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0 pointsnecovek3y ago0 comments

While I am a devoted fan of Thinkpad laptops (they are better than Apple MacBooks because of — at least as an option — non-glare screens, keyboards and soft-touch non-wrist-cutting palmrest: two/three most important factors for a portable machine imho), that's only partially true, and rarely with a new generation of hardware.

Eg. I remember getting Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen early on in the cycle (I've also got 5th and 8th gen in the house, and X1 Yoga 6th gen which sucks with that metal finish), and the with the removal of "regular" S3 sleep, you close your laptop and it keeps running and potentially burning in your bag. It took Lenovo a year or so to add a "Linux sleep support" BIOS option, though it took community less than that to provide DSDT patches to re-enable S3 sleep.

All I am saying is that Lenovo machines, esp Thinkpad line, are usually a great choice, but you can hit early-adopter hurdles just like with any other laptop. The good thing about them is that community is huge and great, and that they are the best laptops around as far as usability on the go goes (as in, actually typing on them and seeing what you type).

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nobleach3y ago

The whole S3 sleep fiasco is the stuff of nightmares. I have a gen 6 X1 Carbon too and I've gotten it sleeping very well. I also have a Dell XPS 15 that I love but... it's been 2 years since it was brand new and it's still stuck on S2 "idle". As I understand it, Microsoft wants it this way so they can maintain network connectivity. My major gripe with the Lenovo is the 16 gigs of RAM soldered on the board. It's so nice to be able to pop open my Dell and put up to 64 gigs in there, while replacing the SSD in one of the two M2 slots.

Then again, I'm typing this on a 2019 Macbook Pro (Intel) that has nary a single replaceable part.

CoolCold3y ago

> Microsoft wants it this way so they can maintain network connectivity

I liked coolness of "Connected Standby" - laptop sleeping, but playing music over bluetooth. Other than coolness, cannot say I found much use of it - may be my ssh didn't terminate? Don't remember.

DJeuxg3y ago

The windows created S3 sleep debacle was annoying. But it's long since solved. Lenovo ships both sleep options in bios now and Linux distro a support both sleep styles because they have different drain profiles.

FullyFunctional3y ago

Quick note about the screen glaring - my very first action upon unpacking any Apple notebook is to apply a matte screen protector (the purist may wince). I'd recommend a screen protector on any expensive purchase and the matte one has all but eliminated the glare for me.

necovekOP3y ago

I personally live in a country where it's hard to get any small thing easily online: I'd probably have to order it online from USA, UK or Germany, get it processed by customs and then hope it'd work well. To reduce the costs of trying out more than one item, I'd probably order a few different ones so the shipping costs and customs costs are contained. Which means that I'd be spending $150+ on a screen protector that might not work.

Or I could just look for a laptop that has an anti-glare screen ;-) And a good keyboard.

Too bad new AMD-based Thinkpad Z series do away with a bunch of the good things from X1 Carbon (soft-touch palmrests for one), or I'd seriously consider them to be able to drop my desktop entirely (Intel iGPUs struggle to do full screen video calls on 4k external screens under Linux, I am _hoping_ AMD 680M would do a better job).

addicted3y ago

The same thing happens to me with my company Thinkpad.

Closing the cover does not put it to sleep, no matter what I do to the settings (admittedly it’s a very locked down device so there may be settings that are not available to me).

bodge50003y ago

Yeh same for me, I'm a big thinkpad fan (I own 5 of them, 7 if you include the ones I broke in attempts to do some outlandish mods), but I do occasionally find issues out the box, though that can be down to the distro you use as well.

That being said, an imperfect out the box experience just gives me an excuse to get another (old) thinkpad, so every cloud

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