/tpg/ - ThinkPad General

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

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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 SERIES if you want the Real Business Experience™

Recommended IBM models:
X60, X61, T60, T61, 860, Transnote, PC110

Recommended old models:
X200, W500

Recommended modern models:
X220 - 12", 768x1366, cheap and light
T420 - 14", 900x1600, easy to obtain, ideal size, socketed CPU, Ivy Bridge installable after Coreboot flash
T520 - 15", 1080p, Quadcore-CPUs
W520 - 15", 1080p, Desktop Replacement, 32GB RAM possible, USB 3.0

Last good models:
X230 - 12", USB 3.0, IPS option avaiable, classic keyboard installable
T440p - 14", last ThinkPad to have replacable CPUs, 1080p IPS displays avaiable
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Why ThinkPad?
>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

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

ThinkPad BIOS splash screen collection:
biosimage.booru.org/index.php

Other urls found in this thread:

pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-t-series-laptops/thinkpad-t420/downloads/ds018785
biosimage.booru.org/index.php
reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1b3laf/lpt_improve_your_wifi_signal_using_a_soda_can/
youtu.be/G9Nos1IFq4o
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

which thinkpad model is this?

Looks like a T420 without the touchpad but I might be wrong, anyway how did he replace the BIOS splash screen?

Definitely something with the xx20 keyboard that isn't X220
so it's either T420, T520 or W520 (last one unlikely)
or somebody modded in a xx20 keyboard into a xx30 ThinkPad, then it's either T430, T530 or W530 (again, last is unlikely, but I personally think it's a T420 as it is by far the most popular ThinkPad to be released)

thanks anons

>how did he replace the BIOS splash screen?
no idea really

It's a T420, you can tell by the placement of the fingerprint sensor (it's closer to the trackpad on the T430).
It's a T420 and not a T520 or W520 because those are just fucking huge and have way larger speaker grilles as seen in attached img.

I'm not sure if its contents are any different but this: pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-t-series-laptops/thinkpad-t420/downloads/ds018785 looks to be the utility to flash the boot screen for the T420. I know that on my T430 they literally had a text document that told you exactly how to do it.

What should I go with next after the X230?

hey that's mine!
>which thinkpad model is this?
It is a regular T420

>Looks like a T420 without the touchpad but I might be wrong, anyway how did he replace the BIOS splash screen?

The touchpad is there but I removed the friction film for aesthetics reason. (I only use the TrackPoint and the 3 buttons anyway)
>Replacing BIOS splash screen
Assuming you're using windoze, go to
>www.pcsupport.lenovo.com
and search your Thinkpad name
Download the BIOS Update Utility EXE and run it
go to the folder where it installed the files (usually somewhere in C:\DRIVERS\FLASH) and read the BIOS_LOGO.txt file for detailed instructions :)
You can find the Akari BIOS splash screen images here of course:
>biosimage.booru.org/index.php

So I have an X61 with generic AC Adapter and it gets too hot, compared to the original one that I have for the T420.

The questions are:
Can a T420 AC adapter (20V | 90W | 4.5A) replace my generic X61 adapter (20V | 65W | 3.25A)? Or it wil burn my X61?

What did you use to clean your TP?

semen

What are all of the upgrades I can get for a X220? I just bought one and am eager to get it.

I already know about:
>mSATA
>RAM 16GB
>WLAN

Also, are there any quad core CPU motherboards compatible with the X220?

I use 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol and microfiber cloth.
Make sure to clean your ThinkPad everyday!

no

but semen is good for you user

no, a quad core with that cooling system will explode
>ips screen
>9-cell battery
>docking station

How much do you think I could I sell my e550 for on craigslist? Refurb from Microcenter.

What's the best phone to complement your ThinkPad in:
>aesthetics
and/or
>functionality

If you have the a31 then the obvious choice is the palm pda with docking

For me it's the blackberry classic

...

anime stickers

>anime stickers is a phone

Is alcohol safe for the screen and lid cover?

for the rubber lid cover it's fine. not sure about the screen I use distilled water for that

When I turn on my x220 from hibernate with antergos, the screen is black and I have to restart it. Is hibernation just broken with antergos? I'm using it so if it's in sleep for long enough it'll hibernate and save battery because of the ssd.

Had that same issue with every distro I tried on my T60.
Fixed it with a BIOS update and never had another issue.

Thanks user. On a side note my X220 is arriving with a docking station.

Does the T440p have good battery life? My T420 barely lasts 3 hours. I know the x-series models are good but I prefer something with a bigger screen.

>My T420 barely lasts 3 hours
are you using the discrete card only with a 6 cell or something?

Is a t410 compatible with a 1tb 7200rpm hdd in the ultrabay? I don't know and don't want to buy one to find out it caps at 500gb or 640gb after the fact.

Anyone have any experience with the X1? Need something lightweight. Looking at the gen3 model right now.

