/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

xsauc buyers guide:
dankpads.com

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

Helpful links and resources (Wiki, lookup tools and wallpapers):
pastebin.com/DYjEnVq1

Other urls found in this thread:

pastebin.com/DYjEnVq1
support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds001322
x220.mcdonnelltech.com/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

>pastebin.com/DYjEnVq1

these wallpapers sucks ass

What do you guys think the max you'd pay for a X201 with an i7-M620. I'm following an auction now and I'm not sure what to bid up to.

everyone gets to see my post yay im that annoying guy everyone knows


HI!

$100

I just can't get behind a thinkpad, it's so ugly and aesthetics are important to me.

I just run linux on an asus notebook

function > form

stop being a gay numale

what makes a thinkpad any more functional outside of maybe it's modularity?

Remember to check the last thread for my special battery information.

>durability
>keyboard
>designed to be maintained (chinkpads are getting worse in this regard though)
>won't break if you get one drop of water into the keyboard area
>aftermarket batteries cheap, you can buy a couple and have dozens of hours of run time
etc

This meme is a load of shit. Thinkpads have a unique, simple and consistent appearance that emphasizes being a tool for work over being a fashion accessory. You want ugly, take a look at Latitudes after the E6410 or any gaming laptop. There are some downright repulsive systems out there. Thinkpads aren't among them.

Asus is churning out ultrabook Mac clones, why even bother if that's what you're into? Just get a Macbook Pro and enjoy the emoji bar.

>aftermarket batteries cheap
but which ones?
what did he mean by this?

Should I buy an X1C4 Sup Forums?
Like 650 on outlet

Are there any modern Thinkpads that can approach the battery life of an X230 with 9 cell + slice?

>but which ones?
For older Thinkpads they're usually churned out in batches it seems and B2B'd over Ebay and Amazon. You'll see what is obviously the same case being sold filled with cells by several companies. I've always used Amazon because of their easy return policies for buying batteries and I went by the reviews, haven't gotten a bad battery yet.

>what did he mean by this?

start there and read

Their new thinn ultrabooks get six hours just like their (((mobile workstations))) topkek.

Hey, I have couple retarded questions.

How accurate are battery capacity indications on Windows 10? Does picrelated certainly mean that this T420 can actually run on battery 5ish hours, or is there any chance that it will give me far less time?

How good are 5 - 6 hours for a T420 9cell? Is it like somewhere in its midlife, yet still not bad for what I can expect of a used battery in a 6 years old laptop?

What are some good utilities to test battery on Windows 10?

>screen bezel is now just a fucking sticker
oh china

Whats the difference between the thinkpad t430s and the t430. so far all I've found is that the screen on the t430 is better (1900×600) and it's slimmer/lighter. if that's it I'm definitely going for it because they're basically the same price as the t430 I'm looking at.
is one clearly better? Is there a better thinkpad in general that is just as budget friendly?

>Hey, I have couple retarded questions.
>How accurate are battery capacity indications on Windows 10? Does picrelated certainly mean that this T420 can actually run on battery 5ish hours, or is there any chance that it will give me far less time?

It samples the recent load in the past couple minutes or so and projects your battery life from there. If you go from nothing open, to watching your 288fps 10 bit cartoons or gaymen, and then back to nothing again, you'll see your battery life projections were all over the map.

This is how every mobile device, laptop, etc works and has always worked. The battery indicator is just a guess if it displays anything more complicated than voltage.

>How good are 5 - 6 hours for a T420 9cell? Is it like somewhere in its midlife, yet still not bad for what I can expect of a used battery in a 6 years old laptop?

Depends 100% on how the battery was treated, go read my battery information to see if you can bring an apparently dead battery back to life.

>What are some good utilities to test battery on Windows 10?

Sorry sonny I use Linux on my Thinkpads.

Mine does 7h of cartoons with mpv but i bought it new like five months ago.

Got mine today. Why my dissipator is bent?

Are the memory ddr3 dual channel?

Do I need to change my motherboard in order to put an i7 processor?

Both can have a 1600x900 screen, the t430s just doesn't have the 768p option. The t430s also has smaller battery and a soldered processor to the socket so you can't upgrade the processor.

the t430s has an easy to do fhd mod tho

WHAT THE FUCK?
I'm buying a macbook now.

