
Thinkpad X210 - MYEUHD
https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/
======
saagarjha
> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7
> hours with the extended battery (80Wh).

Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible.

> Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan
> only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or
> scrolling in Slack.

lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning
on when I know really shouldn’t be. I have lived and worked with people for
whom having their fan randomly turn on for no reason is completely normal, and
I just can’t understand how they can bear it. If this happens to me, you can
bet I’m digging through Activity Monitor and killing the culprit before the
fans can get fully ramped up.

~~~
ggreer
I don't lie about battery life numbers. People like to say, "I get 9 hours of
battery life." when they mean that they get 9 hours if they do doing nothing
but let their computer idle with the brightness at minimum. 4 hours with a
55Wh battery is an average consumption of 13 watts. That's because my typical
workflow involves running a VM containing cassandra & postrgres (among other
services) and recompiling go and javascript. My coworkers with 15" MacBook
Pros tend to worry more about battery life than I do.

My fan comment was a joke about Slack's efficiency. Of course compiling a
bunch of go code will make the fan turn on. That will use up 100% of your
cores on any decent sized project.

~~~
mbrumlow
I get about 9 hours of battery life on my T450s and about 6 on my x220 under
load, youtube, vms, coding. That is under load.

My idle times, browsing something like HN, or sitting in #emacs I get near 20
hours on my t450s and about 13 on my x220.

I think low low low idle power consumption is key to long infrequent charges.
This is because the second you are _not_ using your computer then it should
also not be using power. For example, my t450s without adjusting the screen
bigness idles at 2.8W, so tons of idle time with a 97WH battery.

You can't really optimize power for when you are using it. If you are
compiling, you want the fastest compile time and use the most power. Same for
other things that take power.

I go all weekend not charging my personal laptop and the only times I close
the lid is when I am going to bed. Otherwise I leave the lid open, same
brightness and walk away for hours and come back and continue where I left
off.

So I see your point about people saying "I get 9 hours of battery life." doing
nothing, but even 9 hours of doing nothing is fairly low, given I can make a
10 year old laptop get close to 18 hours, and a 4 year old one get near 21
hours "doing nothing".

~~~
weavie
I've just unplugged my x220 and it is telling me it has 4:36 battery
remaining. I only have firefox open and not doing anything else, so that 4:36
is probably quite a significant overhead. It will drop as soon as I do
something.. Yup, just fired up emacs and now it is saying 3:44 remaining.

Would you mind sharing what setup you have that lets you get such long battery
life?

~~~
mbrumlow
Currently in charge of th baby.

But get power top installed. Make sure in the 4th screen in power top and make
sure all settings are to "good". I made a systemd unit to do this for me know
boot. I also installed tlp and have it set it's settings. Some of those cross
over into what powertop does.

I set some things on the i915 driver but that will have to wait until baby
watch is over.

~~~
weavie
I have just installed powertop and updated the settings. It doesn't seem to
have made any difference... but that's probably because I don't know what I am
doing. I'll read up on it further. Thanks for the tip.

~~~
mbrumlow
What battery do you have? The thin one?

~~~
weavie
Not 100% sure, I'll have to look when I get home this evening. I think it may
not be the thin one as it is thicker than the rest of the case, but don't
totally know off hand what I should be looking at to determine it..

------
shasheene
This is a good time to bring up the fact there was never an industry-wide
standardization effort for laptops. A standard form-factor means components
would be re-usable between upgrades: the laptop case, power supply, monitor,
keyboard, touchpad could all be re-used without any additional effort. This
improves repairability, is much better for the environment, and means higher-
end components can be selected with the knowledge that the cost can be spread
out over a longer period.

For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end gaming
PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU.

A 2007 Lenovo ThinkPad X61 chassis is not that different to a 1997 IBM
ThinkPad chassis (or a 1997 Dell Latitude XPi chassis). If the laptop industry
standardized, manufacturers would produce a vast ecosystem of compatible
components.

Instead we got decades of incompatible laptops using several different power
supply voltages (and therefore ten slightly-differently shaped barrel power
plugs), many incompatibly shaped removable lithium-ion batteries, and more
expense and difficulty in sourcing parts if and when components break.

A little bit of forward thinking in the late 1990s would have saved a lot of
eWaste.

~~~
reaperducer
_For desktop PCs, the ATX standard means that the entirety of a high-end
gaming PC upgrade often consists of just a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU._

And that's great, if you're into generic beige boxes.

It's been years since I put together my own IBM compatible computers. But in
the time since then, I haven't really seen any innovation in desktops.

Yes, for a while the processor numbers ticked up, but then plateaued. Graphics
cards push the limits, but that has zero to do with the ATX standard, and more
to do with using GPUs for non-graphics computation.

The laptop and mobile sectors seem to be what is driving SSD adoption, high
DPI displays, power-conscious design, advanced cooling, smaller components,
improved imaging input, reliable fingerprint reading, face recognition for
security, smaller interchangeable ports, the move from spinning media to solid
state or streaming, and probably other things that I can't remember off the
top of my head.

Even if you think Apple's touchbar was a disaster, it's the kind of risk that
wouldn't be taken in the Wintel desktop industry.

All we've gotten from the desktop side in the last 20 years is more elaborate
giant plastic enclosures, LED lights inside the computer, and...? I'm not
sure. Even liquid cooling was in laptops in the early part of this century.

