretty tough.
herbst 10 hours ago [-]
Except the USBc. Not sure if this applies to all models of the t480 series but that connector was slowly breaking down with each use, until it partially worked as charging slot and all usb functionality was lost.
I went trough 4 different docks until I realized who the actual problem was, and the internet was full with similar issues once I knew what to look for.
For some reason my nearly identical, slightly newer, X1 doesn't have these issues.
gherard5555 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, the connector is a little loose now and the cable comes off easily. But you can use the other connector so its not really an issue for me.
Also it sounds like you may have the infamous issue where the firmware of the charging port cease functioning. I strongly recommend updating the charging port firmware to anyone reading this if you have a T480.
johnisgood 10 hours ago [-]
Seems like it is the laptop equivalent of the dumbphone Nokia 3310. :D
coro_1 14 hours ago [-]
From what I know the entire purpose of the Macbook "Pro" line is literally that they're made to be modular. They were at least. I maintain a 2011 Pro. The build quality is noticeably nicer than the cheaper chassis they produce today. The experience itself is actually much nicer too, smoother, feels better. Added, modern displays have great resolution. But the aged units carry an interesting and rich in depth projection ability you don't find today.
maratc 13 hours ago [-]
Modularity hasn't been the proclaimed goal for the Pro line, as far as I can remember. Granted, they were modular once. Today, not so much. The RAM is literally sitting on the die of the chip that includes the CPU and the GPU. This allows for tremendous increases in performance, but RAM upgradeability is sadly out of question.
rmnclmnt 14 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Brought back to life my MBP 2015 last summer (battery replacement, keyboard replacement, thermal paste, etc) and thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher, now running latest MacOS versions ensuring at least 3 years more of security patches. Also these machines run Linux and Windows pretty fine
dmwilcox 10 hours ago [-]
Wow! Just discovered OpenCore Legacy Patcher! My wife's ten year old Macbook Air can get updates!!
Thank you for the tip this will help a lot since it is not the "year of the Linux desktop" for her. :)
rmnclmnt 8 hours ago [-]
Try to give it a shot first on a dedicated partition if you can, then make the switch (IME, I used the old SSD drive for that, then used the 1TB one for daily usage with OCLP).
Pretty smooth for most users apparently. Good luck, keep repairing and maintaining old electronics!
dangus 3 hours ago [-]
I think this is something of a rose tinted glasses nostalgic look.
I remember my iBook G4 took 30 screws to get into it and swap a hard drive.
Yes, it was “modular,” but it wasn’t specifically designed to be easily repaired.
There have been times when the systems were designed to be easy to change components like the disk and RAM in the original Core 2 Duo MacBooks, but these seem to be the exception, not the rule.
Let’s not forget the “no user serviceable parts” original Macintosh. Apple has never really been repair-oriented company, they just occasionally make products that are coincidentally easy to repair.
arkensaw 11 hours ago [-]
I have an X201 (15 years old) and X220 (14 years) that I regularly use, running different flavors of linux. they've both been repaired and upgraded a few times. I'm spoiled by having an M2 Macbook as a daily driver - they can't match it for speed - but I love the ruggedness and resilience and I always will.
zabzonk 15 hours ago [-]
ThinkPads back when were certainly good, sturdy machines, though I could never get along with the nipple. Another great older machine for me was the purple Sony Vaio - magnesium alloy, came with Win2K installed. I bought one, and then immediately bought another - the first I repurposed as a Linux server and I carried them both (easily) around for demoing this and that.
My latest, which I think is going to be in the ThinkPad and Vaio class is my new Asus Zenbook - brilliant light chassis and great performance.
I quite like the cup style trackpoint even if it tended to leave a small circle on the screen.
That particular laptop died in middle age due to motherboard hardware defects.
zh3 13 hours ago [-]
T42, T60, T62, T420, T520 (multiples of some around the house) here, ending at the point they changed the keyboard. All running linux, the T420 and T520 (with SSD's) are fine with modern browsers while the older ones can be slow on bloated sites. I imagine the RAM might be an issue with multiple electron apps though.
Only real maintenance is to use quality battery replacements (T420 lasts particularly well on batteries).
diggernet 13 hours ago [-]
Got a good source for safe, reliable battery replacements? Last time I needed one I discovered that Duracell made them, but it seems like they've stopped now.
zh3 11 hours ago [-]
In the UK, laptopsandspares.com "2-power" batteries have worked well for me. Subtel are pretty good too for UK/EU.
Man, I knew it was going to be a T-series machine. I used to own T400s and T430. Just hardcore pieces of hardware. I fine-tuned my T430 so that it boots Archlinux in about 3-4 seconds. Loved tinkering with Linux, Xfce and coding on that machine. As I grew older I switched to a MacBook, like many others but I miss that machine.
chilldsgn 13 hours ago [-]
I would love to get a ThinkPad as my next computer. My 2018 MacBook Pro is still working amazingly well, but I think I won't get a new one.
HexPhantom 12 hours ago [-]
There’s something satisfying about how fixable and straightforward they are
ccppurcell 11 hours ago [-]
Mine's about 13. I just upgraded from Ubuntu 22 to 24 and I'm regretting it a bit. on 22 I could watch downloaded films on an external monitor but not stream video. I could live with that. But now it seems 24 uses just a little more memory and watching a downloaded video on the monitor makes it shudder... :(
defraudbah 9 hours ago [-]
check out lubuntu/xubuntu/kubuntu, perfect for internet browsing and watching videos
barkut 9 hours ago [-]
X220 owner here. You will have to pry it from my dead cold hands. I don't use anything that can't run on it well, my workflow is mostly shell based. Even Firefox don't do that bad when JS is disabled.
KronisLV 11 hours ago [-]
I currently have an M1 MacBook that I needed for some development (iOS) but now use it for notes and presentations and back up any data on my Nextcloud and homelab. Before that, I had a 210 EUR Polish laptop (I think whitelabel Chinese stuff) that would run Linux distros but would struggle with Wi-Fi.
Frankly, that’s why I quite enjoy desktop PCs. Most of the hardware works as you’d expect and is both repairable (though to be honest I’ve just thrown away mobos in the past when they start misbehaving, possibly due to OC or daily use) and upgradable (I’ve gone from a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 7 5800X, even had an Intel CPU ages back; as well as from an RX 570 to B580, with a few more CPUs and GPUs in the middle). Different RAM, more drives etc., honestly it’s really pleasant, even if there’s this big box in my room that makes some noise.
comment_ran 15 hours ago [-]
Pretty much the same trajectory. I started at my T420 around 2010 and that time I just main laptop, computer. Then, as I have a more powerful desktop, this T420 becomes my secondary computer and I started to experience Linux with it. After almost 15 years I end up converted it into a PVE host and run just one or two virtual machines on it and it's quite durable I can still do functional work on it, quite remarkable how a computer can last so long.
the-mitr 11 hours ago [-]
My R60 which I got around in c. 2005 still works with Linux mint. I replaced the HDD and battery, but rest of the stuff including the orange light (to be used as night light) on top of screen frame still works! The hinges are a bit loose, so they need some support at times.
BrenBarn 14 hours ago [-]
I'm really bummed to see how newer ThinkPads have given up that modularity. Some components are necessarily more integrated, and I was never going to be too sad if it was easier to buy a new laptop than to replace the CPU. But the fact that you could, for instance, trivially replace the hard drive made it ludicrously easy to get a lot of extra mileage out of old ThinkPads.
pabs3 7 hours ago [-]
My X201t still works fine, only replaced it because I found newer desktops in a dumpster. Still no laptops in dumpsters though.
justmarc 13 hours ago [-]
These are very well built machines.
To keep them running for decades Linux or other open source operating systems are pretty much the only choice. Not only for performance (which is better) but also because Windows will phase old hardware support out, it's just what they've always done, and will always continue doing.
ipv6ipv4 14 hours ago [-]
I have a PowerBook titanium G4 from 2003 that I can boot but never bother because it's not worth the power consumption.
dmwilcox 10 hours ago [-]
Really??? I had an iBook from 2001, and put Linux on it, but power consumption was definitely the best of laptops in that entire era. What could it be, like 20-30 watts? Motorola PPC processors weren't exactly heat beasts (or speed demons lol).
I'd be curious about how yours has held up. I overclocked my iBook back in the day to play DivX (bumped FSB from 66 to 100mhz) and it eventually cooked around 2010.
cheeseomlit 15 hours ago [-]
I still use my t420 all the time for one reason and that's the keyboard. I can't stand chiclet keys and that's all there is now
vvpan 15 hours ago [-]
Off-topic about the Nassim Nicholas Taleb opening: Does anybody else feel like he just restates obvious things in a more formalized and somewhat pompous way? I do not mind formalization but I feel like I am supposed to swoon over it as if some profound truth, that was not already implied in our every day thinking, was being revealed.
MonkeyClub 5 hours ago [-]
> just restates obvious things in a more formalized and somewhat pompous way
That's sort of the premise of his Black Swan idea, namely that extraordinary things appear quite obvious in retrospect.
I've read a few of his books, including Antifragile that's referenced in TFA, and he does go beyond merely restating (or formalizing) the obvious.
But then again perhaps such things are not generally obvious and need to be stated explicitly, we just happen to be part of a subset that is more aware of them.
blatantly 14 hours ago [-]
I don't think it is obvious to everyone that a 20 year old laptop had a better survival chance over the next year than a new one.
Most people think old is more fragile.
Sometimes it is though (e.g. parts for a plane need to be replaced every X hours of service)
pazimzadeh 13 hours ago [-]
at some point is it even the same laptop? I don't think the original laptop has a better chance of surviving
darkwater 10 hours ago [-]
It's not strictly THAT or ONE laptop though. It's the concept of old Thinkpad laptops in general: since there is already a big enough refurbishment market active, parts will still be produced or stored and sold, thus permitting that kind of laptop to be repaired and survive. Even if you apply the "ship of Theseus" logic, it won't matter. It won't be the same original Thinkpad, but it will still be a Thinkpad (flies like a Thinkpad, sings like a Thinkpad...)
acosmism 16 hours ago [-]
I still use my t440s all the time to this day. it is durable, versatile, does exactly what it does and does it well. not tied down to its firmware, software - i can't think of the analogy off the bat but its like several other things that "just work" (maybe indoor plumbing or something) so well you forget about them
yu3zhou4 13 hours ago [-]
Respect! I still run x230 with Linux for fun and so my kids can smash the keys on the keyboard (btw imho the keyboard feeling is better than in any laptop I used since then) and they feel good about themselves that they do the same thing as dad
rkagerer 14 hours ago [-]
I still drive a Dell Precision M6600 from 2011, and liken the build quality, robustness and modularity of that era of the product line to the Thinkpads being discussed here.
I'm overdue to upgrade, but know I won't love its replacement anywhere near as much.
gsky 10 hours ago [-]
My last laptop, dell 14r i3 2nd gen, retired after 12 years.
