How ThinkPads Became The Internet's Favorite Laptop
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- Опубликовано: 9 май 2024
- If you've ever spent any time on the internet, there's a good chance you've heard of how amazing Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are. They're the GOAT laptop brand, and if you're a real power user, you know how much better they are than the lowly MacBook. But how did they gain their legendary status and cult-like fanbase online? Are they really all that special, and do they live up to the hype? Find out in this video...
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0:00: Intro
0:45 Corporate heaven
3:03 The Macbook-ification of the laptop
6:18 The meme, the myth, the legend
8:03 The downfall of the ThinkPad
9:32 ThinkPad society and its future 
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Honestly I wish more “gaming laptops” were more straightforward like thinkpads. I don’t need rgbs, it to be super thin, or fancy cases. Just matte black, a fat power brink, and a solid build
Agreed, I have no idea how RGB became a thing
I think a LOT of people would prefer having chonkier, heavier gaming laptops with better cooling and bigger batteries over thinner designs. The problem is that the very purpose of a laptop is to be a portable computer so the average consumer thinks that logically a more portable laptop (thinner) is a better laptop than a thiccer one.
It would be nice if a company decided to make "enthusiast grade" laptops with upgradeable parts, keyboards with deep travel and cooling that can best be described as "overkill" for people that want the best possible gaming experience out of a laptop.
In fact there are thinkpads with nvidia rtx.
and they have always been my option to choose if I took a "gamer" laptop.
There's the lenovo legion
some of the old thinkpad's personality was brought over to lenovo's legion lineup, especially the 2021 and 2022 models, they're very bulky but pack some real power, and theres amazing value in buying used
ThinkPads are the Nokia of the laptop world.
The older ones, maybe.
were*
@@FlyboyHelosim Older thinkpads, older nokias
Check out Panasonic Toughbooks then
So is Dell Latitudes
DDR5 Ram had to be soldered in for higher speeds than 4800MHz. But now they created a new Standard for swappable RAM, and a Thinkpad is the first laptop to support this new standard.
Was looking for this comment. We're getting back some of the old thinkpads!
Yeah, they can't get enough speed trough the so-dimm slots but it's also not compatible with lp-ddr.
The issue is that cheap laptops moved to soldered lpddr for cost saving, thin and light laptops moved to lpddr for efficiency and space, and high performance laptops moved to lpddr for increased bandwidth.
I believe its in the new Thinkpad P1 gen 7 laptop
5600 definitely works. I have a kit of 5600Mhz RAM I inserted into my laptop myself. But yeah, faster speeds are hard.
Dell beat them to the punch with "Dell CAMM" on their Precision's.
0:27 Hey, that's my stack of Thinkpads :D Thanks for including me in the video.
Hey, cool to see you here. Love the ThinkPad collection :)
Why and how do you have so much thinkpads?
0:25
@@user-wz7li1br5o I collected them and they used to be very common at fleet auctions or recycling centers. Also, they were great for messing around with Coreboot and the fleet auction ones were quite easy to refurbish (Great Hardware Maintenance Manuals)
Favorites are the (X200/X201 and for older models the 380 series)
*Still collect them to a degree, but not as much as I used to.
@@7kibass I forgot that I kept letting the video play while I was eating after tapping your link… I looked at the screen at 0:41 and thought that photo was your reply 🤣
ThinkPad aren't a cult. MacBook are. ThinkPad are workhorses.
I don't know about that. I work for an IT company with 10s of thousands of employees where you can pick any type of hardware/OS combination you wish (within reason). If you walk through the office and look at what people actually use it's 2 MacBook users for every ThinkPad user. Probably because we tend not to keep old stock around for long and the new ThinkPads are not that great in comparison. A lot of people are on other Windows and Linux laptops but it's mostly just macs. I mean, Apple products are status symbols for some type of people but you talk about workhorses and that's what ours look like.
Upd: I actually went around my floor and checked and the ratio turned out to not be as dramatic as I imagined at first. Still, the MacBooks are in the majority.
No they're definitely also a cult.
Macbooks are actual workhorses now especially with ARM chips. I couldn't do the work I do without one. They're that amazing.
But they cannot take a beating...
Ok, enjoy your nipple mouse
Spoken like someone who's drake the Kool aid would.
My friend used to crack walnuts with his Thinkpad and used is as a chair while waiting for a metro
wow it's so multifunctional
There was a story about one of my college mates getting mugged on his way home from McDonald's study group. He smashed the mugger's face in with the side of a full-sized 15.6 inch Thinkpad. That bad boy still remained working the next day throughout the entire semester. 😂
Last I visited him it was still collecting dust in his store room. We fuck around and plug it in, aside from a busted removable battery, still booted up. 😂
Gigachad
I've been using them to practice breaking bricks. ruclips.net/video/Qb5YHjnJgEw/видео.html
Back in high-school (2006-2007), my thinkpad fell out of my backpack and bounced down a 10 meters long staircase...
