
Big RAM laptops are abundant as Lenovo does its Skylake refresh - ingve
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/big-ram-laptops-are-abundant-as-lenovo-does-its-skylake-refresh/
======
wooger
Uh, they still haven't added decent screens to the classic X/T thinkpad
models.

A 16:9 screen is bad enough, but looks even worse when the laptop's frame is
16:10.

Also, still offering 1366x768 TN screens is really embarrassing, especially on
expensive machines like these.

~~~
Someone1234
> Also, still offering 1366x768 TN screens is really embarrassing, especially
> on expensive machines like these.

Why is it "embarrassing" to offer a cheaper option? Nobody is forcing you to
buy their lowest end machine. You can stick to the top end display
(2560×1440).

A $700 1366x768 Thinkpad is a little more expensive than consumer laptops, but
the build is still better than a consumer laptop, the uEFI offers more
features, it has the TrackPoint, a better keyboard, and replaceable batteries.

~~~
cbhl
Sometimes an employer is forced to go to a lowest cost option that meets
requirements, so you want to come up with some contrived set of reasonable-
sounding requirements that actually translate in practice to buying a higher-
end machine.

It used to be that this requirement was "power windows" on a car rental, which
only showed up on cars with all the bells and whistles.

~~~
Someone1234
The closest thing to "power windows" would likely be "needs an SSD." Since
they don't normally put SSDs into their cheapest i3 machines, only the i5s
with the 1080p displays (or better).

Also an SSD is a valid requirement if you actually need to get stuff done, in
particular development/SysAdmin-like stuff.

~~~
PaulHoule
If you are running Windows it makes a huge difference to have an SSD and even
if what you are doing is writing Word documents and sending emails and stuff
like that the difference is night and day.

I have an old netbook with a single core Atom processor and an SSD that I put
in to make it shockproof and it feels incredibly fast compared to an i7
machine I have that seems to take 15 minutes to completely boot.

~~~
masklinn
> If you are running Windows it makes a huge difference to have an SSD

SSDs make a huge difference on pretty much any system which can't live solely
in RAM, no matter the OS.

~~~
PaulHoule
I think it is worse on Windows because Windows uses locking very heavily --
i.e. Windows tries harder to protect system integrity than Unix does, even if
that means giving up and showing the blue screen.

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riskable
Any ideas on how well these laptops will support Linux? In my experience,
Thinkpads are hit-or-miss when it comes to Linux support and I don't want to
be the one that has to figure everything out (which I've done before for a few
laptops; going so far as to make my own patches).

Honestly, Windows-only hardware or features are a big warning sign for me as
those will be the first things to cause trouble--even in Windows! Microsoft
will push an update to Windows and then, say, your power management stops
working, the screen starts flickering when playing videos, the special laptop
buttons no longer work, etc etc.

If everything works with Linux out-of-the-box though then it's unlikely you're
going to experience problems in Windows either.

~~~
creshal
Thinkpads are by far the best supported notebooks in Linux – RedHat e.g. is
mainly a Thinkpad shop, so lots of kernel maintainers are investing time into
supporting every single quirk.

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frik
It's so sad that Intel still sells dual-core notebook CPUs, a few quad-core
CPUs and they best notebook CPU has just 2.9 GHz ("Skylake"). see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_micropro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_microprocessors#Skylake_microarchitecture_.286th_generation.29_2)

Compare that specs with 2010 Intel notebook CPUs ("Westmere") max 2.8 GHz -
very little has changed for notebooks. see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_micropro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_microprocessors#Westmere_microarchitecture_.281st_generation.29_2)

Where are the 3-4GHz CPUs for notebooks? Where are 6 or 8 core CPUs for
notebooks?

~~~
vox_mollis
Unfortunately, battery life drives the laptop market more than any other
feature. Most laptop purchasers live in this bizarre world in which electrical
outlets are as rare as an oasis in the desert, and the market responds as
such.

~~~
jimktrains2
There are still many places that don't have abundant outlets:
classrooms/lecture halls, waiting rooms, airports, parks, your porch.

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ismavis
There's now an OLED screen option in the new X1.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/lenovo-x1-carbon-
adds...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/lenovo-x1-carbon-adds-tablet-
and-desktop-editions-and-a-yoga-that-ditches-the-lcd/)

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freehunter
Big RAM? 16GB is a lot of RAM but it's not unheard of. My Thinkpad W540 has
that much, which is standard in my company. I think any Mac can be configured
with 16GB of RAM. 32GB is a lot, but of the four laptops they mentioned, only
two of them support that much.

~~~
ericfrenkiel
It's the 32 GB RAM chassis that is most exciting since it's no longer ungodly
expensive.

In the same way that 8 GB is ubiquitous today for the low-end, 16 GB will soon
become the standard.

~~~
yuhong
More precisely, that is thanks to 8Gbit DDR4, which will eventually reach
crossover with 4Gbit probably by next year.

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vox_mollis
Offtopic, but I've always been curious: do people _really_ find trackpoint
style mice even remotely usable? Presumably so, since Lenovo still includes
them, but personal experience makes this baffling.

Edit: thanks for the responses. I can definitely see how the trackpoint could
be more accurate, but my experience is that the workflow is MUCH slower. As
basically a joystick device, you must wait for the pointer to move to the
desired location. One could compensate for this by pushing harder, but this
results in overshoot of the intended target, which requires compensating with
slow, precise reversal movement. The whole process is just very, very tedious
in my experience using them. That's what I meant, specifically. How do you
trackpoint users manage to get around this?

