/tpg/ - ThinkPad General

Previous thread: If you're looking for purchase advice, state your budget and requirements (e.g. size and performance).
Don't buy anything OTHER THAN IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T, X, and W/P Series if you want the Real Business Experience™

>Other business laptops are welcome in /tpg/ (Dell Latitude/Precision, HP EliteBook/ZBook).

Libreboot-compatible models:
>T60 (check lcd), X60(s/t); X200(s/t. -s requires soldering), T400(s)/500; W500.

Modern models:
>X220/X230 - 12", 768p, cheap and light
>T420/T430 - 14", 900p, widely available, socketed CPU, both Coreboot-compatible (Ivy Bridge CPU support on T420); Quad Core Compatible, Old keyboard swap on *30 series
>T520/530; W520/530 - 15", 1080p, DTR, 32GB RAM on quadcore models, USB 3.0
>T440s
>T440p/540p; W540/1 - Last Thinkpads with socketed processors, easily replaceable trackpad (W541 doesn't need trackpad replacement)
>P-Series - 15'' + 17'', 4K display, up to 64GB of RAM, Xeon CPU option. Expensive.

Upgraded models:
>X210 - X200/X201, i5 8250u quadcore
>X62 - X61, i5 5250u
>T70 - T60, i7 7700 hq
IPS displays, USB 3.0, m.2 x4, mini dp, no
forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=117

Why ThinkPad?
>Used machines are plentiful and cheap
>Excellent keyboards - tactile feel and quiet
>Great durability: magnesium rollcage for structural integrity, with high quality plastic body panels
>Utilitarian design: e.g. indicator LEDs, 7 row keyboard layout on older models
>Docking stations that easily turns your laptop into a desktop
>Easy to repair (most models), upgrade & maintain thanks to readily available service manuals for every model, spare parts easy & cheap to obtain
>The best TrackPoint™, great for those who type a lot or hate swiping their fingers all over a touchpad
>Excellent GNU/Linux & *BSD support


>ThinkWiki - Info on ThinkPads & running GNU/Linux on them:
thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
>BIOS logo booru:
biosimage.booru.org

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Other urls found in this thread:

ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-W530-Core-i7-2-9-8GB-RAM-180-GB-SSD-nVidia-Quadro-K1000M-Win-10/152978057268?epid=19017831236&hash=item239e33e834:g:qxEAAOSwqLtabby5
support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds018785
youtube.com/watch?v=nRVJCtREW38
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

From previous thread.
user, if you're here, what kind of screen did you buy and how much did you pay for it? Is it an lcd screen?

Fuck off reddit

Is there a reason why my T420 only boots from UEFI?
Is it the windows install that it came with? Because I'm forced to use GPT now which I hate
I tried everything to make sure that it wasn't the usb/iso that was the issue
after installed arch I'm going to try booting a usb in legacy to see if it works, but is there anything else that could be the problem?

4th for maya best girl

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you better not derail this civilized thread about business laptops with your waifu wars

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What gloves to use for programming?
I dont want to wear out my keyboard, but my hands need to breath

No, seriously, my refurb x220 goes to sleep/powers off if I hold the fn key or the left alt key.

Is there an easy way to fix this or should I just send it back?

is $30 for IBM model m keyboard a gud deal?

anything's a good deal if you put your mind to it

These days yes, it's a real M. At that price it might need work.

Should x1c 3rd gen used be around 250?

Yeah

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> Fan on T400 started rattling at low RPMs today

I guess I should replace it.

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get aT440P is time to upgrade

Thinking of getting a p72 when it fucking finay comes out. Hoping it will be atable/powerful enough for the music performance and processing/recording stuff Im going to need to do with it.

Any thoughts on it so far?

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get a t440p

what kind of work?

No.

Grrr...
I can't find a good good thinkpad for 500€, I need your help Jow Forums.
Only thing I want is fast 2.9@, min 200GB(option for ultrabay) SSD and the seller has to be located on in EU.

Should I just wait and get more money?

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buy one with hdd and just put a ssd in there

I have never done windows swap before, I could do that.

I was looking for w520 and w530. But there are only w540 that are decent with specs

>windows swap
what? why would you use windows over linux, specially in a thinkpad?

Where's the trap?

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I run special administrative software that runs only on windowns.

