/tpg/ - ThinkPad General

Previous thread: IRC: #/tpg/ on irc.rizon.net

Other business laptops are also welcome in /tpg/ (e.g. Dell Latitude/Precision, HP EliteBook/ZBook).
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If you're looking for purchase advice, READ THE BUYERS GUIDE FIRST. Then post, stating budget and requirements (e.g. size and performance).
Don't buy anything OTHER THAN T, X AND W/P SERIES if you want the Real ThinkPad Experience™

Recommended models:
T420 - 14", normal size
X220 - 12.5", ultraportable
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Why ThinkPad? (also applies to other business laptops)
>Used machines are plentiful and cheap.
>Excellent keyboards - tactile feel and quiet.
>Great durability: chassis uses a magnesium rollcage for structural integrity, with high quality plastic body panels.
>Utilitarian design: e.g. indicator LEDs, 7 row keyboard layout on older models.
>Docking stations that easily turns your laptop into a desktop.
>Easy to repair, upgrade and maintain thanks to readily available service manuals for every model. Spare parts are easy and cheap to obtain.
>The best trackpoint (that red thing in the middle of the keyboard). Great for those who type a lot or hate swiping their fingers all over a touchpad.
>Excellent GNU/Linux & *BSD support.
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Used ThinkPad Buyers Guide:
ktgee.net/tpg

New guides by xsauc:
dankpads.com

EPP discount for new ThinkPads (USA & Canada only, usually 15%+ off):
pastebin.com/DujvzEzU

ThinkWiki - Info on ThinkPads and running GNU/Linux on them:
thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

ThinkPad service guides w/ tutorial videos:
lenovoservicetraining.com/

ThinkPad wallpaper collection:
imgur.com/a/NlepZ

Other urls found in this thread:

item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=43600546862&toSite=main
thinkwiki.org/wiki/Install_Classic_Keyboard_on_xx30_Series_ThinkPads
support.lenovo.com/product_security/smm_attack
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>I'm sure it'll be fine. I don't think a replacement heatsink is that expensive so look in to it.

yeah, thanks. I just need it to work the next couple of days, after that I'll have time to change it

X220t owners: Is it worth it to install a Linux distro on my X220t? I mostly just use it for art programs.

W530 has absolutely no heat issues.

here are my temps immediately after 3 hours of fallout 4 gameplay on medium settings

No, touch support on linux is flaky at best

I need a laptop for general document editing work and the occasional youtube video.
No games, no graphics card.
I have been looking at the Thinkpad L560 because I don't need the magnesium chassis of the T series.
Is this a good choice, and is there a tangible difference i5 6200U and 6300U?
My budget is about $800.
Would like a 14-15 inch size.
Prefer a 1080p screen.

Buy a used T-series instead, the T530 has a 1080p screen. Not only is it cheaper it also has a vastly superior CPU and is much easier to maintain

I do see that the processor is good, however I don't live in burgerland and can't find used thinkpads easily.
I would prefer to pay the new price for a no frills document editor and be done with it.

What country do you live in?

Singapore.

guys guys guys

a w520
1080p
quadcore i7, (2750QM)
Quadro 1000M

for $180

do I grab this shit like literally right now?
this seems really good, what should I look out for? this is on craigslist

Does anyone have any experience with
item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=43600546862&toSite=main
this 1080p mod from chinkland for the X220, or links to english forums discussing it?

$200 for T430 with i7 8gb RAM, 128gb ssd, and dock.

Should I buy?

Whats the screen resolution?

Its a good price anyways though.

fuck country ,why not vietnam?

Dont know, and seller doesn't know so I'm guessing 768p

Wait a minute. Is this an eDP to lvds adapter to drive the IPS panel? If yes, then this could be an option for the t420/t430 FHD mod.

So i need to know something about Arch Linux, because its the easiest distro to install CDE on.
I have a Thinkpad R30 with a 3.8gb hard drive, and i need to know if its possible to install arch on it with that limited amount of space.
Moreso, could i install firefox and shitpost from it?

I travel by train and plane a lot.

Thinking about picking up an X220 mainly because of the weight and the battery life.

Will it be ok for opening a dozen tabs on chromium or firefox?

I'm learning to program + build my own lightweight applications for engineering purposes (more like little tools)

I'm planning on running ubuntu with a Core i5-2520M +4GB of ram if that helps.

In the UK, I see them for around £140 ($210).

T 6 0 1 F
6
0
1
F

I have an x220t dual booting gentoo (awesomewm) and windows 10, I believe I have a 2520M and 4gb also. On gentoo it screams, gets like 6 hours of battery life while I'm using it (I mostly do programming with vim and shit). Windows 10 is a little less good, advertisements will fuck your shit up good, so make sure you have adblock going, gmail loads a little slow for my tastes, and if you use facebook much you'll see performance issues. Also some slight issues with powerpoint/word, just little hiccups more than anything else, also around 3 hours of battery life.

