Lenovo laptops

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 19 Dec 2021 at 21:58, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've seen a fair number of posts (many from Liam - hi :-) that tout
> the ease of using Lenovo machines.

:-)

> I wonder - are their laptops also that easy to work with?

It's the laptops _only_ I talk about. I have none of their desktops
and have rarely seen them.

Note: *only* Thinkpads. Not any other Lenovo laptops. All other brands
and ranges are plastic consumer junk; avoid.

Side note:
I visited Mark Shuttleworth's (Ubuntu founder/funder/SABDFL) old
apartment in London. It was full of Thinkpads. Ubuntu was developed on
them, AFAICS.

Second side note: I worked for Red Hat for some months. All engineers
have Thinkpads. (Lots of Macbook Pros among management/marketing who
aren't smart enough to use Linux.)

Later I worked for SUSE. Until some point less than a decade ago, all
laptops were Thinkpads. Some people still use them despite being given
modern Dells that are much faster.

Also see this recent article of mine:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/26/thinkpad_motherboard_mod/

It's the old ones that are good.

I persuaded a friend to buy a W510, a big desktop-replacement one,
last year. He was shocked at the price. When he got it, he was more
shocked. He said it sounded like a Mercedes when he shut the lid, and
typing on it was a dream.

Only then did he understand why I called his previous Acer "cheap
plastic sh*t". Now, he said, he understood.

Last month I bought a Core i7 T420 and a Core i7 quad-core W520. I am
looking for a Core i7 X220 to replace my excellent Core i5 X220.

After the ??20 series, the keyboards became junk. The trackpads too
but they've walked those back and newer ones have physical buttons
again.

200/300/400/500: lovely, great keyboards, but Core 2 Duo & sluggish in
general use now.
210/410/510: lovely, early Core i-series, still usably quick, but
limited expansion -- e.g. miniPCI slot can't take SSD.
220/420/520: near-perfect. Thick and heavy but highly maintainable.
Run modern distros, can use UEFI, support 2 SSDs or SSD+HDD.
230/430/530: beginning of the end. Poor chiclet keyboards, but faster,
USB 3 as standard, etc.
240/440/540: now nasty buttonless trackpads too.
250/450/550: I would not even consider these myself, but if you don't
mind chiclet keyboards, may be OK.

Follow the links in my article. Read what Cory Doctorow said about the
200 and 220. Both generally held to be the best laptop PC ever made.

Now:
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-framework-is-the-most-exciting-laptop-ive-ever-used-5415da0a46e5
Read to the end.

> Is this also a relatively easy operation?
> How hard are they to open up?

Old ones: very easy, not hard.
Last few years: not easy, very hard.

Forget all Ideapad and non-Thinkpad models. Ultra thin X1 series are
also end-user unmaintainable. Nice machines if you can overlook the
keyboard, though.

I'd say look at approx decade-old kit in the price point of under £250
for the good stuff.


-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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