Again, I haven't built a desktop in a long time, so if I'm off base I'd like
to hear a list of desktop innovations enabled by the ATX standard. But my
observation is that ATX is a pickup truck, and laptops are a Tesla.

~~~
hatsix
Nearly all of the tech you have in your laptop was developed, tested, and
refined on desktops. PCI based SSD were in desktops before NVMe was a thing.
Vapor cooled processors were on budget gaming PCs 10 years ago. Even the
MacBook trackpad was based on a desktop keyboard produced by a company called
fingerworks. High DPI monitors came first to desktop. High refresh rate came
first to desktop. Fingerprint reader? Had one on my secure computer 15 years
ago. Face unlock a couple years after that.

Desktop is still the primary place for innovation. Laptops use technology that
was introduced and pioneered on desktop, then refined until it could fit in
Mobile/Laptop. Don't get me wrong, there's probably more work in getting the
tech into Mobile than developing it in the first place... But the genesis of
the ideas happen on desktop.

Desktop has the opposite mix of freedom and constraints as mobile. Standard
internals, but freedom of space. There are dozens of heat-sink manufacturers
for PC... Dozens of small teams focused on one problem. There's some variation
between chipsets, but nothing that requires major design changes. These teams
can afford to innovate... And customers can afford to try new solutions. If
the heat-sink doesn't perform, you're out 5% of the total cost. But there's no
similar way to try things out for laptops.

For example... Should a laptop combine all of its thermal dissipation into one
single connected system or have isolated heat management? It completely
depends on usage and thermal sensitivities of the components... It was desktop
water-cooling that gave engineers the ability to test cooling GPU and CPU with
the same thermal system to determine where to draw the line.

~~~
ako
Huh? Most of todays innovation is about power efficiency. This is driven from
mobile and laptops, but benefits desktops and servers as well.

------
eggy
I have a Lenovo T430u running Kali, and it is rock solid. I love the keyboard,
and I use the TrackPoint for CAD work in FreeCAD. I never feel like it is
going to slip from my hands when I pull it from my backpack. It is so easy to
open up, that I open it twice or more a year to clean out the fans, which are
usually clean anyway; I like seeing the internals like a car mechanic who
likes to check under the hood ;)

I considered the Lenovo Carbon X1, but it is pricey, doesn't have a number
pad, and is at the ultra-slim form factor of a MBP or other similar notebook
form factor.

The Lenovo T580 has the num pad, but the graphics card is the NVIDIA MX150, a
mobile but faster version of the GeForce 1030. Not really an issue for me, but
my son's Lenovo Yoga came with a 1050 two years ago.

Anyway, I've owned all sorts of notebooks, including MBPs, and have found the
Lenovos to be my workhorses, and getting out of my way to get things done.
Yes, the battery is only 4 to 6 hours, but for me, even traveling and living
all over the world, it has never bit me work wise, only when playing.

~~~
veryworried
Why in God’s name are you using Kali as a daily driver? Anyone who does this
has no idea what they’re doing. Kali is made exclusively for pentesting, with
a modified and insecure kernel specifically for running certain pentesting
apps better.

~~~
chronolitus
Can't you tell? he's hacking e-corp

~~~
eggy
I still haven't watched the show. Is it good?

~~~
lorenzk
By far the best onscreen „hacking“ I know of. He does use Linux Mint as daily
driver though...

~~~
eggy
Definitely going to binge watch soon. I have thought of using Redox and
writing my own tools. An obsucre OS, but still running across
interent/ethernet...oh, wait, spawn a drone node on a Windows machine using
MOSREF/Wasp Lisp in Rust or Shen (shout out to doublec/sdunlop!) [1,2]

[1] [https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/02/19/spawning-windows-
comman...](https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/02/19/spawning-windows-commands-in-
wasp-lisp-and-mosref.html) [2] [https://github.com/doublec/shen-
wasp/releases/tag/v0.8](https://github.com/doublec/shen-
wasp/releases/tag/v0.8)

~~~
sydney6
And what have you found to be the issue(s) with running Redox as your OS?

~~~
eggy
I am not using Redox. I am looking into it currently for its potential of
easily porting standard utilities and other programs.

------
dotancohen
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or
> scrolling in Slack.

The next time somebody asks why everybody has a problem with Electron, I'm
referring them to this page.

~~~
lucideer
Electron is far from ideal, and it may be argued it's incredibly difficult to
make a relatively efficient Electron app (vscode is often cited as one, but
Microsoft has plenty of resources).

However, for all the efficiency challenges Electron brings, Slack is
universally cited in types of comments such as the above. This makes me highly
suspect that—beyond being just written in Electron—Slack is actually an
extremely poorly written app, and just the canonical example of overengineered
inefficiency in general.

Slack Web, for example, also does similarly draconian things to my CPU.

Similarly, Riot.im—probably the most comparable app to Slack functionality-
wise—is also built in Electron. It has some of the performance problems one
would expect from any Electron app, but it is _nowhere near_ as bad as Slack
(and has a much much smaller development team with much tighter resources).

In short: Electron may not be ideal, but it seems to get an unfairly bad name
from Slack; we should be laying the criticism with the Slack dev team rather
than with the Electron one.

~~~
ecshafer
Slack is a massive company with a singular product. Can they really not afford
to write their product natively? Their backend should be reusable, and they
could write a core of the application in C++ that should give them a core
functionality in all operating systems. Then have a native team take over for
iOS, mac android, and windows, Linux. There are cross platform libraries that
gets you a ui pretty far, or they could use pure graphics library and roll
their own.

A billion dollar company has few excuses in my opinion.

