Previous thread: 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).
Why ThinkPad? >Used machines are plentiful and cheap >Excellent keyboards >Great durability (excl L and E series) >Utilitarian design >Docking stations that easily turns your laptop into a desktop >Most models are easy to repair, upgrade & maintain thanks to readily available service manuals for every model and spare parts are easy & cheap to obtain >The best TrackPoint™, easier to use when typing >Good for Hackintoshing
Libreboot-compatible models: >T60 (check lcd), X60(s/t); X200(s/t. -s requires soldering), T400(s)/500; W500 Models before *40 series can be Corebooted
Modern models: >X220/X230 - 12", 768p, cheap >T420/T430 - 14", 900p, widely available for a good price, socketed CPU (Ivy Bridge CPU support on T420); Quad Core Compatible >T520/530; W520/530 - 15", 1080p, DTR, 32GB RAM on quadcore models, USB 3.0 >T440s - best price/performance ultra portable >T440p/540p; W540/1 - Last Thinkpads with socketed processors, easily replaceable trackpad (W541 doesn't need trackpad replacement)
Better for what? You won't get a new machine with the same build quality for the same money. And I'm not sure if a modern low power dual core could beat the quad core in the W530.
If you don't care much about portability (it's over 4kg) or battery life then get the W530
Oliver Smith
Thinking of getting a t480. Would love p52 but don't think I wanna spend that kind of money. Any of you have one? Should I go new or take my chances on ebay? Better for virtualization/etc. Portability doesn't really matter to me, I used to have toughbooks for my main machines. Battery life is sort of needed since some classrooms we don't have access to outlets so sometimes I need to go like 5hr with same charge.
Cameron Miller
What do you guys think of the P51s thinkpad? Personally its been very good to me, but has some minor inconveniences. Like the fn and ctrl button are positioned very weirdly. Pic related.
5 hours would be pretty difficult if you run heavy stuff on the W530. T480 might handle it better Nobody here has one, and even if they did they wouldn't want to talk about the issues. Like any laptop, every thinkpad has some small or big problems that are rarely mentioned here
Brody Mitchell
>fn and ctrl swapped ah yes, it's always fun when I forget this and hit fn+s instead of ctrl+s
Julian Harris
Thinklet here, never bought one, but the aesthetics and the practicality and style got me. What would you recommend for a first time buyer? I wish to use it "on the go" for coding and a little bit of pentesting when I'm not at home. I'll also use it for school a bit I think.
>Nobody here has one, and even if they did they wouldn't want to talk about the issues. what issues user? I'm falling for the thinkpad meme and looking at t430 and t440p on eBay as we speak.
Ian Martin
are there any hd3000 proprietary drivers for linux??
Hudson Lopez
damn why did I not know that thanks i guess
Jack Nelson
T440p is great
Chase Barnes
40 series have the unusable touchpad/trackpoint and even if you buy a replacement from the 50 series you're likely to get a chink fake or one of the "bad ones". A lot of the keyboards on ebay are now fakes, too.
Charles Ward
Depends.
Dominic Perry
What's the cheapest X-series ThinkPad worth having? Only needed for web browsing and programming.
Christopher Brooks
Sorry for being a dick, stressful day at work. X230 or T430 if you need more power and don't mind the extra weight.
Charles Flores
can i use my x220 charger on the t420?
Josiah Gonzalez
Thank you
Nathaniel Morris
Is the P52 still having issues? I remember when they came out a bunch kept getting bricked from bios settings and some people were having a tough time installing Linux on it. It’s looking like that’s the machine I’m going with but wanted to ask some people who may have experience with the machine before I throw them $1200. X200 is waifu-tier
Landon Allen
X220
Brayden Ortiz
X200. X61/-s if you're into modding the display and dealing with lolDDR2 and a spicy keychain in your lap. Avoid the X201, it's always priced above the level of suck that the Nehalem generation brought to Lenovo's Thinkpads.
What's the best CPU I can put in my X220? I think my iGPU is dying.
Nathan Sanders
Time for a new mobo, the cpu is soldered :^)
Dominic King
X230 imo. The keyboard and especially trackpoint and trackpoint buttons are ass on those.