There was nothing wrong with the thinkpad! I'm however, till this day, the sole person on this planet who got detention for damaging staircase tiles using a laptop....
If your company gives you a thinkpad, your job is secure. If they give you a mac then be prepared 😂
If they give you think pads they are too poor for Dell
My dad is still using his Thinkpad T420s until 2021 where it basically unusable (battery died, speaker not working, overheating issues, super slow hard drive). I managed to fixed all the issues and installed an SSD to it, now it still working even though i rarely using it.
You can improve the girl easily by debloating Win7/10, I have an l440 that I run win10 on daily, aside from the weight, she still runs better than anything else I could have bought for AU$200. The other option is installing mint and not telling him, I did this to my dad, and he is happy with his PC :P $50 laptop, $80 ram $35 SSD m.2 free SSD for storage (free because I have like 10 120GB sitting on my desk, don't judge an old man and his hobby).
Similar situation here. Over the years I replaced the battery, keyboard, speaker, and added a second SSD. I love that tank.
@@ezevaillard7740 i was thinking of buying t440 and using it as main workhorse replacing my x230. What upgrade do you recommend?
T420 is the best T Series thinkpad there was just because of the keyboard I am typing on... The T430 was okay just not the same ((yes you can flip the T420 keyboard into a T430)) but still. T420 is still my main laptop :)
T420 is the best T Series thinkpad there was just because of the keyboard I am typing on... The T430 was okay just not the same ((yes you can flip the T420 keyboard into a T430)) but still. T420 is still my main laptop :) I hope it keeps going for a few more years... then most of my daily laptops will be over 15 years old ha.... run a real OS kids not mickey mouse stuff and enjoy pressing your smooth lovely keys.
used and abused every day, as it sits on the sofa it gets a fair few drops, but keeps on going. (( it's not 100% perfect wifi card probably needs changing, monitor has its wobbles, bezels around the screen need to be made better )).
Sorry I have to disagree that the T480 was the best last T Series, I had one from work I used it as a desktop for maybe a year and a half, the two bridged batteries bubbled up like crazy, took out the batteries because I didn't want to get a dell, keyboard stopped working after a few months, screen stopped working, total junk.
X230 is the best last X Series the funny thing is that although it does not have the old X220 keyboard it just works better than the T430's which is weird.
If an end user wears gloves on the workplace, like protective padded gloves, the nipple track button is *crucial* for use on a thinkpad. It lets you control the cursor without needing the trackpad that tends to not work so well when you need to go back to welding or whatever.
True, I've heard a lot of stories about ThinkPads used in blue collar environments.
Wait, I thought the track button was just for nostalgic reason.
Come to think of it.... yeah, I've seen ads of astronaut looking fellas holding laptops & working on something.
it's main use is so that you don't take your fingers off the keyboard - a touchpad means hand going back and forth between it for mouse control and typing position. Programmers and writers who touch type can do stuff faster if they use the "nipple"
makes sense thank you
I feel that the better thing to do would be just using mouse. Those thing are difficult to use. I couldnt image doing excel (which i assume what a blue collar do with a laptop) with those.
IBM was the GOAT of PC hardware, present day IBM tech would've been amazing
Crazy that IBM had a monopoly on software and computers. Well, until companies like HP and Oracle took a good chunk of the market share.
True I agree. IBM were the god father's of it innovation
If you think Micro Channel was better than ISA16, EISA, VLB, or PCI I have bad news for you
if they were that good the wouldn't go out of business
@@kenny4957 arent they still kicking hard
I hate the "thin and sleek" look that laptops try to go for these days, especially since it usually means it has worse specs or durability or some other random inferiority.
As someone on the internet also said, I need my laptop to be "heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death" thanks to the huge-ass battery inside it, with every practical port imaginable plus a CD player.
It must have the ports!
My laptop is STILL portable when it weighs 2.5 kg instead of 1. It's MORE portable because it can safely port itself down a flight of stairs.
cd player for the win
On looks I do agree, but the thin slims have a niche. The X1s are particularly favoured in laboratories as there is limited space due to safety concerns and equipment and they have enough computation power to manage data and run control software while logging measurement for any application. Also, while expensive by compound and equipment standards an X1 is still "disposable" in a laboratory accident and will eventually wear out. Solvent fumes will condemn the X1 to an eventual death, but it should last 10 years.
One personal gripe I have with the X1 is limited memory storage. I would pay to have an 8 Tb M2.SSD in mine, but the tight tolerances make it unfeasable. The other Lenovos are too bulky to work.
With all the crazy "gaming laptop" shapes and "futuristic-looking" cases, no one can still beat the classic "compact rectangular brick" look. It's simple, not atrociously huge or disappointingly small.
Just a reliable piece of brick.
