I've had a X1 since 2017. The CPU is pretty weak, but it's still solid overall. Still on the original battery too (yes the capacity has gone down from 57 Wh to 25 Wh). I've gotten other computers through work since, but the X1 is still my favourite laptop! In fact I'm typing on it now.

Where did you get the battery?

Lenovo no longer sells T480 batteries afaict, and 3rd party vendors are a (dangerous) crapshoot.

I guess you spent x000's on your thinkpad but not anywhere near the same amount on luggage.

You can absolutely get 'buy it for life' backpacks and luggage for a few $000

https://www.briggs-riley.com/collections/carry-on-luggage still have a great repair and warranty deal for example.

I have gone through quite a few over the years. The oldest I still have are a W530 and X230 Tablet. The former I just reinstalled with Gentoo for one of my kids. Still very usable. The keyboard and trackpoint is very enjoyable, better than later ones. My latest are an AMD X13 gen 4 and a ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II for the other devices with inferior keyboards ;)

I went from a T490 to a T14 gen 3 (Intel). Was a nice upgrade. The GPU sucks, which I don't need or care about, but the rest is fine. I got a NOS one for a reasonable amount of money.

The X1 looks nice but colleagues had thermal issues with theirs and the CPU is a bit limp so I skipped that particular problem.

I'm using my ThinkPad T520 daily driver right now.

With its non-chiclet keyboard, I type 12+ hours every day, never any discomfort.

Last year, I bought a late-model ThinkPad, to experimentally try replacing the T520. So I could have some local GPU compute, and not have to stockpile dwindling rare high-spec replacement units, in my minimalism lifestyle. But I haven't yet felt motivated to try out the new one, and see whether I can move to a not-as-good keyboard layout and a suspicious key action.

I loved my T430s. I swapped the keyboard out for a backlit one, and took out the DVD drive and replaced it with a hot swappable second battery. I was running Ubuntu MATE on it, it worked very well for me. The ThinkLight was also great.

I now have a second hand T480s which is also a wonderful machine, but not as amazing as that T430s. I gave my T430s to my mother who uses it to run software (albeit via Windows now) for her sewing machine.

I had the T431s for over a decade as well.

Replaced the keyboard (orange juice spillage), screen (upgraded to a higher resolution panel), hdd (to an SSD of course), RAM, Wifi adapter (Wifi 6) as well as the battery.

I now use an X1 Nano and while it's nice (and very light!) I am sad that the upgradability is nowhere near as good.

I still use my old T420, though less than I used to. Coincidentally, the RAM died this week, but a $30 investment later, and it lives again. At this point, I think I've repaired or replaced every single swappable component aside from the display.

I still have two 2013 era t430s, one with windows 7 and one with windows 10. When browsing the web they barely feel any slower than my corporate supplied t14 gen 2 or p1 gen 6 both with windows 11 now. I guess that’s the price of security.

I went through an odd series of emotions reading this lol.

ChromeOS made me throw up a bit but the recipient made me smile. May it serve them well.

i’m sorry this really made me laugh - I hope she’s ok!

>Lenovo Yogabook 9i

I am just waiting for linux to get sorted out on it and then I will buy. It might not be perfect but it looks pretty great. I mainly wish it had a headphone jack, bluetooth is not great for working on music.

I had a rotating-display Thinkpad 2-in-1, and I think the design peaked in the model previous to that, the X1 Carbon.

My family has ThinkPad T series from my past work laptops or used bought ones as well.

I had a Thinkpad X200T with a Core 2 Duo serving as my home router for a while, eventually I upgraded to a Dell Optiplex that my work was throwing away. Laptop as a router is great because they blow SBCs out of the water while preserving a modicum of energy efficiency. I do miss just being able to pop the lid open when I needed to troubleshoot something instead of having to lug the Optiplex into the office to attach a monitor and keyboard.

Oh yes I see that. I got my first ThinkPad last year and the only one that wasn't loaded with "AI" nonsense was a P1. Despite the enormous size and weight it's a similar experience than old ones gave me when I tried them. I guess thats the option for me as long as possible. At some point we have to switch to something newer anyway...

The thing that turns me off is that they are 14 inches for most of them. I personally cannot use my laptop in a serious way if it's below 16 inches

Do you know if there is any kind of index / forum for these sorts of projects? I'm interested in seeing what's out there for my T420s.

I miss the M-series silicon, but plain old Ubuntu runs like a charm on Thinkpads. I much prefer the Ubuntu UX and native Linux environment.

Battery life is slightly worse, driver support is perfect - every peripheral I've tried is perfect, performance and security are top-notch.

My two complaints are battery life and compiling Rust code taking a bit longer. But everything else is better on Thinkpad.

I use a Thinkpad and MacBook Pro interchangeably.

Note: I use an X1 Carbon, so that's more like a MacBook Air. They're not 1:1 and my complaints are partly due to my choice.