It still works fine but the processor was slowing me down. New one's i3 12gen cost me $300
ardillamorris 6 hours ago [-]
If everything is modelar and can be replaced is the think pad just a box?
HexPhantom 13 hours ago [-]
This is a fantastic breakdown, and it nails something I think a lot of people feel but don’t always articulate: modern hardware is often objectively better, but not necessarily more resilient
51Cards 16 hours ago [-]
My W530 is 13-ish years old and it's still my daily driver. It doesn't travel anymore (now wired into my desk) but still works great running Win 10. I code on this thing all day and so far have only had to replace a fan and give it an SSD upgrade.
dash2 10 hours ago [-]
I can still run my X60 from 2006. Still, I am not sure about the premise here. My Macbook Air from 2013 also runs very solidly.
anshumankmr 11 hours ago [-]
I have an ASUS laptop that is borderline unusable in three years, the only saving grace is the RTX 3060 which I use for gaming and occasionally ollama.
zer0zzz 2 hours ago [-]
What is the point of a reparable upgradable machine if the components are all ancient and a used m1 MacBook with just as much ram as the maximum on a x220 costs 500 dollars?
28304283409234 13 hours ago [-]
Wish there was a company that would build upgrades to old ThinkPads. A new main oard that would fit snugly in my x230 for example.
tiberius_p 9 hours ago [-]
Mine is 12 years old, battery is dead but I use it as a server.
gsibble 3 hours ago [-]
I have both a brand new M4 Macbook and a ThinkPad P16s. I run Arch with Hyprland on my P16s.
They are both fantastic laptops but have clearly different use cases.
My Macook is my browsing/YouTube/music/research/photo editing machine. It's fantastic at those things. It also integrates into FaceTime and iMessage which means I don't have to pull out my phone all the time.
My P16s is my work laptop. I can disappear into it for 5 hours straight writing code. I'm either in Cursor or the terminal most of that time with a little browser use. And hyprland is freaking gorgeous, fast, and incredibly stable. I don't get nearly as good a development experience on my Macbook, mostly because so much of its navigation is based upon the trackpad vs. the keyboard in Hyprland.
So, I enjoy both and each has their place. I think my only complaint about the P16s is while it has an extremely high res OLED display, it's not as bright as I'd prefer.
csdvrx 1 hours ago [-]
> And hyprland is freaking gorgeous, fast, and incredibly stable. I don't get nearly as good a development experience on my Macbook, mostly because so much of its navigation is based upon the trackpad vs. the keyboard in Hyprland.
hyprland is so much better than anything else I don't understand why it's not more popular on HN
mgaunard 12 hours ago [-]
My computer is about that age as well, didn't know that was abnormal or special.
zlagen 11 hours ago [-]
the most annoying thing about new laptops is how difficult is to find replacement batteries that can be trusted and work well. The battery situation is a downgrade compared to the previous pluggable ones.
hkt 11 hours ago [-]
ThinkPad x230T owner here. I believe mine is 12 years old.
By contrast, my son is 9 this year. Still, the kids are good to one another.
namirez 14 hours ago [-]
I still have my T61 thinkpad from 2007. Other than the dead battery, it works great.
jmclnx 5 hours ago [-]
I purchased a battery for my T61 from GHU Electronics a year ago. So far no issues.
ggm 15 hours ago [-]
I have an x31 from 2003/4 I'd love to rescue but the bios won't boot.
15 hours ago [-]
koinedad 14 hours ago [-]
Something about the font on this blog is not friendly to my eyes.
Willingham 6 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. On mobile, the letters are too thin, certainly less accessible for us folks with eyesight issues.
zie 14 hours ago [-]
Reading this from my t420s, it's only 11yrs old.
jxjnskkzxxhx 12 hours ago [-]
You can run an LLM on a Mac laptop?
4fterd4rk 5 hours ago [-]
They're quite good at it, actually.
ubermonkey 5 hours ago [-]
One of the finest laptops I ever had -- in my 30 year history with the form factor -- was an IBM Thinkpad 560Z. It was insanely compact, but powerful enough for my purposes at the time. It had a radical design for the time b/c it had NO removable media on board at all. It shipped with an outboard CD-ROM that I used often enough that it lived on my desk, and an outboard floppy drive that I don't think I used at all.
The shame of it was that a PC of that era had a super short useful life. Now we think nothing of keeping computers for 5 years or more; they're just so powerful that for most regular human tasks, there's no need for the kind of upgrade treadmill that dominated computing 25 years ago. After 3 years, though, the 560Z was almost unusable -- it had a TINY hard drive, and limited RAM. Windows was getting fatter and slower. But the physical computer itself was in GREAT shape -- even after years of heavy travel, it bore none of the crappy wear and tear I'd associate with colleagues' Dells (e.g.) later. I kept it on a shelf for a long time because it was so solid and pleasing that I couldn't bear to part with it despite its basic uselessness.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the 560Z was also my last Windows laptop. Because my job back then was mostly Office docs, and because Win98 was so awful, I shifted to a Mac when the 560 was done, and I've been there ever since.
nonrandomstring 11 hours ago [-]
Got a 2005 Asus EEPC netbook hanging around that is still part of the
family and does useful work. Battery still good (replaced twice) and a
few scratches on the screen and a broken key. Took it on the train
with me recently as I just needed to read some PDF files and so scpd
them to it and threw it in a bag.
Looking after electronics, repairing stuff and treating it with
respect is just part of my way. That one has an old Puppy Linux on
it. Works fine.
The original sense of the word "materialism" is a respect for material
things - it's a very positive word. But it changed in the 80s
(probably after Madonna's "Material Girl" :) to mean something
negative and shallow.)
sneak 6 hours ago [-]
It’s just a different layer of abstraction. The chips on your SSD in your thinkpad are also soldered without any easy way to replace them save for replacing the whole SSD. Same for your RAM.
Now in a modern laptop it’s the top case or bottom case or board; the robot-made factory parts are bigger integrated components of the system. All you care about is your data anyway, the repairability of the system as a whole by swapping out components at home (admittedly a large culture in the PC world, as silly as it is these days when all you’re doing is connecting a robot factory gpu to a robot factory cpu and choosing a PSU and RAM (also made in robot factories)) isn’t that important.
I hope one day that computing gets so small and light and dense and integrated that I can’t replace any single components without a robot factory and/or microscope. I want a solid microscopically integrated slab (which is what my iPad Pro is basically approaching).
lennychanuk 11 hours ago [-]
Same, but just because I'm lazy and cheap.
shmerl 15 hours ago [-]
Side note, but I noticed now practically all Thinkpads are available with Linux as an option. That's a big improvement from when Windows tax was practically unavoidable with them.
oever 12 hours ago [-]
I recently tried to buy a ThinkPad with trackpoint and a high-resolution screen. The X1 AMD G5 is available with Linux but the 2880x1800 version is only available with Windows. Initially, I thought there was no 2880 version, because the OS selection comes before the screen selection in the Lenovo configuration tool. Once Linux is selected, the 2880 version disappears.
It's not been delivered yet, but I'm sure installing Linux will not be a problem.
A ThinkPad with ~14" 4k OLED touchscreen and trackpoint and AMD processor is what I was looking for, but those do not seem to exist.
kev009 10 hours ago [-]
The 4k OLED and touchscreen kind of cancel each other out if you care about maximum optical quality.
RecycledEle 9 hours ago [-]
My coworkers understand and envy my Lenovo e570, they just wish Apple or Dell sold one like I have new at a reasonable price.
I can not fault them. I wish GM still sold the S10 pickup.
einpoklum 11 hours ago [-]
Of course he does. Because of the robustness but also the keyboard. It's so annoying that they don't make decently build laptops, at all, these days.
I'm hanging on to my X201. I bought it after I left my workplace where I had an X230; and I choose an earlier model because I wanted to upgrade rather than downgrade my computer. I am _much_ more satisfied with the X201 - because of the keyboard of course. IIANM, X220 is the best one of the X series.
I replaced the HDD with an SSD about 8 years ago and expanded the RAM to 8 GB, and performance is tolerable. At the moment I'm running Lubuntu on it, but I'm thinking of switching to Q4OS.
Now, sure, it's old; and yes, it's a bit rickety plastics-wise after having survived a fall from 3m at some point; and yes, the battery life is limited even after replacing it.
But - I would take it over a modern piece-of-@#$%-keyboard machine any day of the week.
badgersnake 11 hours ago [-]
I still use my X1 carbon gen 1. 8gb ram is getting a little bit tight these days though. Sadly not upgradable.
369548684892826 7 hours ago [-]
If you've got linux on it have you tried enabling zram? I use it with aggressive settings on my X1 Carbon G6 with 8GB of RAM and it effectively gives me somewhere around 15GB of RAM. It does need a reasonably fast CPU, but probably worth trying on the Gen 1.
wazoox 12 hours ago [-]
I have a ~2009 MacBook. It has a swappable battery (replaced once, dead again), and it was overall easily upgradable : it received a 4GB RAM stick to replace its original 2GB (unfortunately it can't manage more than 3.5GB), an SSD to replace its hard drive, and a new DVD drive as its superdrive failed. However its core2 Duo is really too slow for the modern web (either running MacOS or Linux), it takes almost a full minute to open a youtube link. I should probably downgrade to 32 bits Linux to get back some speed, but it won't become exactly snappy anyway :)
acquacow 6 hours ago [-]
You should be able to do a 2gig + 4gig stick combo. That's what I have in my 2008 Macbook pro, it runs 6GB just fine.
limpbizkitfan 7 hours ago [-]
Sorry but rifling through your weblog there is a ton of freak shit posted dog
DeathArrow 12 hours ago [-]
Here is someone using the same T400 as daily driver:
>Despite their age, these business-class laptop are still serviceable and useful for web browsing, ‘office work’, and light coding.
In the world of Javascript frameworks where you download and execute 100 MB for a web application?
In the world of desktop applications written in Javascript?
pengaru 12 hours ago [-]
Writing this on my 16GB RAM i7 X230... but I really miss my X61s w/SXGA+ LED mod, perfect keyboard for my sized hands.
globular-toast 13 hours ago [-]
This is why I've always preferred full size PCs. But if I were to get a laptop it sounds like it would be a 17 year old ThinkPad. Are the newer ones the same? This wasn't clear in the article.
My PC is ten years old now. It's always run GNU/Linux and feels noticeably snappier than more recent machines with their bloated software. I've maxed out the CPU and RAM on it, overclocked it, added a nice AMD workstation GPU so I could run two 4k screens. I guess the thing is it really feels like I own it. I don't feel the same about phones and tablets.
ErrorNoBrain 6 hours ago [-]
I mean sure, being able to keep a 17 year old laptop is alive, is awesome...
but why?
I get special hardware needs to live for a long time, like, an arcade machine, specialized equipment or something. but some random laptop?
what can it do, that a modern computer cant, apart from being repaired easily (lets ignore framework laptops for the sake of argument)
if his point is he just wants a framework laptop, it already exists.
dweinus 1 hours ago [-]
It also avoids a lot of waste/pollution/cost. That might sound trivial, but over the course of 17 years an average person might own 5 laptops.
trod1234 13 hours ago [-]
I'm surprised they didn't mention how many of the Thinkpad models encase heatsink fan power cord in kapton tape and run that cord along and above the CPU/GPU shared heatsink. The modular assembly fails reliably and consistently roughly every 3 years.
