Posted by Fred34 4/3/2025
Now in a modern laptop it’s the top case or bottom case or board; the robot-made factory parts are bigger integrated components of the system. All you care about is your data anyway, the repairability of the system as a whole by swapping out components at home (admittedly a large culture in the PC world, as silly as it is these days when all you’re doing is connecting a robot factory gpu to a robot factory cpu and choosing a PSU and RAM (also made in robot factories)) isn’t that important.
I hope one day that computing gets so small and light and dense and integrated that I can’t replace any single components without a robot factory and/or microscope. I want a solid microscopically integrated slab (which is what my iPad Pro is basically approaching).
Maybe you have the main motherboard with CPU, RAM, and possibly GPU all together. Save space - integrate bigger and better batteries.
Swappable storage though seems like a no brainer (especially because even the fastest SSDs don't require the kind of latency and link speed soldered RAM might). A modern card type slot for peripherals seems like a damn nice addition too along with the ability to swap the WiFi chip.
Hell I would even settle for an easily swapped mobo with soldered parts if I wanted to upgrade down the line - a good screen and keyboard and chassis can last a long time !
This is like wanting a headphone jack or usb-A or SD card slot on an iPhone SE. It’s a step backwards, given the size and weight. We’re actually at the point where the thickness of a micro-sd card slot cage matters.
Any weight budget that could be used for such things almost nobody ever uses is rightfully used instead for battery.
Instead, refurbished Thinkpads are still coming off leases. Available for a 250-700 refurbished. Bench repairable. I keep good backups. If something incredible happens and I can’t fix it I can get a new one same day and be back on my feet.
And I like the aesthetic. They’re built to be durable. The chassis has fluid channels. The parts are replaceable. They’re black, unassuming, and utilitarian.
It is getting harder to keep the latest versions of some distros running on them. Software continues to expand like a gas and developers don’t seem to run their stuff on anything but the latest spec hardware. But there are distros out there where folks take care to keep things minimal and fast.
These are still powerful machines. Not editing 4K video on them. But they’re dang useful for coding, writing, and day to day things I do.
The "hard" thing about thinkpads is you have to find them. I must have searched eBay listing for close to a month before the right thinkpad popped up. Especially with the workstation grade laptops, they were so configurable brand new that there are something like 48 possible variants you can find, and finding one with the exact specs you want can be incredibly difficult.
I'm hanging on to my X201. I bought it after I left my workplace where I had an X230; and I choose an earlier model because I wanted to upgrade rather than downgrade my computer. I am _much_ more satisfied with the X201 - because of the keyboard of course. IIANM, X220 is the best one of the X series.
I replaced the HDD with an SSD about 8 years ago and expanded the RAM to 8 GB, and performance is tolerable. At the moment I'm running Lubuntu on it, but I'm thinking of switching to Q4OS.
Now, sure, it's old; and yes, it's a bit rickety plastics-wise after having survived a fall from 3m at some point; and yes, the battery life is limited even after replacing it.
But - I would take it over a modern piece-of-@#$%-keyboard machine any day of the week.
By contrast, my son is 9 this year. Still, the kids are good to one another.
I like the older keyboards and I'm ok with 1366x768 so I'm happy with an X220 with 8Gb RAM and a 256Gb ssd (sata). I know many people would find that unacceptable.
- fully mechanical
- mechanical shutter with light meter
- electronic control of shutter, mechanical advance
- fully electronic shutter and advance
Broadly, what I'm finding after digging in to restoring some cameras is that most of the cameras from the first stage can still be fixed and made to perform close to when they were new. The second still work, but the light meter can die (simpler light meters may be repairable, later ones not so much). The third and fourth stages - once they die, there's no repairing them. And when you look at digital cameras, there'll be very, very few of these that last long into the future.
This bears out the 'Lindy Effect' mentioned in the article.
Or if you want to get fancy the Nikon FM3a gives you sort of the best of all worlds (all mechanical internals or battery powered auto exposure with the flip of a dial)
The FM3a always really appealed, but the more I think about it the less it appeals. Although it's a mechanical shutter, the electronics are still pretty complex and if they die, there's so few of them that there's very little way of repairing it with salvaged parts. I've also heard that because they are not as reliable as the previous FM / FM2 iterations
EDIT: I just turned it over to check and its a T420i Type 4177-X07 pretty much solid as a rock. I also discovered it would run with 16GB of RAM so there's that.
I wouldn't be surprised if its DVD drive is also okay and if you gave me a disc I could read the stuff off of it for you. Now there's something not everyone can do these days.