I'd just like to ask, how is it possible that you fags don't know anything about batteries?

batteryuniversity.com holy shit read.

So what, just buy the first result and hope for the best? I was hoping Sup Forums would have a hot tip or a meme battery manufacturer

>just buy the first result and hope for the best
no, where did I say this

read the reviews and shit and be smart, don't be a retard and don't buy off ebay

>Why my dissipator is bent?
Mine is too but that's because of my own fault, it's pretty easy to bend them (and fix it as well).

don't know the model so can't answer the other questions

it's not going to be at the top if it's got 1 star, but amazon is full of people getting free stuff for positive reviews. If you look up powerbanks, the top results all do this.

X220.

Then yeah it's dual channel and the processor is soldered so you'll need to change the board to upgrade it.

This is why you bother with Amazon, you test your battery and if it's shitty you return it.

All the packs I've bought which had good reviews were filled with Sony or Sanyo cells, and with my careful battery faggotry they're currently both at over 110% capacity, while being about six months old.

Authentic Lenovo batteries are no better than the Chinese knockoffs these days, and are always 3x as expensive at least.

Thanks. I won't upgrade then. i5 is fine for me.

^ I should say, both the batteries I'm using in my current user Thinkpad are at over 110% rated capacity. I have many other batteries which I've bought but most of them are in storage. I maintain them every few months.

I have brought other batteries back from the dead with my procedures, from >5% capacity to 80% or more in some cases.

How do you maintain them? Do you change the water?

just go upthread and read you retard, obviously you don't know shit about batteries

I only read images.

Not like it matters, the Macbook is even worse now. If they were still making the 2011 models with upgraded internals then maybe I would consider switching, but I'm not leaving Thinkpads to go over to the Emoji bar or the keyboard with 45nm of travel.

Apple dropped the spill guard under the keyboard when they went Intel, Powerbooks were the last Thinkpad-tier Macs durability wise.

>It samples the recent load in the past couple minutes or so and projects your battery life from there.
Thanks for the reply.
I know this. I meant how accurate those predictions are on a given load. Well they normally are from my experience, but whadya know, perhaps they can be affected by either some windows bugs or lack of some drivers or something regarding the battery wear or something something.

>Linux
It's a local seller, which means I can see the machine in person and run whichever nice little test software before I buy it, unfortunately not likely to have a chance to install linux on it.

Genuine or chink?

Chinese and a counterfeit one.

No one has free international shipping for genuine lenovo batteries or anything tech-related so China is my greatest ally.

If your battery isn't calibrated it will lie about its remaining capacity and that obviously fucks up the estimate

T430 and x230 owners: what are your average browsing and idle temps?

I hope to god this is bait

I'm not saying you're wrong about it, just that I see someone saying that win 7 is the best for it, then someone else with 10, then 8.1, then debian. I would think there's a system that's specifically better suited than the rest for its hardware.

I have an x220 right here and for what I do mostly any system would suffice, but it'd be nice to use a specific system that will perhaps play with it better than others. I'm willing to use Windows 10 despite not liking it much if that's going to be a better option for the little thing but there doesn't seem to be a verdict of which system works better regardless of user preference.

>tfw x220 and t420 work nicely out of the box with almost every operating system
>even with fucking macOS

How badly can it lie?

And how do I calibrate it? Is this what I need?
support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds001322
> To enable the battery to indicate accurate state of charge and correct battery health, do the following procedures after the battery firmware update by this software.

>[Windows 8] // They don't have instructions for Windows 10, but I geusss same applies
> After updating firmware, reset the battery gauge for calibration, as follows.
> Have your battery 100% charged.
> Discharge it until 5% battery charge. Do NOT attach the AC adapter to the computer during discharge.
> Have it 100% charged, again. Do NOT detach the AC adapter from the computer during charge.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WHERE'S MY THINKPAD

not that unusual, anything with an Intel processor and no wifi whitelist will basically work

I have to disagree with that one.

I tried macOS and it works definitely nicer than one would expect, but not just good enough for work. Mainly I get worse battery life (not much really, so it's not exactly the biggest problem) than on Windows and the behavior between the touchpad and the trackpoint is a complete and utter mess.

The rest works fine, but... fuck me I don't find it comfortable to use with a skippy trackpoint that either has to register clicks twice or half of the time.

as long as you run it to empty and back to full again occasionally, the battery knows where its limits are.