Sure I can get parts, but I don't think it actually shows what they are trying to say.
Vaslo 14 hours ago [-]
I have one of these that was a tablet and touchscreen from my mba program in 2008. I still have it and put some version of Linux command line only (peppermint maybe) and it still works. Haven’t touched it in a few years.
Honestly was never that impressed by it and have had to replace the fans on it multiple times but it’s still kicking while other laptops are not.
VirusNewbie 14 hours ago [-]
Back in the day, I heard all sorts of great things about how durable Thinkpads were, I bought one with my hard earned money in ~2004 when doing contact web development work. It was my least reliable laptop I've ever had.
My Vaio notebooks always lasted quite a bit longer. Eventually got a macbook and haven't gone back, but yeah, the one Thinkpad I owned was the least reliable computing device I've bought in the ~40 years of my lifetime.
cft 14 hours ago [-]
About 14 months after purchase, screen bezel of my MacBook cracked. Apparently there was a tiny food crumb jammed between the screen bezel and the keyboard bezel. It was then that I found out that the screen bezel is made of glass. And that Apple recommends to wipe the keyboard before closing the lid.
neonnoodle 8 hours ago [-]
hell same
senectus1 15 hours ago [-]
ha! I have one of those at home. I think it still works too.
cbeach 10 hours ago [-]
This article compares two deliberately-different platforms.
One is vertically integrated and designed for thermal performance, lightness, thinness and attractiveness.
One is modular, and sacrifices thermal performance, lightness, thinness and attractiveness in order that the user can replace their own battery / RAM / etc
IMO the latter is a false economy. Yes, you can upgrade your RAM, but what about the bus speed, and limitations of the motherboard and CPU? You end up with a Frankenstein's monster of new and old parts, which are constrained by the lowest common denominator, and only useful for basic tasks.
Apple devices have high resale value. Far better, IMO, to sell your laptop after a few years, as a cohesive, intact package that retains some residual value, and then buy a new one with wholly modern parts that make sense together.
bainganbharta 2 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 18:58:16 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
* USB3
* Up to 32 GB of RAM (vs max 8 GB for T400)
* M.2 slot (for SSD), 6 Gb/s SATA (vs 1.5 Gb/s on T400)
* x86-64-v3 (AVX2 etc) and OpenGL 4.6
* Dual-band AC wifi and BT4.0 (optional 4G LTE WWAN)
* DisplayPort with 4k@60Hz output
* Slightly larger screen estate (1600x900 vs 1440x900), with FHD 1080p display option
* Dramatically better battery life
* Backlit keyboard
Many of these are not merely nice to have but also ensure longevity by being compatible with lot of other modern stuff. On the other hand I do believe that T450 generation device might remain viable daily driver for a long while still. From the specs the biggest obvious shortcoming to me is the lack of USB-C, especially USB-C charging. But besides that, it seems pretty usable system.
For reference, I have old X240 that I still occasionally use.
ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (and the "modern web") worsen
Framework laptops are wonderful, modern and (arguably?) cheaper to own in the long-term thanks to being able to replace components, particularly the entire mainboard as time progresses.
*But* they're a tiny boutique manufacturer. Their barrier to entry is that of a pretty hefty modern laptop, versus buying a T420 for practically pennies and performing all kinds of aftermarket "mods" to it. 51nb's "FrankenPads" especially breathe incredible new life into old IBM and Lenovo stock.
Combine this with the fact that being the "defacto business laptop" for nearly three decades (along with perhaps Dell) means there's enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back
This is with the optimistic assumption that the total number of thinkpads on earth equals the total number of thinkpads ever manufactured. A more conservative estimate might be something like n = total number of thinkpads manufactured each year * mean lifespan of a thinkpad = (12 million thinkpads / year) * (5 years lifespan) = 60 million thinkpads in good working order for a lunar round trip.
But yeah, it would not be a good thing, according to the movie at least.
The collective electromagnetic resonance of their legendary keyboards creates a subtle gravitational anomaly that could, over approx. 17.3 years, reduce the lunar orbit by up to 4% (!), according to my rigorous calculations and simulations.
My recent paper[1] on "Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation" was mysteriously rejected by mainstream journals, likely due to Big Space's vested interest in maintaining the status quo; the current Earth-Moon distances for profit reasons.
Have you came across my paper, considering you have heard about Olaf?
[1] https://arvix.org/abs/2108.05779v3 ("Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation: Theoretical Applications of Legacy Computing Hardware on Celestial Body Dynamics")
Edit: Ugh, the site seems to be down at this moment, typical HN hug of death. Sorry about that. Forgot to archive! My rookie mistake. :/
if opened and touching corner-to-corner (~0.574m), will add ~ 71% to effective area.
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/content/dam/lenovo/pcsd/north-america...
At ~10.9 lbs + 2.2 lbs for the charger, it was not terribly practical to travel with, so it ended up effectively as a desktop in the office.
It now sits in my closet, and periodically I turn it on. The dual screen was a bit too small to do much with, but it was great for notepad or a chat window. Being a 32 bit system limited to 4 GB of RAM, it's not terribly useful today.
I say this as somebody the regularly uses laptops as old as 2009 (like, I will spend most of today on one). A lot of real-world, everyday computing barely taxes modern hardware on a decent OS like Linux. Old hardware will let you do a lot more than people think.
I think it’s time for either Framework or a third party partner to sell a new chassis that’s compatible with the FW13’s mainboard, but focuses on a more sturdy, premium feel, even if that means doing away with the modular port cards. I suspect that mainboards housed in such a chassis will fare better over time than their original housing counterparts.
[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
The Cortex A53 on the original MNT Reform is even worse.
Then again, if you're mostly just editing text and doing some light web surfing, I suppose it's fast enough.
Or laptops get so uncommon that manufacturers have to band together and agree on standards.
I made the mistake of packing my MacBook (at the time an M1 model), my Framework, and my iPad Pro 12.9 (with keyboard case) in a single laptop bag for a work trip a while back. The Framework got bent around the power button in a way that made the button get jammed; I bought a new input cover for ~$100 and replaced it in five minutes. My iPad's keyboard case now has keys that occasionally get stuck, so I'll probably replace that at some point. My MacBook seemed fine at the time, but it developed an intermittent trackpad button jam that could have been caused by that (or maybe a piece of dust).
I did have a Macbook trackpad fail in a similar way, where the "button" seemed to intermittently fail to click. It turned out my battery was swelling (see /r/spicypillows) and this impacted the trackpad operation.
On topic, I took the Macbook with swollen battery in to the Apple Store and they had to replace the entire keyboard+battery assembly as a unit because the battery was not replaceable.
The problem with this machine is that sooner or later I'll run out of reasonably priced keyboards (they wear and the mechanisms under the most used keys break), maybe no more support for the graphic card neither from Nvidia nor from the open source driver, and go forbids if some RAM burns. Perhaps RAM from that age it still available but historically the prices hike when only a few desperate people look for it and have to pay a premium.
So eventually I'll have to buy a new laptop because of maintenance: hardware parts and software updates. I'm betting on another 2 or 3 years. There is nothing I particularly like on the market now but this laptop was a compromise too. Serviceability and 3 buttons on the touchpad vs a useless number pad that shifts the center of the keyboard to the left of the screen.
Maybe they should think about a FrameTough line.
Not clear to me if you mean always or that it changed. Do suggest to check the thermal paste, plus clear out dust in fans and heatsink fins.
The 4th gen almost never kicked its fans on, especially in Linux. The new one gets far hotter, even at idle. Lenovo removed the traditional sleep mode in favor of modern sleep, which causes it to die with the lid closed in a couple days compared to over a week with the 4th gen.
i bought maybe 5 differnet thinkpads over the years and never had an issue with the old charging port. with the last usb-c thinkpad i got i had to buy 2 new chargers and both of those i repaired a few times as well. the connector just wiggles around too much and the cables are also too rigid so when it gets snagged on something the connector ends up bending in the port before the cable bends.
in the end i just got rid of it before the actual port on the motherboard got completely damaged
Larger port module plates that bolt into the sides of the chassis with a few screws would be just as good from a longevity standpoint, would enable better rigidity, and would allow the FW13 to host a considerably higher number of ports.
A screw or two definitely wouldn't have impeded the handful of times I've moved my 16's parts around, not even in the slightest, it's just not that frequent. And I don't usually carry other kinds of ports + wouldn't be able to have the screwdriver too, it's usually "I have them all" or "I have none" and then all I can realistically do is swap sides. I'd have zero complaints with some standard screws.
... but tool-less lowers the barrier to literally zero, which is pretty big when you need it. It's a very different mental-space: absolutely zero concern.
... and if they were smaller, they'd be incompatible, and it'd be harder to build custom ones due to even less internal space.
Rigidity is only for the main body, not the screen part.
For context, that's what I'm talking about with the kind of patterns when it happens: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254769961?sortBy=rank
> packing it in tightly with books
Which is basically equivalent to "putting it in a backpack" to me. I brought my last one in a lot of places, putting it with an iPad in the laptop compartment, the iPad was fine, the MacBook screen wasn't. For comparison I have an Asus X13 now, same use case (the iPad became a Surface Pro) for the same one year+ period now, and the screen is still perfect.
Personally I moved away from macs, so choosing a laptop with a touch screen was the best option: screens are tough enough, won't scratch under most circumstances, and can be wiped with anything short of diamond dust.
Otherwise they'd better lay off the drugs that generated that thinness fetish and make sturdy devices again.
(Note that i don't see any button traces on my m3 mbpro yet. it's close to a year old. And I'm not the kind that keeps the tv remote in the plastic bag that it was delivered in, probably the opposite.)
Reminds me of that iPhone model where they issued guidance on how to hold it because people lost signal during calls.
Also on that I think they should do away with the modular port things anyway. They're a suboptimial use of space and limit the total number of ports you can have. The real problem is that the ports on most laptops are soldered directly to the motherboard which results in extreme expense if you kill one. Just give us some replaceable ones like the current MacBook line. They're on an easy to remove daughterboard and purchaseable online.
I have a few Thinkpad X260s which can be got on eBay for $100US. Drop in a fresh SSD and stick of 16gb memory for another $100US and you have a very capable little machine for common, daily use that suits all my needs more than adequately. If one gets damaged, I am not out too much money. I've been using two for about 4 years now, one as my daily driver at home and one that goes on the road with me. I have not needed to further upgrade either one beyond what I did initially when buying* them. So, with that in mind, I think use-case has a lot to do with whether or not someone can get away with running the more disposable cheap-but-good Thinkpad like I do.
But >$800US for a Framework 13 that bends like a reed in the wind is not a smart choice for me. I really like their ethos of modularity, too, but there's just no way I'm hitting that cost anytime soon.
