What are /r/thinkpad's favorite Products & Services?

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I've had this laptop for a little over two weeks now and I absolutely adore it. I got it a day or two before I left on vacation, so I was able to really put it through its paces as a road warrior. (Do people still say "road warrior"?) Here is my mini-review:

I upgraded from an X201. I really like the 12" form factor of the X201, so I was a little iffy on the 14" screen. As it turned out, the aspect ratio of the screen means the front-to-back distance (the dimension that matters for a fat man in an airplane seat) is only like 1/4" greater than the X201 and it's only an inch or so wider.

It's so light that at first you think it might be flimsy, but it's actually really strong. (Thanks, carbon fiber chassis!)

I'm a lifelong TrackPointer, so I can't comment on the trackpad that I immediately disabled.

It's fast as hell (went for the 16GB model with the i7-8650U) super quiet, runs cool, gets amazing battery life and the screen is gorgeous. The keyboard feels very nice and the backlighting works great on a dark plane.

As an aside, I didn't really know much about Thunderbolt 3, but it's amazing. I bought one of these things, which you can plug your power supply, network cable, speakers, HDMI and USB (mechanical keyboard and trackball mouse, in my case) and you only have to connect one cable to the laptop and you've got everything. It's like a docking station, but better.

It's an Ultrabook, yes, but it's in every way a real ThinkPad. I effin' LOVE this thing.

Touchpad buttons can be replaced without changing the whole palmrest or touchpad. Not long ago I've bought a cheap T420 with a faulty touchpad button, I'm a Trackpoint user so it didn't affect me but my colleagues are not and needed a bit of help so I bought this from AliExpress.

Simply swap over of the old buttons and reconnect the ribbon cable and away you go. :)

NEW Original Three buttons Touchpad Clickpad Trackpad for Lenovo Thinkpad T440 T440S T440P T450 T450S T450P T540P W540 W541 W550S T550 X1 Carbon Yoag S3 S5 Yoga X1 Carbon Gen 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076JF393L/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ixotCb9P5TVAG

I bought it from nbparts, and despite description it DID come with a screwdriver and pick. It did NOT come with a cable but you can reuse the old one. Confirmed WORKING with synaptics drivers.

Tipp10 is my go to. It's free and a portable version is available, too. The German version of Consumer Reports once compared it to a bunch of paid programs and it was better than any commercial software they tested.

https://www.tipp10.com/en/index/

https://www.amazon.com/XPG-S40G-Gen3x4-Internal-AS40G-4TT-C/dp/B0897CV222

it's this model but you must to find locally best price :)

also it's not intended to fit laptops, rather for desktop usage - normally nvme has chips on one side - this ssd has chips on both sides so drive is thicker.

even in p53 i needed to add a little distancing pad under the disk in the place where you screw it to the board so it is a little bit "tilted" upwards from one side (something around 0.5mm/0.020 inch) - i also had to remove thermalpads under the drives.

You can just remove the screws for the hinges (2 in each corner) and the top assembly should come right off. You will have to disconnect the LCD cable, Webcam and mic cable, and Wifi / WWAN cables.

Some issues i ran into:

• wifi issues. You can remove the wifi antennas from the lid and use them, but you’ll have to route them outside. I tried this but the signal was weak. I attached this external wifi antenna on the side (drilled a hole where the lock would be) and that took care of that issue. You can also just buy a usb wifi dongle (just disable the wifi switch on the side).
• screen display issue. Windows detected that i don’t have internal screen, so it made the external as the main screen. In Linux (ubuntu based), it still thinks that you have internal and external connected so you’ll have to select Duplicate Displays and choose the external monitor.

I'd recommend getting the 44++ battery which is the 9-cell battery that's compatible with the X220. This is the same battery sold on Amazon.

There are good deals online for ThinkPad batteries, but be careful that you're getting OEM batteries; non-OEM batteries tend to cheaply made and don't last as long as OEM batteries. Always check the seller's reviews to make sure they're not substituting with non-OEM units.

Amazon Wired and Wireless

Unless you're running a fairly old Thinkpad or a tablet convertible, most things just work out of box.

The only Thinkpad-specific packages for semi-modern models are:

• thinkpad-scripts (custom repository) - the most useful one is a rotation script for convertibles (magickrotate supposedly offers the same, but this one works pretty well and is maintained)
• tp-smapi - for battery control on old Thinkpads, or acpi-call for newer ones
• thinkfan - for custom fan control

I wrote up a guide that covers some of the Linux customization and suggested installs (for an X230t in this case).

Most of the suggested installs for linux are standard stuff -- tlp, powertop, thermald, etc.

Virtualbox is a great way to test drive a bunch of distros to find one you like, without going dual boot.

Linux for freedom, for cost, for no cost upgrades, for open source applications. I just feels so much better knowing that I'm not beholden to MS and their desire to sell my data or squeeze me for $$ in perpetuity. Also the ability to setup several new virtual machines and not have to pay $200 for win pro for each and every one.

I would strongly suggest you give /r/SolusProject/ a try, it's a great desktop focused distro.