I keep forgetting how big IBM was and the fact that they were everywhere
Yea, they even had a subsidiary in Nazi Germany that contributed to the Holocaust
Yep. Even where they shouldn't.
Those who know, knows. 💀
@@rafaelroma1657 context pls
@@azdaf They had a subsidiary in Nazi Germany called Dehomag, which was giving the Nazis all of their computing machines.
Hold on, I thought Thinkpad was made by Lenovo? I used to have one
Edit : nvm I just finished the video
We had a kid at my high school who was constantly getting in trouble for being on his ThinkPad during class lol
Did they think he was hacking or something because he was always in the terminal?
@@bnorrishwhat? No he prolly just wasn’t doing his work
My thinkpad t14 has horrible battery life, have to keep it at Eco mode with literally brightness for like 3 hours of battery.
@@1Dome Have you checked the battery health percentage?
Based and Thinkpad-pilled.
I did my whole engineering major with an old Thinkpad I got from my neighbor's work. It was a beast and I had a much better computing experience than my friends with new shiny laptops.
One time I even managed to kill the keyboard and screen just before finals, bought replacements and got the computer back again in 30 minutes😅. Loved that beast.
You use past tense. What happened to it.
What engineering did you major in???
@@Lil_Smo passed it down to my younger brother, and got an X1 instead.
@@OGTennyson Mech
@@royamkies8351 oh ok.
I'm doing civil engineering and I'm considering getting one
"They don't make X like they used to" is a meme but its genuinly true for thinkpads.
They were the last laptop brand that let you fix everything.
Btw I dont think the T480 is the last true thinkpad, really the T530/T570 are.
I've had a T570 for years now, the 27 hour battery still works like new and if it ever goes bad, I can just buy a new one. Worst case scenario I open the battery and put new cells inside.
It came with a german keyboard, I installed an aftermarket backlit english keyboard in 5 minutes for 20 euro. I added an extra 1tb M.2 drive and a 2TB SDD along with 32gb of DDR4. Oh and it had an extra slot on the side that let me install a USB-C connector.
Its an absolute workhorse for all of my needs. I dare you to find a new laptop under 500 euro that has those specs.
And yes, the thing is damn near indestrucable. If Lenovo ever goes back to the old style of thinkpads, I will happily shell out more than a grand for a new one. But until that happens, my T570 will keep on chugging.
It's worth pointing out *some* new Thinkpads have soldered memory, but not all. They have quite a few different models.
Good point, not all of them are soldered in.
And of those that are, some have an additional ram slot so you can make it dual channel. Was great for a company supplied one which only had 8gb of ram.
@@ArmChairPlum wasn't it shown in the video that one of the models didn't have memory slots?
We got some 1st gen Yoga X1's in for recycling, they were soldered unfortunately.
My X1 Carbon gave up on me and repairing was hard because of the parts being soldered so I switched to an Elitebook
I ignored the red trackpoint for ages. Seemed annoying. Then i worked a while at a small desk with no mouse space and forced myself to use it. Now I'm lost without it. I guess I'm now in the cult and won't be able to change brands.
Welcome... to the dot side.
The prickly nipple
MacBook touchpads are 1000x better than the nipple
This is how I used to play RuneScape as a kid on my moms ThinkPad lmao
@@jay31415 No
I grew up in a major mining centre, and my grandfather was a mine boss. Everyone who needed to use a laptop on the property used a ThinkPad. Those things could handle the rigor of usage thousands of feet underground with dust, moisture, explosive jolts, and of course drops as major hazards. It had a knock-on effect in the community with ThinkPads being easily serviceable and a laptop of choice for the local businesses and university.
Fun fact: The ThinkPad's original design was meant to evoke a modern bento box.
Lenovo ThinkPad SL510... Found it in a NYC ewaste bin in the basement of my apartment building. Microcenter had a heavy-duty battery in stock. I installed a 256Gb SSD and I had 8Gb of DDR3 RAM in my inventory. Put Linux Mint: MATE Edition on it. It's fantastic... I love it....
One thing not directly mentioned was IBM's support OF repair / upgrade culture (not just designing the hardware to be easily upgraded and repaired but the first party support of it). For example, I remember enthusiasts appreciating the subtle differences between a Thailand sourced keyboard or a Japanese LCD... and you could call IBM up and ask for the specific part from the specific source and they'd send it without issue (no second guessing why or claiming they couldn't know or distinguish). The support site provided full illustrated documentation along with videos for just about any disassembly or install task.
So it was like car tuner culture with the manufacturer backing you up. Many of the modular things Framework is being praised for today were standard issue for the Thinkpads. I remember being able to swap out my disc drive for extended battery or additional IO.
the FRU numbers being on every component's really nice too
The real appeal is the thriving secondary market, yeah frameworks are easier and better for repair/upgrade, but no company buys 200 frameworks for workers and then dumps them onto the used market after 2/4 years making for a flood of affordable repairable laptops with lots of parts for the secondary market.