Zachary Brooks
What are X200s going for these days?
Jacob Reyes
i got mine with 1440x900 for $40
Jaxson Price
I'm about to fucking explode. >get minimal bargain thinkpad on ebay >takes over a week to get here but it's cheap ok >battery fucked >keyboard fucked >both listed as working in the listing >seller will send me replacements in 3 days >ok, well then I can't be too upset >while they're on the way, try to open back panel >one of the back panel screws is FUCKING STRIPPED
Yes it's the smallest thing, yes I can probably just replace this, but at this point I'm spending almost a month just to get a piece of shit $60 laptop.
Am I retarded to expect to be able to do a clean install of windows 7 from a second hand x230? I have an OEM version installed right now but the key is invalid as far as downloading an ISO is concerned, is there nothing I can do besides installing linux. x230 didn't come with a licensing sticker only a windows 8 sticker.
Jeremiah Brooks
just fucking download it retard lmao
Brandon Bennett
literally all pre 2013 thickbads have the same charger ports
Brayden Perry
how many shitposting hours should i expect on a new nine cell battery for an x220?
Isaac Peterson
how's the 3k screen on the t550? anyone have anything to say about the t550 in general? i don't see it mentioned much here.
Landon Sanders
We are talking numbers in the neighborhood of infinity here, buddy.
Andrew Ross
>used a T520 back in highschool and through college >Upgraded it over time to be fully specced out >Gave it to my little sister when she was entering highschool >replaced the battery and keyboard so she can have a fresh start >She's going to college soon and I've been talking about getting her a brand new clapped out Thinkpad as a graduation gift >She's refusing to let the T520 go
Fuckin damnit. How do I get her to upgrade? She already downloaded the .PDF for the thinkpad so she can fix/solder the charging port once. She's replaced the keyboard as well because her stupid fucking friend spilled soda on the laptop.
I asked this last thread so I'm gonna copy paste and see if I get lucky.
Recently got myself an x200 tablet. From what I've read it should be able to take 2x4gb memory. I got 2x4gb that should be compatible however only 1 seems to work at a time. I can even combine one of them with a 2gb stick that came with the computer and that works but the 4gb sticks won't work together. What am I missing.
Cpu is core 2 Duo SL9400
Austin Walker
>ywn have an imouto this based
Aiden Lopez
she's resourceful but her Thinkpad is getting long in the tooth. Even she's admitted as much. The battery life just isn't what it once was.
Jose Collins
Is getting a pair of 2133mhz ram sticks over the 1866mhz ones worth the extra 30 bucks? It's for a T430.
Nothing because a core2 duo with igpu is useless today.
Leo Williams
Except the workstation ones Timings of the sticks might simply be incompatible
William Flores
It's an Acer Laptop you retard.
Easton Foster
will disable hyperthreading in bios improve battery life?
Kevin Martin
a bit
David Rodriguez
So, I brought a t420 for need of a simple laptop,
It seems if I use the mouse pad wrong it brings up new desktop tab screen, Googled how to turn it off. Which just lead to snap options under multitasking. It didn't fix the problem. Wtf am I doing wrong
Lincoln Barnes
Is 1920x1080 too small for a 14" T450s? Would 1600x900 be better? Windows
Kayden Martin
Just ordered a Gen 7 X1 Carbon for my university course, anybody have any experience with it? Wanna make sure I didn't just get ripped
Elijah Lee
>too small every reasonable OS can scale the UI to whatever resolution you want
>Windows ok lmao fuck outta here
Aaron Turner
Can you just put any M.2 in the T440p? I'm new to this. I went to the specifications and it just says 'M.2'
Ian Smith
Is the L390 worth in your opinion /tpg/?
Isaiah Ramirez
not much but disabling turbo boost will
Cooper Cox
Install a fully free and libre GNU/Linux-Libre GNU OS, such as Parabola GNU/Linux-Libre OpenRC Edition.