So that's gentoo and windows, I don't really know how to convert my experience into something like ubuntu with the unity ui, I'm also not sure if I saw a whole lot of "dozens of tabs" type use, but take that as you will.

Hey guys, I just got my X220 and I have some questions regarding the recent exploits in certain Thinkpads:


Should I change my BIOS to Coreboot? And by doing so is this backdoor avoided?

Or should I update the BIOS given by Lenovo?


Does the this update put me at some risk for Lenovo to have their own backdoor on my machine?

9cell or 6cell?

says 5.3Ah, whatever the cell count that corresponds to

6 cell = 5300mAh
9 cell = 7800mAh

thanks.

Just update

Tightened up the keyboard screw underneath the memory cover and the TrackPoint is now as stiff as I am for ur mum. Try it lads, feels amazing.

I wish shit like this was available somewhere moon wasn't the main language.

CDE is not secure.

Is a £14 9 cell battery on eBay legit? Not in the sense of it being genuine Lenovo but in the sense of working.

It'll probably work. Keep an eye out for catastrophic failure and/or explosions in the night.

It'll work but will have shit battery time and durability. higher possibly of housefires.

Not if it's for a **30 generation or newer Thinkpad. Earlier ones should be fine.

Help /tpg/, I am a robot with no freedom of thought. Should I get an eGPU to play light vidya on my thinkpad, or shill out billions of moosebux for an actual desktop build?

Neither. If you're actually doing "light" vidya, most dGPUs in ThinkPads are fine. My P50s plays PoE on Ultra @ full frames.

desktops are for plebs, eGPU life

Probably shoulda specified that I have a T420. Using an ASUS N53SV right now for vidya. If I get an eGPU, there would probably be lodse gains.

Just to reiterate, my friend's K2000M in his W530 plays most games on Medium fine via Steam.

If you're not getting a new machine though and don't like how your integrated/dedicated is performing, it's all preference really.

I want to buy a Thinkpad tablet because gimmicks and i would like a detachable screen.

What should i know about them?
How do they work?
Do they work like the usual 2-1 tablets with eMMC memory or the HDD is in the screen?
What about battery?

Which one should i get, the cheapest option that isnt x61t.

For the new BIOS update what did you guys use to create a bootable image of a USB? I tried Rufus, but it says it's not supported.

anyone here have experience undervolting an x60? i love that computer, but i hate the fan and i don't need all that power since i'm only using vim and terminal

i've tried playing around with cpufrequtils, but i didn't notice any difference

The X230 keyboard looks quite different from the X220, is it still good for typing like the T420 and X220?

Have you tried just changing out the paste?

Not IMO. If you're intrepid enough you can try this: thinkwiki.org/wiki/Install_Classic_Keyboard_on_xx30_Series_ThinkPads

Anyone?

While fixing my trusty old t420 I had to remove some of the tape on the board. Is there any real reason for me to replace it?

Is it weird that I find 17" the most comfy size even when lugging it around? The only issue I have is them not fitting in some (shitty) bags but that's a minor issue compared to how comfy the extra screen space is.

Anyone else who finds 17" perfectly portable and preferable to 15.4"/15.6"? Kinda curious if it's just because I'm a big guy

15" 4:3 is the best. Widescreen is inherently pleb-tier.

I prefer 12" laptops, always have.

Just purchased an X220 and a 120gb SSD for $230.

I'm fucking hyped.

That's a pretty damn sweet deal user, congrats!

explain the virtues of 4:3 15" over 16:10

So I updated the bios on my T420, due to the security flaw. Everything seems to be 100% fine, except the bluetooth which is acting a bit weird. TLP can no longer disable it on start up, and if I just remove the bluetooth manager from autostart, it is still running in the background when I start the computer. The only way to properly turn of bluetooth is via the icon on the toolbar. Anyone else have had any problems like this?

How is that a good deal? $230 is terrible for the xx20 series. You can get an X230 for about that price.

Good job retard, the backdoor only exists on xx30 and later models.

You are retarded. I got an X220 with i5, 8gb ram and 160gb ssd and a 9-cell for 220 euros. You can't even get this on ebay for that cheap, not to mention the shipping costs.

support.lenovo.com/product_security/smm_attack

I said I got the laptop and the SSD for $230. The X220 itself was $185.

>220 EUROS
Holy shit, that's even worse.

For BIN that's okay I guess, but if you waited even a few days at most you could snag one for ~$200. Also don't expect that battery to work if it's used at all.