>to find out it caps at 500gb or 640gb after the fact.
>drives with data caps
don't buy american drives with cuck shit like data caps then

>gen3
install gen2

yes, 3 hours is pretty shitty desu and 9 cells are expensive. so I'm looking for something which lasts longer and has updated hardware (mainly 1080p and usb3)

Wouldn't've done it without you, Sup Forums: my little Yoga 11E 3G

>Yoga
Why? Stick with the X, T, W, or P series.

>Up to Celeron N3160

are there any fairly recent thinkpad models with a hard drive caddy or a single screw to remove at most?

Yeeeah, I heard the Yogas aren't the best, but I got it because smol, relatively new, no fancy stylus screen to anger Linux, and cheap. I just want it as a shitty class laptop.
So far, I've had an even shittier Lenovo, non-Thinkpad lappy, and it's held fast (N22, eMMC drive and can't into BIOS, also not Linux certified by Lenovo, hence my buying a ThinkPad). If the Yoga shits the bed, I' guess I'll try one of the X series.

thanks?

I am looking to W510 Software+Drivers... Why is Lenovo's site so shit? Gib me links now, cucks!

I love my ThinkPad but I kind of want something I can carry around and still have good battery life. Is it dumb to get a Lenovo Chromebook and install Gallium on it? My x200T is still pretty light but the battery life still doesn't compare to lower spec'd Chromebooks.

I just received the X230 that I bought off of ebay from a really reputable seller. It's in near perfect physical condition.

However on first boot I was prompted to input a Windows activation code and they never provided me with one. When I chose to skip the step I was taken to the standard Windows 10 login screen.

They didn't give me any login information either.

I sent them a message immediately on ebay. Did I get scammed?

format the drive and reinstall windows / install linux

Alright I got a new W520-Q3-Quadro-2000M-04W2029-04W2031-04W2041
Motherboard for my thinkpad.
How ever the heat sink fans connector doesn't fit. Where the fuck do I find the right fan please help anons.

Seriously will suck someone's dick for help

Dude, obviously you bought the wrong board, you stupid faggot. Return it and buy the proper one.

how easy would it be to mod a thinkpad? im thinking about buying a newer model but putting it in an old chassis so i can use the hard drive caddy

SOMEONE FUCKING ANSWER ME! SHOULD I RUN LENOVO systemupdate5.07.0065.EXE?

don't just don't

w h y

It's not the wrong board..... it fits perfectly and the heat sink fits fine as well. It's just the fan connector

install gentoo

b e c a u s e

I was going to dual boot Win 8.1 and Debian. I have Gentoo on my X20... I prefer Debian overall...

n o t a r e a s o n

I've been wondering the same thing. I wanted to mod a z61t because I love the silver ibm logo and the regular thinkpad logo but it doesn't have the best specs. For just a word processor it won't be that bad but I always look to improvement if I can.
I know xsauc pondered the idea too but I don't think he's ever followed up on it.
I don't know how to help because I don't have any experience myself but I imagine it won't be easy.

e v e r y r e a s o n

>just convinced my girlfriend to order a x230 off ebay
too bad i'm dumping her soon

Well try and reinstalling the faulty board? if it fits without an issue, you bought the wrong board my nigga

Is she good to you? does she give you her arse? sucks you dry? don't do it

nah she's boring as fuck, a typical bitch I guess. I don't respect her enough to continue investing my time. A solid 7/10 I'd say

Turns out it was the correct board like I said. But for some reason the fan had an extended piece of plastic. With no connectors in it. It fit the other board but not this one
So I did abit of nigger rigging and cut the plastic end that didn't have any connectors off and mashed it into the fan socket.
Electrical taped the bitch so it doesn't fall out.
Will report back if it fails or works

Is it a good thing to reset the BIOS to defaults when getting a used ThinkPad?

for what purpose?

Hmm fan is working. However when I turn on thinkpad. The following occurs in this order

>power light, webcam, and fan all flash on for like a second then turn off

>then power light and fan activate. Nothing on monitor. But fan over time begins spinning faster and faster and just continues till I turn it off
So do I give up or go to some place and make them do it for me

are you the same guy just asking the same question or are you a different guy?
Either way it doesn't matter, you don't need to reset anything, just look through the bios and change it as you need to if you need to. Chances are whoever owned it before you probably doesn't even know what a bios is so don't even worry about it.

My Thinkpad makes a high-pitched humming noise whenever it is on sleep mode. Is this a windoze problem or a thinpad problem? very distracting desu

I think it's just a thinkpad problem. It hasn't been updated in a while but go to the thinkwiki and look up your model number and see the known problems. High pitched noised are usually listed there.
I've personally noticed with my T420 that it emits a high pitched buzz when I scroll and move the mouse

I'm thinking about getting a docking station for my X230, should I go with Ultrabase 3 or Mini Dock 3?

so my wifi in my room keeps cutting out, for reference the router is right downstairs and my roommate also gets good wifi? any fixes?

im on a T530 if that helps.

do w520's all have the same fan or is there a variant for each gpu?

