I disagree. My thinkpad x230t is still going strong nearly 10 years later (extreme example). With 16GB of ram and an SSD it's still a decently capable machine.
If you're the type of person that needs the _fastest_ computer then yeah obviously you're upgrading every year. Or if you work on large codebases, etc.
But if you don't care about that, you can easily go 4+ years with your laptop. Yes computers have gotten faster, but the internet is still usable on a 10 year old machine.
I've replaced my battery once already, but consider your keyboard/screen are likely things to break at any point in time with accidents.
And we're comparing this to apple, a company that has been basically DRM'ing components - even if you can buy the replacement you can't use it without it being "programmed" by apple.
EDIT: Also note that the bare minimum models from 10 years ago are likely too slow nowadays, I mean to compare this to the medium-upper range devices of the time, potentially with relatively low cost upgrades like an SSD.
I still use a ThinkPad T420 running Linux for some projects. It's a tank, practically everything is replaceable (unlike in my MBP, which has already had one Butterfly Keyboard failure...) and Sandy Bridge CPUs are honestly still modern enough that I'd honestly say most complaints about modernity are artificial consumerist nonsense.
We're at the point where computers, cars and phones are good enough and commoditized to the point where they should be lasting 10+ years. Instead, we're moving toward a 4-year maximum with everything sealed up and soldered, so you can throw it on the e-waste pile and replace it to keep "infinite" growth chugging. The iMac is particularly offensive.
What Foundation is doing should be the norm, by law.
> ...and Sandy Bridge CPUs are honestly still modern enough that I'd honestly say most complaints about modernity are artificial consumerist nonsense.
Just because you don't personally see any benefit to the advancements being made doesn't mean others don't. They're certainly still performant enough to be useful but even something like h.264 decoding puts a huge strain on my haswell laptop, which is a trivial task to newer ones thanks to advancements in chips. This isn't even an uncommon task. Anyone who watches videos online probably benefits from this, especially when it comes to laptops which are concerned with battery life.
> We're at the point where computers, cars and phones are good enough and commoditized to the point where they should be lasting 10+ years.
Cars do last 10+ years. I'm driving around in a 17 year old vehicle and it works just fine. But I don't think that means we should halt all progress in vehicles. It's still using gasoline and not running on electric motors, after all. At some point down the road perhaps we'll see commoditization of batteries in the auto industry but that's not where we're at today, where the vast majority of vehicles on the road still run on gas.
> Instead, we're moving toward a 4-year maximum with everything sealed up and soldered, so you can throw it on the e-waste pile and replace it to keep "infinite" growth chugging. The iMac is particularly offensive.
If the iMac is offensive to you, then don't buy it. All these environmental arguments on this website always come off as extremely disingenuous when they pair it with their solution being imposing restrictions rather than creating a superior product.
> What Foundation is doing should be the norm, by law.
I can't stand these authoritarian takes. No one is forcing you to partake and there are options available to people that hold certain ideologies. The idea that you must impose that on everyone by law is absurd.
Apologies, I think I may be thinking of h.265 and vp9. At any rate, the point is that particular laptop cannot play back any youtube video beyond 720p30 without protesting. very loudly.
This is a tangential question. I adore my Thinkpad x230t but it has a whopping ~1 hour battery life at this point. Do you leave yours permanently plugged in or do you have some sort of modern battery solution for our ancient beast with an amazing keyboard?
You can hack the bios to remove the DRM and use 2012 aftermarket batteries, or replace the cells. I dumped my x230, not worth the horribly priced aftermarket (if you break your screen it’s almost as expensive as another laptop and you’ll need to repair it). I love my newer x250 with no DRM for WiFi, 2x SSD slots, cheap batteries that can hotswap, cheaper 1080p IPS replacement screens, and 11hr+ battery life. The x230 already lost the classic keyboard, the new one is fine, and the speakers are retardedly still on the bottom but it’s much louder.
Ah yeah, the unlock to do this is called "1vyrain", right? https://github.com/n4ru/1vyrain/ Friend was telling me about it as he accidentally ordered a non-Lenovo battery and was considering sending it back but also considering trying this "unlock".
That looks very nice, before you had to flash the bios yourself, I never heard of it. I just got lazy and never flashed the bios, I'll set time to use this. Makes the battery replacement much less painful, thank you!
No problem! Yeah it looks a bit scary to me so I'll only try it if I can really dedicate some time and focus on it, and only if I really want to install the mod. I think this same mod is needed if you want to use X220 keyboard on the X230.
Thinking of how the MNT Reform designed their battery solution[0], I wonder if it's possible to build a "battery enclosure" where you can just drop in a bunch of LiFePo4 cells, so you can just purchase commodity batteries. It seems super wasteful to buy a complete new battery every time because it's just the cells inside that lose energy capacity...
I've had the same issue, I've replaced the battery once but I've found that if you're running any type of workload then ~1 hour is the best you can hope for. Luckily I rarely need it mobile for more then an hour, but I might look into modding the battery.