@@lolkthnxbai They still are, i am broke and with an external GPU and a second hand thinkpad made a gaming setup, now i have 2
In my region Pakistan, Thinkpads is still the most popular to this date because how affordable and easy to upgrade
Using a thinkpad right now ;)
Facts. Bought X230 back in September 2019 for 15000 pkr (about $100 in Sept 19) and still rocking it.
@@ahmadmonu777 x230 is now going for 20 25k 💀
@@ahmadmonu777 did you upgrade it?
Do they bring them toJihad?
I bought used Thinkpad T440, worked flawlessly through my university years, later I gave it to my father, who upgraded it even further with bigger SSD, bigger battery and higher resolution screen. Nowadays sadly it rare to see one device working for so long.
Ok, I'm 2 minutes in and I'm fucking sold. Was this video supposed to be an ad?
I'd watch until the end to avoid falling for the meme like I did ;)
I have a ThinkPad for close to ten years now the thing still works like a champ. All i do is clean the fan from time to time.
Awesome. :D I upgraded to a new thinkpad 2 years ago, the old one was from 2012 or so... Without HDMI or USB-C. I couldn't handle not having those ports in the modern world so bit the bullet and upgraded. But i gotta say, my new-ish Thinkpad P15S gen2 is a fantastic machine, worthy of its thinkpad logo. If you do decide to upgrade, I say go for it, the water is fine. I did test drive a few other brands, including an apple, but they were all fragile, non-upgradable non-repairable garbage.
@@eeydabez2169 there are 3 types of thinkpad, t, p and x series. can you please explain the diifferences?
ThinkPads are so water resistant you can even pee on your keyboard and it'll still work.
how do you know this
Talking from experience?!?!?
That seems rather specific. Did you find that out firsthand?
Or perhaps is better you don’t bring your laptop to your parties, I hope the waterproof is good enough to resist a doble washing cycle with lots and lots of bleach.
@@dmora2309 How am I supposed to get laid at parties if I don't have my ThinkPad T480 to show them? I cannot simply stop bringing it to parties (and the bathroom)
Been rockin' my trusty W541 ThinkPad for a solid nine years now. Survived the wild ride of undergrad and the maze of grad school architecture projects like a boss. From sketching out dreams to bringing them to life in 3D, this beast has seen it all. It's been dropped more times than I care to admit, but it's tougher than a tank-just a little screen hiccup from all the adventures. One slap on the screen, and it's back to working again.
looking from a old thinkpad e55o, a broken student from south america, loving this old laptop
Every like this comment gets I will buy one thinkpad
Can I have one? :)
@@anasx2700 sure! comes preinstalled with arch
Can I have one
Can I have two?
Can I have mewtwo
Recently I bought a T480 and I genuinely think it was the only right decision I've ever made XD
Are you going to upgrade?
How much does it cost?
Sorry you bought a laptop or a terminator model?
I bought a T480S about two years ago as my main laptop, and it cost me $250 with an nvme ssd upgrade. I've yet to find a viable replacement at that same price, even today
@@cmbaz1140 Eventully yeah, but all i need is to upgrade to 32GB+1TB and a WWAN Card and all of these upgrades cost like 160$ here.
The laptop itself was 160$ also
I hope you can live with the shitty "speakers".
There is a T410 downstairs from me right now thats in use by my neighbor. It started life as a standard corporate lease, made its way into my hands as a work machine that I consolidated 4-5 other computers into (cheapo company). I used it for ~4 years and then IT guy gave it to me. Finally, having no more daily use for it, I donated it to my neighbor so he could plink away in a word processor. Absolute unit of a machine.
It may sound weird, but I love my 2017 Dell XPS for most of the same reasons people love ThinkPads.
It's really quite durable, has exactly every port I need and every part is replaceable.
Mine is now coming up on 7 years old, and with a fresh battery and a fresh install of windows 11 it's a perfectly good regular use machine and ready for at least another 5 years. It wears its faint scratches on the aluminium case gracefully after years of heavy use, surviving being carried around daily (and not so carefully) for the first 4 years and even being dropped a few times.
And it still has room for improvement too! I could still upgrade the original 16gb of ram, or the 512gb m.2 ssd.
A desktop PC has replaced it for the heavy lifting like CAD and gaming, but I bought my XPS second hand for a good price in early 2018 when it was barely half a year old, and it remains as my trusty old portable machine.
I remember in the past every NASA mission when the cameras show the room where engineers watched the mission progress, all the laptops were ThinkPads, perhaps one or two Dell’s, not the case in latest missions, but ThinkPads had a good run.
Which laptops they are using for latest missions??
@@-Blue-_ macbook's
I love ThinkPad for the KEYBOARDDDDDD...
That for sure.
Been writing for a content mill and loved the keyboard on my X230 (still love it!)
Yep, same for me !