~~~
JoshTriplett
Yes, absolutely. I actually have a USB ThinkPad keyboard that includes a
trackpoint, and use that when at a desk, in preference to any other mouse or
keyboard.

With the sensitivity set well, a trackpoint can move the mouse all the way
across the screen with a strong push, yet have pixel-accurate precision with a
light touch. And it sits on home row, making it trivial to switch between
keyboard and mouse without a major hand position change.

I only use the touchpad to scroll. Even for that, some people configure the
trackpoint to scroll while holding the middle mouse button, but that
configuration doesn't work for me as I rely on a functional three-button mouse
(middle-click to open a link in a tab, and middle-click to paste in a
terminal).

~~~
creshal
> but that configuration doesn't work for me as I rely on a functional three-
> button mouse (middle-click to open a link in a tab, and middle-click to
> paste in a terminal).

You lose middle-button click only in Windows. The Linux drivers will pass
through middle clicks normally, even with wheel emulation enabled.

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thomasjudge
I love the first line in this article: "We've long cried out for laptops with
lots of RAM so that they can handle workloads as varied as hosting development
virtual machines or running Chrome.."

~~~
creshal
Top three reasons why people in my company had to be upgraded from 4 to 16 GiB
RAM:

• Running multiple VMs to debug IE 8-10

• Chrome

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vardump
I'd love to buy Lenovo's big RAM (64 GB ECC) laptop.

But Lenovo included unerasable spyware in BIOS that reinstalls itself _after a
clean reinstall of non-OEM, original Windows DVD_ , I think I'll pass. Maybe
it doesn't affect Lenovo's business range, but I don't want to take any
chances.

[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/08/lenovo...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/08/lenovo-used-windows-anti-theft-feature-to-install-
persistent-crapware/)

Lenovo did remove the crapware in question afterwards. It doesn't inspire
confidence when they do same spyware/crapware deal multiple times and only
remove such software after getting caught.

~~~
yuhong
It doesn't affect the business range.

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ericfrenkiel
RAM is the new disk - we're seeing a phase change whereby most data can be
held permanently in RAM. For a laptop, this might not a lot of sense (until
non-volatile RAM arrives), but for servers, RAM density is enabling multi-TB
datasets to be held in memory. This will be transformative since it means that
businesses can easily access memory like the big boys (Google, Facebook) using
off-the-shelf software.

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ChuckMcM
I really appreciate this but would really really like it to be ECC ram. That
and a nice 2K screen would be a really nice setup.

~~~
yuhong
Look at the Thinkpad P50/P70.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Ouch: "Weight Starting at 5.62lbs, 0.96in" (from the Lenovo page on the P50)

There is absolutely no technical reason for Intel to not offer ECC in the
desktop/laptop chipsets. Which would then allow people like Lenovo to build it
into their 'thin and light' line as well. I put all the blame on Intel for
this one as they try to prop up the margins on "server" chips.

FWIW, this is something I hope ARM (and perhaps Apple) totally disrupts. I
would love to see an A52 class ARM chip for use in a laptop that offered ECC
support on large address spaces.

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5h
My several year old x220t has an i7 and 12gb of ram, don't think i'll be
replacing it for at least another 2-3 years

~~~
creshal
My X220 has an i5, 16 GiB RAM, and a battery run time of 19 hours.

Still waiting for a worthy replacement. The X260 clearly isn't one.

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AceyMan
Being stuck on 16:9 is bad enough, but worst of all was the move away from the
"7-row" keyboard. The island ("chicklet") Thinkpad keyboard is better than
other OEMs versions of same, and of course, I won't leave home without a
Trackpoint.

But every day since my x201s died—replaced by an x230 tablet—I miss the
seventh row. ScrollLock and Pause|Break are not legacy controls, and I get
blocked every day when I reach for those keys, and as they say, "There they
were: gone![1]"

Oh, and I see no reason why all the pro-line Thinkpads (X,T) don't support
32GB, minimum.

Lenovo seems to be getting the Thinkpad brand back on track, but for my money
it's not happening quickly enough.

[1] Possibly from character, Ed, on _Northern Exposure_

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mixmastamyk
I don't care for all those big cables coming out at the sides... especially
the right side where my mouse hand will be. Wish manufactures wouldn't do that
so often.

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PaulHoule
I got a big RAM laptop from Lenovo back in 2012 and it is great! I bought the
RAM from Crucial, however, because Lenovo charged entirely too much for it.

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peter303
My graphics company designs for 96GB. But the time the software ships , the
high end should be there.

~~~
josteink
Ugg. Companies like yours is the reason you need to buy a 16GB laptop today
just to _browse the web_.

Don't take it personal, but it's really starting to get quite absurd.

~~~
tertius
This an 4k/5k resolutions.

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bfrog
Finally an update worth possibly purchasing, the limited amount of ram was a
real downside to the last few iterations they pushed out. That and the single
channel DDR situation.

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auvi
I wonder when the new MacBook Pro with Skylake chips arrive, they should also
have similar amounts of RAM.

~~~
et2o
As someone waiting to upgrade, it's a little annoying that they seem to be
taking so long. The 15" pro is still using Haswell processors.

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mtgx
Good news for Qubes OS.

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alrs
I could give two shits about the X1, but the new X260 can take 16GB of RAM and
has an onboard ethernet port. Yes, please.

~~~
scw
The X220 takes 16GB, and an onboard gig-e Intel nic. It was released in 2011.

~~~
alrs
X250 can't do 16GB, sadly.

~~~
blueyed
You can get it directly from Lenovo.