That's the reason I jumped to the T430. Same CPU, but can get a 70++ battery for 6-9 hours worth of battery, but kinda the same concept. The only bad thing, you need to mod the keyboard for an t420 for the vintage thinkpad experience.
I ended up just buying a new battery for my t540p. I was reluctant to because I didn't think it could possibly last much longer with the abuse it's been subjected to, but, it's still going strong a year later.
Coincidentally I just bought a ThinkPad X230T this past weekend and it's powered on next to me at this moment! It runs great. I actually bought a couple, and a regular X230. Such nice machines, and very repairable. I am observing the fate of modern computing and trying to get a few easily-repairable machines to hopefully last a long time, rather than weird difficult-to-repair stuff. I have absolutely zero interest in brand new machines that are increasingly locked down with impossible-to-repair and "you don't really own this computer" features.
The X230 was having some weird power/sensor issue so I ordered a replacement motherboard for like $40 CAD in case it dies. It could be years before I need it, but like, this stuff costs peanuts and I am so much more comfortable using a computer I know I can easily maintain (and has excellent performance to boot).
I highly suggest you return them since the upkeep is very expensive. The repairs for screens is ridiculous, the batteries are horrible (the x220 has more longevity since the bios is DRM free), the cards are on a whitelist (only approved ones allowed). It is so bad I have some that are in disrepair until I can find parts for them again. The x240 to x270 will have modern parts that are cheap, the batteries internal and external are under $30, the screen aren't almost/more than the price of the same laptop. The TN screens on the x230 may not break, but you won't be happy using them, and to modify it with modern parts needs an expensive $60 screen adapter, and you can't control the backlight. The x250 is the best since there is no wifi whitelist, unofficial screens are fine in linux, the trackpad is good by default, and the battery market is so good sometimes they give you 2 6 cells instead of one, whereas the x230 ones are now going for $80.
Ah yeah, luckily the X230T I will mostly only use plugged in. I do agree, the energy efficiency (and battery cost) is one criticism of mine. That said, I'm not too worried about WLAN allowlist since I can supposedly remove that with 1vyrain (same with battery allowlist), if I even cared about it. Same with displays, the TN in the X230 is pretty sub-par but totally fine for me. Yeah, for now stuff is pretty easily available here, but I wonder how long that will last. Lots of people selling these machines for parts, so I can totally hoard some extra stuff if I want to... haha
With the cheaper batteries it’s still only an ok usage if you already have it. Official batteries will cost the same as the unofficial ones for these older devices and the screens remain expensive, and there aren’t any good IPS ones. If you don’t care about it being used as a laptop you can replace them with screens that are larger in size, but it won’t close properly anymore. I personally never looked back since the x250 was better in every way, the default screen is IPS.
>And we're comparing this to apple, a company that has been basically DRM'ing components - even if you can buy the replacement you can't use it without it being "programmed" by apple.
Bit of a devil's advocate here, but by doing this they prevent themselves getting blamed when low quality replacement parts are cranked out on the cheap by companies who don't care if their customers' customers die in a
fire.
The headline if an iPhone with a third party battery exploding and injuring someone will be "This iPhone Exploded, You Won't Believe Her Injuries", not "iPhone with Knock Off Battery Explodes".
Apple wouldn't be as profitable as they are if they weren't anticipating things like this and planning for it years in advance.
That's a neat trick, thanks! That said--I want to use a browser, because that's how to get to the thing in the way with the least friction. So while in a pinch that definitely helps, it's not (to me) reasonable for daily use, which constrains the internet usage on that machine a lot.
Yeah, the manual way is certainly the long way around, though there are (or used to be, anyway) addons for Firefox to directly send Youtube and friends to mpv. Another snag is that you can't directly switch between video qualities, though you can put --ytdl-format into the config with the appropriate formats for your screen size.
The only issues I’ve run into with older laptops are limited wifi speed/range, the inability to decode HD video streams efficiently, and battery life, which is mostly solved by a new battery, though efficiency isn’t always great with older devices.
That is because laptop is a misnomer. While technically possible, most of them have some sort of vents for either air intake or outlet there. Which is then blocked. And makes it cook. Even if they vent backwards/sideways only, they still cook because the little free space between bottom and table(or whatever surface) is still blocked.
If you're the type of person that needs the _fastest_ computer then yeah obviously you're upgrading every year. Or if you work on large codebases, etc.
But if you don't care about that, you can easily go 4+ years with your laptop. Yes computers have gotten faster, but the internet is still usable on a 10 year old machine.
I've replaced my battery once already, but consider your keyboard/screen are likely things to break at any point in time with accidents.
And we're comparing this to apple, a company that has been basically DRM'ing components - even if you can buy the replacement you can't use it without it being "programmed" by apple.
EDIT: Also note that the bare minimum models from 10 years ago are likely too slow nowadays, I mean to compare this to the medium-upper range devices of the time, potentially with relatively low cost upgrades like an SSD.