~~~
danShumway
I feel like I might be falling into some kind of fallacy, but it seems at
first glance like your argument supports GP's.

If Electron is such a horrible platform that you literally can't write
performant software with it, and Slack's performance problems are really a
huge problem for regular users, and yet as a massive company with a singular
product they _still_ rely on it, then I would guess at least one of two things
should be true:

A) Native app development is actually way more horrible than most people say,
and Electron's experience is so much better that even a company as big as
Slack finds it preferable to building a dedicated Mac team.

OR, B) Slack's dev team just may not actually care all that much about
performance in the first place, and they might just be writing a poorly
optimized app on top of a poorly optimized platform which exasperates all of
its problems.

Or, maybe a combination of the two. I dunno.

Anecdotally using Slack within a web browser (which _should_ get rid of some
of Electron's downsides since it's no longer a separate browser instance) I
still occasionally see slowdown and issues with the App. Not nearly as bad as,
say, Twitter, but not great. Certainly not as performant as I would expect an
interface this simple to be.

So while it's silly to claim that Electron doesn't have an impact on
performance, I suspect that even if the Slack team was writing native apps,
they still might end up with a piece of software that has problems. Maybe
fewer of them, or maybe even more, since you can get away with a lot of bad
architecture in a C++ program before you hit the same bottlenecks like loading
time or typing lag.

Are we sure that the Slack team wouldn't just view a native codebase as
license to cut even more corners with performance?

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

~~~
dwhitney
"burned with a candle" \- nobody upvoted you for any reason other than wanting
to know how this happened. Do tell, OP!

~~~
anderspitman
My sister put a candle on the table and the rising heat was barely under the
lip of my open laptop lid. It melted a bit of the plastic, but the damage was
only cosmetic. Sorry; pretty anticlimactic I know haha.

------
ahstilde
Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after
Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine?

Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?

~~~
camgunz
You don't buy the new ones. You buy at latest an X230 and put Linux or BSD on
it. All the excitement around 51nb is that you can upgrade to modern hardware
if you think the X220 is the last good notebook ever commercially produced. A
lot of people (disclaimer: including me) think that, which is why you see them
as targets for things like OpenBSD and Libreboot.

But you're right, I would never buy a "modern" Lenovo though. But in fairness,
I don't know that I'd buy a modern notebook at all.

~~~
VvR-Ox
Still using the x220 as my every day personal notebook.

At work I have the x230 with the new keyboard - it's not as good as the old
one still in the x220 but it's way better than let's say the new macbook
keyboards.

The sad thing is that the x220 doesn't compete doing stuff with many VM's or
consumer things like videos with high-res.

But I can totally live with that and use it for everything else with the
following specs & setup: \- 16GB RAM \- 256GB SSD \- i5-2540M CPU @ 2.60GHz \-
extended battery (good for holding it while carrying around) \- i3wm (it's
awesome how much you can do with few resources) \- programming/writing etc.
with VIM (also saves a lot compared to an eclipse/intellij)

It's definitely not the PC you want a full fledged desktop environment on and
you shouldn't bother doing video stuff etc. but for everything else it's just
perfect and I wouldn't want to give it away as long as I can.

The x230 is ok but I don't have so much love for it, can't explain what
exactly I miss most but it's not the TP experience I was searching for all the
years.

My next project is an old x200 that will be refurbished and put to test with
some BSD OS (I heard it's also quite interesting and easy on old hardware).

P.S.: The trackpads suck hell and I only use the red nub on TPs. The only
trackpad I ever found useful was on a MBP (some time around 2016 I think) but
they managed to destroy that experience like they did with their crappy
keyboards :-P

------
pixelmonkey
If you can still find one on then used market, I'll put in a plug for the
Lenovo X1C 4th Gen (2016 model) as an ideal Linux laptop. It's what I switched
to after the x220, and I describe it here:

[https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-
linux](https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux)

Fan never turns on, matte display, awesome connectivity, great battery life,
and everything on Linux just works.

~~~
kjaer
I recently switched to a X1C6, and I wholly agree. It's an amazing laptop in
terms of hardware and build quality, but it does have a bunch of Linux
compatibility problems.

~~~
olivil
I have an X1C6 on Linux as well since launch, but since they added s3 sleep
support it's been 100%. What compatibility issues are you having?

~~~
kjaer
The trackpad didn't work out of the box, I had to change some settings;
annoying, but no big deal. What's a bigger problem is that the trackpad
buttons don't work after suspending/hibernating, and I still haven't been able
to fix that. Also, the fingerprint reader and NFC do not have any drivers on
Linux.

The Arch wiki page[1] has been tremendously helpful in getting set up.
However, I think the length of the article goes some way toward showing that
compatibility is far from perfect.

The trackpad / NFC issues seem to only be present on laptops with NFC behind
the trackpad, so my recommendation would be to avoid that one if it's possible
to get a similar model without.

[1]:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_\(Gen_6\))

------
lelf
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or
> _scrolling in Slack_.

That’s intensive. And sad.

~~~
jasonvorhe
I don't get why people don't just use Slack on Chrome. Everything people rant
about when using the Electron-app doesn't happen in Chrome.

~~~
craftyguy
Electron _is_ chromium...