You can buy a new battery. Apparently they use the same type as W530. I might have to buy one myself :D

It still exists https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcars24/

It can even be an explorer.exe replacement

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcars/

I think that laptop is using the second link

EDIT: Looking at the console it's actually lcars24, neat.

Sir, I have good news for you. You don't need a second computer at all.

Welcome to the world of Virtualbox. Try this stuff out, and save your cash: http://www.howtogeek.com/196060/beginner-geek-how-to-create-and-use-virtual-machines/

And if you find that helped you, and you want to PayPal me some of the funds you saved, I won't hold it against you ;)

Have fun!

In 1991, a Macintosh Portable was used to send the first email in space, test peripherals and sensors in space, record medical information, and visually track in real time the space shuttle's path.

The link has a cute video of a disk ejecting. On that page you can find a link which corroborates osxdaily's claims.

It's Office Pro Plus 2016!
To install it, I used PlayOnLinux, along with this specific guide (https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-16677-Test_Microsoft_Office_2016_Installation.html). For the setup files, I used this IMG from Microsoft's servers (https://officecdn.microsoft.com/db/492350F6-3A01-4F97-B9C0-C7C6DDF67D60/media/en-US/ProPlusRetail.img), though you'll need to supply a product key.
After setup finishes, you'll then have to make shortcuts of each Office program via PlayOnLinux

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

I'm surprised no one has mentioned ElementaryOS yet! It's essentially Ubuntu with a pretty design and some extra things added. Very easy to install and use, though I'd recommend swapping out some of the default applications.

https://elementary.io/

I bought these two items

https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-1080p-1920X1080-IPS-FHD-Upgrade-Kit-for-Thinkpad-T430-T420-LCD-controller/174115749504

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0788TL1VR/

I'm told there is an adapter model with a longer cable you can find. I had to put the adapter behind the screen. It took a lot of work to get it to fit without pushing on the screen.

If you look around there are a few guides.

Hi,

The stand is one I found on Amazon from Thingy Club, here is the model I used I have shortened one of the arms by unscrewing a section to make it fit the laptop a little better.

I hope that helps.

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Not bloatware, it's bloatware & spyware

Background is here: https://unsplash.com/photos/Y-MGVIkpyFw

I like Antergos, I used it for ages on my old machine after a week or two of Manjaro. I preferred having a system closer to arch and the compatibility which the arch wiki which is a crazy good resource. I managed to break Manjaro a couple of times just tweaking and customising things but doing the same and more in Antergos and it was solid for months.

One of outdated drivers Lenovo provides. Check the BSOD with http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html but it can be tricky to find the bad driver. Usually you need a full memory dump and use Microsoft Kernel Debugger to find the stuck IRP that points to the buggy driver.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/juanand/2011/03/20/analyzing-a-crash-dump-aka-bsod/

Ubuntu or any of it's derivatives for a very user-friendly, 'first linux', or Debian if you feel up to it.

Out of the box, most distributions have no power management set up. These days, you can use TLP and it will do all the setup for you. I'm getting 15h+ on a T450s i7 with the big battery pack.

I know for Windows, Intel wifi adapters can turn on/off this via the LedMode entry in the registry - this looks like one possible Linux version of this.

If you're running multiple machines independent of one another, you may want to look at Synergy for mouse and keyboard sharing, across monitors. I use it all day long and it is phenomenal.

It happened to me the same error, at the same point, with bunsen labs, that use debian installer, was an error with the media installer:

From debian page:

>Important

>The image must be written to the whole-disk device and not a partition, e.g.

>/dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1. Do not use tools like unetbootin which alter the

>image.

Use win32diskimager in windows or dd in linux. It worked to me when I used dd command.

Edit: Formatting

Of course! I got it off of https://www.pexels.com/search/4k%20wallpaper/

If you scroll down a bit, you'll see the same one, but they have tons of other cool ones.

You have up to 3 drives spots in your Thinkpad. 2 of them are for SSD drives (like chewing gum sticks) and the 3rd is for a traditional laptop drive. This can either be an ssd drive or mechanical drive. I opted for a 1TB SSD drive in that 3rd bay just for speed reasons. You can either add another stick drive using the adapter you bought (more expensive in that format) or purchase the "other" adapter you linked to and install a traditional format drive. I purchased my adapter similar to the one you linked to from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DXK5PAS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's pretty plug and play to add a drive in that bay using the adapter. 1 to 2 TB drives are pretty cheap for the mechanical ones, or you could get SSD if you wanted the speed. Or get the M2 drive format and use that stick adapter you already purchased. Those are incrementally more expensive however...

You need to extract the proprietary firmware onto a flash drive and insert it into another port when it asks for it. I think this was where I got it from when I was trying out Debian.

X240 all the way. The ULV Haswell processor it has isn't nearly as powerful as the one in the X230, but it's significantly better in the battery department.

Get the 6-cell external battery (the bigger one) for the X240. That, coupled with the internal 3-cell should give you pretty long runtimes, even up to ~15 hours or so of normal use (YMMV).

The X230 idles at around ~10-15W while the X240 idles at something like ~4-6W.

To maximise runtime on Linux use tlp.

>Mint is a good one to start with.