*Note on buying Thinkpad from eBay: yes, collectors have ruined the price of some models, but not all. Lots of the X Series models are still very cheap, but please do not support sellers who are offering cheap laptops without a battery and power cable. Be patient and dig, you'll find the ones who are selling you a complete, useable machine for cheap. Unfortunately, eBay is flooded with a lot of vulture tech resellers that part perfectly good batteries from devices so they can make more money selling you both separately.
People talking about old Lenovos being good quality are often talking about in the pre-IBM days which is far more likely to be nostalgia at this point.
In this case I was referring to post-T480 ThinkPads which have soldered memory, and no longer have hot-swappable batteries or on-board Ethernet.
They're still pretty easy to find replacements for when they go bad.
Meanwhile my T420 still runs like on day one (which was already 5 years old when I got it, and travelled 1+ years with me in a backpack), the screen works in direct sunlight and it's not even the best of its series, hardware still perfect. Fat SSD + 32GB Ram and you can barely tell how old it is.
Meanwhile, my T410 works great as a workbench computer.
I’ve wanted to get a T480 for a while now (mainly to do a T25 frankenpad [1] – seems like a nice project), but if it really has those issues with the USB-C ports, I think I’ll pass :-(
[1]: https://www.xyte.ch/mods/t25-frankenpad/
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2307079/dont-buy-these-dange...
I still have and regularly use a fully functional X200, somewhere in the box I have a fully functional T42 and an R31 whose only defect is a small screen blemish caused by me closing the lid with something on the keyboard.
But my multiple X1 Gen1 and Gen2 all have various failures (screen, battery, webcam, or keyboard), my T450 has big battery issues, my T470s have screen/GPU and battery issues. T490 is fine for now, X1 Gen11 has crappy battery and is overheating from the get go. These are different generations, different lots and still affected by the same constant issues.
At least a lot of modern ThinkPads are still modular. Recently got a 5th gen T14 AMD. Memory, NVMe SSD, WWAN modem, battery, and a bunch of other components are really easy to replace. I think I prefer the keyboard over my MBP, it feels less harsh.
Also the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be, which is endlessly annoying as a user of different laptop brands.
There's always been a bios option to swap them. It's on my x230, and probably exists on older PCs as well.
> The Fn key first debuted on the monochrome display ThinkPad 300 in October of 1992. Yes there was a ThinkPad with a monochrome display. The Fn key circa 1992 was placed exactly as it is today. Interestingly enough, Apple uses the same positions for their Fn and Ctrl keys as ThinkPad. Every other notebook personal computer manufacturer that I know of has the Fn and Ctrl key positions swapped. Some would say backwards.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110130203223/https://www.lenov...
By contrast, I know someone who got a T480 second hand and it lasted six months. My guess is the 2012 era was when the change happened
Among a few: The keyboard switch from the old 7-row (whose pinnacle was at the x220/T420 era with double-height esc and del) to the new 6-row (with later ever decreasing key travel) to the current x9 (which is basically just a yoga keyboard with no trackpoint, no key grouping, and the loss of pgup/pgdn). Things like the modular battery options vanished. The case got flimsier over time with e.g. the magnesium rollcage first vanishing from the display, then from the base. (And no - from enterprise experience - the carbon fiber composite isn't generally "as good or better", esp. for failure modes like punctual force on the display. Or...grabbing the laptop by the display and using it to fan your BBQ, which doesn't faze my old X41 :) ).
I think xx30-series has such a good reputation because you could use a T420 keyboard (with a tiny modification to better fit the chassis and not short out the backlight pin).
I've been trying to rationalise why that's the case for years - whether it's the keyboard, the trackpoint, its ability to survive my casual brutality, some nostalgic emotional/romantic aspect, etc., but recently I've kinda Stopped Worrying and just unapologetically embraced it. I've been wandering around kubecon with it for the last couple of days and getting 9-10 hours per battery and it hasn't skipped a beat.
For anyone interested, there's a new project in town, the X210Ai [1]. I can't vouch for anything yet as I've not pulled the trigger myself, but I've been in touch with the vendor via whatsapp for the last couple of months, and they're legit enthusiasts.
[0]: https://postimg.cc/Ty7PyKRx [1]: https://www.tpart.net/about-x210ai/
With that said, I do wish the keyboard on my Framework 13 were better. It would be a wonderful to have a ThinkPad-quality keyboard, I have a ThinkPad T430 and its keyboard is one of the best chiclet-style keyboards I’ve ever used. I also like the keyboard on my old aluminum PowerBook G4, as well as the keyboard on my work-issued M3 MacBook Pro. What would be a dream, though, would be if there’s some way to fit a mechanical keyboard into a laptop.
Exactly this. I've given up hope to expect an old-school TP keyboard with its ridged concave keys providing perfect tactile feedback even when not depressing a key, but there's basically no standard laptop layout out there anymore optimized for efficient touch typing, with existing consistently grouped and offset(!) off-center key groups (4-group f-keys, pgup/pgdn/home/end cluster, arrow keys). And some key travel to go with tactile scissor keys to reduce bottoming-out would be nice.
(Oh, and why I find the "tactile feedback" so important, see the wonderful "Pictures Under Glass" rant.
https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDes...
Not directly related to keyboards, but the premise remains the same. Hands feel things. :) )
I will say, it has weirded me out that they have been so cagey about the pricing in particular, which AFAICT, is the only thing not public about the laptop before the pre order date
And thus, I have everything from a 14 year old t420s to my trusty t25 anniversary edition, and then a few workhorses with 8th gen Intels (x13 yoga, x1 carbon, t580) as personal and family laptops.
Also iirc there are projects that make Motherboard that fit in old thinkpad chassis. It has very impressive spec: 8 core Zen3 AMD cpu and 32gb ram. Some M2 slot etc.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_25th_anniversary_edit...
Still trucking after 7 years though. But I can’t upgrade it to Win 11 lol
> But I can’t upgrade it to Win 11 lol
Nothing of value has been lost :^) (But if you really need Win 11, there are workarounds)
Had to use Scroll Lock just yesterday. Which, well, I can't on my x13 :-(
I’m really rooting for Framework over the next decade to really establish themselves and hopefully affect some change in laptop repairability. And hell, even if they don’t, hopefully they’ll be around so I can continue to be a customer.
Are you listening, Nirav?
(Yes, I know it would make the laptop slightly thicker and heavier. But I just said I'm using a W520, and happy with it...)
Still, it's not a complete nonstarter for me, because the 16 does have that optional keypad. I could actually start using the numlock key again.
https://mntre.com/
All those off-center keys have been grouped, offset and/or specially shaped since ages for a reason - to immediately and unambiguously settle your fingers there with minimal error when you have to move you hand away from the homerow anyway.
I hate Framework laptops' design. They went to the extreme of repairability but only as a marketing tool, while the products are still e-waste trash.
I looked at Framework 13 laptop as a replacement for my X60 Tablet. Let me do a comparison between them:
Please note that the X60 is ~15 years old. This wasn't a performance comparison.So, yes, framework laptops are repaireable, but they're so crippled, there isn't much left in them to repair.
Yep on battery - I rarely use mine while traveling (and rarely travel) and set max charge to 60% so it should last a good long time, but it can be replaced when I need too. I replaced 2 in my black Macbook and once in my iPhone 3G (but I got 8 years out of the phone). When my work MB Pro had a battery bulge, the whole machine was replaced and presumably recycled since it was not repairable.
Internal, yep, but nvme > SATA any day.
They are usb-c yes, but the ports are adjustable (can mix usb-c, usb-a, display-port, hdmi, network, storage, etc) so it's not as restrictive as you seem to be implying.
On video, I am not sure if you think it's some kind of DisplayLink thing but it's alt-dp over usb, directly connected to the GPU.
My 13" has a headphone jack (and passable speakers) and a built in Mic (and both the camera and mic have switches to disable them).
2.5GB Ethernet is available as an expansion module.
I find the keyboard and touch pad okay! I don't really need a touchscreen.
On ports: I don't use the finger print reader (but it has one). I don't need SD card slot all that often (but is available). I don't have any FW devices (and 400Mbs vs 5-10Gbps). Don't need a modem or an IR Port
I don't use a dock (I do at work for my MB Pro - but it's mostly a permanent desktop configuration so I don't mind that it's connected via usb-c). The one I got IS compatible with my Framework 13 though.
I had a t61 for work and I loved it... in 2009 . I should have bought it from the company when I left but bought a black Macbook instead
> X60 battery is removed by 2 spring latches on the back
Yeah but the FW13 battery also lasts several times more than the battery life you get out of swapping two or three X60 batteries on the train.
Also, VGA out is useless in this day and age and USB-C is not only robust but also way faster and more capable.
My mistake.
> That was a conscious design decision, as you're supposed to use swappable expansion cards.
> - SD card slot
Like I said. The laptop itself is very basic (crippleware by Lenovo standards). You have to use USB ports for everything, there are only 3 usable, and also mechanically very weak, not to mention performance, heat inside a closed plastic case, cost, etc.
I keep telling myself I should try an X230T and Linux --- if there was a Framework device which supported Wacom EMR, I wouldn't have to. That said, my next major tech purchase is an rPi 5 and a Wacom Movink 13.
Also, unless something has changed or I am misinterpreting what they are saying, the fw13 does have an audio output that is not an expansion card.
Community forum posts from 2021 suggest they sort of forgot to include this information initially.
It so happens that the audio jack in my previous laptop started getting loose after four years, which was a first, as usually it was the USB ports which would go, so having it as an expansion card was a major selling point for me.
This really is a device for people who tend to break things despite relatively light usage. I for one damaged the screen in every single laptop that I had.
So, does it really have a headphones jack or not?
My X60T headphones jack only recently started to cause troubles after many many years of use, but it was an easy fix: drill 3 tiny holes in the connector casing and push a needle through each one to bend the contacts tighter.
Anyway, I'd rather just disassemble the expansion card and solder in a new port should this ever come to pass, as it's just a question of undoing two screws:
https://community.frame.work/t/whats-inside-the-audio-expans...
I suppose I could see a secondhand market for used mainboards and other parts.
https://community.frame.work/c/community-market/202
https://forum.fairphone.com/c/market/51
Also, at least among the people I work with and talk to, many are dropping their MacBooks for a ThinkPad, because they are migrating from macOS to Linux as Apple becomes increasingly restrictive and running Linux is just becoming the easier option.
Framework is approaching the point where there is now a choice, Framework or ThinkPads. It's just that I can still get a really good used ThinkPad for like half or a third of the price.
IBM HMMs, or creatively named Hardware Maintenance Manuals, were written so that if all steps in the document were performed from start to end as written, the laptop would be a pile of FRUs or Field Replacement Units, so that those FRUs can be inspected, discarded, ordered, and replaced, and then the process can be done in reverse to produce a working unit.
Why - I mean I think I know why - they likely don't have enough control and/or influence over parts suppliers to be able to publicly expose those data unlike the Big Blue - but why...