>Mainly I get worse battery life (not much really, so it's not exactly the biggest problem) than on Windows and the behavior between the touchpad and the trackpoint is a complete and utter mess
For me is the complete opposite.

Sure i agree that the touchpad works like shit but i never use it however the trackpoint works just as good as ever and i get better battery than what i got on Windows as i posted here .

It's a T420.

Do you disable the touchpad through hardware?

I did and that disables the middle button scrolling for me. If I disable it with PrtSc instead, clicks won't register if I just touch the touchpad a little bit with my palm.

7 hours though? That's crazy. I can't get more than 2:30 on my 6 cell battery.

No i just don't use it, if i disable the touchpad the trackpoint gets disabled as well as if they were linked.

Pic related and this is with an upgraded quad core processor, you sure you also generated the SSDT for your processor for proper speedstep? (if you followed the insanelymac guide that is).

I followed this guide

x220.mcdonnelltech.com/

It was pretty no-nonsense I must say. Literally copy and paste shit. I did the ssdtPRGen thingie and copied that SSDT and all.

Maybe I need to recalibrate my battery? I got this thing refurbished so I don't even have a point of reference on how good the state of this battery is. I'd install any OS and do any tests if I had such point of reference to be honest.

Install windows7.

8 and 10 are shit for a x220, if you don't believe me then dual boot and compare temps, noise and battery life.

A tweaked loonix is fine too.

I used this one insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285678-lenovo-thinkpad-t420-with-uefi-only/ but looks almost identical, even takes some things from this t420 guide.

Also my 9-cell battery isn't even genuine as i said here , you can see where it misreports the capacity and gets stuck at 6% for a long ass time.

>I got this thing refurbished so I don't even have a point of reference on how good the state of this battery is
Install Lenovo Power Manager on Windows, there you can see the cycles of discharge and the state of the battery, then use BatteryMon and do your usual stuff while it's running in the background to get an estimate of how long does it last in its current state.

Is there a way to remove the fucking stains on my thinkpad's lid?

Many thanks.

This thing came with a Windows 7 Pro for refurb pcs product key. I wonder if it works with normal W7 Pro.

Paint thinner and a soft cotton pad

thanks user

I used turpentine and then isopropyl alcohol to clean mine, if everything fails there's always the "put a skin on it" option.

it should work, I dont see why not as long as its a decent pro edition and not a "ultimate black gold platinum edition" from some slav tracker.

If I got a libreboot thinkpad would I still be able to install Win7 on it? Would the install process be pretty much unchanged?

Don't fucking do this, try not to run your battery below 10% at a minimum unless you are trying to rejuvenate it.

Every time you bottom out a healthy battery you are damaging it slightly.

>it misreports the capacity and gets stuck at 6% for a long ass time
It can only estimate the battery's state by looking at the voltage. It doesn't know what 6% even means.

Anyway you should never run your battery that low unless you're cycling it in order to refresh it, AFTER it has dropped below 50% original capacity.

You're frying your battery user. Stop it.

>Paint thinner
>turpentine

don't do this user, alcohol and that orange-based goo gone cleaner are all you need

you cant be this retarded surely...

Do I get banned if I share a link of my ebay auction for a ThinkPad here?

Well, I'm a newfag to Thinkshit, so yes

No but some user might troll you and not pay for it lol

go ahead

Yes, you should do this. Hitting 0% once a month is worth it to actually know how much charge you have. Your battery won't last forever, 0.001% doesn't make a difference.

thanks user

>Hitting 0% once a month is worth it to actually know how much charge you have. Your battery won't last forever, 0.001% doesn't make a difference.

Draining the battery all the way is extremely hard on it. Who cares if you "know how much charge you have" if you're having to fry your battery every month figuring it out?

The fact it's way more than 0.001% damage to the battery for each full discharge. This is just how it is, physics and chemistry user. Look into cycle depth vs battery longevity.

Don't drain below 10% unless your battery is already below half its rated capacity.

It doesn't actually hit 0.0%, it knows when it's close. How can I avoid 10% if I've got no idea if I'm on 15% or 20%? It's fine. My MBP battery is over a year old and still above 100% rated capacity.

The thing is, when i used Windows all the data that the Lenovo Power Manager application reported about the battery and the firmware was from some generic 6-cell battery from another lenovo laptop, not even a thinkpad.