I feel like Lenovo makes the best keyboards. Typing this on my Thinkpad X1 Yoga, and i came from Yoga c740 to this.
I was first issued a Thinkpad 10 years ago when working in IT at my university. I dropped that laptop so many times off bunk beds and ladders and it never broke. Been a customer ever since and I always push Lenovo Thinkpad to all my clients. I'm glad Lenovo continued the build quality and still modernized.
Great video. As I was studying about these topics, I arrived at the same conclusions:
- have Proxmox on host as a supervisor isntalled on a seperate cheap SSD (or SSDs in RAID) a
- have a seperate NVMe powerful drive (or in RAID) for VMs
- have TrueNas in VM and HDD storage passed through HBD controller with SATA drives connected to it.
Clean optimized.
If ur job gives you a mac you will get fired in a week
If you get a thinkpad you have a job for life
If you look at it from a laptop drop pov then yes, you’re getting fired for dropping company equipment. Thinkpads could be hammered back together after a drop😂.
That’s funny, my previous job gave me a Mac.
My current one gave me a thinkpad.
I want my MacBook back, and I’m currently looking for a job that will free me from that trashpad.
I saw this tweet on X too haha lol
@@andyvirus2300can’t you just use a personal mac
@@andyvirus2300 that’s why companies that allow preference are better.
My Thinkpad was the ONLY laptop that had the exact specifications I was looking for (at the time). Without even knowing that there was a cult following (except amongst the Linux guys I knew), I came to *really* like my laptop. It's got a certain... je ne sais quoi. 🤷♀️😊
This is literally what happened to me also lol. I had no idea Thinkpads have a cult following
me, after I decided to try sardines on a whim one day.
I had 5 Thinkpads in my collection. X61 (MSDOS 6.22/Windows XP), T61P (Windows 7), X220(2 of these, I've given them away to family), X230 Tablet with a dock and/or a slice battery for 14 hours use. My 11 year old X230 Tablet runs Windows 11 23H2 just fine. I use it almost every day.
I got a ten year old think pad for free as some neighbors were moving out and left it behind. I installed Linux onto it from locked windows seven professional and it works amazing
I bought t480 in last December it's beautiful, Strong and Upgradable. Perfect
I have one too, but I find the speakers to be substandard.
My first job in tech was being an asset manager for IBM. I'm bad with tools but I've been able to replace the LCD, keyboard, hard drive, ram and do it in an afternoon.
I bought a ThinkPad E14 some time ago for my writing gig as well as other miscellaneous tasks. I bought it because my dad used to use a ThinkPad when he was working as a scientist at a national research institute in my home country. He used to tell me how rugged the machines were, even claiming that some of them survived volatile material spills and radioactive environments. He's not one to exaggerate, so I bought the E14 since it was one of the cheaper ThinkPad options in the market. I've been blown away by it's build quality, and absolutely enamored by the design. It's one of the best laptops I've ever owned, and I've owned quite a few Dell office laptops that didn't fare well to my constant travel. This was a very interesting video.
P.S: English is not my first language, so please excuse any errors in my writing.
My father's work gave their employees the laptops they were replacing, got a p51, been using it daily for YEARS, 64gb of ram and a nice undervolt and it still runs windows 10 and games like a champ. Better specs than the t480 but still has great build and keyboard. 10/10 laptop, could not recommend enough.
Last year I bought a refurbished T480s and I honestly think it's by far the best laptop I've ever used.
Lenovo is the first company that’s using LPCAMM2, which is a new RAM standard called CAMM (compression attached to memory module) for laptops and they are super easy to switch out so hopefully thinkPads go back to their former glory
I have used 3 Thinkpads since 2010. They might not have the flashiest hardware, but have kept me from headaches my friends having with their laptops, including broken hinge, poor heat dissipation, noises in the 3.5mm audio jack, broken power jack, etc. Would definitely buy another one.
Framework would be a worthy successor to take the thinkpad torch.
As someone who has gone from a Thinkpad to a Framework, I agree. Best laptop you can get right now imo
This is what ive been thinking
next gen fav is gonna be this one
No mouse nub tho :(
They need more configuration options though, like 4k screens
@@DylanMatthewTurner what mouse nub?
I almost was worried that it may be time to think about moving away from my T520, but this video reminded me just how cool it is and how much I'd miss it. I've essentially fully upgraded it, so it's still quite usable for most of my use cases
I bought a used X220 3 years ago for doing automotive field work like repairs with Mitchell OnDemand5 and OBD2 tuning through USB and for writing invoices for customers, upgrade it to SSD and more RAM, and it's a great tough machine, best laptop ever!
I'm using Thinkpad E440 since 2015, it's a gift from my office. Since then, i never fall in love with other laptop. At 2018, i purchased E480 and use it until 2023. Then i bought used T14 gen1 and use it until today. Because i'm a programmer, having best keyboard is preferred than having sleek, thin, and colorful laptop.