~~~
alfredxing
Electron is _built with_ Chromium. It's usually behind by a few versions
(though the team is really focusing now on getting things up to date), and
there are differences and additions.

------
leiroigh
I am a happy owner of an x62. This article almost convinced me to buy an x210
next.

Minor gripes: (1) The dispayport-hdmi thing, (2) the mainboard is split (sound
+ rhs usb are on a separate board) and the small part has pretty flimsy
attachement inside the case, (3) the CPU (i5 broadwell engineering sample) is
pretty lackluster but perfect for development (no turbo, no throttling, no
surprises), (4) finding an ok screen is hard, (5) nobody told me that I have
to buy a separate wifi card. There is a free mini-pci slot, but 51nb could
have been clearer on their online description, (5) the old x60 speakers suck.

Overall, it is an awesome machine (trackpoint, ibm keyboard, beautiful
rubberized metal case). And shockingly cheap: An x62 mainboard, plus an old
x60 chassis from ebay and battery from amazon, plus screen from alibaba, plus
SSD, wifi-card and ram comes at ~$600 (I think?), cheap enough to buy as an
experiment. I can definitely recommend to anyone who is ok with a little
tinkering and the small adventure of ordering this from China (best approach:
have Chinese colleague).

edit: Linux drivers work perfectly. Really, the ram was the most expensive
component of this build. To expand on the no-surprises advantage of the CPU:
To me it is more important to effortlessly benchmark small code changes than
to quickly compile large codebases. And the weird engineering sample CPU that
the 51nb guys sourced somewhere is absolutely perfect for that: Timings
reliably match up with Agner Fog's instruction tables / iaca, without anything
getting into the way (after the kernel cpufreq manager adjusted).

~~~
ggreer
I'm not sure what screen you got off Alibaba but if you want something better,
you might want to try the daylight LED mod.[1] You won't get better color
gamut, but you will get insane brightness and better battery life.

I did that mod to my X62 and it made the screen actually usable.

1\. [https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-
kit.shtml](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml)

~~~
xiphmont
It'll be a little while before I'm offering them again. Still clearing new
projects out of the way.

~~~
leiroigh
Damn, 15 minutes after getting pointed to your mods the disappointment :)

Also, thanks for all your guides on the thinkpad forums.

Would you mind writing a small idiosyncratic guide about "51nb procurement for
dummies"?

Like: Buy one of these models of chassis. These aftermarket batteries. These
screens (possibly with aliexpress links). Use this preferred method of
ordering. Remember that you also need to procure (ram, wifi, ssd).

I was lucky enough to have a chinese collegue who dealt with everything for me
(I sent him the taobao link and gave him cash, next time he visited family he
brought me my board). Without that I would have been lost.

(seriously, taobao? no way to enter a non-chinese address? Take my money
already! There must be somebody in China who wants to make a quick $50 per
item for just reshipping 51nb boards to the West, e.g. via aliexpress or ebay,
instead of imposing on the time of hackers / hardware engineers who have
better things to do than reshipping packages)

~~~
xiphmont
The problem with any specific process or link recommendations is they become
obsolete instantly. Putting one of these together requires some searching and
active exception handling.

There are Chinese services that do forwarding (I use FSC), as well as
enthusiast engineers, like Jacky (or me), but enthusiasts get overwhelmed
quickly... it becomes a full time job for little or no profit. I have to
consciously dial way back to keep this only a hobby so it stays fun.

~~~
leiroigh
I know, and I am super grateful for all the cool things you and the other
people in the scene develop, and for the effort you go to to actually ship out
modkits. You do what's fun and I won't ask for more.

Don't get me wrong, putting together my x62 from your and other's guides was
fun. I am just wishing that some of the Shenzen hardware hackers had an
entrepreneurial cousin or friend who made a business out of this. I wish I
could just send an aliexpress link to all my friends who rightfully complain
about lenovo design quality nosediving.

------
GordonS
Is anyone happy coding on such a small screen, even if it is high-res?

I have a 2016 13" MBP, and find the screen too small for coding. It's high-
res, but that means everything is super-small unless you increase the scaling,
which of course reduces the available screen real estate. The screen is
annoyingly reflective too, but that's another problem entirely.

My daily driver is a 15" HP Zbook G3 with a 1080p display, which I also find
too small. I'm thinking a 15", high-res display would probably be ideal for
portable coding?

~~~
firmgently
I moved to a 10.1" display as a winter (low power) necessity. There's more sun
now so I have enough power for my larger laptop but am not using it, I prefer
the ergonomics of my current setup.

My tablet is on an arm suspended at eye height about 15-20cm away from my
face. At the same time I can have my ThinkPad BlueTooth keyboard+trackpoint in
an ergonomically sound position (not possible to do both of these things
solely with a laptop due to the keyboard and display being tied together).

I had a 15.6" laptop display and a ruler within reach so I just measured... at
35-40cm away from my face the visible area of the 15.6" screen is occluded by
the visible area of the tablet screen at 15-20 cm away. The aspect ratios are
different (my preferred 16:10/1920x1200 on the tablet vs 16:9/1920x1080 on the
laptop lcd) but this is roughly correct. Admittedly 35-40cm is probably a
little further away than most people have their laptop screen but it's in the
ballpark.

I've had setups with multiple/larger monitors in the past. It's hard to
compare properly as so much has changed for me. I move towards spending more
and more of my time in the terminal and have learned to make good use of tmux
for workspace management (and i3 workspaces when I'm using a WM). I don't miss
the multiple/larger monitors (but am not suggesting anybody should be the same
as me).