0: https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/...
1: https://thinkpads.com/support/hmm/hmm_pdf/42x3550_04.pdf
Also, you don't change its motherboard, you change the mainboard (for my laptop, it's the CPU/integrated GPU + memory sockets); this is unlike changing the entire computer. Then, you can reuse the replaced mainboard as a server if you wish to.
This pales with my experience using a Macbook Air whose motherboard failed. I did have to replace the entire computer.
Something that I find particularly annoying are persistent issues with noisy cooling systems. Some models are great, but others have poorly thought fans and overly aggressive firmware. Software fixes can only remedy part of the problem. I wish they stayed closer to their original ethos of high-quality utilitarian computers.
Something like the 25th and 30th Anniversary Editions should be in their main stock product line, i.e. stop messing with keyboards please. The original was fine.
Me, as a 250ish lb giant, have stepped on one multiple times without so much as a creak. Granted, it was on accident each time and I'm sure perfect heel placement could have done the job if I tried.
Even so, can Framework do the same? Can anyone else making laptops today?
Indeed, old thinkpads were designed to survive a coffee spill on the keyboard and they did, and various drops (with spinning rust as storage and cfl backed screens)
And when you achieve to break some part, it can be easily swapped. Oh and the documentation for that is available and very detailed.
Framework isn't the top choice for business.
That is entirely false. Replacing the mainboard itself costs the same amount of money as a new laptop (an entire device). Their component prices are on their website under "Shop Parts", so you can verify that for yourself. I can buy a brand new Ryzen 7000 series laptop for the price of replacing a Ryzen 7000 series mainboard for a Framework laptop. Their laptops are also a lot more expensive than same spec branded ones from Asus, Lenovo and Dell that have better build quality and design.
I don't know where does this myth come from. The cost of replacing individual component is more expensive than replacing an entire device which people do not do because it needs repairing or often even upgrading, but because they're sick of the sight of it. You can't replace one component and extend the life of your PC another full cycle because you'll soon have to replace other components too. So when it comes to upgrading you have to consider the price of upgrading all available components to get the true cost as opposed to buying a new device.
Eventually, sooner rather than later, both RAM and SSD will come soldered on, so the only thing you will be able to replace is the battery and the screen. Both which 99% users never have to replace.
I am a Thinkpad user myself, have had them for both work and pleasure. Recently upgraded my old T14 for an X13 after reading and watching a lot of Framework reviews. It's just simply a gimmick, with a lot of quality issues, being sustained by having LTT name behind it.
I haven't been able to confirm this (I found laptop prices running at about twice the cost of the mainboard), but I wonder if you're comparing an EOL runout model from a place that can afford heavy discounts against a standard price from a smaller company. If you just need a laptop and you're not too fussy, that's definitely a fair choice. But if you're buying a laptop for ten years, you probably aren't going to settle for the unsold 16GB 512GB.
> Their laptops are also a lot more expensive than same spec branded ones from Asus, Lenovo and Dell that have better build quality and design.
I guess a Framework isn't for someone who wants a same spec Asus, Lenovo or Dell.
> Eventually, sooner rather than later, both RAM and SSD will come soldered on, so the only thing you will be able to replace is the battery and the screen.
This is 173% fud. If it happens, it's because Framework is dead and there's some different company that bought their branding and just wants to use it for market segmentation. I definitely have to rate the chances that Framework has died as one of the risks of buying them, whereas I wouldn't concern myself with the risk of System76 dying, because a typical laptop lasts well past its warranty, but the point of Framework is indeed what happens in that post-warranty period.
I'm not a huge fan of Frameworks. I left a critical review on another comment. I'm not sure at all if they fit my needs, and having recently discovered the wonder of tailscale I'm now debating if my next computer will be a Framework vs a headless desktop + a dumb laptop. So even if a Framework doesn't fit my needs, they're still the only laptop that seems to. But your criticisms don't at all seem grounded enough.
Take a look at the Framework desktop, it comes with soldered on RAM. Not because of any active decisions made by Framework, but simply because that's how that CPU ships. It literally didn't support RAM slots. I can only see this trend continuing. I don't doubt that Framework will be the last hold out in the fight against soldered on RAM and SSDs, but sooner or later if they want to keep shipping the latest CPUs, they probably won't have too much of a choice in the matter.
I would be in the market for the MB only but I think I can build a 9950 based system cheaper, but I am not running AI models locally.
But I do agree that the trend of soldered SoC-like will grow, seeing that less than 1 in 10 consumers ever upgrade a computer. Apple silicon has been out for four years and I don't really come across a lot of grumbling about their integrated components which gives me hope that it's a tenable option and we're worried about nothing.
That’s not true, you must be comparing unlike boards and machines.
a 7640 mainboard is $380 (https://frame.work/products/mainboard-amd-ryzen-7040-series?...) and a 7640 chassis (with no memory, ssd, or expansion bays) is $750 (https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configurat...)
Another example, the ai 7 350 mainboard is $700, and a bare chassis is $1,230.
Ryzen 7840U replacement Framework mainboard £699 (currently discounted): https://frame.work/gb/en/products/mainboard-amd-ryzen-7040-s...
Thinkbook 14" Gen 7, 7735HS/16G/512G £730 - https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bun...
Ideapad Slim 3 Gen 10 14", 8840HS/24G/512G £730 - https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bun...
7840U and 8840HS are essentially the same CPU and the difference in performance between 7840U and 7735HS is minimal, few % at best. So these three are comparable. I'm sorry but for the price of a replacement mainboard I can buy a brand new whole laptop with memory, storage, screen, the everything that comes with it. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the hype behind a repairable laptop?
I have a 12th Gen 13 but I will probably wait one more generation and either get that or a discounted Strixpoint MB (since it'll be a generation back and presumably cheaper).
This is sarcasm, I hope, right? The two most consumable items in the laptop (specially for OLED screens), and you're suggesting users have no need to replace them?
Or launch multiple lines.
Longevity is built one step at a time. Voting with dollars only helps it become an option enough and signal to other manufacturers to consider similar ways.
Just remind them if you see them. They'll eventually prioritize making it happen.
At every company I've worked for, tickets get promoted from the backlog if enough customers or would-be customers nag about it.
But I can get as many Thinkpads as I want.
They are also bulky and battery life is not great.
To upgrade it you have to buy a mainboard which is quite expensive.
I found that I am better by selling my old laptop and buying a new one.
But bulky? I have the Framework 13 and it's very well sized. Smaller and lighter than the 14" macbook pro and similar to my windows laptop.
Holy $ALL_DEITIES! I use mac laptops, but I've recently set up a WinAMDNvidia "gaming" laptop. I just closed the lid when I was done for the day, because that's what you do with macs.
In the morning there was a strong whooshing sound in my home office. Guess what, the sleeping laptop had turned its fan on. What kind of sleep mode is that that needs active cooling?
I wish someone would build a new laptop abound a ComExpress module and all the freely-open parts from a Framework laptop.
It is hard to build a legend around something like this.
MacBooks are produced in China too (as everything), but they have that "legacy" of being a cult product from U.S.A.
That's true for every computer. But people still buy old C64, Amiga, Atari, IBM or Apple computers.
Not in meaningful numbers.
That's biased though. As soon as a 51nb motherboard dies or has any hardware failure you're back to 2008-era level of performance.
No they're not. They have the sake kind of atrocious low-travel keyboards that almost-all (or all) other laptops these days have. And - for many of us - the most important piece of hardware in a laptop is the keyboard.
The user being able to swap parts easily is _neat_ but it's just not an required feature, any more than the user of a car being able to easily hot-swap the engine. The right level of integration provides a tradeoff the maximizes reliability, cost, performance, and repair. A professional can still replace almost any component of a modern laptop, with a few thousand $ of specialized tools, and the battery, the only component with a fixed lifetime, can be easily replaced at home.
I really hope Framework can continue to develop hardware with documented repairability, without falling for the myth that tight integration and quality are mutually exclusive.
Right now, having devices which require both expertise and expensive machinery means that the cost of going to someone to repair it will increase over 10 folds, making a full replacement a financial and sound choice.
If my CPU doesn't last for 10 years but I can change it myself in minutes, I would rather that than throwing away everything else I still love and is still functional just for promised extended reliability (which is just a matter of statistics and profit margins at the end of the day).
You have to understand though that people like us are a tiny minority.
Increasingly I hate creating waste, especially e-waste, and so I'll tinker with things to get them working or upgrade them, but most people don't want the hassle.
I believe this change benefits 100% the companies imposing them, consumers always have a tech-enthusiast around to ask if needs be.
Anyone that can read and use their brain can strip a laptop down to components and reassemble it.
Armchair dipshits like to slag on Louis Rossmann, but did lead repair sessions where he would teach people how to do hot air pcb rework. Dude walks the talk and empowers people.
You are missing my point.
No one’s dismissing Rossmann or the value of empowerment. The problem is acting like isolated efforts equal systemic change. If this were as easy as you claim, the landscape would reflect that.
So yes, you’re missing the point. Passion is fine, but without policy, infrastructure, and incentives, it goes nowhere.
(And for the failing RAM: open the hood, a LED tells you which strip is failing, swap it, close, go on… The build quality is quite amazing, BTW.)
This. It existed. The laptops still commanded enthusiasm, felt great, capable, and solid without being too heavy, and had swappable RAM and disk. Keyboard and battery swap were screwdriver set DIYs. Heck, the old Pismos had hot swappable battery and drive bays.
I'm still frequently using a MacBook Pro 11,3. Only lets you swap the drive but that by itself is a great point of flexibility.
The M series does amazing things which have their own merits, but the particular set of tradeoffs aren't inevitable.
The "sacrifices must be made" idea apparently sacrifices recall of other possibilities first.
None of my MacBook Pros ever had any issues, and I used my last MacBook for 9 years. I could keep using it with Linux instead of MacOS, but I think almost a decade of use is plenty of value for me.
There were recalls and scandals with the MacBook Pro over the years, but nothing that other vendors also didn't see, and that wouldn't have required the same exact parts being replaced. I'm thinking of the GPU issues with certain MacBooks. The difference is Apple is usually able to be held to task to fix issues, while almost any other vendor did not care to stand behind their product, including Lenovo.
I had a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon with the HiDPI screen that was absolutely awful, requiring replacement multiple times. Each time, the moron from Unisys that Lenovo sent to do the on-site repair would return me with a laptop that was poorly reassembled, and with new problems due to the tech's ineptitude. The same dude did service for Lenovo servers, and he once dropped a server that needed a fan replaced on the floor. Talk about fragile.
Thinkpads are great, and the oldest ones are still solid to use, but to say that MacBooks are fragile ignores that Thinkpads too are fragile.
Sorry, but this is a joke. "any other vendor did not care to stand behind their product"? Give me a break.
Apple has been time and again the champion of denying issues with their products until lawsuits forced their hand, often settling without admitting wrongdoing. Bendgate, Batterygate, MBP nVidia, MBP AMD, Butterfly keyboard, just off the top of my head. (Again: My criticism here is about how Apple handled them.)