The Thinkpads with Core i-series from 2011-14 were always a treat when I worked in computer maintenance. They really are built tough, are plenty versatile and pretty straightforward to repair. And they still look pretty good, if a bit bulky. But the chonk means I don't have to be concerned about whether or not my laptop screen is fucked if shoved into a tightly-packed overhead bin in a particularly bumpy plane ride.
A Thinkpad that retains what made it great, just include a dedicated GPU and it's the perfect laptop.
I have one of the newer ThinkPads, the one made by Lenovo, and boy is it still a beast. It can run Minecraft with mods and simple shaders at stable 30 fps, it survived being dropped from a desk a couple times, it’s drive is quite fast, AND IT’S YOGA SERIES (3rd gen), meaning it has a touchscreen which is very handy to me as a student. As for a roll cage - the body itself is one, being around 60% metal. Absolute unit of a laptop.
The first big thing I bought with my first big salary was a refurbished T480, I swapped the keyboard and both batteries and applied a leather skin on it, it's a beauty.
This video convinced me to buy a Thinkpad myself, and I’m loving it. I have a T430s and I instantly fell in love with it. I definitely fell for the meme. It has Arch Linux and all, and I just use to code on my projects. I just recently bought another one the T440p. All dirt cheap. Definitely worth every penny
This video will be my response to anyone who asks about my dear 50$ laptop.
Lenovo sells 2000 USD Thinkpap laptops that the screen touches the keyboard leaving permanent marks to the screen. And they say that it's because we carry the laptop around... Also the battery life when in stand by for laptops like T14, T14s, P14, X13 is ridiculous poor. The consume more power in standby than other laptops when idling. But the worst thing on those laptops is the BIOS. OMG the BIOS... It is probably written randomly by a bunch of kindergarten kids. Just have a look at the Lenovo community forums...
That generation is not accepted by the cult. Lenovo realized that and will bring back some upgradable ones. We will see how this goes. I still run an 2016 Xeon next to MB Pro M1. It still can keep up with a lot of workloads. AND can be serviced.
@@datacoderX They are implementing lpcamm2 lpddr5x on the new p1 g7, so we could hopefully see lpcamm and upgradable ram coming back to the t and x series
Finally a guy with knowledge, modern thinkpads are trash😊 Lenovo fcked it up
Watching on my 2013 W540. ive kept this thing going for so long. The Y key actually snapped off so i jerryrigged a fix by just applying some double sided tape and it worked, and managed to withstand time too. Even though im a filthy windows user this laptop is everything ill ever need. Does the job perfectly.
I would love to see a "thinkpad skin" for framework laptops. Just imagine that absurd flexibility combined with a thick, resistant, and timeless design like that.
I'm on my 4th ThinkPad right now. Went from a T41, to a T400 to an X201 and now a T480
I used to use HP.. the 2470.. got nub (pointer) addicted.. then got one that refused to load Mint Debian and switched to Lenovo
which one is best?
@Im-not-alone-Im-full-of-myself if you go for age, obviously the T480 is the best of all. But I really love the 4:3 aspect ratio of the T41, and mine came with the uxga+ display (1400x1050), which was high dpi in early 2000s way before Retina Display was a thing, discrete graphics, and the keyboard was really great.
I had a brief stint working at a mom-and-pop computer repair shop about five years ago. The ThinkPads were always the easiest to repair and I loved them.
I think the most memorable ThinkPad I saw though was one brought in by a Korean couple. I think it was the oldest laptop I saw brought in that still worked (not the oldest-there was some insane 90's Toshiba laptop that a customer brought in for ewaste recycling.) If I had to guess, it was from about 2005-2007. It just needed a keyboard replacement, which, due to the design, I could just unscrew and lift out, rather than having to go from the bottom and remove every component inside it to get there. The thing was in miserable condition, but sure enough, to a slightly incredulous me, it booted up Windows 7 (this was about a couple weeks after the official end of life).
I have a MacBook Pro these days-yeah, definitely not counterculture, but they brought back enough ports and I just can't ignore that power-to-efficiency ratio. Still, there exists an alternate timeline where I went with a modern ThinkPad-something in the T-series. I really admire them, and they're still on my shortlist for if I ever need an x86 laptop-them and the Frameworks.
Snapdragon is about to break that dynamic.😊
I had no idea there was a ThinkPad cult out there. My dad worked in corporate for over 30 years and had multiple. He often got to keep his older models, and would hand them down for me when i was old enough to have a laptop of my own.
One of them specifically I believe he got it in 2006 or 2007, it was mine for a bunch of years, and when I had to get a better one for college I gave it to my mother. She still uses it to this day, and it works very well still! It even has it's original dock attachment!! I've never seen another brand that it's this durable
When I was a kid an old ThinkPad T60 was handed down to me. I loved the rough buildquality and the "click" sound it made when I closed the screen. Recently, after years of using a desktop PCs, I fell back for the ThinkPad-Love. I bought a T450 and a X1 Carbon Gen 4 and yes they are old, but theres just a thing about these Laptops what makes me happy :)
I fell for the meme recently.