Mint is literally just Ubuntu with even worse security and a developer that doesn't know what they're doing.

If you care about security at all, you shouldn't use Mint.

>“This is the list of packages it will never update, instead of just integrating changes properly with the packages in the ubuntu archive they instead suppress doing (security) updates at all for them.”

>“I would say forcefully keeping a vulnerable kernel browser or xorg in place instead of allowing the provided security updates to be installer makes it a vulnerable system, yes. I personally wouldn't do online banking with it

This is from my personal T480s. I thought I'd post this screenshot for people who love their Arch userland but also need to get things done on Windows (like Overwatch). This uses Windows Subsystem for Linux and yuk7/ArchWSL to allow for Arch on WSL. It works surprisingly well on LTSC (1809), and a TB3 eGPU also works fine.

Seeing the title I was thinking that we live in really "interesting" (read as bad) times when journalists need this. Then I read the text of your question.

I see people claim Chromebooks are pretty secure, but I am not entirely sure how safe they would be against FBI level of attack. Maybe Google has way to get inside it (so they could be compelled by government), but then again, most stuff on chromebooks lives in the cloud.

As far as ThinkPad goes for Qubes OS - you want to check for HW compatibility - basically read all links in the "Choosing Your Hardware" section of documentation at https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/ especially the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) specifically "Laptop Devices". You want most columns on https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/#hardware-laptops to be "Yes" (green), "Unknown" might be ok but has not been verified. I personally would go for refurbished ThinkPad of the x20 generation but that is because I don't like chicklet keyboard (and would hope that the Unknowns in the SLAT column turn out to actually to work).

Depending on the level of your paranoia and how much sensitive work it is, you might be consider if getting refurbished devices is safe - you could be targeted by one of the programs which intercept HW deliveries to select targets and modify it.

No one has made one. What I wouldn't do for a matte black square box ugly sort of thing that you can drop on the ground or sit on with no worry.

edit:

If you want something cool though, get an ubuntu phone.

https://www.ubuntu.com/phone

That is real linux; not the java android rubbish.

I'll start now from scratch.

Edit: version 0.1 feedback thread here.

Edit 2: All of the current ThinkPad and currently available flair models have been added; CSV file and sprite sheet (80px square per laptop) is here.

That is a good question, I have been asking myself for a while. My answer has been yes, I won't leaving him all alone all day with internet connection though... There are lots of interesting things for kids from scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu) to kerbal space program, from geogebra to nice games.

Consider that we don't have television at home (we only watch some cartoon and documentaries all together on my computer) and that he (and his younger brothers) can do 8 hours drive in a day without a single movie (chatting, singing and books are so much more fun)

So considering him and us, I finally decided that it is time but I completely share your worries. Moderate use and no internet will be the key.

You'll need one of these docking stations: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Docking-Station-40AJ0135US/dp/B079NM5JK4

These are the same ones for the T450 and T560 too along with a few other models

You can replace the WiFi card with a Broadcom, should be pretty easy, or use a USB WiFi adapter when you’re booted in Mac OS. This one should work fine

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AC1300-Wireless-Supports-10-9-10-14/dp/B07P6N2TZH/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=t3u+tp-link&qid=1605695275&sprefix=t3u&sr=8-3

Definitely works fine with 16GB. I've used 2 x 8GB DDR3 1600 then upgraded to 2 x 8GB 1866 which worked with a custom bios at the full 1866 speed. Both were sets from Amazon 2 x 8GB DDR3 1600 and 2 x 8GB DDR3 1866.

Find an 8GB unit, and forget the CPU upgrade. It would appear that the cheaper T440p units have all sold out. Here's the price list from when I did something similar:

1. T440p (i5-4300/8GB RAM/No HDD) base: $165
2. LP140WF1(SP)(U1): $55
3. 4700MQ: $80
4. MX300 275: $80
5. 9 cell battery: $70

for a total of $450

You can get the panel from Amazon, and this 4700MQ.

Upgraded from my X230 to this beautiful machine 2 weeks ago and I have to say, it is a worthy successor.

It is running my two 1080p LG Monitors and Gigabit Ethernet over the USB-C Dock. The stand is this amazon basics stand for just 13€. Its holding up great in my normal tasks, though thermal throttling needs to be adressed. When under consistent loads it comes in at about 1,8GHz. Other than that, no complaints.

I made this wallpaper myself

I read about X230 being good base for hackintosh, never tried it. Here you can read some more and more

I don't think Malware is as big of a deal as the Intel Management Engine. That's a full-on CIA-backed snooping system installed on most modern platforms, including thinkpads. If you think Malware is bad, read about Management Engine....

There are efforts to neutralize it, but they require much expertise to deploy and use at this point

http://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-management-engine/

So I have an x230t.

Back when I was running Debian (with gnome) I had good luck with Magick Rotation. It was fairly easy to install and it handled everything with rotation "automagickly." I remember it worked fine right away I only had some issues having the icon stick.

I switched to arch a while ago and haven't gotten it to work (I tend to use Windows for my tablet needs so haven't really spent much time trying). However, as per the page if you're on a debian base you should be OK.