I can say that this is my favourite _of my personally-owned_ setups ever, for
its lightness, silence, low power usage and minimal space requirements. These
requirements of mine are very specific of course but you asked for a
subjective measure. I am very happy (and on a 10.1" screen)!

Next time I upgrade I'll be looking for a nice rootable tablet... possibly
something x86 which can run linux so I can get VMs to work. I think I'm done
with laptops.

[ To repeat stuff I've mentioned here before but which might help make sense
of the above:

\+ the 'display' is an Android tablet running termux (as it's the fastest and
nicest terminal I could find)

\+ I just use termux for its terminal and work in Debian Stretch via Linux
Deploy

\+ Termux is very good on its own but in my experience the best armhf packages
are on Debian. I'm comparing to termux and Arch which are all I have
experience with - they are both great but I've found some packages to be
either missing or had problems due to termux's clang vs gcc... or that Arch
uses Armv7 binaries whereas my tablet seems happier with Debian's Armhf in
some cases. I specifically had trouble getting a working binary for Chromium
which is essential for me as I need the developer tools but achieved it on
Debian.

\+ I run Debian GUI apps via local XSDL server and/or VNC

\+ So far the only thing I've been unable to achieve is VMWare emulation of
X86 OSes but as I don't have an X86 CPU in here I can't be surprised about
that ]

~~~
Zee2
So many things about this comment raise so many questions.

1\. "winter (low power) necessity" Do you live in some remote cabin where you
exist solely off of solar power or something? Sounds fascinating.

2\. "I don't have an x86 CPU in here" Do you do all of your development solely
off of a Android tablet running Debian in some kind of bizarre franken-ARM-
Linux setup?

Very fascinating.

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

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

I am sold, totally :)

------
pascoej
I went and visited their office in SZ last summer to buy one of these
motherboards.

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

------
tbrock
These are awesome. For a long time I’ve thought a 13.3 X thinkpad like the 2X0
series (a proper successor to the x300/x301) would be the best thing ever. You
take the x2X0 chassis, renowned for portabiltiy, battery life, and repair
ability and shove a 13.3 inch screen in. Just like how the 13 inch class
chassis on the x1 has a 14 inch screen.

Well it’s happened: the x390 now exists. Maybe ever better would be a thick
X1. Not larger or wider but thicker so the battery life was insane and you
could upgrade the ram to 32/64gb.

~~~
arebours
> Maybe ever better would be a thick X1.

T480?

~~~
tbrock
No, that one has stupid large bezels. You don’t get much for the thickness.

------
mark_l_watson
I was interested in the hassle for making a payment and buying something from
China. Counter to my view of how the world is supposed to work. Payment
hassles probably due to buying from a small group of enthusiasts, not a large
company.

I haven’t done business directly with anyone in China for a number of years (I
helped a student on a project about 10 years ago and a media company had me
write a simple machine learning model for them) but them paying me was easy,
just used PayPal.

Buying not rebranded Chinese electronics interests me, because of potential
lower cost, as long as it is westernized in things like keyboard, etc. and has
a year warranty. I have specifically been looking at products like GPD Pocket
2.

~~~
dbg31415
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14219918#14223933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14219918#14223933)

I bought a NAS off Amazon a few years ago... one of their 3rd party sellers
had the same product for $50 cheaper so I went with that. Anyway, what
happened next was really amusing to me.

I get the product about 8 weeks later... I had tried to cancel because it was
so slow, and Amazon wouldn't let me -- they said I had to receive the product
and then send it back as a return once I got it in order to get a refund.

I was planning on just sending the box back the same day... but something
caught my eye. The box had come from Shenzhen, China. Curious I cut open the
outside box.

Immediately I saw that the NAS they sent inside had been opened, and had been
re-tapped shut -- and poorly, there was a clear bulge on top of the box. My
heart sank a bit... but I figured, "Well, let's see -- maybe it was a return
or something... can't hurt to open it again since it's already been opened."

Inside the NAS box, all the manuals are in Chinese... and seem like they are
just photocopies of the originals. The NAS was not in the original packaging,
but rather elaborate bubble wrap. And there's a China to US power adapter to
the cord.

I'm curious if it would even turn on, so I plug in the NAS... It boots! But
not in English. I'm thinking, "What did I just buy?!" But I can sort of read
some of the messages and it seems like instead of 4x2GB drives, it came with
4x4GB drives. Interesting.

It's late so I leave it initializing the drives (I think that's what it was
doing anyway) and go to bed. Next morning I wake up, and it's still
initializing the drives. Fuck it... time to call tech support and get my money
back. The little light kept blinking yellow, but I couldn't read anything.

I email Amazon to initiate the return process, then go to work. I leave the
NAS running -- honestly just sort of forgot about it. Got pulled into a
business trip that day, so it was about 4 days until I got back to focus on
the project again. When I got home the little yellow light on the NAS was
still blinking, and I thought it was weird that I hadn't gotten an email from
the seller with return instructions.

I email Amazon to tell them I hadn't heard anything back from the seller, and
since I had to wait anyway, decided to call tech support. Cringe.