"You're holding it wrong" is a meme for a reason (that didn't result in a lawsuit, though IIRC)
Even if a professional can fix it, that expertise to be able to use those tools worth "a few thousand dollars" costs a lot too, likely pushing the price high enough that its worth thinking about buying a new device instead.
While the battery might be the only thing with a fixed lifetime, other components often also break. I was unlucky and owned a ThinkPad with one soldered on RAM module and one socketed slot to be able to upgrade the RAM, but that didn't help the day that the soldered on RAM died on me.
Realistically I don't know anyone with my specific kind of problem who's used their services before, so I don't really know their reputation. It's not like walking into a supermarket, or even getting a car repaired where you have some sense of the likelihood it will take as long as they say, cost as much as they say and actually succeed. There's much greater information asymmetry.
Of course, given how unattractive it is to get something repaired, more people will be inclined to just buy something new, resulting in less demand for repairs, resulting in less supply, less attractive repair market, etc.
Repairability (at home, by relative morons) also means more repair shops, because less repairability means death of a repairs market.
This is generally a problem in taxation than the devices. Consider I want to have an electrician fix my broken wallsocket:
>Billed for 100€/hour
>Out of which expenses for moving using a workcar, calculating by officially recognized tax administration car wear value 0,59€/km for 5km both ways, so ~6€, 94€ remains
>VAT is 25,5%, leaving you with ~70€
>Paying for mandatory employer's portion of pension 17,5%, leaving us with ~57,75€
Now the employee gets 57,75€, out of which following are deducted:
>Income tax for average electrician: 26%, ~15€
>Employee's part of mandatory pension: 7,15%, ~ 4,1€
>Municipal taxes: ~8% depending on municipality ~ 4,6€
So 57,75€ - 23,7€ = ~34€
There are also various single or partial percent taxes that slightly affect the outcome, and companies often want some sort of profit instead of directly giving 100% to the single employee.
CUDIMM is changeable and fast.
> The user being able to swap parts easily is _neat_ but it's just not an required feature
Mostly because people seem to have forgotten that it was possible. Often laptops are slow to due either a too full disk and/or not enough memory. It used to be more common to upgrade those. But apparently that knowledge/skill is forgotten and it's now more custom to buy a new device.
Being able to change those saves money IMO.
I funded my early career years by doing IT for home users of all sorts of expertise and budget and I feel like I got a decent gauge at what the average user did during the replaceable hardware era.
The people in the middle class and below would end up with such a shit device out of the gate (those 400-600usd laptops at the time, lower outside of the us), that by the time they started complaining about slowness, the upgradeable things did not make a difference. 1 to 2gb ram with a shit Celeron? Hardly worth the money. Bottom shelf Core2duos, overheating, cracking hinges, etc.
Not to mention that even then not all laptops were very standard in the way they were built. Taking one apart could be very time consuming and they would pay by the hour for me to do it, so after labor it was above what the device was worth and it would only buy them a few months of time at most. You do that once and you realize next time you’ll get a desktop.
The richer people would just get MacBooks and only call me for software stuff.
Companies had thinkpads and once purchased would never go out the standarized build. Just swap them when out of warranty, or at the time most would actually work at a desk with a desktop and leave work at work.
The real reason however is that going up SoC SKUs at apple gives you more memory channels. Those bandwidth increases you see in specs are because of that, not because the memory is soldered.
I meant the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAMM_(memory_module)
That's a way to have the memory close, but still being able to change it (without e.g. hot air station or something).
not worth it
The whole setup (allegedly) fits inside original chassis, too, and disk speeds are about the same. So the only real tradeoffs for Apple are cost and the fact that user can swap in third party parts instead of paying obscene prices Apple charges for spec upgrades.
I wish more people took direct control over their lives. But many are just happy to not think and put up with whatever they get.
In a lot of places that is highly illegal
Would certainly be more "green."
Recently I decided to do a service on it for the first time, and I was absolutely stunned by how little dust had built up in the CPU fan and the interior in general, after 7 years of usage, often sitting on top of a couch or bed, near my long-haired Norwegian forest cat Rufus. All it needed was a litle puff of computer duster and it was good as new. That's very good design of the air intakes and is a huge factor in the machine's longevity.
I did computer repair professionally for a while, and one of the most common causes of irreparable death I saw in laptops was massive dust buildup in cpu fans and consequent heat damage to surrounding components. I'd sometimes see this in 2-3 year old laptops even.
Funny to think that something as simple as the shape of an air intake opening can have such a profound impact on the lifetime of a device.
The other thing that Thinkpads are unrivaled at is protection for the display. People like to say macbooks are sturdy, but they are quite prone to cracked displays because of Apple's obsession with smaller bezels. The thinkpad ofc has t34 style angled armor for its display. Can't remember ever seeing a Thinkpad with a cracked display. And I carry my Thinkpad around in just a backpack with no sleeve, often the Thinkpad is the only thing in there, and it regularly impacts the floor when the(thin-bottomed) backpack is put down while sitting down on the bus or getting home.
Can't speak to every model, but it's not always like this. I just swapped the battery on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air, and it's much easier now. The battery is glued to a metal tray that unscrews and lifts out of the laptop. It is discarded with the old battery. The tray is also held down with pull-tab adhesive strips, but they are trivial to remove - similar to what "command hooks" have.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+B...
I've also done a battery swap on a 2015 Macbook Pro 15" - much harder. Each individual battery cell is glued directly to the chassis, and removing each one involves a lot of prying and praying it doesn't puncture or decide to detonate.
Back to the macbook air, I've also replaced the screen and USB-C ports. It's not that bad.
I've only ever swapped the battery on a late 2011 MacBook and it was kept in place by three tri-wing screws - really simple procedure and reportedly the device is still in use. I would not attempt the same on a 2015 or 2019 model due to the glue situation.
These "fragility" arguments always, as in the case of the OP, ignore the actual experience of owning and using the thing. People will adopt an ancient smartphone because they are locked into the idea that removable battery and removable SD cards are morally superior, and then blindly ignore the fact that the battery life sucks, the only batteries available are random chinese junk, the backs are easy to break and lose, SD cards are unreliable and easy to lose, and so forth. There is a reason that the market overwhlemingly prefers phones and laptops with fixed storage and integrated battery packs.
If you're only running programs that you have full control of, and can compile/fix locally, or where receiving security fixes &etc. don't matter, then you're good. But things are a bit more interconnected, these days.
I do still enjoy running my hardware into the ground rather than tossing out perfectly good components every few years though (:
[1] In my case, the boot loader stopped working for my hardware on FreeBSD 11.4
That's interesting/strange. Did you report it? I'd expect them to care about that serious of a breakage in a point release.
It eventually got auto-closed for not being tagged to any non-EOL versions. I did recently confirm it was still a problem on newer releases, but that hardware died not long after, so I didn't pursue it.
My best guess is that it was some BIOS-level oddity. It's also possible that it was due in some way to the hardware (slowly) dying; I can't be sure. But it was a very clear "worked on release X, stopped working on release Y (and beyond)" sort of behavior.
[1] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257722
Thanks to Linux I have kept my memory need low (8GB IIRC)
Two of the four used X220 units I've bought arrived with the lid end piece wiggling, because it was no longer firmly attached to the main piece.
The X200 and almost every other ThinkPad managed just fine with a 1-piece lid, including being rugged against drops, so I don't know why the change.
Did you find any typical repairs for the lid section?
(I haven't opened up my wiggly units yet, but I guess probably it got banged, and either screws were stripped out of their holes, or some internal plastic piece snapped.)
I need to do some automotive tuning/testing and guess what, the T420 is where its at for that, too. It's no longer good as a daily driver, but it'll do everything else just fine.
IT data destruction companies all remove the storage, and put the device back on ebay the same day.
It's difficult to know exactly when a server might fail. It might be within 1 month of its build, it might be 50 years. But what's clear is that failure isn't less likely as the machine gets older, it's more likely. There are outliers, but they;re rare. The failure modes for these things are well recorded, and the whole thing is designed to fail within a certain number of hours (if it's not the hard drive, it's the fan, the cpu, the memory, the capacitors, the solder joints, etc). It doesn't get better as it ages.
But environmental stress is often a predictor of how long it lives. If the machine is cooled properly, in a low-humidity environment, is jostled less, run at low-capacity (fans not running as hard, temperature not as high, disks not written to as much, etc), then it lives longer. So you can decrease the probability of failure, and it may live longer. But it also might drop dead tomorrow, because again there may be manufacturing flaws.
If given the choice, I wouldn't buy an old machine, because I don't know what kind of stress it's had, and the math is stacked against it.
Is this true? Doesn't most hardware have a dip in failure rate in the middle of its average lifespan?
If Lenovo were to release a modern T420-like, with identical chassis, battery system and similar IO port variety, but a modern display, modern internals (replaceable SSD! soldered RAM at least has a case for performance) and a modern camera, cash would evaporate out of my wallet.
I remember there was a person [1] modding T60/T61s into "T700"s with 11th gen Intel chips. Unfortunately it looks like the project's been quiet since 2022. Hopefully there'll be more who try.
[1] https://www.xyte.ch/t700-crowdfunding/
ThinkPads ain't what they were. My x230 is still going.
The package manager needs more RAM than the average other package manager because it is doing a lot more behind the back.
It is in a mint condition, not a single scratch, and I don't want to throw it out for sure. I have an old OpenBSD on it, it is perfect for some light C coding using mg. :)
But if the password is a harddisk password, you are SOL :( You will need to get a new HD.
What do you mean a Thinkpad is repairable? If a chip dies, you have to go out and buy a new chip!
Whatever happened to the days where you could just wire in a new transistor yourself?
(/Joke)
Jokes aside, my point is that this article is splitting hairs about where repairability and integration lies. It's not worth opening up a failing RAM module to find the microscopic broken transistor. For many of us, it's not worth repairing an old laptop, but instead we'd rather have the advantages of everything soldered to the mainboard.
(Although I will admit to repairing an old Mac laptop. The fans started to squeak, so I changed them.)
The older they are, the better they are, but even the modern ones are still pretty good. Like the OP mentions, the market for parts is strong and it's easy to get what you need. Then when you go to sell them, they sell for a good amount. That W510 is worth at least $100 in its current condition.
Everyone agrees the build quality used to be better (my grandpa already said this about appliances from his youth). But one thing I almost never see discussed is the power consumption of these old devices. Older CPUs often double as room heaters. Modern ones, especially the Apple M-series, have become a lot more efficient. So while I agree that modern laptops suck in many ways, I would do the math to see if it's actually cheaper to buy and use an older computer. Maybe not if you're in Qatar or Russia but some countries have extremely high electricity costs.
At maximum, a T580 can draw 44 watts. 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, at 50 cents a kWh (quite expensive for the US), that's $65 a year. That's a several-year-old computer already.
The W520 can draw a much higher (but still low relative to a desktop) 150 watts. The cost per year to run it would then be around $220/year - but again, that's assuming maximum power draw for much of the day every day. Your home refrigerator uses more than twice that.
