When she was 4 my daughter managed to shove one of those trackpad caps up her nose. At first she was going for the clown look but ended up in frantic tears and a visit to A&E at 2am
I don't think there's a sexier laptop design than the Thinkpad'. I've tried other manufacturers, a M2 Mac, Dell, HP, yet something always pulls me back to ThinkPads, even if the recent versions aren't the powerhouse the 4xx versions were. The black and orange combination just has something so alluring. That and also the flexibility of the warranty/support if you buy used. I've probably owned over 7 ThinkPads so far, which is a lot to me, I'm not that old. Many of these were sold or died, but I still keep my old T530 which is now a media server and it's a plan replacing my Latitude with a T14.
My ThinkPad (T480s) is turning 8 this year, and only got its first battery replacement last month. I've been carrying it with me everywhere, on every single trip (office or holidays alike), on all continents. In that same timespan, I used up 3 backpacks and 2 suitcases along the same routes. All I want for its replacement is not to cost an insane amount of money because of the made-up by AI components shortage, and maybe now that I'm older I would prefer a smaller form factor like the X1.
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.
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 wouldn't suggest going for a recent X1 as there are some driver issues on Linux.
My current one is a Thinkpad 14s AMD. As somebody who had most smaller Thinkpads and Dells in the last 15 years, this is my favourite machine so far: great battery, a decent GPU, still a Thinkpad, perfect Linux support.
Has any of the newer ThinkPad models been upgraded to use a metal case or they are still made out of plastic? Asking as that is the main deal-breaker for me
I rather liked the T-series (had quite a few!). But Lenovo are really running out of good will as far as I am concerned. They're riding the brand to destruction. Had some serious problems recently including one brick and one out of warranty battery turning up completely dead. The latter was an absolute nightmare to sort out resulting in a chargeback in the end.
I've taken to just buying multiple 2-3 year old "tested" units again (plenty of NOS ones out there) and keeping them alive via ebay which is what I was doing around the X201 era. Same with the desktops - mine is a 2019 M720T ThinkCentre that cost me $150 equiv a couple of months back (before the RAM pricing went mental)
I had a brief affair with Apple, culminating in a fairly nice M4 MacBook Pro, but quite frankly it scares me carrying that around and I really do not like Tahoe (Sequoia was fine). Back to Debian stable on the T14 gen 3 it is...
As much as I love the old thinkpads, the T540p was my last. The case being entirely plastic means it will eventually start warping, motherboard included, in short order turning your expensive device into a paper weight.
I don't think I'd consider getting any laptop that isn't a used thinkpad at this point. I use my old ones as servers, which I affectionately refer to as the ThinkStack.
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...
I was referring more to the classic T4XX line, like T480, T490 etc.
I don't know what the new T14 or T16 are worth, but if they have equal quality I'm highly interested !
I really like my T14.. Gen2? Some Intel 11th Gen cpu from a few years back. Still getting driver and firmware updates through regular windows updates, which is neat.
Well, you can't have a t4xx or t14 with 16" display. It's like saying you want a apple pie, but you really don't like apple, and want banana.
Lenovo is dead to me. I have nothing but issues and I'm not alone. We have a fleet of around 3000 X1E, X1C and T480s. The USB port regularly craps out not sending the display signal to the monitor so my co-workers regularly have to restart their Lenovo after they go to standby. This is super disruptive, especially for our developers. In some cases, connecting a display even causes blue screens. (All our monitors are Lenovo Think visions, too...)
I reported this issue to Lenovo and was stuck in the typical service desk loop of hell. Once I escalated the issue with our Lenovo representative the issue got some traction, but there wasn't any real progress for months and the troubleshooting remained nothing but superficial. Not a single expert got in touch with us to get some real and in-depth hardware debugging logs or whatever you need to truly analyse the hardware faults.
Ultimately, my employer decided to stop follow up on that with Lenovo and to just deal with it. We continue to buy these crappy laptops and monitors despite all the issues they cause us and shove the money down Lenovo throats, like any real company would. /s
The X1 looks nice but colleagues had thermal issues with theirs and the CPU is a bit limp so I skipped that particular problem.
My current one is a Thinkpad 14s AMD. As somebody who had most smaller Thinkpads and Dells in the last 15 years, this is my favourite machine so far: great battery, a decent GPU, still a Thinkpad, perfect Linux support.
I've taken to just buying multiple 2-3 year old "tested" units again (plenty of NOS ones out there) and keeping them alive via ebay which is what I was doing around the X201 era. Same with the desktops - mine is a 2019 M720T ThinkCentre that cost me $150 equiv a couple of months back (before the RAM pricing went mental)
I had a brief affair with Apple, culminating in a fairly nice M4 MacBook Pro, but quite frankly it scares me carrying that around and I really do not like Tahoe (Sequoia was fine). Back to Debian stable on the T14 gen 3 it is...
I had no idea David did the swooping mid-1990s AS/400s, I have a couple of those in my system collection and they definitely have an aesthetic.
It's t14 that are 14", it's in the name.
I really like my T14.. Gen2? Some Intel 11th Gen cpu from a few years back. Still getting driver and firmware updates through regular windows updates, which is neat.
Well, you can't have a t4xx or t14 with 16" display. It's like saying you want a apple pie, but you really don't like apple, and want banana.
I never owned another mouse as laggy and imprecise. Its design is good, but its basic mouse functionality is just very bad.
I reported this issue to Lenovo and was stuck in the typical service desk loop of hell. Once I escalated the issue with our Lenovo representative the issue got some traction, but there wasn't any real progress for months and the troubleshooting remained nothing but superficial. Not a single expert got in touch with us to get some real and in-depth hardware debugging logs or whatever you need to truly analyse the hardware faults.
Ultimately, my employer decided to stop follow up on that with Lenovo and to just deal with it. We continue to buy these crappy laptops and monitors despite all the issues they cause us and shove the money down Lenovo throats, like any real company would. /s
A quick Web search shows examples from more recent models with any OS.