E16 gen 1. Ryzen 5 7530u. Upgraded the RAM to 40 GB with a 32 GB stick of DDR4 3200 to accompany the 8 GB of soldered on RAM. I put KDE Neon on it. Compared to a lot of laptops, it's still decently serviceable, with most parts being sold straight from Lenovo. Mine was missing the RAM RF shield, and it was easy to get a new one shipped. I've been enjoying tinkering with running LLM AI models locally on it.
I got an old T420 as a hand-me-down from my mom's work. It had windows 7, and I remember installing arch linux for the on that thing. I now use it everyday! (It also took a while to get into the BIOS because of some weird security stuff?)
Bought a T460 in 2019, still rocking it today without problems!
Using it right now to watch this video, the typing is really satisfying and it serves me for a long time even if it fell a few times
At the beggining of the year I got Thinkpad T490s. Pretty nice but when my VM capped my RAM, I wanted to upgrade. Bought the RAM, I found out RAM is soldered in. Thankfully I could return that RAM quickly.
I knew that Thinkpad will be a stopgap for Framework, which I got recently. The biggest things I'm missing is the middle click on touchpad and fingerprint reader next to the touchpad.
FW is much quieter and I can upgrade it obviously.
Cause of Luis Rossmann talking about what he liked about his og IBM ThinkPad
I was obsessed with ThinkPads in 2005 because I was a vendor at IBM and they only gave us ThinkCenter desktops. I only got a ThinkPad in 2014 but by then IBM had become just a job for me. Now I’m considering getting a refurbished T480 to relive the old times.
Such a fun AND serious video. Congrats.
watching on my Thinkpad x270
watching on my W520
I've used Thickpads at work for almost a decade and I think they are well made. That's why I bought one used for myself as well.
I am typing this on a Thinkpad E 15. Upgraded the RAM and you can upgrade the storage so it is still ahead of some other brands even with the slim design and missing ports.
Still have an X201T and a T460 which I also love.
I just upgraded (2) Lenovo Thinkpads. A T400 and a G560. I installed 8 gigs of ram in each, and both with Baracuda Seagate sata hard drives 7200 speed. For some crazy reason I could not install the Brave browser on the G560 after installing MX 23.2 Libretto so I just copied the same operating system for the G560 hard drive from my T400 hard drive using the new Sabrent cloning device. Now the G560 has the Brave browser and it works quite well on both laptops. I really like the T400 keyboard the best. These things are pretty easy to work on and built like tanks. Both of my Lenovo laptops were found in dumpsters. Now they are excellent Linux machines.
It’s funny I didn’t know there was a cult around thinkpads til like a few weeks ago but I instantly understood why. My dad had one growing up. That thing could take a beating and it lasted for years. I remember getting to “play” with it as a kid. Basically just typing in MSWord and I remember the keyboard being sweet. Great quality machine.
Now which thinkpad should I buy for coding?
Watching this video on my T490 that I bought last year for around 200€. Chrome was pushing the RAM just beyond 8GB, but after upgrading to 16GB, it feels like a new laptop and is my daily driver, despite the gaming pc next to it, it just saves so much on electricity and feels basically the same 99% of the time
My first THINKPAD was given by my University when I joined as Assistant Professor in 2007. It lasted comfortably till 2012 with one upgrade in 2010 done by the University itself. Did not change the battery or adaptor or display even once. But, it slowed down significantly after 5 years and handed it over to my cousin to be used in 2014. I think it is still working for productivity purposes without a single upgrade or repair.
Still code on my T450s nearly every day. 10 years going strong!
L512 guy here! What a beast!
Got a T500 for $15. Maxed out RAM, installed SSD, run MX Linux on it and it works well. The keyboard is great. Has original battery and it still holds a charge. It just a beater but gets the job done. Also, it has the last Core 2 Duo wich is great because no backdoor in the CPU.
You have no proof that modern CPU have backdoor. Only internet FUD.
You have no proof that ancien CPU don't have backdoor. Only internet speculation.
@@hypnoz7871 intel ME is prolly not a backdoor but it's still bloatware I don't need
@@hypnoz7871 hello, agent.
@@hypnoz7871 You have no proof that it _doesn't_. No one does except Intel and the feds.
I ran a thinkpad w541 workstation with 32 gigs of RAM an upgraded i7-4910MQ and the quadro k1100m for four years
It was an editing machine, a DVD player, a hard drive recovery system, a mobile broadband road beast, and could dock and operate up to 6 displays to get some real work done.
Most effienct robust machine I ever used, took a drop off 6 stories and kept ticking, i even managed to put enough voltage through VGA once that it blew up the graphics card, which, was still repairable.