Alexander Kelly
Is the intel hd graphics 620 any good for engineering stuff like CAD, solid edge/works, and some old games? Buying a laptop with a dedicated graphics card could be way more expensive
Angel Bailey
you need a SATA 2242 M.2, you might need to install it where the WWAN card is located.
John Hill
Thiccpads be thicc vegan edition What are you doing on your thiccoads guys?
Planning to change my T450s screen to a 1080p IPS, if any owners are around, would you recommend the AUO or LG one?
Julian Lewis
If I'm buying a new laptop, should I buy it off of Lenovo's website or amazon? Can I still get the extra insurances from Lenovo's site if I get off amazon?
Alexander King
post pic of sis plz
Hunter Walker
Whats the difference between T520 and W520? What is the fastest 2nd gen processor I can get in a Thinkpad? I want to do some medium to large compiles. I don't care about the weight or battery life. Just needs to be fast, portable and cheap.
Levi Rodriguez
heya /tpg/, found this 390e, seems to be working but the drives been wiped it's very underpowered though, bios indicates 64MBs of ram and a 333mhz Pentium 2 what OS would work on it and make it usable as a C++ programming machine ? even tinyCore Linux requires twice the ram
In Germany where can I find Thinkpads besides ebay?
Jose Martinez
>buy used and refurbished thinkpad >battery dies in 45mins gotta love it
Eli Nguyen
Or Dell laptops*
Leo Price
T520 is the 15" version of the T420. For proper quad-cores and 32G of RAM (and constantly swapping, hurf durf) you pretty much have to go W520. Beware: there's versions of both that have a shitty 1600x900 display. Insist on the wide-gamut panel on a W520, it's effectively the best non-wide-viewing-angle display available.
Honestly though for compiling C programs any ThinkPad since the T60 will be just fine. And for compiling C++, no ThinkPad will get there fast. Any other languages, gb2/kindergarten/
Austin Campbell
NetBSD
Tyler Wood
>supports X11 on 8M of ram thanks user, any other suggestions ?
Dylan Morales
You could run XP but it'd be pretty slow. 2000 would be a better choice if you wanted something a little snappier but still somewhat useful. You won't be able to run modern programs on 2000 even with the kernel patch but many programs have old versions that are compatible with 2000 or can be made compatible through the kernel patch. DOS may also be a fun option. Winworld has a link to 7.1 which is basically a stripped down version of 98. That would run like a dream on that hardware and probably has drivers if you look hard enough.
Cooper Foster
OpenBSD should work but with 64MB there really aren't that many modern OSs which would run on it. I suppose something like 9front would work but I've only messed around with it in a VM so no idea how well it works on bare metal. Alternatively try upgrading to 128MB in which case FreeBSD and TinyCore should work.
Brody Gray
So I need a new battery for my thinkpad x61 tablet. I currently have 3 batteries, but one of them is pic related and has a lifespan of ~5 minutes.
The other two are currently clusterfucked for no apparent reason. The charge/discharge controller will refuse to charge either one of them. I think what happened is they both got over discharged when I was putting off a mobo replacement for a few months, and now the controller is confused and thinks the cells are damaged or something. I opened one up and the 4 cylindrical cells are all at a reasonable voltage above 3V, but the rectangular ones are all in the 2V range. While I consider trying to individually charge the low cells and bypass the charge controller in a fireproof box, I need to buy a new battery that isnt jacked up, as even if that does work, I fucked up the shell of the battery pretty bad, and it looks like crap now, and honestly I dont even know if I could get it back together at all.
TLDR: I need a cheap 8 cell x61 tablet battery for as cheap as possible. Sketchy origins are OK as long as it works. Where do I get it, and how much should I pay?
A T430 without battery 14'' LED 1366x768 Intel Core i5 3320M 8GB RAM HDD: 320GB
140 euros (150 dollars) is it worth it ?