You can always do the soda can trick.

soda can trick?

afaik I only experienced 2 types of connections on a t520. One for discrete other for integrated graphics.
Are you saying the display doesnt even turn on? I thought it did even without fan connected.

could the fan have been for integrated graphics and not work for discrete?

reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1b3laf/lpt_improve_your_wifi_signal_using_a_soda_can/

huh...

Just installed Ubuntu on x220t. Seems pretty familiar, when will I need to start using the terminal more?

It's the orginal display. It worked with my old mother board
But now it doesn't. The fan works.
>computer starts up with a flash of the webcam then it quickly turns off for at least 10 seconds.
Then power button and fan turns back on. Fan starts spinning faster and faster
The display never turns on

>11pm
>Post my x201 on local e-shop cus i want to buy a x220
>11:10pm
>"Hey buddy, still selling?"

Shit, that was fast

>go to buy a t60 on eBay in UK
>they're all fucked up pieces of shit unless you pay about £120
>one of them was actually covered in cement

Damn It Sup Forums pushing the price up with your bloody memes!

D E V I L I SH
E
V
I
L
I
S
H

And no I had the 1000m discrete and and bought this mother board with the 2000m card.
The fan works. But now the monitor isn't showing anything.
The computer turns on and does this

I parted ways with my T60 and gave it to a friend of mine, what model should I get? X220 or T420?

Anyone here actively using a T420 daily? Wondering what are the limits of its intlel 3000 GPU. I thought I could get away with simple graphics and photo editing with it, on an external monitor of course.

Both are bad options.

Get an X230/T430 instead.

Was the fan loud on your t60? If so which core 2 duo did you have and which graphics card?

BIG BOI

fans only ramped when browser is doing anything heavy, its the Core Duo with Radeon X1400 model

I just had a fucking ordeal. My T420 was shutting off for no discernible reason, randomly. My error logs were saying jack shit, I wasn't getting BSODs or anything, my laptop just shut off or restarting when battery was in.

Originally I thought it was my ultrabay HDD caddy because it was $8 off Ebay and I read cheap ones can short out your computer. Removed it, still happened.

I thought it was my ram. Ran memtest86 for like 4 hours, no errors.

Googling pointed to a ton of people talking about CPU issues. Ran 2 benchmarks and Intel's diagnostic tool, not a fucking problem.

Then by stroke of luck, I noticed that when I push pressure on my keyboard, it turned off but it only worked sometimes. I started putting pressure around elsewhere and finally, I put pressure to the right of my trackpad, turned off every single time. So something to the right of my trackpad was causing this shit to turn off. Then I remembered, that's where the fucking fingerprint reader is supposed to be. My T420 didn't come with one though but could Lenovo in their infinite fucking wisdom maybe left a cable connected under there?

That is exactly what they did. Lenovo just left the fucking bare ribbon cable for the reader, right under the palmrest and because the cable is connected to the trackpad cable, it was getting electricity. As soon as I saw that, knew what the problem was. Sure enough, when I pressed the cable pins up against the metal construction of the fucking computer, it turned it off. It was getting shorted out constantly.

I put some electrical tape around the pins of the cable and its fucking perfect now. Not a single problem.

TL;DR: Fuck you Lenovo, you couldn't have put a shield over the fucking pins you assholes?

If you're having problems with your T420 restarting and you don't have a fingerprint reader, look out for that.

Portable vs Non-Portable
If you go for a x230/t430 get an old keyboard

Now you know why even IBM uses macbooks now.

Has anyone seen this video before? It's beautiful especially with the 25th anniversary coming up.

youtu.be/G9Nos1IFq4o

how to fix 9 cell battery wobble? I want to hold my T420 with the Rossmann grip but scared because of the wobble pls help

Howdy, niggers. Just chillin with my maxed out T60 libreboot Freedom Machine™ and haven't been by in a while. It's a slightly laggy day-to-day but I still love it for my dedicated laptop shitpost machine. About to add to the Lenovo family with a Thinkstation S30 for my dedicated Plex/file server.

How is the fan noise on your T60?

Get an x230 instead

Not terrible. But then I'm running thinkfan and phc to undervolt. When it goes full tilt, it sounds like a fan but it's not high pitched.

that's normal.
I do the rossman grip too and nothing has ever happened. Although I haven't tested it in a new york subway while someone tried to jack my laptop. I'm not even sure he has tried that part of his theory yet.

Thanks. If I bought one with a lesser processor and used it only for word processing and some very light web browsing would the fan piss me off when I'm writing. I'll be librebooting it and installing Lubuntu.

Put some electrical tape on the bottom of the battery (as in the side facing the laptop) to 'fill the gap'