"jminer" (jminer)
06/11/2020 at 12:35 • Filed to: None
4
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"jminer" (jminer)
06/11/2020 at 12:35 • Filed to: None | 4
| 40 |
Oppo has gotten more vocally techy lately mostly thanks to Rusty and the creation of the super-awesome Oppo Folding at Home team. So I figured I’d share a passion of mine.
I am dubbing t oday a s ThinkPad Thursday!
**This is not a theme day as I figure there aren’t many folks like me who fetishize these IBM/Lenovo personal compute devices on Oppo **
For t hose of you who aren’t familiar with ThinkPads, they’re a laptop family originally made by IB M until ~15 years ago and then by Lenovo from then until now. Their trademark has always been their keyboard and the TrackPoint.
**I know there are those that hate that red nipple in the keyboard but I love it - they’re amazing and will use it 90% of the time over a trackpad and even usually over a wireless mouse**
ThinkPads were mostly focused on the business consumer and developed a (well deserved) reputation for reliability, performance and durability. Counting work devices I’ve probably owned or daily operated 25 of them over my 15 year career in IT. Hell I have 5 in my house right now...
Today’s ThinkPad used to be my wife’s daily driver - an X201 Tablet
This particular device was bought to replace a Toshiba Tablet - my wife always preferred these type of devices and has used them since 2004. She loved the portability, flexibility and the ability to use a stylus for notes and such. Yes the iPad had come out by 2010 but they cost a lot and couldn’t come close to the level of functionality of a full laptop like this - hell they’re barely there today and this was a long time before web-apps.
In-Unit Pen Storage! This is how you don’t loose a $100 pen! My wife still complains about the iPad Pro and the lack of good pen storage options in the cases for it.
This X201 Tablet has a first generation Core i7- 620LM which has 2 cores and 4 threads running at 2.0 Ghz base frequency. It also has a 12.1" screen that runs at 1280x800 and actually looks good today as it was available as an IPS panel and has pretty decent brightness. The X201 Tablet was also one of the first batch of windows devices to support multi-touch in a non-specialized device.
To make up for the less than miserly i7 they offered a giant battery that doubled as handle on the back of the device. You could securely hold it in one hand while operating it with the pen in the other.
I actually deployed a fleet of these (and their successors the X210 and X220) at my workplace at the time to replace large stacks of paperwork our PM’s used at a disaster restoration company . This in conjunction with a document management system allowed our PMs to only come into the office once a week instead of several times a day to turn in and retrieve paperwork and across the fleet ended up cutting something like 5k miles a month less driven (it was a long time ago and don’t remember the exact numbers).
The laptop has no optical drive, but was available with the UltraBase which gave you an optical drive, extra I/O and a place to plop it onto to work.
This device finally got put to backup duty a couple years ago as my wife has migrated to an iPad Pro for 75% of what she does and used her desktop/borrows my T hinkP ad for the rest.
Booting it up this morning I see that the OS install on it is actually from 2012! I am shocked I left it on there that long. I used it as a primary laptop for a bit after my wife retired it but it was getting way too hot so I put it away. I’ve ordered some fresh thermal paste and that plus a new OS I think will make it happy for a bit again.
This guy has been kept around because it still has the classic ThinkPad keyboard which is glorious to type on. A few years after this they changed to a island style keyboard as they were very popular (and still are). The modern T hinkP ad keyboard with TrackPoint is by far my favorite modern mobile keyboard to type on - enough so I bought a small version that I use with devices like Raspberry Pis.
The above picture is both my small ThinkP
ad keyboard the X201 showing the difference in style between them.
This article turned out way longer a lecture than I expected and am making myself stop or it would easily triple in length. If I’m bored later I’ll make another of these going into one of the other ThinkPad laptops I have. Today I am actually decommissioning a pair of them though - an E530 and an E531. They are old enough they’re not great for daily use but also beat to hell physically so they’re getting stripped for parts today.
Thanks for reading my crazy long ramblings about a ThinkPad laptop today Oppo!
themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 12:45 |
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I have a literal stack of T41s in my living room right now. I’m amazed at how easy they are to service and troubleshoot. The packaging is second to none and holy crap, the screens and hard drives are still good after 15 years. I am selling all of them, but I really want to keep one that has the Radeon 9600 in it as a retro gaming machine.
Damn impressive machines for the time.
CB
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 12:48 |
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I've had a ThinkPad for two and a half years now. 10/10 would recommend.