My W530's i7-3820QM has a cpubenchmark score of 8528 while the W550s's i7-5600U comes in at a whopping 3864. Consider that I've got 32GiB of RAM and the W550s caps at 16...

Ya, I'm not seeing it, either.

Windows 11 might not be supported by that laptop. Last I checked, you need a really recent CPU and a TPM from the last couple years for Windows to even allow the upgrade.

What you can do is install an official Windows 10 ISO and install as normal, download the PC Health Check app (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11 and scroll down), and check if your PC is compatible. You might be able to try them both out without product keys. Cheers

Have you checked temps? It could be overheating and thermally throttling. I like HWinfo for temperature monitoring (https://www.fosshub.com/HWiNFO.html), or HWinfo64 if you have 64-bit Windows. Also, 4GB of RAM is really too little for Windows 10 if you plan to do anything but the most basic tasks; an upgrade to 8GB of RAM and an SSD (assuming you have a mechanical hard drive right now) would help a lot.

I mention the SSD upgrade because Windows 10 performs like utter garbage on 5400 rpm drives--the 4K read and write performance of mechanical drives just isn't sufficient for good general OS performance anymore. And SSDs are really affordable now, so if there were ever a time to upgrade, this is it.

I got 12 hours out of my X220 on Friday with an 8-month old 9 cell. No joke.

This was with brightness at around 30%, with Arch Linux, tlp, and optimizations in PowerTop. Mostly had Chrome with ~5 tabs, Geary (email), and Spotify open. Sometimes played a little http://vertix.io as well.

It's a Core i7 in a very small package. It's going to get warm. If it gets too warm, it'll shut itself off (but before that, it'll ramp up the fan speed and throttle down the CPU power).

However, if you are concerned, you can just download CoreTemp. Yes, it's third party and no, there isn't a Lenovo app to check temperatures.

PowerShell has a load of bash-like aliases, but they are still PowerShell commands you are executing, and therefore the switches and syntax are not anything like bash.

I use CMDer, which includes git bash, clink (bash keyboard shortcuts and shell enhancements) as well as ConEmu, which allows you to run various shells and GUI programs in separate windows, as well as Windows for Linux Subsystem (which is Linux) and PowerShell, PuTTY, et al.

http://cmder.net/

And then you can also run Linux virtual machines in Hyper-V (with WINE to really mix things up) and you've got anything you ever need at the same time, including applications like Photoshop and AutoCAD (if you have enough RAM).

It's pretty much always recommended to do a clean OS install after buying a used computer, especially with Windows. Make sure you get the current Windows 7 key off of it before uninstalling (Belarc Advisor is a solid freeware program that can view software licenses and such).

As for obtaining legitimate Windows installation media, you can try this link from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

When performing a clean installation of Windows 7, there are some bugs that make Windows Update not run properly (takes literally days to search for updates). There are some standalone updates that can resolve this issue, but they change as time goes on, so it's best to just search for the latest guides on this.

The necessary drivers can be downloaded from Lenovo's website directly. I would recommend downloading the latest graphics drivers from the manufacturer directly and downloading the wired and wireless networking drivers before performing the clean installation (and saving them on a USB drive or CD/DVD). Lenovo's System Update utility is good, but doesn't always catch everything.

Welcome to the strange and scary future of the year of 2008, where CPUs have something called turbo boost!

If you use a halfway useful tool like CPU-Z, it will also understand Turbo and show you the proper clock speed.

Most European languages are part of the Indo-European language family. There are notable exceptions, like Basque which is a language isolate, and the Uralic languages (Finno-Ugric + Samoyedic). But ~~this~~the Indo-European language family is huge and varied and it includes Indo-Iranian languages like Hindi and Farsi as well as all Greek, Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Celtic languages. It is not impossible to find similarities between Sanskrit (sort of the Latin of India) and Danish probably, but I personally am far from an expert on this. There are all sorts of words in Germanic languages that share their root with Hindi/Sanskrit/Farsi words.

At some point there was likely a Proto-Indo European language from which all languages in the family developed. We have no evidence from sources in this language, but it is instead reconstructed by linguists from current and historic Indo-European languages for which we do have primary resources.

Edit: If you're interested in this topic there is a great lecture series bij The Great Courses called The Story of Human Language. You can probably get it for free when you take an Audible subscription and cancel after buying the course with the 1 credit you get with the trial.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/minifree.org

From what I can see, the reviews are a mix of both good and bad.

Might just be a lazy owner, or else they're too busy for their own good.

I would try to get in contact with them, and next time never pay for something you doubt a second.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

And probably available on others too if you are from a different part of the world.

Lenovo actually sells desktop versions of their keyboards, which can connect via USB or Bluetooth. They are found on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Compact-Keyboard-TrackPoint/dp/B00F3U4TQS/ (Wired) and https://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-Compact-Bluetooth-Keyboard-TrackPoint/dp/B00C32FWJC/ (Wireless). Note that I am unsure if these will be the exact same as your E560 (being you mentioned that the T440's was different (while both appearing the same as chiclet). Alternatively, being you said that you liked the MX Browns except for the actuation force needed, perhaps you'll like MX Reds (being they have the least actuation force out of Cherry's lineup)?