I have a personal T470 with linux and a Macbook for work. Battery life is worse on the Thinkpad, and I have a 5 year older CPU so performance is lower. Everything else is better. I feel like I did something really bad in my last life to be cursed to work with the MacOS UI everyday.

I use a ThinkPad with Linux as my daily driver and a MBP at work. I love my ThinkPad dearly-but it goes 0/4 up against the MBP.

The best thing I've done for my in practice battery life on Linux is enable aggressive suspend to hibernate, but it still doesn't compare to the all day use I get out of the MBP.

Driver support is really good, everything works, but it obviously can't compete with the 'perfect' driver support you get with macOS.

Performance is again really good but it's not M* performance, nothing is, but I'm happy with it. The OS is perfectly snappy and responsive.

Security is also quite good, Linux has fantastic TPM support now so you get passwordless full disk encryption. Fingerprint reader works and is well integrated into popular DEs. But it's not TouchID or Apple's secure coprocessor, SIP level extra. And just in general the Linux security model without SELinux or Flatpak sandboxing is user-based so you don't get protection against software you run behaving naughtily. The antivirus story is also not as good / nonexistent, but I've never really cared about those so nothing lost for me.

The advantage of the Thinkpad is you get to run Linux, it's about half the cost of the MBP, it's more than good enough as a daily driver, and you get all the full sized ports with no adapter.

Cheapish (~$1000) thinkpad E14 gen7 (AMD) variant has battery life of >24h (reading/typing in vim). At least according to power meter, not that I'd read or type that long.

And everything works on it on Linux, even obscure things like fingerprint sensor, various bizarro Fn key combos, all the various HW accelerations (video encode/decode via vaapi), etc. I didn't find anything that would not work.

Absolutely nothing beats the integration of Apple software and hardware. As it should be because they don't give you another option! You can't run Apple software on anything else (without hacks), and you can't run anything else on Apple hardware (without significant effort and sacrifice in functionality). This is Apple's whole design philosophy and value prop, and they are essentially unbeatable at systems integration.

This deep software/hardware integration means Apple absolutely destroys everyone at battery life. No contest. If you want to optimize for battery life, Apple is the choice.

The deep integration also makes Apple's security quite good. Obnoxiously so as they make even common operations like downloading software off the web take extra steps.

That being said as soon as you stray outside of a pure Apple ecosystem, Linux wins in my experience. Plugging a Logitech mouse into my MacBook prompted me to install Logitech keyboard drivers... Not only was the device type wrong but drivers?! ...for a simple input device?! I haven't had to worry about printer, mouse, keyboard, webcam, usb mic, drawing pad, etc drivers in years. Simple devices almost universally Just Work in Linux without having to install or configure anything. It's mind boggling when I touch Windows or macOS and am greeted with proprietary drivers for something like a basic laser printer.

But there's plenty of counter-examples: Nvidia requires their proprietary driver to fully utilize their hardware, but the driver is much better than it used to be. My understanding is that no one on Windows really enjoys dealing with Nvidia drivers either, so it's probably a similar scenario.

At the end of the day I use both Linux and macOS regularly and prefer Linux overall. My Macbook Air's battery life and lack of fans does make it unbeatable for actual lap-top computing, and when I want to look and sound good on a Zoom call I can always count on its builtin camera and mic. So I basically use my Macbook as a laptop form factor iPhone or iPad, which I think is Apple's intent and fills a niche for sure.

IMO the ThinkPad brand died after IBM sold its PC division. Lenovo has kept it alive because it is a cash cow, but the machines have shoddy build quality and are ludicrously overpriced.

My previous X1 Extreme Gen 1 (2018) had annoying coil whine and screen backlight bleed. One of the key caps broke off after a couple of years. Eventually I ended up doing a full keyboard and battery replacement.

My current X1 Carbon Gen 13 is nice and light, has no coil whine, but it's still made from cheap plastic. Considering it's a $2k+ machine, it sure doesn't feel like it.

In comparison, ThinkPads from the IBM era were built like tanks. Still plastic, sure, but they felt solid, and were reliable workhorses for years.

At this point the only thing keeping me on ThinkPads is the TrackPoint, but since trackpads are decent on Linux nowadays, I think I'm ready to finally ditch the brand. Some of the new Dell and HP machines look interesting. Frameworks seem nice, but I've read many issues about their build quality, and they're not cheap either.

> (hardware was decent. Software was terrible)

I'd be interested to hear which software was terrible on mac and what was the better alternative on your side of the fence?

I also have T14s Gen 3 (AMD) and to me this is a pinnacle of laptop design. Latest Fedora KDE edition runs buttery smooth on it.

> the European failure and subordination to the USA/Microsoft by not fostering at least an alternative to Windows that its corporations and governments can operate on. There has been nothing but talk and tiny little forays into adopting open source, but absolutely nothing that could even rise to being a real alternative to Windows or even MacOS.