Nom De Plume
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 12:49 |
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Single language user trimmed W10 x86 is so light compared to W7. I’ve installed this on some laptops I thought were so far behind the times they couldn’t possibly be worth the effort. At least the ones new enough to be somehow capable of accepting SSD aware BIOS were surprisingly nimble.
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jminer
> themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
06/11/2020 at 12:51 |
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Hells yes - I have a T42 over in the corner with a battery that still holds a damn charge. I tried replacing the HDD with a SD card but cheaped out on the adapter and it didn’t work. A project to pick back up another day.
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jminer
> CB
06/11/2020 at 12:53 |
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They’re amazing. I * cheaped* out a couple years ago when I wanted a thinner and lighter personal laptop and bought a Yoga. It still cost me $800 and I had to replace the keyboard and screen within a year and a half from buying it.
I said screw it and paid $1500 for a E480 with an i7- 8550 and an RX 550 a year and a half ago and love the damn thing. It’s a tank and will be my daily for several more years.
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jminer
> Nom De Plume
06/11/2020 at 12:55 |
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I’ll give it a try - I usually toss Ubuntu on older devices to make them usable this X201 though has a lot of proprietary drivers with the pen and touch screen though so I doubt it would play nice with Linux.
It has an SSD today but it’s 8 years old so I’ll probably pop in a newer one with fresh Win 10 and a few more GB of RAM. It has a single 4 GB stick in it now so I’ll double that to 8.
Gone
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:02 |
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Love the TrackPoint. Have had two Lenovo versions. Previously had the T440 ( HATED the touch/clickpad ugh) and now have a T 480s . I have a ThinkStation for the heavy lifting and just use the laptop to go to boats/ sites, a nd now Teams calls . Big fan though, they get put through a lot and don’t care . My wife’s job gives them Dell laptops now (previously ThinkPads), poor souls.
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themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:02 |
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AH, that’s right, it was the 42, not the 41 that has the radeon.... But still, that was a hell of a line. I think my first office computer was one. The docking stations are a retro trip on themselves too! Soooooooo many ports and connections.
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jminer
> Gone
06/11/2020 at 13:05 |
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That generation where they got rid of physical buttons on the top of the trackpad were the worse. My E531 had that and it was awful.
My current main personal laptop is an E480 and it’s glorious!
Our work uses HP which are okay but not great. I still love the ThinkPads and have a problem using anything else for personal stuff. I bought a Yoga a few years ago because the keyboard was alright and expected ThinkPad like durability and was sorely dissapointed. Within a year and a half I had replaced the keyboard (which was riveted to the case) and the screen so it got replaced with the E480 I rock now.
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jminer
> themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
06/11/2020 at 13:08 |
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It’s awesome r ight? Even the ports available on the old thinkpads are awesome. My T42 has an expansion slot, mic, speaker, modem, ethernet, PS2, 2 USB, parallel printer port, VGA and a DVD drive!
To be fair every single port there can be replaced with a USB type C and a dongle but I like the variety and I hate dongles!
If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:12 |
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I’ve been casually browsing for a 25th Anniversary model to pop up a t a good price for some time now. It’s based on the recent T470 but they brought back the classic keyboard and colorfu l logo.
I just ordered my mom a T450s to replace her creaky old X220, mostly because she needs a better webcam for Zoom. I have the T440s and it's honestly even better than the legendary T420, so I figure she should get another 6-7 years out of this new one.
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themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:20 |
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While I fully agree that the USB needs to be flipped at least twice before inserting it correctly, can we also all agree that trying to plug in one of these:
Basically amounted to using one of these:
Our lab in college had some equipment from the 80s and early 90s. So we had some old computers around and had to get good at switching around peripherals and equipment by feel for the plugs and ports alone. So trying to plug in the PS/2 keyboard (model M, no less!) resulted in an undergrad giving a reacharound to a desktop with a very intense look on their face.
facw
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:24 |
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I have had the following Thinkpads:
Thinkpad I1200:
Kind of shitty, but I knew that going in I preferred to have a good desktop and a $1000 junky laptop than the ~$2500 Thinkpads my college recommend for people.
Intel® Celeron(tm) Processor
500MHz, 32MB,6.0GB HDD, 24X CD, 56Kbps Modem, 12.1" HPA Display, Windows 98
That display was not a great, an 800x600 passive matrix screen, which really couldn’t handle motion at all. You could play Civ III, but let’s just say Starcraft was not a success, and forget anything needing 3D acceleration. No ethernet or wifi, so I had PCMCIA cards for those. My only IBM Thinkpad.