Camden Hernandez
On a somewhat related note, I have an idea that I shared here once before relating to batteries. The DC jack on the x61 takes 20V. Since it is taking DC current, if somebody were to take a charging cable, snip off the end above the inverter, and in it place attach a battery pack that will output 20V, the computer shouldn't know the difference, right? It would think it is getting that from an AC source, right? This would accomplish 2 things. 1) it would let you hot swap batteries on a laptop that otherwise couldn't be hot swapped. 2) it would increase your battery life
The best part about this is that as long as the cells you use can handle the current load, you can use ANY type of battery for this. If you really wanted to, you could use a ton of rechargeable AA's. Alternatively, you could use good cells out of bad batteries that you dont want to re-build. Or hell, some combination of AGM lead acid batteries from a UPS.
My biggest concern would be regulating the voltage. How do I go about getting the output voltage to be sufficiently close to 20V as the cells discharge? Some kind of regulator, but what am I looking for exactly?
Samuel Martinez
Thinking of buying a new battery for my X240, is aliepxress a good bet or shall I pay extra for amazon I'm in the UK so no burger or europoor only options pls
Jose Roberts
I fucked up and bought a w500 (upgraded cpu, and ram) for librebooting. What a fucking waste of time. I should've just bought a 420/430/530, and corebooted instead.
Nathaniel Morales
Honestly depends on what you'll be doing with it. Earlier generations like the T410 are really really cheap and have some nice to have features like the superior keyboard and a 16x10 aspect ratio. They still work fine with the modern web and you can use that extra money you saved for an ssd, wifi card upgrade or a bigger battery.
Xavier Barnes
Is it possible o get SATA 3 speeds in a T400 or im doomed?
Jordan Ward
Buy new battery bam problem solved
Nicholas Clark
how much does a 1080p IPS display affect battery life compared to a 768p TN panel on the X250? I can also get a 768p IPS display for way cheaper than the 1080p one, so would that one be a better idea?
an older version of NT sounds fun but pretty useless for modern gcc I don't really have any ram that old lying around, and I know that openbsd consumes 53mb with X only so that's out of the question. Do you remember how much 9front used in your VM ? If not I'll try it myself
Zachary Morales
theres a linux distro called "puppy" or "wary-puppy" or just "puppy-linux" that I tried to boot on an old Dell Inspiron 7500. It had either 64 or 128 Mb of RAM and a Pentium 3 CPU, and I think it worked, although I dont remember for sure. I just remember burning 6 million OS images because I kept doing it wrong because I didn't know squat about how to do that stuff back then. I dont remember if it was any good, but I am pretty sure it would boot on 64 Mb or RAM. I do remember that that distro was specifically designed for very low RAM machines.
I just got the X220 and impressions are pretty good. It's thinner and lighter than i expected
Jason Cruz
Sata speeds really don't matter. My T60 only has sata1 and worked very well with an SSD
Aaron Butler
Why do you shill lenovo laptops? Are they really that good?
Andrew Morris
I want to use it as a daily pc. Put some Linux on to it, a 9 cell bat and take it to class. I'm a CS student. There's a ton of cheap T410 and T420 in the range of the 110 dollars in my country but I think they are to out dated for them to be a daily thing... Idk. I want to fall for the meme but I'm having the most difficult time doing so.
Long story short, I basically want a pet project, with socketed CPU, ram and battery so I can mess around with Linux and have it functional for my degree
Jonathan Miller
Get a greencell one from ebay
James Jenkins
No, L-series and overpriced.
Evan Peterson
too much, get a T420 with 1600x900 screen instead.
Samuel Collins
I cant speak for all of them, or even most of the modern ones, but yes, they are that good. I use an x61 tablet as my daily portable computer for things like web browsing, word documents, spreasheets, etc. I also use it as a drawing tablet, because it can do that too. I have a more modern one for my desktop.
But the quality of this particular machine is extremely impressive. Its rugged, sturdy, reliable, lightweight, and when you consider its age, it is very fast. Even by modern standards, it isn't slow. Its not fast, but I would say that it is quick. It is faster than some laptops I have used that are a year old or less.
I have an ssd in it as well as 8 Gb of ram. The ssd made a huge difference.
Oliver Carter
Never owned an ultrabook before, should I get the T450s or T460s? I have 2 choices and the difference between them is $20. Both are i7s. T460s has 12 GB of RAM while T450s has 8.