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It'll be very powerful but very expensive on release.

what's the best thinkpad for watching films

please don't buy new thinkpads they just run of the meme

ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-W530-Core-i7-2-9-8GB-RAM-180-GB-SSD-nVidia-Quadro-K1000M-Win-10/152978057268?epid=19017831236&hash=item239e33e834:g:qxEAAOSwqLtabby5
Think I'm going for this one

Get a T530 if you don't need the GPU, and if you do, get a W530 with a K2000m. You will regret the K1000m.

too late
and there is no k2000m

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The weak part of the Model M is the little plastic rivets that hold the barrel plate onto the metal backplate. They'll break if someone goes ape on the keyboard, it took shock abuse, or someone stacked something heavy on it.
The way to fix that is a boltmod.
Very early versions also ended up with cracks running lengthwise horizontal across the entire plastic barrel plate. Early design flaw coupled with wrong grade of ABS. But that's only the very earliest square-label ones.

LG LP140WD2(TL)(G1)
£ 41.99

>whats wine
wintard

bought an 13 euro aftermarket battery for my x60s on ebay. just got it today and one of the battery cells is swollen already.

I know I cheaped out but its hard to justify a 30euro battery for a 50euro laptop

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great. thank you

what's wrong with the k1000m?
I just bought a W520 with the Quadro 1000M and 16 gigs of ram for 200
novidea is cancer on linux so I was planning to just leave it off

bump
pls help

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Just a spitball, turn off secure boot?

nah the t420 came out before that cancer
I think it's the windows 10 installation that the moron I bought it from had installed.
I'm going to install arg lenox in UEFI mode when I get home, change the bios settings to legacy only and see if it boots from a USB
I would try removing the drive to see if that does anything but I dont have a screwdriver in my dorm

Alright, Arch installed just fine in UEFI
I put the bios is legacy only mode and when I try to boot off my arch usb, I get a black screen for like 20 seconds and then it goes back to the F12 boot menu
What gives? I've never had a thinkpad do this before

And it's running like fucking molasses
startx to i3 on a fresh arch install shouldn't take 2 minutes.
What the fuck is going on with this thing?
Should I update the bios?

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you should install debian

>pretty much every major company exclusively buys Thinkpads because of memes and former glory
You're very special and cool for owning a $50 IBM Thinkpad but you know this is false my man

>another retard fallen for the (((vintage))) thinkpad meme

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No like it's running slower than my x200. sensors is reporting 37C so I don't understand what's going on
I have too many debian machines already. I don't think this is an arch issue

>laptop is basically an antique
>it's somehow slow
m8, even my mother could solve this mystery

t450s master race reporting in

My T420 is lightning fast, I dunno what that user is having problems with.

ThinkPads are for folks who hate apple but are otherwise identical in all respects.

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it was my bad
My script dumps config files that are written for debian rather than arch, they worked a few years ago but arch changed a lot of their names and stuff so it was probably throwing a million errors in the background slowing things down.
Got it fixed and it's running as it should now

I just don't understand why it's not booting with legacy mode and it's really annoying me that I had to use a GPT disk (I like to be able to move disks around my machines)
How do I fix this anons? I'm geniunely stumped

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> Replacing decent Thinkpad with modern chinkshit

Where do you think we are, friend?

FUCKING LENOVO WHERES MY RYZEN THINKPAD

>my old shit is working bad
>why would i chage my old slow shit with a new fast fine laptop

Is there any place where I get the older T420 BIOS updates?
chinknovo only has the latest one on their site for spectre and I don't want my shit to slow down

> Why would I replace a $10 part when I could spend $1200 on a brand new laptop lol

On debian which de works best on an x220 out of the box?

Glad to hear you got it working, user. I like your color scheme a lot, I've had the same look to my computer for about 8 months now and your screenshot is making me want to rework things a bit. It'd be nice to have some cooler colors for the winter season.

First google result. Scroll down. Everything there from revision 01.

support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds018785

Wow that's so deep man wow thanks for woke-ing my sheeple eyes

I have a very long i3config that works well with all my thinkpads (including the tabletS), but KDE worked very well the last time I tried it
Just make sure you're on testing or sid

>thinkpad
>brand new
you droped some dumb shit right there

I love how they're all .exe's except for the one I don't want (the spectre patch) which is an iso.
I don't know if it's worth it.
Can anyone with a T420 try to replicate this issue? Try setting your bios to legacy only mode and booting from the debian 9.5 disk or the latest arch iso.
I don't know if it's my USB drive because it works just fine in my T420

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I want this thinkpad
what model is that

youtube.com/watch?v=nRVJCtREW38

Just a heads up.
"If the UEFI BIOS has been updated to version 1.48 or higher, it is no longer
able to roll back to the version before 1.48 for security improvement."

