/tpg/ - ThinkPad General

Don't buy anything OTHER THAN IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T, X, and W/P Series if you want the Real Business Experience™
>Other business laptops are welcome in /tpg/ (Dell Latitude/Precision, HP EliteBook/ZBook)

Why ThinkPad?
>Used machines are plentiful and cheap
>Excellent keyboards, tactile feel and quiet
>Great durability: magnesium roll cage for structural integrity, with high quality plastic body panels
>Utilitarian design: e.g. indicator LEDs, 7 row keyboard layout on older models
>Docking stations that easily turns your laptop into a desktop
>Easy to repair (most models), upgrade & maintain thanks to readily available service manuals for every model, spare parts easy & cheap to obtain
>Excellent Linux & *BSD support

ThinkWiki - General info about ThinkPads/specs
thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

Modern models:
>X220/X230 - 12", 768p, cheap and light
>T420/T430 - 14", 900p (1080p w/mod board), Ivy Bridge support on T420 w/coreboot, quad core upgrade, classic keyboard mod on xx30 series
>T520/530; W520/530 - 15", 1080p, DTR, 32GB RAM on quad core models
>T440p/540p; W540/1 - last ThinkPads with socketed processors, easily replaceable trackpad (W541 doesn't need trackpad replacement)
>T440s/T450(s)/T460(s)/T470(s) - ultraportables, good battery life
>T480 - last ThinkPad with swappable battery, T25 keyboard mod, excellent performance/battery life, getting cheaper

Upgraded models:
>X210 - X200/X201, i5-8250U quad core
>X62/X63 - X61, i5-5250U
>T70 - T60, i7-7700HQ
IPS displays, USB 3.0, M.2 x4, MiniDP, no dock
forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=117

BIOS replacement:
coreboot.org - T440p, X131e, X1C1, and xx30 series (no 61) or older
libreboot.org - X/T60 and xx00 series

Additional resources:
biosimage.booru.org
1vyra.in

UEFI patches:
github.com/digmorepaka/thinkpad-firmware-patches

Chat:
t.me/thinkpadgeneral
discord.gg/Ybdz7AS
##ibmthinkpad on libera
#/tpg/ on rizon

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X1 nano is the coolest thing I’ve bought ever
I’m looking at getting other old tiny thinkpads just for the fun comparison

The good
>the screen is gorgeous
>the realistic battery life is good enough, 8-9 hours of regular usage at 70-80% brightness
>it’s cool and quiet (after a software fix)
>the keyboard feels good despite having a relatively low travel compared to other thinkpad keyboards, it’s noticeable if you think about it, but not otherwise
>physical camera shutter is a cool bonus in something this small

The bad
>2 usb c ports, requiring a dock or wireless accessories to do much of anything really
>the touchpad is has awful palm avoidance and I frequently found myself fucking things up with random clicks on accident
>only thing you can upgrade is the SSD, and that has to wait until SSD tech gets better because it’s a short and one sided form factor that is 1tb at the absolute maximum
>windows hello and the fingerprint sensor work great in windows but both technologies (one obviously) are completely unsupported under Linux, which brings in the last problem
>windows runs like ass on this thing

That last issue is a big one so let me explain, the stock windows install is a bloated mess of Lenovo garbage, and it causes huge performance problems in a lot of applications and games, we’re talking making any game unplayable with extreme long lag spikes where frame rates drop to the single digits because it’s throttling all cores and the gpu down to the bare minimum to keep the cpu cool, because the stock power management settings are to let the cpu hit 95c with the fan near idle and then throttle it to death until it cools back down, rather than just running the fan a little faster
This is such a problem that going over to Linux not only brought average temperatures down to 75-80c tops under load, but the fan noise increased so little I didn’t even notice until it kicked up one notch for a second when booting for the second time on linux

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It’s genuinely annoying to me that Lenovo thought this was a good idea? Leave their machine using 5.5gb of ram on idle? Letting it throttle to death making everything an unstable laggy mess?

Linux as a clean install you watch the stability in performance come back, the thermals are great considering it’s this tiny thing with an anemic Heatsink, and it boots just as fast.
However you do lose as I mentioned the other two login methods which are really good and worked really well in windows, it’s just that the rest of windows on this is a pain in the ass.

Even a clean install of updated 10 pro, it had limited power control, as soon as you install the bare minimum Lenovo bloatware to get the fingerprint scanner working you’re left with even more garbage it tries to install without asking.
Windows in general annoys me but that’s another topic, it’s just not as fluid as it should be.
Using windows 10 on my P50, it felt like it was meant for that, it all worked well, because there wasn’t anything crazy going on. The nano has all these more complex technologies in it which have the software end equivalent of a complete afterthought.

Only other complaint as an audio nerd, this has a tiger lake integrated dac that tops out at 48khz 24 bit Audio.
That’s fine for 99% of people but if you’re like me and have a bunch of high resolution flacs and DSD and shit, get a dac, hope it works on Linux (it won’t).

I wish that thing had rj45 and upgradable ram. I hate lenovo.

bone stock ubuntu though is perfect on this thing, with the exception of facial recognition and the fingerprint scanner working properly

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Screenfetch? Is that like a fancy neofetch?

I have troubles with my old T440, it won't boot at all. It starts, the power button turns green but the screen remains black forever. What could be the problem? I tried everything battery-related but it didn't work.

They're very similar.

Is there an X270/X260/X250 touchpad model that doesn't make it feel like you're leading the pointer by a leash?