For most people, I don't see this cost increase as a problem.
Even if you add a 210 l upright freezer to it is is still less than 300 kWh per year. That's 300 kWh / (365 * 24 h) = 34 W
I wish the graphic driver could be better as playing Youtube videos constantly crashes Firefox on Ubuntu. Other than that I have nothing to complain. I have been using it for 3+ years with zero maintenance (I didn't even bother to clean the fan) and it never failed me.
I have a second "new" Dell workstation laptop standing by just in case it breaks down. But it is a Windows machine with 32GB of memory, so I'll probably use WSL2 instead.
Do you have the xf86-video-intel driver installed? Try removing that package and just relying on the kernel modesetting DRI driver instead. That's been the recommended way to run Intel graphics for long time now.
I don't know if that's your issue, but it this caused a lot of weird issues on my x270 with Firefox.
I spent $100 on what I thought was a legit and reputable local middleman for laptop batteries (of course they just buy from China), but even then first battery was half dead on arrival, and second free replacement was dead in around just under a year with rapid capacity decline after 6 months.
I am going to look at another vendor. Maybe GreenCell?
i guess i am a hoarder? Hate to throw away useful working things..
I like the older keyboards and I'm ok with 1366x768 so I'm happy with an X220 with 8Gb RAM and a 256Gb ssd (sata). I know many people would find that unacceptable.
Eventually, it had a Core i7-3820QM with 16GB RAM, 1080p screen (with an adapter), SSDs (plural, I put one in the UltraBay)... I installed Coreboot with Tianocore, upgraded the WiFi card... I even modded in the keyboard from a T420.
In June of 2022, 10 years later, I bought an X270 off eBay. I could still use the T430, it was just starting to feel sluggish... I just felt like I needed a new laptop. I'm very happy with the X270 and I hope to use it as long as possible.
It was also fun to start covering it with stickers all over again!
I still have the T430, it's just not being used and it's sitting in a storage locker (with my vintage computer collection).
A cleaning and re-paste will bring it back. If on windows maybe time for a windows re-install.
Typed on a T430 via BSD that was just re-pasted and cleaned, not sluggish anymore :) If you are interested *BSD, I can confirm both NetBSD and OpenBSD works great on the T430 I have.
It weighs less than 2kg and is perfect for light duties.
My current workstation setup includes 22cores/44threads decade old xeon plus four decade old Titan X GPUs with a total of 48GB VRAM, which is enough to run a decent local AI model, but I’m finally wanting more capacity. I haven’t been this interested to upgrade in a decade. NVIDIA’s new DGX-class offerings might convince me, depending on pricing and supply, although waiting a few more years to let things stabilize could be what I do. Still, it’s an exciting time for hardware, especially now that there’s a tangible reason to invest in more power for local AI.
Instead, refurbished Thinkpads are still coming off leases. Available for a 250-700 refurbished. Bench repairable. I keep good backups. If something incredible happens and I can’t fix it I can get a new one same day and be back on my feet.
And I like the aesthetic. They’re built to be durable. The chassis has fluid channels. The parts are replaceable. They’re black, unassuming, and utilitarian.
It is getting harder to keep the latest versions of some distros running on them. Software continues to expand like a gas and developers don’t seem to run their stuff on anything but the latest spec hardware. But there are distros out there where folks take care to keep things minimal and fast.
These are still powerful machines. Not editing 4K video on them. But they’re dang useful for coding, writing, and day to day things I do.
The "hard" thing about thinkpads is you have to find them. I must have searched eBay listing for close to a month before the right thinkpad popped up. Especially with the workstation grade laptops, they were so configurable brand new that there are something like 48 possible variants you can find, and finding one with the exact specs you want can be incredibly difficult.
The white plastic macbook is in decent shape too with just standard light scratching on the body. It was sold for parts only but worked just fine. Needed a battery replacement, and I found some old magsafe "L" chargers for cheap. Maxed out the RAM at 4GB (Supports 6GB (4G+2G) but 1pc of 4GB DDR2 are expensive).
The 2008 unibody macbook needed the lower body replaced (bad keyboard main issue) but the rest of it works fine. The original battery still worked and held some charge, but I got a 3rd party one anyway along with the magsafe "L" charger. Maxed out RAM at a usable 8GB DDR3. This was also sold dirt cheap "for parts".
Both ran MX Linux for awhile until I needed the SATA SSDs. They now sit with their old mechanical hdds and the last supported OSX versions on them. Maybe one day I'll get around to selling them.
the X230 didn't last as long, the efficiencies of the M1 macbooks were too good to ignore. Gave it to my mother since because she wanted "an old laptop that just works"
This I understand.
My company's IT department is using the Windows 11 migration to move everyone to new laptops, and I am going to miss that amazingly firm-but-sqiushy keyboard so hard.
I can't stand Windows, but writing long-form reports on that machine is a joy.
Aside from it being a principled thing, Linux does work a lot better on older machines. Newer hardware tends to have shit driver support for a few years.
Like my 10 year old Asus laptop which is supposed to have horrid Linux compatibility runs multiple versions of Ubuntu with KDE perfectly, with only bluetooth crapping out occasionally.
A new Lenovo laptop that we just got at work that's supposed to be tested with linux? Completely broken, can't adjust the display brightness, can't read the battery level, touchpad doesn't work, and more. I'm sure it'll be sorted out by Ubuntu 26 or whatever, but damn is it a crap experience. Using linux on a machine that's less than 5 years old is already too bleeding edge for productivity.
Unlike the 4 or so Dell (and Asus) laptops (that came with Linux preinstalled) that preceded this one, it can simultaneously support:
* Bluetooth. Yay!
* Wifi. Yay!
* Sleeps when the lid closes. Yay!
* Stays asleep when in my bag. Yay!
It's also reasonably fast and decently capable, but the not-trying-to-commit-heat-death-suicide-in-my-bag and supporting BOTH Wifi AND Bluetooth at the same time are really the biggest features.
[1] https://hackaday.io/project/27272-tp-bmp
The EU should mandate 10-year warranties for higher-end consumer electronics and durable goods.
This could work on a sliding scale: less expensive items get shorter warranties (but never below the current 2-year minimum), while pricier products require longer coverage periods.
Such legislation would:
1. End the exploitation of workers in sweatshops producing deliberately short-lived products
2. Discourage planned obsolescence and reduce manufacturing waste
3. Significantly decrease the climate impact of consumer electronics
4. Create genuine incentives for a Circular Economy where durable products like quality ThinkPads become standard rather than exceptions
By requiring products to last, we'd not only protect consumers and the Environment, but also the vulnerable workers currently trapped and exploited in sweatshops designed to produce disposable goods.
Only in very niche jobs you carry your laptop to/from office/home every day.
- cost (laptops getting more expensive) - quality (laptops getting less powerful / smaller) - time (manufacturers have a long grace period before they need to implement the regulations, to allow technology to catch up)
I used a thinkpad X200 back in 2014 or so and it got completely destroyed due to a spill. I replaced the memory, keyboard etc. but was unable to get it to work again. Also, the monitor had developed a few dead scanlines so I decided to buy another one. This was my primary work machine so I needed something quickly. I got another x230 off ebay. It was a piece used for demos at shows so it was refurbished. Threw Debian onto it and started work 2014. I used it straight till 2022 or so. It was my primary machine. I replaced the battery, added RAM. Then the fan got damaged and the front plastic plating got cracked so it was no longer presentable. I bought an X1 carbon but gave the laptop to my son. We bought a fan, thermal paste and some plastic parts for the casing, a new battery etc., watched a few youtube videos and fixed it up. It's still running and they play casual games on it. It's now atleast 10 years old and still going strong.
It's a very strong machine with great longevity. Though I feel that the newer ones are not as good as the old and the X1 is definitely less repairable than its older cousins.
Lenovo made this Laptop worse than 7 years ago, and it's their top line model for > 2000$. It's such a shame and sad to see. There's no very good alternative with integrated touchscreen and stylus.
- fully mechanical
- mechanical shutter with light meter
- electronic control of shutter, mechanical advance
- fully electronic shutter and advance
Broadly, what I'm finding after digging in to restoring some cameras is that most of the cameras from the first stage can still be fixed and made to perform close to when they were new. The second still work, but the light meter can die (simpler light meters may be repairable, later ones not so much). The third and fourth stages - once they die, there's no repairing them. And when you look at digital cameras, there'll be very, very few of these that last long into the future.
This bears out the 'Lindy Effect' mentioned in the article.
I've only ever personally owned second hand Thinkpads and they're so great. But you should get the newest, reasonably priced one you can. There are so many affordable T480s/T470s out there or even the newer T14 models. They're still very serviceable and many still allow expansion with unsoldered RAM.
That's my only personal laptop, to the last detail. What are you doing that makes it feel slow?
I might upgrade to a x270 for the USB-C charging and a full-HD display, but only when this one dies. Which might take another decade...
It couldn't be more fine. It does everything I need it to do.
Of course I can't do anything with it because you can't update the OS and without having a new OS you can't actually download or run anything from the shop.
Well, at least I updated the root certificate on it and it's good as a PDF reader, book reader and music player still.
Perhaps my usage is too light, no IDEs, no electron anything, no streaming, and few tabs because I shutdown the laptop instead of suspend it -- but I don't see what all the fuss is about needing to upgrade anything. 16gb of ram and an i5 is fine, even for the modern web, disable JavaScript and/or run ublock origin.
The new fangled ARM stuff ;) strikes me as essentially similar in character to smartphones: future e-waste with no possibility of repair. Choose wisely, choose x86 and modularity
Works great. Stuck on Catalina, but can handle the software I need.
Still, it's fast enough to use with linux, and the keyboard is a joy to use. Swappable batteries are fun, and useful.
However, I can't really use one outside of just nostalgia, or for tuning cars.
Good article, though.
That said, I maintain a G4 Cube running an outdated OS to play Sim City and Sim Tower. And it's "upgraded" as much as possible.
****JavaScript not included
Until recently, my daily driver was the T500 (the larger screen version of the T400 in the article), and it worked fine for everything except GPU.
(I actually downgraded to the T500 years ago, because I was pissed off about the Intel Management Engine.)
Recently, I upgraded from the T500 to the T520, which is the last ThinkPad with a non-chiclet keyboard. It works fine for everything except GPU and fitting inside many backpacks.
With ThinkPads of this era, you want to get a high-spec variant of the model (e.g., top-res IPS display), and then make the following upgrades:
* SSD
* run Linux
* run uBlock Origin (and block most of the third-party surveillance, which hurts performance) (JS runs fine, so long as you're not running multiple dueling adtech slimeballs' intimate mouse trackers)
* max out the RAM (you don't need that much for Linux, unless you're using an exceptionally bloated desktop option, but it's cheap, and you can use it to keep filesystems like ~/.cache off your SSD )
* (optional) replace the CPU with a more optimal one for power draw or heat, or maybe for compute (these are socketed in most models)
* (optional, not for the faint of heart) install Coreboot, and then you have more WiFi upgrade options
I have a T430 with the T420's keyboard and it lasted me 7 years of daily use before battery life became too big of an issue for me (even with a single DDR3L RAM module and a slice battery), so I put it aside. The typing experience was really excellent.
