Thread turns practicalBattery sourcing and favorite ThinkPad models
6 Nov 2 5:28 PM · 8d ago · 9 comments · 1 source · development 6 of 6
Later comments shift to practical advice, with users asking where to find trustworthy non-OEM replacement batteries for X230-X270 era ThinkPads and comparing favorite models (X230, T420s, X280, X250), while vlowrian notes still running an original 2015 X250 after battery and Wi-Fi upgrades.
“the aftermarket world for these seems rife with super-sketchy knockoffs that I'm certain will not be trustworthy”
amatechajsbarretto Blog authoribobev Hacker News submitterezst HN commenterGrombobulous HN commenteramatecha HN commenter
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What people said 24 voices · best of 58 · verbatim
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I have a mid-range used ThinkPad and I love it. It's not the fastest machine but it's built like a tank and it feels nice to carry my dev environment along with me when I'm traveling.
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When I saw this headline, I thought "I bet it's an old Thinkpad" :)I have 3 personally, one for work. My T470p is probably the best one, given some tradeoffs (some annoying pressure points on the screen which happened on two replacements and some occasional flakiness with power) I got a cheap T480 when I thought the T470p was a lost cause…
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> I'm talking about the atrocious TN panels. For those of us who used greyscale passive-matrix LCDs in the 1990s, they are more than good enough, they are fine. Features like mouse pointer trails, pointers that get bigger when wiggled, circular ripple-circles when you press Ctrl, and other ways to find your mouse pointer are because on '90s…
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For anyone still running these older ThinkPads, where do you get new batteries from? I've not yet replaced any of mine but the aftermarket world for these seems rife with super-sketchy knockoffs that I'm certain will not be trustworthy. Any recommendations for known-good manufacturers of batteries for X230-X270 era? I'm in NA but I don't really…
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I don't know how you put up with it: - No USB-C (always need to have separate brick to charge, especially annoying when traveling) - Crappy display (depends on the model, but Lenovos are notoriously bad if they don't have the IPS option) - Very old CPU and GPU - Low RAM Don't get me wrong, I have a bunch of ThinkPads myself, but I find myself not…
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Ah no way! I figured it might be an old ThinkPad, but coincidentally it's the exact laptop on the desk next to me at this very moment! In my case running OpenBSD rather than Linux, but still. Oh and I've got i5-5300U vs. the OP's i5-5200U. 8GB as well which as OP says is plenty. Good times :) My only real criticism on this machine is the display…
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I had one for 10 years, through high school and uni. After that I tried the new-ish models and my god, Lenovo does not know how to make laptops anymore.
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My favorite laptop is a $90 Samsung Chromebook I bought around 7 years ago from Walmart clearance section during Black Friday.I used it to remotely connect to hpc cluster to monitor my machine learning experiments.It was unused for a while, then we had a baby. He used it to watch videos, absolutely battered it. This thing is indestructible. He…
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not surprised to see a sibling of my x250. Got it for 160 € refurbished in 2023. Now with FreeBSD. Nice.
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Siemens Nixendorf Scenic Mobile 300, 133 MHz Pentium (before we had to number them), 16 MB of RAM, 800×600 passive matrix LCD, released 1997. I caused a major scandal at my high school since nobody on the staff had ever contemplated the scenario whereby a student turned up with a computer of their own. I dual booted Windows NT 4.0 and Linux (2.2…
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For traveling, I don't just mean the daily commute but also longer trips. I prefer carrying just one USB-C charger and cable. Also, replacement is ubiquitous if the cable or charger breaks. I'm not talking about pixel density, I'm talking about the atrocious TN panels. Terrible colors, terrible viewing angles. Black-on-white documents display as…
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my previous favorites were an X220 and a T480s. The T480s ran for 8 years, started losing bits of rubber from the screen area, to be replaced this year by a framework 13 pro, which will probably be my favorite lap for another 8 years, or maybe more (depending on how you accept the ship of theseus)
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eBay is not a good source. In the UK, I use Morgan Computers, and regularly check Tier1 Online and Bargain Hardware, just in case. These are enterprise boxes -- you want depreciated ex-corpie-fleet machines. I know of Gigacomputer in Czechia. I am sure there must be other such places. I have never lived or worked in North America and don't plan…
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I have several Thinkpads, but my favorite is a T420s.AFAIK, it was the last of the line that had sculpted keytops, it feels good to type on. It's a damned shame that the newer ones have those chicklet keys.i7 with 16GB RAM, HDD replaced with SSD. Runs Fedora like a top.
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The battery life means that USB-C isn't an issue (it only needs a charge when I get to where I'm going, at which point I don't care about transformer. It's pretty tiny anyway). The screen feels like a matter of perspective: I'm used to 96 dpi screens, and I'd rather see the pixels than suffer the performance implications of not seeing them.
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Every Windows laptop I have ever had where I installed Linux on it, I swear its lifespan is infinitely longer than if I kept Windows on it. My wife has Macs that are older than my oldest laptops / desktops I can still turn on. Windows is just abysmal for hardware.
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> For those of us who used greyscale passive-matrix LCDs in the 1990s... Wow, that brought back some neat memories; thank you! > ...I don't need retina displays, HDR, any of that: a 15Y old full colour flat panel LCD is still amazingly good. Yeah, maybe its my age and because of what you noted earlier, but kinda basic displays are more than enough…
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The thing will old laptops from last decade is shitty screen color. I love my t420, but the screen is literally too painful to look at for a long time.So my favorite one is the thinkpad t14g1, with ips screen, and lightweight
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I think the sweet spot in that family is the x270. Same form-factor but obviously more recent hardware, up to a i7-7600u with 32GB of RAM, Full HD touchscreen, 2 nvme slots and very conveniently it can be charged by Usb-C when their 2 batteries are low at the end of a long day! They're so great I have accumulated way too many.
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I still daily an X280. RAM is soldered so it's days are numbered (though that number is still high) and this one does not have the bridge battery setup, just an internal one. The size is great though, and the keyboard is top notch. This also charges over USB-C which is a nice creature comfort.
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i used my old x220 for many years beyond anyone else would have used it, even still reached for it from time to time after i got my 2020 MBP... but w/ my current M3 Air, it's too much of a leap forward... battery life is important to me and the power you get w/ this battery is unmatched
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Like the author I also have a X250, and I bought a cable that connects on the Thinkpad power jack and has USB-C on the other end. This way I don't need to travel with the Thinkpad brick, just the special cable and a USB-C that I use for everything else (phone, earbuds, e-reader, etc).
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~zesterer I'm curious how well does it handle developing in Rust. I know rust-analyzer quickly starts to feel a bit painful on my significantly more modern laptop (Ryzen 7730U)
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What shortcomings do you refer to, specifically? Keyboard key quality and arrangement? I feel like even the modern ones are pretty solid generally.
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