The thing was, the NAS was still doing something. The drives were still
spinning... but after 4 days... I figured it wasn't doing anything good. But I
didn't unplug it. I read the serial number to the guy in tech support.
Pause... "Can you read me the serial number again?" I do... longer pause. "Can
you read me the serial number one more time?" I do... Pause... "Please hold,
Sir."

"Sir, where did you get this NAS?" I'd been transferred to someone up the food
chain who told me that the device I had wasn't a valid serial number -- that
the number I gave was for a model that hadn't been released yet. Super weird
conversation, they took all my details, Amazon order number, and told me they
would call me back.

Really late, like 2 AM that night, I got an email from the seller. It just
said, "What wrong?"

So I write back, and my phone signature had my cell phone number on it. I get
a call. At like 3 AM. The guy is polite, but his English isn't great. He tells
me to just unplug the NAS, and plug it back in again -- then walks me through
how to install the English interface. We're chatting for like 2 hours. He's
crazy knowledgeable. We get everything set up, but I have no idea what all I
just put on the device... most of the links he had been emailing me throughout
the process were just IP addresses and paths. But they seem legit... and there
wasn't anything on the NAS yet so I didn't mind running strange updates on it.

He says the yellow light will blink for 4 hours 24 minutes. (I don't remember
the exact number, but the point was it was an exact number.) He says to email
him, not Amazon -- he's very clear about that -- if I need help after. He's a
friendly guy, I liked how helpful he was.

I go back to sleep for a few hours, do some yard work when I wake up, forget
about the NAS, but when I checked later... some point after 4 hours 24
minutes... it's all green and working fine. And it's got twice the space than
I paid for. And it's all in English. Only thing was... when I hit the "check
for updates" option it just spun and nothing happened. But everything else
seemed perfect.

So I'm on the fence... I have this clearly not authentic NAS from some random
guy in China... that the manufacturer says it's not supposed to exist... but
it's 100% bigger than what I thought I paid for...

That night I got an email from the seller, and you can tell he's sad. "I tried
to help you, why did you tell Amazon it was a fake? It not a fake." I wrote
back that I think that was from before he and I spoke, I had called the
manufacturer's tech support to get the issue fixed and they told me the serial
number wasn't real, but that it's working fine for me now.

He was writing back instantly, "It not a fake, you want a refund? I give you
refund, but please don't complain to Amazon about me, I sell good stuff."
Right away I see an email from Amazon telling me that the seller had given me
a 100% refund. He even refunded shipping costs.

I felt awful. Here's this guy who spent 2 hours on the phone with me, probably
spent a lot on an international call, and the manufacturer contacted Amazon
about the order and came down on him for selling counterfeits. Probably scared
him or told him he wouldn't be able to sell on Amazon any more if it was a
fake... who knows.

I write back, "Thanks for the refund, where do I send the NAS? I will pay for
shipping. I didn't mean to get you in trouble."

He writes back, "I'm sorry. It's not a fake. Please don't be mad at me."

The case was marked as resolved at Amazon, the guy told me I didn't have to
return the NAS, and I never heard back from the manufacturer. Free NAS! But a
little guilt because I didn't pay this guy for it, or for his time... and he
stopped responding to my emails after that. I offered to send it back to him
two more times.

About a year later I logged in to the interface, realized the auto-update
feature was working fine. Updated the bios and firmware. I think that was 5-6
years ago now -- it's been running great.

I had raved about the quality of the NAS to a friend, who bought the same
model about 6 months after I did... but his died a few months ago... when we
took it apart to switch out the drives we realized it had totally different
drives and cables, and even the logic board seemed different from the one that
mine had. Sure hardware changes, but... his seemed more legit and polished
inside than mine. Mine has a few spots inside that just look glue-gunned in
place. (=

Anyway yeah, probably 7 years on... my little free (and probably semi-
counterfeit) NAS is still running great.

That call at 3 AM was by far the most knowledgeable of any seller or tech
support person I've ever spoken with.

~~~
setquk
He might be knowledgeable but you got shipped what is colloquially known as a
“shed” here in the UK. They’re ok when they work but when they don’t they can
burn your house to the ground or empty your entire NAS to a random IP in
China.

You never know if you’ve won.

~~~
snazz
The only real solution is to firewall it off from the internet and very
carefully inspect the power supply and temperatures.

~~~
NullPrefix
>very carefully inspect the power supply

How are you gonna do that? Run a stress test on it for two years? If it's
working now doesn't mean cheap caps won't blow the night after.

------
noir_lord
I wonder why Lenovo doesn't lean into this.

Clearly there is a market for people wanting this kind of machine to the
extent they are jumping through hoops for it.

I have a maxed out T470P (stock) and it's a cracking little machine and while
the keyboard is by modern standards excellent that's because the bar shifted,
it's still not as nice as the one on my old R50 was.

~~~
efficax
Lenovo _knows_ about the love for the retro Thinkpads, and even tried to take
advantage of it:

[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-
ser...](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-
series/ThinkPad-25/p/22TP2TTTP25)

It was a decent showing, but not what I wanted (an X60 form factor with a 4k
4:3 screen)

~~~
systemBuilder
A friend of mine who loves thinkpads bought two of those T25 anniversary
models (2017). Sadly the only thing that was ThinkPad about that model is the
keyboard. The CPU was a meh i5-7200. The motherboard was stupidly designed and
the power switch had to come up through a hole in the keyboard. That's not how
T4x/T6x series thinkpads work. Also there was no thinklight. Overall what they
did was bring back the keyboard and then quit.

------
kensai
I am happy to read this review a couple of days after I saw a video of this
Unboxing guy evangelizing the use of other Thinkpads. Lenovo is definitely
making nice machines.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUSFda_W7k)

"Unbox Therapy

After many years using MacBook variants I've made the switch to Windows. I've
used every version of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that have been released. My
current laptop of choice is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon / Lenovo Thinkpad X1
Extreme.Turns out switching from Mac to Windows isn't as painful as I
expected."