Thinkpad X200s:
Two laptops (a chunky Dell and a no name ulraportable) later, I was back to Thinkpads with an X200s. The big attraction was the 1440x900 screen at a time when it was hard to get anything better than 1280
x768 on ultraportables. Note that it lacks a trackpad, even though the regular
X200 had one. This was a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and a 320GB HD. I replaced the HD with a 128GB SSD the next year, upgraded the wifi to 802.11n (refused to boot if you put it in the wifi slot, but there was a weird thing where you could cover one pin with tape and put it in the WWAN slot instead), and I’m pretty sure upped the RAM to 8GB. I liked this machine, though I ended up loaning it to a friend much of the time I owned it (I also had a work Vaio Z at the time, which was an excellent machine as well).
Thinkpad X250:
Work machine. Core i5-5200U, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD (who the hell buys a non-solid state drive in 2015? ), thankfully later upgraded to a 256GB SSD. I loved my IT department for issuing ultraportables and hated them just as much for specing them with the god-awful 1366x768 display instead of the 1080p version, making this thing basically useless without an external monitor. Actually had three of these due to various issues mostly centered around the CPU fan failing.
Thinkpad X260:
Also a work machine. i5-6200U, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD (replaced with the SSD from my X 250). Basically the same machine as the X250, minus the fingerprint reader (which our IT disabled with our Win10 upgrade anyway), and with more modern graphics outputs. Replaced the X250 when the X250 fan failed again, and they didn’t have any spare X250s to give me. Same horrible low-res screen and inadequate RAM. Otherwise a decent machine. I’ve still got this kicking around, but my main work machine is now a Macbook Pro (I’d much prefer a Windows/Linux dual boot ultrabook, but our IT has very limited flexibility).
I’m thinking I may buy myself an X1 Carbon this year
if there are good B
lack Friday deals, my 2016
Asus
Zenbook is getting a bit long in the tooth, and has a somewhat broken trackpad, and unfortunately options for cheap ultraportbles with > 1080p screens are pretty limited at the moment.
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jminer
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
06/11/2020 at 13:25 |
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I would love one of the anniversary editions.
Aso I spent a fair bit of time this week hunting for the right T430 to buy on eBay as the CPU is socketed still and you can mod them to take the classic keyboard off the T420. A big 3rd gen i7 and 16 GB of RAM plus a MSATA SSD you have a hell of a machine.
I ultimately called it off after adding the costs and realizing it wouldn't be much more than a toy. It's be fun but my E480 still can do more, is lighter, with a bettery screen and battery life.
TheRealBicycleBuck
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:27 |
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My first laptop had a nubbin too!
I feel compelled to find the charger to see if it will still boot.
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facw
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
06/11/2020 at 13:37 |
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It’s pretty disgusting that even new machines with 1080p or even 4k screens frequently come with crappy 720p webcams. Meanwhile cell phones with their tiny screens get high-res front cams. And while Zoom seems to do okay with higher res video. Google Meet defaults to 360p and maxes out at 720p (at least for the free tier, maybe the business version does better).
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facw
> themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
06/11/2020 at 13:38 |
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GRS1
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 13:57 |
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I still DD a T430 w/ the T420 keyboard. Only major flaw is the screen. There is an upgrade, but the last time I checked, reviews were mixed...
I really wish the TP25 had been appropriately priced.
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jminer
> facw
06/11/2020 at 14:06 |
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I love the history of you thinkpads - It kills me that so many laptops are still 768 - I can’t stand using that resolution anymore. I found it too small in 2006!
I almost bought a Macbook this last round but hated typing on the butterfly keyboard so I went with a thinkpad E480.
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jminer
> TheRealBicycleBuck
06/11/2020 at 14:07 |
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I love that some Dells and HPs still have the nubbin. My previous work laptop was an HP elitebook with a nubbin but my current one doesn’t have it.
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facw
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 14:10 |
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Yeah, this Mac book is one of the new 16" Macbook Pros with the allegedly less shitty keyboard. It’s livable at least. I find the force touch trackpad much more irritating (I don’t know how Apple can think right clicks are too complicated, but that having slightly different pressures on the trackpad do different things is good ergonomics).
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jminer
> GRS1
06/11/2020 at 14:10 |
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If I bought one I was going to upgrade the T430 to an HD+ screen but that’s not quite FHD and meh brightness and still TN . That was that killed the idea for me. I couldn’t bring myself to spend $150 on a decent base + $ 100 for a decent battery + $150 on mods (including the screen) for a project that will had plenty of processing power still didn’t look great.
