Updated ThinkPad Laptop Portfolio(news.lenovo.com) |
Updated ThinkPad Laptop Portfolio(news.lenovo.com) |
May be that they didn't do that with their pro offerings, but I for one try to avoid companies with such a mindset.
That said, it's true that it doesn't speak well of the company.
This is, in my opinion, one thing that greatly helps apple build their reputation. When you mention "Dell" people first think of their cheap/bad inspirion stuff and not of the high priced xps, elitebook etc. models. Similarly for HP, similarly for Lenovo.
For the most part it helps to think of the consumer and non-consumer branches as completely different companies that just happen to have the same name.
If I were a consumer buying a Windows laptop for Windows use cases there is no way I would trust any hardware supplier's OEM build out of the box to not include bloatware that adds a level of risk out of the box that isn't worth completely wiping the disk (including restoration partitions). Whether it be for "support" use cases or more nefarious / gray areas it's a hard sell to say any one is exemplary better than the other. Maybe niche players and those that are selling non-Windows variants, but the reality is margins are thin on general purpose computing and so these types of angles become the norm. And the reality is Windows has lost it's way with regard to being consumer oriented. A default consumer build out of the box is already riddled with ad and bloatware. It's truly a cringe-worthy state of consumer options today.
Also didn't know about the "Download Valley"
Purism has an open source laptop that looks good. Expensive, though. Voting for FOSS hardware with your wallet ain't cheap.
Lenovo is supporting Linux on a lot of their hardware moving forward [0]. Lenovo also joined LVFS in 2018 to provide native Linux firmware updates [1].
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/linux [1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/lvfs-lenovo-firmware-upd...
Dell's XPS "Ubuntu edition" looks like a great device. However, limitations on repairability at that price are a non-starter for me.
A crack appeared in the bezel around the screen. I figured the issue was my fault, but I also babied the device and the crack was a full crack through the plastic bezel. Lenovo could not have been less helpful because I didn’t pay for their insurance. I was very happy to pay, but wanted a quote for accidental damage for my credit card. Lenovo would not, under any circumstance, give me a quote without my paying a fee for a quote to fix my computer. At this point I’m just hoping the crack doesn’t get worse.
One example: My models are supposed to be sold with 8 GB RAM, the tech specs say "Up to 16 GB" and the order confirmation suggests 4 GB.
Surely there's a market for a laptop with a good keyboard and real ports somewhere? If I'm at a desk I'll work at my desktop, I want a portable device for doing on site stuff, which often involves plugging into a network
Fine, but where are the people who will spend ten minutes talking about the different keyboard options they considered for their daily driver? Where are the people who have to read code for a living and will openly mock 16:9 with it's pathetic vertical space? Talking about how easy it is to dual boot Linux on the machine?
If anyone knows of such reviewers, please drop a link below. I'm sick of wathching MKBHD.
I'm waiting for 8:5, OLED or microLED, and I'm continually looking at Thunderbolt docks for something cheap & compact. The Dell XPS 2-in-1 is very close to what I want, but I wish there were 1 more USB type-c.
Dell actually has an OLED screen on the Dell XPS 15, but it's 3840x2160 (16:9). c'est la vie..
I wish Lenovo would create this. Both vertical & horizontal edge to edge screen. Super slim. Sub 14” display for those of us who travel a lot. Light weight. Etc.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-xps-13-lapt...
X1 display is not vertical edge to edge.
And it’s larger than I want. It’s 14” and I’m not wanting a form factor so large.
This video (granted it’s dated) gives a sense of the size difference between XPS and X1
I can't believe it, but Lenovo's best compact laptop is still the X220 or X230 (where the keyboard already started to deteriorate). Sure, the new ones are faster, but it doesn't make up for the deteriorated structural features, keyboard etc.
The linux experience with the P1 has improved quite a bit since I got it about 8 months ago as support for the hardware has improved in the kernel.
Generally, I would say ThinkPads support linux as well as anything else right now: the ultrabooks with Intel graphics are fine. Anything with optimus graphics chip will work but not quite perfectly. Imho stay away from OLED for now.
Ubuntu 20.04 will bring fractional scaling and a new kernel. Along with packaging the nvidia drivers on the ISO and the optimus support they've built in, that is probably going to be the best laptop distro.
My last was a T460, but have a colleague who got a T490 and sang it's praises for a week. Think he put Arch or Manjaro on it.
The new drivers are still quite unstable and many people still have no mic or bad audio.
"built leveraging the core tenets of design, innovation and quality."
I do appreciate their naming, which includes now the screen size (T14,X13).
X1 X3 X4
T4 T5 T7
T5s T5e (or T5p)
E4 E5
P5 P5s P7
and then just versioned them
T4v2 or T4g10
*s being slim, e being extreme or p being performance. T5P vs P5S might be confusing, so id be ok with the switch to E.
You can also splurge an even extra 10% to get next-business-day onsite service.
It is worth to note that it does not actually mean that Lenovo will come next business day to fix. It means that they "try" (whatever that means) to do something next day, and if they fail, they shrug their shoulders and come later.
Source: My NBD serviced Thinkpad was bricked for something like 10 days.
I still recommend at least the onsite, if not both, but careful because Onsite+Accidental does not necessarily mean Onsite Accidental.
I am sure there are ways to cheat this system by stretching the truth, but its not the spirit of the agreement youre making when you buy the device and related maintenance contract.
Wikipedia also treats the Extreme as a submodel of X1Carbon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_Carbon
However, if you reinstalled Windows manually you wouldn't have. Technically it had nothing to do with firmware.
Secondly, the review genre lends itself to a race for releasing something first and results in only the most superficial aspects of a product considered which I find could be better served as well.
Case in point: There are many comments in this thread about their their privacy disasters with the consumer line or how they don't like the service levels for the consumer line. On the one hand, this has nothing to do with how it works for thinkpads, on the other hand both are Lenovo.
As a similar example, suppose you have an article about a new Porsche and then 90% of the comments are about how they don't like something in their VW Golf. That would seems weird, right? Yet both are made by the same company.
So I guess it is going to land in fedora first and then make its way to other distros.
That said, under windows the fingerprint reader is frustratingly bad (lots and lotsof false negatives and slow). How can they be almost perfect on phones but that awful on laptops?