Besides just being called a "ThinkPad chiclet keyboard," I don't know any precise name for the technology used.

Hope this helps!

After reading thoroughly, all I can think for you is e-ink. Even though they're still expensive, you should reconsider it as you will be sitting in front of a screen for a long time. I found one from Sony with around $600. Here is the link. https://www.sony.com/electronics/digital-paper-notepads/dpt-series/specifications

As a second option, have you tried light blocking screen protectors? It just blocks blue light so if you're having trouble with the lights and not with some particular colors, it won't be suitable for you. But hey, you should give it a try. Here is the one from Amazon as an example. https://www.amazon.com/EYES-PC-Blocking-Protector-Diagonal/dp/B00OL26BVK

Points in favor of the X270:

• X270 is significantly cheaper used: ~$400-$450 vs. $750+.
• X270 is upgradeable to 32GB RAM via its single SODIMM socket. X280 has 16gb max, soldered to the motherboard.
• X270 can’t be bricked due to defective Thunderbolt firmware (it has USB-C, but no Thunderbolt).
• X270 docks are being blown out dirt cheap, they're currently $30 brand new on Amazon (and come with a 90W charger). I got mine for $20, and they were in the $13-$15 range for a while as well. X280 needs the side-dock station, which is $180ish on top of the higher entry price.
• X270 has built-in Ethernet, rather than requiring a dongle.
• X270 has a slightly smaller footprint: 305.5 x 208.5mm vs. 307.7 x 209.8mm

Points in favor of the X280:

• X280 has a quad-core CPU, instead of the X270’s dual.
• X280 is slightly thinner: 17.4-17.8mm vs. 20.3mm.

My opinion is far from unbiased, but unless you need the quad CPU of the X280, I think the X270 is the better machine.

Sure. :) I'm using a XCSOURCE EXP GDC v8.4 (although i believe there are newer revisions out there, as well as other waaay more cheaper risers meant mostly for crypto mining).

Basically, using the (hot swappable!) ExpressCard slot you can use one of those to run pretty much any PCI-e card that you would like to, although the most common use case is an eGPU. All sounds great but there are some caveats... bandwidth being one of them. You are limited to* PCI-e 2.0 1x speeds... and albeit it may sound terrific it's not that big of a deal in the real world. And as long as you don't go RTX 2080Ti or whatever you'll be more than fine. For the record, i've used an R9 270 as well (GTX 1050 performance levels, this HD 7770 would be somewhere around a GT 1030) and the GPU was being consistently maxed out so i'd expect something like that, or even a 1060 to be the sweet spot. Any more than that and you're sacrificing performance, but not more than 20-25% from what i gathered back when i got my X230.

Last but not least, you can only really pull this off on an ExpressCard Gen2 system... the bandwidth of Gen1 is too little to bother unless you use the card for mining or something else other than gaming.

I just made the exact move you did...moving from a MacBook Pro mid-2012 to a T440s. I added an M.2 SSD into the WWAN slot and replaced the screen with the N140HCE-EN1 by Innolux (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075DD2356/). I didn't mind the 1600x900 screen honestly, but had the replacement ordered before actually receiving the machine, based primarily on the reviews of the dim and low-resolution of the 1600x900 display. The swap was simple and took about 10 minutes. The new display is 1080p, super bright, and has great color, and best of all was a simple drop-in replacement. As for the track pad, I haven't done anything with mine yet and may not. Gestures and multi-touch work great on the existing track pad and coming from the Mac (I've been using Macs for over 32 years) I'm used to a buttonless track pad and I really don't mind it.

For what it's worth, I am getting 11+ hours of battery life on this unit. I'm very pleased with this decision and find the T440s to be everything I need in a portable computer.

Intel opened thunderbolt up in 2017

https://www.gsmarena.com/intel_will_open_the_thunderbolt_3_standard_to_the_public_royaltyfree-news-25233.php

Anybody lacking it in 2020 is behind the times.

Luckily, USB 4.0 will bake TB in and properly standardize the whole thing.

You don't touch the BIOS on the Lenovo. You get around it by modifying the firmware on the $5 mini-PCIE Atheros WiFI card to match the IDs of a white-listed Intel card.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/rebranding-the-atheros-928x-cards-the-guide.115110/

http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-lenovo-t430-el-capitan.175935/page-40#post-1256153

I haven't tried it yet, since I have an Intel 6300 card that's currently behaving itself.

No, not by your standards. By your standards a fan in a thin and light running at 2k something RPM (and doing a fine job of keeping your X1E cool) is a "noisy fan issue" .(https://tinyurl.com/yb3boecg) By your standards a thinkpad is not for you. Thinkpads in general are designed for people who would rather have a computer running on the cool side, and last a while. Rather than a solid state quiet computer that runs hot and fries its self after 2-3 years. Your standards of a "noisy fan issue" suggest you need a macbook, a computer that will run very very quietly, while roasting itself.. But quietly roasting itself(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgeh7ZJRhZU). And you want to pair it with a eGPU!?!?!?! LOL that's going to be like a jet engine compared to a X1E

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/NEW-Touchpad-for-Lenovo-Thinkpad-X230S-X240-X240S-X250-Touchpad-Clickpad-With-Left-and-Right-three/32584588937.html?ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10084_10083_10080_10082_10081_10060_10061_100...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Lenovo-Yoga-S1-Thinkpad-X230S-X240S-X250-Three-button-keys-Touchpad-Trackpad-/111856834284?hash=item1a0b2fd6ec:g:JL0AAOSwI-BWF5NK

There isn't much difference in "speed", but there's quite a bit of difference in "power".