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jminer
> facw
06/11/2020 at 14:12 |
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I will admit I use zero trackpad gestures outside of 2 finger scrolling so that giant apple trackpad is wasted on me. I would just rather have my trackpoint nubbin plus a trackpad for those few times it is better with a mouse for when I game.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 14:12 |
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I wasn’t aware that the nubbin was still available on Dells. I’ve had a series of them through work and none of them were so equipped.
I bought that laptop back in 2001.
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jminer
> TheRealBicycleBuck
06/11/2020 at 14:22 |
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Up until a couple years ago you could still get it on some of the dell laptops.
Looking again it was last available on the Precision 7720 a few years ago.
barnie
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 14:54 |
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Was doing routing on a race boat years ago that had one of these. Now, I always carried a trackball in my gear bag cause I don’t like the pads and mice slide around in waves. But I got to like this little nub and the buttons close to the bottom edge . And that keyboard! Stuff of dreams. My old Geos (back in Win 3.1 days) had this feel ( with a marble-sized trackball be side it) . So clicky and just the right size.
Older Panasonic Toughbook CF-C1s had a nub, too, but the k eyboard was not near as good as this. They became popular for hardiness. B lack case/ keyboard /bezel are much easier to work with under nigh ttime red or green lamps than light colors . And, try to use a stylus in a rolly sea; as likely to p oke holes in the screen as hit the mark...
Thanks for the memories.
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jminer
> barnie
06/11/2020 at 15:44 |
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You’re welcome - thanks for sharing your stories too!
cberg
> jminer
06/11/2020 at 21:40 |
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My flopponaut machine is a max spec’d x220t. I’m on a P1 with a Xeon right now. Damn shame my company doesn’t buy ThinkPads too.
404 - User No Longer Available
> jminer
06/12/2020 at 15:14 |
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Can I join too?
...just kidding.
I have a Yoga 260 myself.
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jminer
> 404 - User No Longer Available
06/12/2020 at 15:22 |
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I like it - you made me laugh there!
Finchster
> jminer
06/13/2020 at 05:57 |
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IMO... one of the best thinkpads is the T440p..
Can buy bare bones for cheap. Upgrade the CPU up to a 4910 i7 quad core with 16gb of 2133... swap the keyboard out for a backlit version if the one you got doesn’t have it. SSD primary drive, CD > 2.5" drive adapter with a bigger storage drive. The trackpad is absolutely horrible but you can swap it for the T450 (I think? I may be wrong about that model). New Wifi card and (if you want) a small M.2 drive slot for a THIRD physical drive. And best of all you can swap the panel for a 1920x1080 matte or glossy panel with around 75% NTSC which is higher than a lot of companies are putting in their “ budget” models.. (looking at you, Asus, MSI and Lenovo..)
Nibby
> jminer
06/13/2020 at 08:34 |
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i used to swear by thinkpads but now have switched to latitudes and elitebooks... the modern thinkpads keep removing things that made thinkpads great like the older keyboard, upgradability, etc.
Grindintosecond
> jminer
06/13/2020 at 10:51 |
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x201 was incredible. it was like the Joshua Tree album, or Thriller, or VH’s 1984. Just a monster hit. Also was something around $1,5 00+ new i think..
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Grindintosecond
> TheRealBicycleBuck
06/13/2020 at 10:53 |
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I had that exact thing. inspiron 8000. I had the floppy and ZIP drive bay swaps. It was quite good for what it was then. The S-video out was a dream....for the TVs that used S-video.
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jminer
> Nibby
06/13/2020 at 12:12 |
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I will definitely give you that they’re not what they used to be and I honestly haven’t found a modern replacement of them. For a lot of folks the Macbook pro replaced them but then they stripped away all the ports and changed the keyboard to a crap one. With the latest generation it may be again. To be honest I don’t need a laptop a half inch thick - I’d rather it have a few ports, be upgrade able and durable.
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Nibby
> jminer
06/13/2020 at 13:00 |
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elitebooks have plenty of ports (at least the 830/840/850 series) and upgradable RAM, WiFi, storage
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jminer
> Nibby
06/13/2020 at 16:18 |
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That’s all the same upgrade ability as my thinkpad e480.
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Nibby
> jminer
06/13/2020 at 16:36 |
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yea but the *90 and newer ones have soldered WiFi and only one free RAM slot... some have just soldered RAM now like the X390 and T490s
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jminer
> Finchster
06/13/2020 at 16:55 |
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The T440 is a solid machine, but the T430 can do everthing in your list except a 1080 screen plus you can put the classic keyboard on it...
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jminer
> Grindintosecond
06/13/2020 at 16:58 |
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It is an amazing laptop. I think this one with the i7 and the ultrabase it cost something like $2500!