Why shouldn't I install openSUSE on my T530?

what is the most retard proof thinkpad, i.e. the toughest youcan get without purchasing a toughbook

preferably a newer model, would buy used if i didn't need it right now

Yeah I just read that
fug
Well other than the bios being shit I can't think of a single reason why a usb stick would work fine with UEFI boot but not legacy boot
I hope the W520 I have coming in doesn't have the same autism

>W520
I hope you're not actually gonna install systemd/Linux on it

Why wouldn't I?

a x130e it was made for kids

I would use a Thinkpad I just don't like the nipple

Optimus support is a bitch, you might as well buy a T5** without a dGPU, and since the screen is adobeRGB, color profiling and management etc doesn't work well either. Fuck it, no OS does, but there's less demand for it on Linux so it gets less development.
I freelance as a photographer, and photo editing tools themselves are fine on linux, but to make full usage of this device it's better to stick with windows, since I need full performance, and the ability to use, and not use, the dGPU anytime I want.

Still, if it's gonna be used only on the desk (ie not moved) it's probably fine though if you're willing to put effort to make it work.

Optimus has been "fine" since 2016. bumblebee works and there's an option to disable the gpu in the bios, my t530 has this.
As for the screen there's a bunch of color calibration tools for linux, not that I need it or care, I was after the resolution and getting 16 gigs of ram for 200 bucks

>Optimus
The reason I still dualboot too. Doesn't work as seamlessly as on windows, though it's mostly because novidia doesn't want to give proper development. Still can't really blame them for not supporting the 2%; when I looked at dev discussion on the whole linux browser hardware acceleration debacle, chrome/opera/mozilla devs share the same "GPU blacklist" vocabulary.

Shit like this is why this board is basically fucking Reddit now. Newfags who don't know shit about anything so they call a T420 "vintage". If you don't know what's wrong, it's alright to not say anything at all, this isn't Reddit, you're not getting anymore karma fag.

Oh and this shit seem have regressed a bit, in older ubuntu release I just need to logout and login to switch cards but now I have to reboot. wtf.
18.10 seem to fix this, it's easier now, tried the daily build 3 days ago, but performance isn't the same.

wat r u a fag

What are you waiting to install coreboot on your thinkpad?
You can use it to play games on your BIOS!

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Thank you for the downvote, and keeping this subreddit at a higher quality than others.

How many years do I have to wait until used A485 thinkpads appear on ebay for half of their MSRP? I am hanging in with my Lenovo G550 craptop and my shitty PC.

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Don't let the idiots get to you

I need to get a raspberry pi for libreboot, and those weird clamp things. I'm waiting for ram and cpu first. Is there any other cool payloads to put in the BIOS besides that Tetris and a bootloader?

wew, probably 5 years, so 2024
I can't believe I'm going to see the 2020s

don't know, but I see the E585 finally dropped so I can buy one now

Massive faggot here. Just got a $1500 usd grant to spend on ONE laptop. I want to play tekken 7 and do homework for my computer networking classes. What should I get?

is it possible to install meltdown&spectre patches while using coreboot?

a noose

See: Get one with a Ryzen 2500u. 2700u if you care about several more fps. You will have around 600$ to spend on mouse/headphones/controller or maybe even a monitor.

is it possible to painlessly switch out the key caps for fn and ctrl on t420?

No, they're different sizes.

You can swap what they do in the BIOS though

> Install Coreboot
> Lose the ability to use the HD3470

It's a dogshit GPU, but it's still lightyears ahead of the integrated Intel trash.

The Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

If I want to update the bios using Linux, how would I go about it if there's no iso provided, and just an exe?
This is for the retarded T420 that will boot from UEFI but not legacy, it's on a 2011 bios now so I'm thinking of trying one of the 2012 bios updates

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Do I fit in yet guys...

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depends, post feetsies

Is the T530's trackpad and mouse buttons as bad as the reviews say?