For single-threaded tasks that strain the processor in bursts, like browsing the web, watching videos, or most normal desktop tasks, they will perform just about the same.

For multi-core CPU-intensive sustained tasks like protein folding or 3D rendering, the full-voltage quad-cores of the P50 will shine, because they literally have more power than the ULV CPUs (30W more, to be precise) to handle the load.

In terms of regular everyday use, the T460s will be more than enough. Getting an SSD and lots of RAM will make a larger impact on the "speed" of the system than having a more powerful processor.

Also, FYI, you can compare CPUs on sites like cpuboss, or you can just compare passmark benchmark scores on the passmark site. Terms like "i5" and "i7" are too broad (there are literally hundreds of i5 models, for instance) - look up the PSREF to see the exact processor model.

And now the questions...

CPU... Does it really worth 230€ for an i7-6820HQ (8MB cache, up to 3.6GHz) instead of an i7-6700HQ (6MB cache, up to 3.5GHz). Both looking at ark and benchmarks, I'd say no, but maybe I'm missing something (and not understanding why so much difference for two products in the same price range according to intel.com).

Would you suggest to just get a single 16GB module of DDR4 RAM to keep the 2nd space for future upgrades or is it better to go with 8GB+8GB (or 32GB, but it would be ~~~150€ [on lenovo shop]~~ ~100€ [on amazon] more)? I read somewhere that skylake would support dual-channel also in single elements or something like that?

And finally wich battery? Is the 6 cell 47Wh of the same (physical) size of 6 cell 72Wh. As the 2nd one is just 17€ more... There's also a 3 cell version (23,2 Wh) which I guess doesn't increase the thickness of this machine.

Put a SSD in your x230.

I am currently using an X230 with a Intel 530 240gb SSD and find it can easily handle all my needs (SSD was a huge improvement).

Only consider the new lineup if you want something with a bigger screen.

CPU performance is not much different from the X230 to the x60 lineup. Passmark score increase from your i7-3520m to a i7-6600U is only 4-5% faster. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2608&cmp[]=890

CPUs shift has been towards getting more energy efficient at lower utilization rather then more powerful over the past few years.

If you need more battery, then grab a larger one for your x230.

Ninite is an awesome program where you customize what applications you want to install (from their own selection, which is pretty good), download a custom ninite, and it installs all of them for you (and I think it keeps them updated as well).

I do have a couple of questions though :p

1. What do you think of the screen? Too dim, washed out colors?

2. What do you think of the battery life? (and with which battery?)

3. Does the keyboard area flex if you press on it hard?

Thanks!

Moar Memory, Moar CPU, Moar Good. Especially when doing heavy things like video editing. So I'd take that new system under consideration.

The i7-4900M can even do 32GB of memory, but w/o the product number of the notebook it's impossible to tell if it can do it, too.

And when it comes to video editing, maybe have a look at this:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

That's perfectly normal for lithium ion batteries like the one in your T450s. Basically, the chemistry of an li-ion battery requires less energy to charge the closer it gets to 100%. Li-ion chargers are designed to reduce the current delivered to the battery towards the end of the charge cycle. The charger may stop charging anywhere from 95% to 100% capacity, depending on battery temperature, to prevent over-charging.

Over-charging a li-ion battery typically results in a spontaneous disassembly of the battery casing and rapid oxidization of said battery (boom + fire!)

The top answer here gets it right: http://superuser.com/questions/502328/how-does-limiting-a-laptop-batterys-full-charge-to-less-than-100-extend-its-ba

Also see the "Simple Guideline for Charging Lithium Batteries" section near the bottom of this page: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries - full charges are actually not good for Li-ion batteries and will degrade your battery's life faster than a partial charge.

Here is a page for Linux fingerprint reader driver team: https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint

Some recent FP readers don't work in Linux. Some of us are writing to Lenovo for their supports. Please chime in at https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/Validity-Fingerprint-Reader-Linux/td-p/3352145

Thanks.

It's still a sizeable bump, I think.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4578U+%40+3.00GHz

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4600U+%40+2.10GHz

And the X230 has a 35 W processor and still lasts 15 hours on a charge (9 cell, no slice), so I'd think they could still provide good battery life.

its the cpu. more power draw = more heat.

a few things for you to look into.

- get a temp monitoring program. https://www.hwinfo.com/ is free and very well done. that way you can see what the actual temps are. the computer heating up is normal and it may actually be doing a fine job at moving the heat from the cpu to the fan.

-look into undervolting. ive not done it myself on a t440p but ive read that its possible. the idea is the bios is feeding the cpu more power then it really needs and if you tune it down a bit, Less power draw = lower temps.