Upgrading the CPU to a quad-core model (ideally one that consumes 35W over 45W) is one of the best upgrades to make for anyone still using these machines.
Yes, if I don't have to keep multiple browser windows, video calls, Slack, and whathaveyou open, then I too can get by with an ancient Thinkpad. If it is enough for you, then all the power to you. I am sincerely supportive of the fact that you can stick it to today's consumerist, disposable tech industry.
Here I am on my T480s with 40 GB memory (8 is soldered) and the highest tier CPU for the Thinkpad gen (apparently these are soldered on too), and it's a drag. I'm trying to scrape by until I can start thinking about saving up for a new Framework.
That says more about how unoptimized are today's applications than the capabilities of the machine
EDIT: I just turned it over to check and its a T420i Type 4177-X07 pretty much solid as a rock. I also discovered it would run with 16GB of RAM so there's that.
On a fixed PC everything is swappable by definition. I don't quite understand why people love laptops so much. If you're using your PC in only one place a tower PC is cheaper and can be upgraded indefinitely with only a screwdriver (if that).
I wish I could have a job where I work on a desktop machine and could just leave things at the office when I leave for the day. Alas.
With a family and a kid, it turns out I’d prefer to spend most of my time at the computer in common spaces; at the dinner table, on the couch, etc. so that I’m present and available for my family. This is far better than squirreling myself away in a room.
(Note that for work, I have a different computer, I’m talking about for life outside of work.)
> it turns out I’d prefer to spend most of my time at the computer in common spaces; at the dinner table, on the couch
And this?
> I’m present and available for my family
I often sit with my kids and get a little work done on the couch while they're entertaining themselves. I can engage where appropriate, and of course I don't spend my entire life working. This flexibility allows me time to walk them to school, pick them up from school, leave early to go to their sports things, band concerts, or just play outside with them.
You know, nuance and balance.
When I’m “at work” in my home office. I’m not to be disturbed. When I’m “off work” my computer is shut down until the next day and I get on with the rest of my life - which doesn’t involve computers.
That sets strict expectations from everyone in my home.
On a smaller scale, I often bring my computer to the roof of my building or to a library or cafe. I can understand preferring the constraint of "when I leave my desk I don't have to think about the computer anymore", but for me all the additional flexibility is a good tradeoff.
My main use these days is recording and mixing music through an interface from 2014. With Reaper the experience is even better than when I picked the laptop up back around 2010.
Using Ghidra and the source that Apple released. Final set up will be, NeXTSTEP3.3, DOS6.22 (AutoCAD R12, Matlab), WinXP (For Encarta 95 and Mindmaze) and NetBSD.
My only complain is Ctrl cap sensor having some inconsistencies, I have to push strong on it.
For the rest I consider ThinkPad as the way to go for second hand.
I went trough 4 different docks until I realized who the actual problem was, and the internet was full with similar issues once I knew what to look for.
For some reason my nearly identical, slightly newer, X1 doesn't have these issues.
Also it sounds like you may have the infamous issue where the firmware of the charging port cease functioning. I strongly recommend updating the charging port firmware to anyone reading this if you have a T480.
Thank you for the tip this will help a lot since it is not the "year of the Linux desktop" for her. :)
I remember my iBook G4 took 30 screws to get into it and swap a hard drive.
Yes, it was “modular,” but it wasn’t specifically designed to be easily repaired.
There have been times when the systems were designed to be easy to change components like the disk and RAM in the original Core 2 Duo MacBooks, but these seem to be the exception, not the rule.
Let’s not forget the “no user serviceable parts” original Macintosh. Apple has never really been repair-oriented company, they just occasionally make products that are coincidentally easy to repair.
My latest, which I think is going to be in the ThinkPad and Vaio class is my new Asus Zenbook - brilliant light chassis and great performance.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dctaft/413198278/
I quite like the cup style trackpoint even if it tended to leave a small circle on the screen.
That particular laptop died in middle age due to motherboard hardware defects.
Only real maintenance is to use quality battery replacements (T420 lasts particularly well on batteries).
https://www.laptopsandspares.com/pno/cbi3402a.html
https://www.subtel.co.uk/Battery-for-Lenovo-ThinkPad-Edge-14...
Frankly, that’s why I quite enjoy desktop PCs. Most of the hardware works as you’d expect and is both repairable (though to be honest I’ve just thrown away mobos in the past when they start misbehaving, possibly due to OC or daily use) and upgradable (I’ve gone from a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 7 5800X, even had an Intel CPU ages back; as well as from an RX 570 to B580, with a few more CPUs and GPUs in the middle). Different RAM, more drives etc., honestly it’s really pleasant, even if there’s this big box in my room that makes some noise.
To keep them running for decades Linux or other open source operating systems are pretty much the only choice. Not only for performance (which is better) but also because Windows will phase old hardware support out, it's just what they've always done, and will always continue doing.
I'd be curious about how yours has held up. I overclocked my iBook back in the day to play DivX (bumped FSB from 66 to 100mhz) and it eventually cooked around 2010.
That's sort of the premise of his Black Swan idea, namely that extraordinary things appear quite obvious in retrospect.
I've read a few of his books, including Antifragile that's referenced in TFA, and he does go beyond merely restating (or formalizing) the obvious.
But then again perhaps such things are not generally obvious and need to be stated explicitly, we just happen to be part of a subset that is more aware of them.
Most people think old is more fragile.
Sometimes it is though (e.g. parts for a plane need to be replaced every X hours of service)
I'm overdue to upgrade, but know I won't love its replacement anywhere near as much.
It still works fine but the processor was slowing me down. New one's i3 12gen cost me $300
They are both fantastic laptops but have clearly different use cases.
My Macook is my browsing/YouTube/music/research/photo editing machine. It's fantastic at those things. It also integrates into FaceTime and iMessage which means I don't have to pull out my phone all the time.
My P16s is my work laptop. I can disappear into it for 5 hours straight writing code. I'm either in Cursor or the terminal most of that time with a little browser use. And hyprland is freaking gorgeous, fast, and incredibly stable. I don't get nearly as good a development experience on my Macbook, mostly because so much of its navigation is based upon the trackpad vs. the keyboard in Hyprland.
So, I enjoy both and each has their place. I think my only complaint about the P16s is while it has an extremely high res OLED display, it's not as bright as I'd prefer.
hyprland is so much better than anything else I don't understand why it's not more popular on HN
By contrast, my son is 9 this year. Still, the kids are good to one another.
The shame of it was that a PC of that era had a super short useful life. Now we think nothing of keeping computers for 5 years or more; they're just so powerful that for most regular human tasks, there's no need for the kind of upgrade treadmill that dominated computing 25 years ago. After 3 years, though, the 560Z was almost unusable -- it had a TINY hard drive, and limited RAM. Windows was getting fatter and slower. But the physical computer itself was in GREAT shape -- even after years of heavy travel, it bore none of the crappy wear and tear I'd associate with colleagues' Dells (e.g.) later. I kept it on a shelf for a long time because it was so solid and pleasing that I couldn't bear to part with it despite its basic uselessness.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the 560Z was also my last Windows laptop. Because my job back then was mostly Office docs, and because Win98 was so awful, I shifted to a Mac when the 560 was done, and I've been there ever since.
Looking after electronics, repairing stuff and treating it with respect is just part of my way. That one has an old Puppy Linux on it. Works fine.
The original sense of the word "materialism" is a respect for material things - it's a very positive word. But it changed in the 80s (probably after Madonna's "Material Girl" :) to mean something negative and shallow.)
Now in a modern laptop it’s the top case or bottom case or board; the robot-made factory parts are bigger integrated components of the system. All you care about is your data anyway, the repairability of the system as a whole by swapping out components at home (admittedly a large culture in the PC world, as silly as it is these days when all you’re doing is connecting a robot factory gpu to a robot factory cpu and choosing a PSU and RAM (also made in robot factories)) isn’t that important.
I hope one day that computing gets so small and light and dense and integrated that I can’t replace any single components without a robot factory and/or microscope. I want a solid microscopically integrated slab (which is what my iPad Pro is basically approaching).
It's not been delivered yet, but I'm sure installing Linux will not be a problem.
A ThinkPad with ~14" 4k OLED touchscreen and trackpoint and AMD processor is what I was looking for, but those do not seem to exist.
I can not fault them. I wish GM still sold the S10 pickup.
I'm hanging on to my X201. I bought it after I left my workplace where I had an X230; and I choose an earlier model because I wanted to upgrade rather than downgrade my computer. I am _much_ more satisfied with the X201 - because of the keyboard of course. IIANM, X220 is the best one of the X series.
I replaced the HDD with an SSD about 8 years ago and expanded the RAM to 8 GB, and performance is tolerable. At the moment I'm running Lubuntu on it, but I'm thinking of switching to Q4OS.
Now, sure, it's old; and yes, it's a bit rickety plastics-wise after having survived a fall from 3m at some point; and yes, the battery life is limited even after replacing it.
But - I would take it over a modern piece-of-@#$%-keyboard machine any day of the week.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1hakly7/the_think...
In the world of Javascript frameworks where you download and execute 100 MB for a web application?
In the world of desktop applications written in Javascript?
My PC is ten years old now. It's always run GNU/Linux and feels noticeably snappier than more recent machines with their bloated software. I've maxed out the CPU and RAM on it, overclocked it, added a nice AMD workstation GPU so I could run two 4k screens. I guess the thing is it really feels like I own it. I don't feel the same about phones and tablets.
but why?
I get special hardware needs to live for a long time, like, an arcade machine, specialized equipment or something. but some random laptop?
what can it do, that a modern computer cant, apart from being repaired easily (lets ignore framework laptops for the sake of argument)
if his point is he just wants a framework laptop, it already exists.
Sure I can get parts, but I don't think it actually shows what they are trying to say.
Honestly was never that impressed by it and have had to replace the fans on it multiple times but it’s still kicking while other laptops are not.
My Vaio notebooks always lasted quite a bit longer. Eventually got a macbook and haven't gone back, but yeah, the one Thinkpad I owned was the least reliable computing device I've bought in the ~40 years of my lifetime.
One is vertically integrated and designed for thermal performance, lightness, thinness and attractiveness.
One is modular, and sacrifices thermal performance, lightness, thinness and attractiveness in order that the user can replace their own battery / RAM / etc
IMO the latter is a false economy. Yes, you can upgrade your RAM, but what about the bus speed, and limitations of the motherboard and CPU? You end up with a Frankenstein's monster of new and old parts, which are constrained by the lowest common denominator, and only useful for basic tasks.
Apple devices have high resale value. Far better, IMO, to sell your laptop after a few years, as a cohesive, intact package that retains some residual value, and then buy a new one with wholly modern parts that make sense together.