Yet. The current US 'situation', combined with US tech spying means those little forays are getting seriouser and seriouser. It's going to be somewhat slower due to languages, and induvidual governments wanting 'their' version (of spying on their populations), but the beginnings are begun.

This topic has been beaten to death but, they're much more durable and serviceable, and you can get them with nice IPS touchscreens (the MacBook oled PWM drivers make my eyes water, sadly)

I bet you could upgrade the screen if you wanted to. I put a modern-ish 1440p IPS into my T420, looks fantastic.

If those guys cared, we'd still have the great x220 keyboard.

If you're really concerned get a metal ammo box (they're like $15 at harbor freight in the US last I checked). I put my 40v ryobi tool batteries in these as they're known for going full firework.

Also, this is the most basic two-button mouse design, the same as all cheapo mice since the 90s, what is so innovative about it?

Why do plastic case laptops warp in short order? I have never seen or heard about that.

I read somewhere that in Shenzhen you can get metal thinkpad clones with any modern hardware you like, made to order, one at a time for a resonable price.

Not sure if it still exists

I've been a ThinkPad user forever, and I wouldn't buy another one if they "upgraded" to metal like everyone else. If I were to guess, most serious ThinkPad users would want the current shell, the dated appearance, and the keyboard to not change much or at all.

I have had generations of ThinkPad, since the x30 series. And the older older all had a very stiff metal (magnesium) frame as a core and usually a metal lid. Nowadays they went to very stiff plastic and carbon to save weight and thickness I guess. But they are much more portable because of this. I think Apple patented the "unibody design" at the time btw. The current company macbook pro I use for work is very heavy compared to other devices, because of all the metal and glass. It is quite a lot to carry around.

They have some metal cased models, I am currently on an aluminum cased X13. There are a few others (or atleast were) but don't recall which.

6th gen X1 Yoga user here. My laptop has a full aluminum chassis (and I bought it three years ago).

> The first went down after 1 year with a headcrash. 1. HDD headcrash in my life.

What HDD make? ThinkPads of 2.5" HDD era usually have cushioned drive caddies, and (IIRC) some head-parking when the laptop detected shock. https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1hp1cq6/active_pr...

> The second one was delivered with bad RAM. Support denied help because of wrong FRU Number. The whole thing went back to the dealer.

Did you get it sealed from the Lenovo factory, or could your dealer have replaced the factory RAM? (That could also explain "wrong FRU number".)

> The third one died in a loud bang of the power supply and died with it.

Bummer. Do you recall the model or design?

I once had a Lenovo AC adapter eventually go bad (out of buying and using dozens of them), and fortunately didn't take the laptop with it.

And I once ripped the laptop-side connector off an old one that I was abusing pretty hard, and then tripped over the cable (but laptop was fine).

Other than that, the rest of them have worked great, even some 20 year-old ones I still have and use.

> The trackcap was horribly to use - an example of bad design par excellence.

The TrackPoint? Could you say specific criticisms of the design?

I consider it mostly a personal preference thing. A lot of people love TrackPoint, and consider it a hard requirement for any laptop they'll personally use. A lot of other people prefer trackpads, and have more options for laptop brands.

(Disclosure: I know the inventor of TrackPoint, but that's not why I use it.)

This reminds me of the time I went to a church dinner with my father.

Everything was fine, but then each person was asked to stand and briefly mention something they were thankful for. About half way through one of the oldsters mentioned their health problems - "I'm thankful they aren't worse" - sigh. Every person after that had to list every health problem they had, and every health problem everyone in their family had. It took like an hour and we were waiting to eat.

It's a portfolio, the guy did things that shipped in millions of units.

It was a good design, in critical environments small goose-neck lights are typically used, even if the buttons and indicators are backlit. I still prefer it to backlit keyboards which, with decreasing thickness, increasingly compromise the quality of the keyboard (I have tested this with later chicklet models running through all available keyboards for a few era ThinkPads). Having a small amount of ambient light is easier on the eyes, especially the yellow-shift on the X40, and you can run the screen at minimal brightness to increase battery life and whatever health benefits this all has.

I managed some 200 ThinkPad branded laptops around 2018-2020 and that era had issues with Thunderbolt firmware. I believe something wrote to it's memory that was meant as WORM storage, breaking things eventually. I went around all the T480's to update the firmware. In my experience the docks were craptacular but the laptops were pretty solid.

Unlikely that it is actually bricked. I had an issue with the T14 Gen 1 AMD that if the battery was fully drained by S3 sleep, I couldn't charge it with the Lenovo charger anymore. However, using a MacBook charger it charged fine.

Which Thinkpad model is that?

A quick Web search shows examples from more recent models with any OS.

It still has issues with sleep still. It just borks the wi-fi now. Need a restart to use the internet again.

Doubt it was the thinkpad's fault. Sleep and bluetooth is still a shitshow on linux.

How did that happen?