~~~
theshrike79
He's been salty at Apple for years since he made a big fuss about Bendgate
(pretty much started it).

Hasn't been invited to an Apple event since. To the surprise of no one.

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

~~~
detaro
> _the biggest joke is that CPUs are not even 50% faster in the last 10 years_

2009 high-end/enthusiast desktop CPU: Intel Core i7-975

2019 high-end/enthusiast desktop CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K

Single-thread performance has _doubled_. And the i9 has double the number of
threads. And uses less energy.

> _and yet we are still fooled into buying entirely new systems every two or
> three years by the Intel-Microsoft-Dell-Motherboard Cabal._

The point is that you do not _need to_ buy an entirely new systems every two
or three years (and I personally know few people that do), but can comfortably
upgrade parts. CPU upgrade compatibility has sometimes been annoyingly short,
but most of time you can easily extend the lifetime of a system by buying a
former high-end CPU for cheap, and for other pieces compatibility is way
longer. SATA drives from 10 years ago still work with modern PCs if they
survived (or your PC from 10 years ago you still use because "CPUs haven't
become faster" can be upgraded with a SATA or PCIe SSD, which it can't fully
utilize, but it'll work and make a difference. PCIe cards always have been
compatible between versions, you had the choice between AGP and PCIe for quite
a while (when that switch happened, like 15 years ago?), and technically can
still buy boards with PCI ports _today_ (although that's a market niche).

------
aquabeagle
It can run coreboot, too.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652584)

------
Causality1
This reminds me of just how much I hate whoever came up with chiclet keyboards
and ruined laptops forever.

~~~
saagarjha
Of course, with opinionated things like keyboards there will be people who
love the exact thing you hate. Me, for example.

~~~
dijit
Choice is good. Lack of choice breeds resentment.

I resent the new keyboards. I also resent soldered memory, soldered storage
and the lack of ethernet jacks.

I vote with my wallet where I can but the keyboards are ubiquitous; you can't
vote with your wallet if there is no choice.

------
airstrike
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or
> scrolling in Slack.

There's something terribly wrong with this statement

~~~
sgc
It's a joke.

------
keithpeter
_" The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or
scrolling in Slack."_

Things like scrolling down a recent issue Web site are the main reason I'm not
still using a vintage unmodified X200. I realise that the OA quote was
probably tongue in cheek but I do find that surfing the Web has become a
processor intensive activity!

~~~
0x03
Only if you enable JS ;)

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

I'll just stick to repairing my 9 year old t410s.

------
GuB-42
What about the GPU?

I wanted a ThinkPad but while they were overall good laptops none of them
offered a decent GPU except for the very expensive and massive "workstation"
models with Quadros on the level of a mid range GTX.

I get that these aren't gaming laptops but why not give us the option of doing
at least some gaming. And GPUs aren't just for gaming we did some projects at
work that involved 3D rendering, plus there is all that GPGPU thing.

In the end I got a light gaming laptop, and at work, they also got gaming
laptops for these projects that involve 3D. With RGB and all that, something I
find kind of fun in a "serious business" environment.

~~~
alipang
Depending on what you want, a gaming box like
[https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-
Card/GV-N1070IXEB-8GD#kf](https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-
Card/GV-N1070IXEB-8GD#kf) might do the trick. There's a lot of great laptops
like the XPS13 that won't do gaming, but can do so with an external box.

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

~~~
untog
To sell enough of them at a price people want to pay? Sadly, yes.

~~~
bitL
They can bump the price and it would sell like hot cakes among developers.
There are simply no similar products on the market. If NUC is profitable,
which is a niche product, I can't see how such a notebook couldn't be (given
at least minimal marketing and not putting a product notice into a locked
cellar).

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

------
b3b0p
I have a MacBook Pro (2017, 15" top model). I came from a Thinkpad running Red
Hat and FreeBSD later.

I have been for the last couple years putting a Thinkpad (P52 or X1
Carbon/Extreme or P1) I'm lusting over in my cart, but not hitting the buy
button.

After owning this MacBook Pro, my first question is how replaceable are the
keyboards? I want to have a spare in the case of spills, crumbs, dirt, etc and
so forth. It's piece of mind at this point.

From my quick and dirty research, they aren't as replaceable as they used to
be, but still able to be done by the user. The P52/72 seem to be the only easy
option like the, "good old days." While the X1/P1/X series require the entire
top palm rest replaced, which is costlier, but it's an option none the less.

I'm eyeing either an X1 Extreme, P52, or maybe getting something slightly more
portable like the X390. I feel this is the year I'm finally going to hit that
buy button and at least test the waters if I can get myself out of the Apple
Ecosystem and survive without regrets using Linux, even so, it will be a fun
experiment.

~~~
ww520
I stocked up thin silicon membrane keyboard covers, put one over the keyboard,
and replace it every 6 months. It prevent spills and scratch. Keyboard can get
really dirty. Replacing it once a while is like getting a new keyboard.