Basically (i think) this thing works as a 6-cell with firmware of a 6-cell battery but since it has 9 cells it lasts some extra hours before discharging and when charging it gets stuck at 99% for plenty of time too, as i said it's not even genuine but lasts like one.

I have no way to know the real percentage at all, most of the time i use it from fully charged to 5% and the screenshot i posted was an exception to see how long would it last.

so my X220T touch/pen screen died on me.

looking for a replacement i ordered a X230T with horrible keyboard and horrible touchpad+ x220t keyboard +x220t palmrest and those chinese usb programmers.

total was 200usd. did i did gud?

>It doesn't actually hit 0.0%, it knows when it's close. How can I avoid 10% if I've got no idea if I'm on 15% or 20%?
10% becomes your new 0% user. This is how all semi-'smart' batteries work, they only know the lower limit you allow them to reach.

>It's fine. My MBP battery is over a year old and still above 100% rated capacity.
Apple was smart enough to invent actual intelligent lithium batteries which bypass a high-resistance cell and there is a voltage converter with a wide enough range to supply the battery even as cells are worn out. You're comparing apples to oranges user.

>The thing is, when i used Windows all the data that the Lenovo Power Manager application reported about the battery and the firmware was from some generic 6-cell battery from another lenovo laptop, not even a thinkpad.
>Basically (i think) this thing works as a 6-cell with firmware of a 6-cell battery but since it has 9 cells it lasts some extra hours before discharging and when charging it gets stuck at 99% for plenty of time too, as i said it's not even genuine but lasts like one.
It's common for generic batteries's chips to misreport themselves, you should be fine.

>I have no way to know the real percentage at all, most of the time i use it from fully charged to 5% and the screenshot i posted was an exception to see how long would it last.
The deeper you cycle a battery the faster it wears out.

specs?

>^ supply the battery
supply the computer i mean to say

anyway that apple battery is using patented apple technology which is designed to extend its life because you can't change it for a new one easily, really nothing to do with removable Thinkpad batteries

3320M and 4GB ram no SSD.

listen guys save yourselves some time and feeling dumb, read and follow my battery tips:

and read batteryuniversity.com

>The deeper you cycle a battery the faster it wears out
I know but when reaching 6% basically means "your battery has between ~40% and 6% capacity left :^)" that's a couple of extra hours i could (or not) squeeze out of the battery.

I agree with you about not discharging the battery too low, in fact that's what i do with my phone but when it misreports charge i can't do shit.

>Facebook machine is more long lasting and real world usable than muh business laptop

>I know but when reaching 6% basically means "your battery has between ~40% and 6% capacity left :^)" that's a couple of extra hours i could (or not) squeeze out of the battery.
If you weren't in the habit of running your battery so low in the first place its voltage wouldn't drop to this critical level so fast. Next time take better care of your batteries.

>I agree with you about not discharging the battery too low, in fact that's what i do with my phone but when it misreports charge i can't do shit.
>misreports
Forget about percent and time estimates generated by software written by poos and chinks, look at voltage. It's good you agree, if you read all about it you will believe it even more.

>>Facebook machine is more long lasting and real world usable than muh business laptop
Yes we all bemoan the shit state of chinkpads here.

Also I should mention that all damage to batteries is cumulative, you don't lose up to 0.2-1% of your rated ORIGINAL capacity for each full discharge, you lose it over your current capacity.

So fucking don't discharge your batteries so deep.

He bought a battery that has an identity crisis, nothing to do with how he used it

Where does a simple pleb find a good battery for a t420? Preferably not very expensive.

>Amazon
>Local stores
>AliExpress/eBay

Would a lid for a T60 fit on an R60 (Assuming they are the same size screen lid)? My plastic lid is starting to crack and break, and was wondering if I could replace it with a metal lid from the T60.

>nothing to do with how he used it
Running your battery low habitually is bad, the chip misreporting shit is likely not the culprit.

Note they warn against full discharge.

>5% charge
when the laptop turns itself off, like I said, it's not running on fumes

You did fine

Maybe you're doing something wrong user?

>He bought a battery that has an identity crisis
it also runs at absolute zero

truly a majestic piece of engineering

xx30 are probably the hottest modern thinkpads

60c/90c is quite normal.

>much generic battery doesn't work right with OS X's battery software on my hackintosh
Oh top kek.

RIP T7250...