Just stick with stable, you don’t miss much.

You just enable non-free repo. You can install the firmware during installation if you give it a usb with the firmware files on. Handbook page.

There's 7 official Ubuntu flavors, meaning they have different desktop environments and software sets. Really, from an end user perspective, they are totally different operating systems.

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours

Yeah, it happens. Happened to my machine, but only a few times (not nearly as frequently) and gradually went away with time. Easiest fix is just to set your computer to do nothing on critical battery (link).

If you're still in warranty on that machine, get them to fix it.

You can use rweverything to pull the Windows key from the BIOS. Some good info here.

If you are replacing your hard drive with an SSD, the small SSD becomes redundant. Removal steps can be found in the T440s Hardware Maintenance Manual.

The snap connectors are a pain. Good luck!

There is no T61 keyboard standalone equivalent. I wish there was as it's one of my favorite layouts.

However, an enterprising individual was able to make their own but it's not for the faint of heart.

Check on tlp page: http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html how to properly configure it. Tlp-stat will suggest you eventually missing packages, and with powertop you will see the most power consuming processes. Hope this helps.

Before testing battery life, install TLP. It massively increases battery life and is a must with any laptop Linux install. It's a "set it and forget it" kind of thing, no extra configuration needed (although it's highly configurable if you're into that :).

Ubuntu 17.10 should have it in the default repos, so a simple

sudo apt update && sudo apt install tlp tlp-rdw tp-smapi-dkms acpi-call dkms

should do it.

If not, you can follow the instructions on the website I linked.

Thanks, I was about to follow your steps, but I checked if it was included in latest rc and if it was available for Ubuntu Vivid (since I am running 15.04), and it was!

4.0 rc5 announcement : http://lwn.net/Articles/637526/

> Dmitry Torokhov (2): > Input: synaptics - fix middle button on Lenovo 2015 products > Revert "Input: synaptics - use dmax in input_mt_assign_slots"

Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid) v4.0-rc5: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.0-rc5-vivid/

I was able to apply it straight (without any patch) to my system and it seems to be working very well.

Anybody running Vivid on 64bit system can apply it (usual disclaimers apply):

1. Download the following three:

   linux-headers-4.0.0-040000rc5_4.0.0-040000rc5.201503230035_all.deb linux-headers-4.0.0-040000rc5-generic_4.0.0-040000rc5.201503230035_amd64.deb linux-image-4.0.0-040000rc5-generic_4.0.0-040000rc5.201503230035_amd64.deb

2. Apply it:

   sudo dpkg -i *deb

3. Reboot and choose the right kernel from "Ubuntu with advanced option" (or something like that) at the boot.

   $ uname -a Linux xxxxxx 4.0.0-040000rc5-generic #201503230035 SMP Mon Mar 23 04:36:26 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=13.3739698&y=49.7458339&z=18&pano=1&pid=54965344&yaw=5.512&fov=1.257&pitch=0.085&source=addr&id=9072331&q=Bezru%C4%8Dova%20315%2F34%20301%2000%20%20Plze%C5%88%2C%20Vnit%C5%99n%C...

He's sitting here https://www.google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/japanese-experiment-module-kibo

I count at least ten. :D

https://www.google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/columbus-research-laboratory This room has even more.

If you're ever looking for something like Arch with more control, you may want to check out Gentoo and/or Funtoo. Both have extensive wikis and guides (like Arch), and are somewhat compatible with each other.

> how does Xournal compare to OneNote?

It doesn't compare. At all. It's like notepad.exe vs vim. But if you just need a paper/pen replacement, it gets the job done fine.

> use touch for scrolling or zooming and maybe have gestures for right/middle click as well as an easy to access on-screen keyboard.

The only DE/toolkit that supports finger scrolling out of the box is Gnome/GTK3. So if you limit yourself to new GTK3 programs, you should be fine (well, relatively).

If you stray outside of that, you're in "finger as mouse" land, and you can only try and improve things with things like this and this. AFAIK, the default X config gives you two-finger scrolling, pinch to zoom as well as right click support (while holding an object with one finger, tap anywhere else on the screen), but it's really clunky and requires very deliberate movements.

Onboard is the best on-screen keyboard I've found, but it's severely lacking compared to most Android keyboards.

Personally, I just use i3 (with the rotate button toggling easystroke's gesture recognition) and use the stylus exclusively with xournal. I have a dual-boot setup with Android-x86 for when I want to play touchscreen games, etc.

Nice find! :D

Use system information software like [CPU-Z](cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html), SIV, or even Windows' own Device Manager to see what you currently have.

The T520 series can hold Sandy Bridge i7 quad-cores, and 16GB RAM (2x 8GB DDR3). They also have an mSATA slot so you can install an SSD without removing the installed HDD or moving it to the optical drive bay.

From man synaptics

Option "TouchpadOff" "integer" Switch off the touchpad. Valid values are:

0 Touchpad is enabled 1 Touchpad is switched off (physical clicks still work) 2 Only tapping and scrolling is switched off When the touchpad is switched off, button events caused by a physical button press are still interpreted. On a ClickPad, this includes software-emulated middle and right buttons as defined by the SoftButtonAreas set‐ ting.