~~~
b3b0p
This is what I have on my MacBook Pro now, since the millisecond I took it out
of the box. It's just not as pleasurable to type on, especially comparing to
say, a Thinkpad keyboard. I was thinking how much peace of mind I would have
using a bare Thinkpad P52 keyboard with a spare in the closet and knowing I
can just go to Lenovo's parts site and order up a new one for a reasonable
cost.

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

------
TheCowboy
It's a shame the Thinkpad Retro / 25 Anniversary Edition was released as a one
time thing. I think it likely hurt the excitement behind buying one as you
could end up with a machine that would be hard to find spare parts for in the
future.

I never got a chance to buy one because they sold out and didn't release more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

------
tormeh
>Linux worked out of the box. I had to install non-free drivers for the
Broadcom wireless card, then tweak a few module options to get better power
saving.

This is not, for the record, "working out of the box".

~~~
viach
> then tweak a few module options to get better power saving

What, what these options are? Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get
power management working on a Linux laptop?".

~~~
saagarjha
> Is there an answer to the mystery of "how to get power management working on
> a Linux laptop?"

Or even the easier question “how to get power management working on _your_
Linux laptop”?

~~~
viach
I seriously think this is the main problem of "Linux on Desktop". Just stop
the cooler spinning all the time that's it - Desktop War is won, Win and Mac
are packing their stuff and go home.

------
mcv
_" Like the X62, the X210 is made by 51NB, a group of enthusiasts in
Shenzhen."_

Is that normal? That a group of enthusiasts designs Thinkpad models?

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

------
m0zg
Just buy a Carbon X1 that's a couple of generations behind "current" \-
they're still being sold. Amazing battery life, trackpoint, high res screen
(if you want it), super light, tough, good keyboard. And it's cheaper, too.
What's not to like? Mine is 3.5 years old now, still going strong. Running
Ubuntu since day one.

------
jokoon
I have a L450, it might not the top-notch quality thinkpad, but it's still
pretty good. I have a chiclet keyboard, seems preferable. I had to manually
remove the FN, INS, PGDN and PGUP keys though, for more comfortable typing.

Also choosing a graphic chipset instead of a laptop GPU seems like the best
option.

------
testacc432
What laptops currently out in the market have a trackpad comparable to the
Macbook Pro's?

~~~
shkkmo
Most of the good ones. Manufacturers finally realized it was a stupid detail
to fail at.

~~~
vernie
Be more specific.

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

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

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

------
fao_
> You can even replace the Trackpoint and the little rubber feet without much
> trouble.

I've been trying desperately to source rubber feet for my X200 but can't find
them anywhere.

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

------
gesman
Nvme SSD slot + plenty of USB 3 slots + ability to plug in 32GB RAM easily is
great.

Any company reducing physical peripherals slots on their devices should be
publicly condemned!

------
mtw
> doing something intensive like... scrolling in Slack

There's something wrong if you go thru all of this and Slack consumes
significant resources on your laptop.

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

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

------
cpburns2009
"The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go _or
scrolling in Slack._ "

That's amusing and sad.

------
keyle
The irony is not lost on me...

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

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

------
trollied
> The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or
> scrolling in Slack.

Made me chuckle :-)

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

------
rocku
How much does it weight?

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

~~~
ggreer
I name all of my computers after elements. I set up DHCP leases so that the
last octet of each host's IP is their atomic number. eg: hydrogen is
192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon is 192.168.1.6, iron is
192.168.1.26, etc.

I also tend to categorize machines by elemental classification. Servers are
alkalai metals, laptops are nonmetals, consoles are halogens, etc. I didn't
have any neat nonmetals left, so I just called my new laptop "iron".

I describe the whole scheme in a blog post I wrote long ago:
[https://geoff.greer.fm/2009/06/17/hostnames/](https://geoff.greer.fm/2009/06/17/hostnames/)

~~~
umvi
> I set up DHCP leases so that the last octet of each host's IP is their
> atomic number. eg: hydrogen is 192.168.1.1, lithium is 192.168.1.3, carbon
> is 192.168.1.6, iron is 192.168.1.26, etc.

Ok, that's definitely a step farther than I've ever taken it. Ingenious
though, I'm stealing that idea!

------
qwerty456127
So sweet...

------
subway
and sound like jet engines..

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

------
0w4u2a
Please, allow me to hijack this thread.

What's the best Thinkpad I could get in Europe for ~200€ right now? (Off eBay
of course). I don't care whether it's 13" or 15".

Edit: thanks for all the replies.

~~~
zhte415
For what it's worth, I still use a circa 2011 T420 for my work PC (decent spec
for the time with i7 and 8GB RAM) which will probably be around or under your
price. Great ThinkPad keyboard (non-chiclet), and instead of following the
company upgrade cycle I opted for an SSD and new battery.

A lot of corporates off-load perfectly good laptops (as 'company property'
they've often been taken care of reasonably well, or just left on a desk, or
kept in a cupboard as backups) as part of their procurement cycle. Find such a
reseller and you'll likely not only have a cheap laptop, but one with years
more life in it too.

~~~
thecrumb
Love my T420. Bought it new, used it for work for a long time. Now it's my
field laptop I take with me when flying my quadcopters. It's been dropped,
rained on, sat in the sun all day when it's 100 degrees outside and it still
boots up happily. Have been thinking about putting a SSD in it but I really
don't need the speed and the original drive works fine.

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