Ironically, what killed it finally was software support, 4th gen haswell may be powerful but software support is starting to run a little thin, tenfold for the Quadro k100m
I've got my eyes on the p71 but I can't help and wish we'd get another genuine monster machine like the w541 out of lenovo again
Either way, glad to see more videos on the topic!
I'm thinking of a P72 myself
Edit: P71. It has a CD/DVD drive and a mxm GPU.
@skyrunner021 the p70 and 71 have an upgradable graphics card where the p72 dosen't
This ain't a big deal for most folks but boy I'm frothing to have a look at that prospect
@@sarcasticmcspastic oh right I meant that one then. It's not a huge selection of graphics cards I hear. My eGPU will probably be better. It'll definitely work better than on my T430, with the P71's pcie 3.0 on the expresscard.
i now unironically use the trackpoint nipple for any thinkpad (or thinkpad-related design) laptop i use. this includes my own personal thinkpad t470s and my work t14 laptop. yes, it is even good for gaming as a joystick for some reason
I thought I was alone in my love for my ThinkPad.
Last year I bought three T430 Thinkpads in a lot for $175. No batteries, no drives, came with power bricks, and all three in great working condition. My purpose was to A) finally have the writing machine I've always desired, and B) be able to run multiple different Linux distros at the same time for comparison purposes. Missions accomplished, but I have to CONSTANTLY force myself to not shop for more of them! I am crack-addicted to their upgradeability mod potential. It's a badge of honor to carry my thic-n-chunky pal around lol. I think that I'll probably hold out on buying any more until I can find a top-spec T480 and stop there.
Maybe.
I've been daily driving a modern thinkpad for a year (P51, got it used for $350 on ebay), it's pretty much everything people like about the old ones (including the heaviness lol) except it can run software made after 2015, love it
Watching this video on a (very flattered) ThinkPad, I can remember all the times I spilled water in it, dropped it, and filled it up with dust over time. The only things that broke were the 'B' key (which always falls into the nub and slowly moves the mouse) and the trackpad not clicking anymore. Also, btw, this model is from 2015 and is still competitive to modern computers. Great laptop!
I didn’t know you had interests other than PRIVACY
Who doesn't love ThinkPads?
@@EricMurphyxyz true
my old thinkpad is so privacy focused that it didn't allow me to enter bios. I forgot the password
when I dig into the way how to reset it, I found that in many cases it can be done only by welding the micro-scheme, then using a special reprogram device to reset it. Alternative is to replace a motherboard.
I read that some Thinkpads are sold these days with password protection, and they don't give the password
he uses a mac lol since when does he care about privacy?
i do have to say one thing on the un-upgradable CPU part.
its not lenovo, its AMD and Intel not selling socketed CPUs for laptops.
As for ram there are some new developments that might give it back to us.
lpcamm lets go
I absolutely love the nipple pointer thingy. It's so much easier to use than a trackpad. I wish more laptops had them.
I haven't bought into the Thinkpad craze, but instead I've actually grabbed the 14s Thinkbook. It was the only laptop I was able to find that was a 2-in-1 with an integrated stylus and 2 nvme slots so I can toss an Oculink adapter into one of them. Also has upgradeable ram up to 40gb, and a full metal body (even the keys!) which is pretty cool for a brand new 2-in-1.
nothing better than installing linux on a old thinkpad
like therapy .
In the late 90s, I was an OS/2 product specialist at IBM Canada. They encouraged us to work with Linux. Back then I liked Mandrake and got it going on a ThinkPad (forgotten which model), but I had to change a config file to get it to work with token ring. Also, I'd occasionally find a pack of Linux distros in my mail slot.
Aren't they also one of the few places you can run open source firmware? I'm hoping framework can become the new thinkpad, but I don't think they're quite there yet firmware wise.
I used to own a very old thinkpad (it was very thick) which my mother previously owned, and I only used it for school for like a year before I stopped using it because it was completely broken. I sometimes miss that beast
The only thing I miss about my old macbook is the touchpad, the sheer size and glass top made it an absolute joy to use. Plus the way that macos handled scrolling felt way better than any other os I've used, other than that it was nothing but pain to get anything done on that computer
For irony, the day you released that video, I buy my first Thinkpad (t410).
I love it, keyboard is awesome to type, very resistent a drops and hits.
Thanks, Bro!
Nice video ! Does someone has the ThinkPad buying guide showed at 7:02 ?
T460 with 68+ and 22 internal battery. It spends 4 days away from a charger and still goes.
Guess you got it throttled back.. easy to do with Linux
@@tsclly2377 No
Nice to see my fav tech/privacy youtuber alive and well.
This makes me wanna buy a thinkpad lol. A laptop where I can upgrade any of the parts, possibly has a dvd slot built in, and can swap to Linux if windows is slowing it down sounds amazing. It’s sounding like the best laptop I can have as a future comp sci student going to college this fall.