Ah I thought you were implying they were bundled or that it came inside the laptop (stock SSDs in ThinkPads are absolute SHIT except the new M.2 ones). That's not bad then.

more real estate.

Except I didn't buy it off the internet and the battery is new. Stop trying this hard when most offers around 200$ are without an SSD, 4gb ram and with a 6-cell battery.

>he fell for the "battery is new" meme.

Wouldn't that come down to the actual resolution though
16:12 just doesn't seem that advantageous, it's not like I split up my windows vertically much and I'd rather have the pixels go to horizontal space what with almost all designs for software being aimed at it

Having more real estate is kinda pointless if it's used for whitespace so I can't say I'm entirely convinced, though that may be because of misunderstanding

>his "not new" battery runs for 10 hours

15" 4:3 is the ideal size and shape for a device meant to be used in your lap. Unless you're dangerously obese, your thighs won't be wide enough to fully support a widescreen laptop of the same size, so it'll wobble when you touch the edges. 15" is preferable to smaller form factors among Thinkpads especially, because smaller Thinkpads have drastically worse screens, inferior cooling, less modularity, and less features. The same usually holds true across other laptops as well, except maybe the bit about screens. While battery life might be better on these smaller models, it's generally not a big enough difference to make it worth all the compromises. With a high enough resolution like the 1600x1200 IPS screen offered on the 15" T60p, you have enough screen real estate to use two windows side-by-side comfortably, and the viewing experience on such a screen is divine compared to the TNs that came later, even though they were still pretty good on the 15.6" models.

It's weird. Laptops have all changed to 16:9/16:10 in the name of muh media consumption, but the iPad is 4:3 and what can you even do on that besides consume media? Shit's backwards as fuck if you think about it.

>he fell for the Windows battery life remaining meme

>windows
concede, beginner memester

Can anyone recommend me a thinkpad model for college CS major under $300?

X220 or bust.

Help.

I finally got myself a ThinkPad.

How do I stop being a Windowsfag once and for all? I'm comfortable compiling and doing the occasional coding on Linux, but have never used it as my day-to-day operating system. How do I join the true ThinkPad Linux master race?

>inb4 install gentoo

get a t420 and move on

>wobble when you touch the edges.
That explains why I haven't been able to comprehend why people dislike 17" laptops. I've got a 16:9 (wish it were 16:10) 17" and it's as snug a fit on the outside of my thighs when in my lap as can be, but then I'm 6'3" and squat lmao3.5pl8 so I can definitely see how it'd be an issue for most people.
I see your point, in any case, and have to agree that shit's weird considering the average main end-user.

install gentoo

Really though, there are tons of distros to choose from, you should look at them and decide yourself (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Arch, etc)

I've looked into them and even ran Mint for a short period of time, but it just feels so fucking terrible as a normal desktop distro. Even my friend who is comfortable with Linux dual boots into Windows for anything but coding and linux specific objectives (MAC Spoofing, WiFi cracking, and other leet hagger shit).

You don't need to be comfortable doing either of those to be comfortable in GNU(!)/Linux. Just take the dive man, it's comfy as fuck. I did it for a laugh and now I literally can't go back because tiling windows, better keyboard commands, easily configurable sexy aesthetics and fucking virtual desktops being as handy as they are is too good to leave.

I've been on OpenSUSE KDE so far but KDE's sort of a mess, keep getting segfaults in drkonqi and krunner occasionally shits itself and drains all my battery life, so I'm switching to LXQt (because for absolutely no reason at all I've decided to go Qt over GTK) soon, but shit's really easy once you take an hour to set up the basics.

What do you dislike? Maybe we can help fix it?
You may be trying to use it like Windows which is a mistake. Personally, as a complete newbie to GNU/Linux, I fucking hate Windows after already a month. It's just way too inconvenient and illogical to bother with, once I looked up the main differences between the two (e.g. keyboard shortcuts) so I wouldn't get tripped up by really weird shit.

How's battery life compared to Windows? I've heard Linux is generally shit for battery and I get a solid 10 hours out of my P50s in Windows doing non-gaming stuff.

Drivers are a bitch. First time I tried it just getting my wireless card required a fucking complicated wrapper (granted this was like 8 years ago - I know things have improved greatly). When I had to set up GPU instances in AWS I had to manually compile them (what the fuck?), and on my desktop half my shit seemed to break. I know games run like crap but I've accepted that I'll need to boot into Windows to do that for sure.

I'm probably using it wrong and expecting it to be like Windows. My friend runs Arch and says if I want to learn to use Linux and be "bleeding edge" I should start by compiling Arch and configuring it.