Property: "Synaptics Off"

If that doesn't work, set the Areas to some nonsense or something.

Do you even use the synaptics driver?

Yeah, it's a known problem with X250's Windows 8.1 recovery. You need to first format SSD using a separate application e.g. bundled with Hiren's BootCD PE. After it, it should deploy without an issue.

Finally someone did it.

You can install SharpKeys (https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys) and check if these non-working key combos (Fn+Home, End, PgUp, Space, Up/Down/Left/Right) produce any scan codes. If they do, these can be remapped. However, it sounds like these are not that important.

What's more, that open a possibility of using classical keyboard with A485 motherboard...

> It's much easier to install T480's system board into T25 than the other way around.

Isn't it easier to only exchange keyboard+palmrest between the two, instead of exchanging motherboards and bottom covers?

I've probably missed thinkpads development over the last years; did they move the dock connector from the bottom to the palmrest?

> \6 Install the basics

> Firefox - with adblock plus to remove ads

> Malwarebytes Antimalware

> 7-zip

> VLC - video player

> XNVew -image viewer

> Revo Uninstaller

Ninite is great. Best thing about it is how easy it is to use. Check boxes and download to install.

If you're in the mood for a little more tinkering, I'd suggest installing Chocolatey, the unofficial package manager for Windows.

With chocolatey you can install stuff silently from the command line, like so. You can also save a bunch of commands like these, each on a new line, and paste the whole lot into CMD / Powershell in one go, go make coffee and come back to see everything installed. For me, its the first thing I install when I set up Windows.

Example commands:

choco install git.install choco install keepass.install choco install nodejs choco install autohotkey

The .install at the end of those first two means that it will use the full installer, and you'll have an add-remove entry, shortcuts in the start menu etc. Without that, an app will be installed in portable mode.

You can search pastebin (Google site:pastebin.com choco install) to find where people have pasted their own choco scripts. They're often better than searching through packages on chocolately.org, as they're a more real-world example of use. They can be a great source of inspiration for stuff you might have forgotten to install.

NBR Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide.

I also immediately add Everything! to the system. Then, a VPN client and configure built-in Firewall.

My install was surprisingly easy.

1. Download Ubuntu 17.04 https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

2. I have three drives: 2 SSD and one HDD. I gave one SSD dedicated to Ubuntu, so using disk management in windows 10 I removed the entire partition.

3. Once the ISO was downloaded I then downloaded win32 Disk imager: https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ Installed that and flashed the ISO to a thumb drive (after I formatted it).

4. After checking if fastboot was disabled (in bios) (and turning on virtualization for future VM use) I Booted off the thumb drive, selected "Install Ubuntu" from the dropdown in grub.

From there I just followed screen prompts, selecting 'download updates while installing', making sure I had an internet connection. I also selected 'install third party software'. I chose the "Install Ubuntu alongside window boot manager" and made sure that the popup referenced the correct SSD. I let Ubuntu choose the default directory and partition structure it wanted, and since it was an SSD I let it put any swap partition on the same SSD.

The install went smoothly after that.

Have a look at this for better battery life and temperatures. I know the tutorial is for Ubuntu, but it should work for Debian as well since Ubuntu is based on Debian. I usually enable p-state in grub, then install thermald. That usually does the trick for me.

Fast bootup time would require you to have an SSD as the OS device. mSATA runs at SATA II speed, but i didn’t notice the difference under my daily use. This was my old setup:

• Samsung SSD in the 2.5 slot (Linux OS)
• mSATA SSD in the WWAN slot (Windows OS)
• large HDD in optical bay using this adapter.

>https://us.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-201331-BLK-Computer-Docking/dp/B086DXLF37/

Minor note - this dock is unusual in supporting DisplayPort 1.4 + DSC, which is potentially useful for some newer machines, but for T490 there are cheaper options. Pretty much any dock with two video outputs and MST can handle dual 1920x1080 60Hz 8bpc (since 2 lanes DP1.2 - 2xHBR2 is enough). Therefore, there might be cheaper options for these use case to get 2x FHD working, just not as "future-proof".

I want to say maybe but it could have issues since the T430 is finicky about using authentic batteries. If you can try it in your T430 before buying and if it works then yeah but honestly a 9 Cell goes for about $40 on Amazon.

I got this one for my secondary T430 that came w/o one and its worked pretty well so far:

https://www.amazon.com/LXHY-0A36303-Compatible-ThinkPad-Replacement/dp/B0811VYYY1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H3CYD62/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_RX6XGKNM18G5G2R3Q89T Plenty still available on Amazon.

I have my T480 since last 2 years with 24+72 battery setup. I get 10 hour battery life easy with moderate use.

I got this one off of amazon. I was surprised how well these work for how inexpensive they are

A high end example: Microsoft Surfacebook 3

A low end example: Chuwi Gemibook

I'm sure there are others in between!

I will give this one a try:

https://www.amazon.com/FahanTech-USB-C-Compatible-Lenovo-laptops/dp/B07LFD1BTQ

And get a 100W USB-C charger, hopefully I can get rid of the huge power-brick while on-the-go.