Also, I use a 16GB RAMDisk. Is there good Linux software for that? On Windows I wrote a small script to copy over folders into my RAMDisk temporarily with an explorer context menu. I'm guessing I should be able to rig up something similar in Linux with bash, but what about the RAMDisk software itself?

Just do it if your Thinkpad is fully compatible, and the overwhelming majority of them are. My setup forces me to at least dualboot Windows, as Linux doesn't know what to do about the Advanced Dock. Whenever I hit the undock button, all my running programs crash, and I'm pretty sure I remember it locking up on me when I redocked once. I run Xubuntu exclusively on my X220 though. It's honestly much more comfortable than Windows and I really wish I could be free from Microsoft across all my systems, but it's just not happening for such specific hardware setups as mine.

>GNU(!)/Linux
shut the fuck up RMS.

Where can you check compatibility?

Lenovo recommends RHEL7.2 64bit for my model (P50s).

Yay or nay?

I know all you guys love your old thinkpads but has anyone here tried the thinkpad 13? What do you think of it?

I already have a desktop but want an ultrabook for uni to take to lectures.

All other ultrabooks are consumer grade trash so I'd rather buy a thinkpad knowing the quality will at least be semi decent.

Would much rather buy a new machine than used, so I'd rather get this over a used x220 or whatever.

You have to pay for Red Hat, don't you? Fedora is the same thing, but without a pricetag. That said, my experience with Fedora on my T420 didn't go over very well. I find that Ubuntu and its derivatives tend to work the best out of the box.

Isn't Ubuntu a meme distro for normies?

It may be a meme distro, but it is still great for people who are taking their first dive.

If by "meme" distro you mean a distro where the majority of your time is spent actually doing work instead of making the distro actually work then sure.

Don't I WANT to spend time making the distro work if I'm looking to dive into Linux extensively? I believe that's why my friend recommended Arch.

Screen is nice, keyboard is OK, build quality is OK but it's built with a little more plastic than I am comfortable with. Not too bad for the price as long as you use a discount code.

Regular Ubuntu sucks, but the offshoots with other DEs besides Unity are generally some of the best starter distros. Ubuntu MATE and Xubuntu are respectable choices that just work. There's Linux Mint too, which makes its UI very Windows-like to make it extremely easy to learn, but it uses an older kernel and packages, which might not be so good to the new hardware in your P50s.

You can get new in box X220's, just be prepared to pay accordingly.

I'm looking to get a HDD adapter for the Ultrabay in my T410 because I have a lot of large 2.5" HDDs lying around but everything I find on Amazon/eBay looks like pic related, which ThinkWiki says does not connect cleanly due to the plastic border. Is there a good place or search string to get the right thing? anything else I should be aware of?

*buntu/Mint suffer from the same problems and shortfalls as any GNU/Linux, but they implement methods developed by volunteers of various levels of competence to hide all the complexity from the end user. When things break, the soft shiny veneer will shatter and you will still have to fix things by hand to make the distro work. I wouldn't recommend Arch though.

forgot picture

I used to feel the same about used anything and I still do, but I have bought two used thinkpads and I don't regret it for a day. The thing about thinkpads is that they are durable as fuck and almost everything can be replaced, so unless the previous owner was a complete knobhead, the laptop is gonna feel like new (especially with a new keyboard/battery).

If you really want to go that way then sure, but it's probably best if you start with something beginner friendly initially and learn about linux whenever you need to fix something or change something to fit you needs.

Diving straight in with arch which is a massive pain to install and requires a hour of trawling through wiki pages isn't fun. Trying to install arch before you've ever used linux is like trying to build a car before you've ever driven one.

Arch is a bigger meme than ubuntu anway. It's not used professionally, people only use it so they can spend hours upon hours tweaking with it and fixing it when it inevitably breaks. If you want a distro that is actually used professionally and is designed to actually get work done, get ubuntu or one of its derivatives (Mint, Ubuntu Mate).

You can always install arch at some point later if you want to. If you've never used linux before, start off with something basic. Even ubuntu will probably be challenging enough to begin with.

I think I'm going to go with Fedora based on a few opinions from personal friends. The friend who recommended Arch just likes the Bleeding Edge meme but also uses stable packages, and another friend said to go with CentOS for LTS Stable or Fedora for stable stable.

Is the x220 with the meme 1368x768 meme screen ok for programming and reading using loonix?

I'm looking to get one for portability.

At the moment I have a 15.4" 16:9 3+kg xps and I'm getting sick of carrying it around for 30 mins of battery life.

Or would I be better off with a t420? How's the battery life?

Sounds like a good choice. I've never used fedora properly but I installed it a while back and don't remember having any major problems. Good luck!

>used professionally
RHEL?

It's not good for reading PDFs at all. But I have a 9" tablet for that.