I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

Posted by Fred34 4/3/2025

I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad(pilledtexts.com)

620 points | 580 commentspage 7

zabzonk 4/3/2025|

ThinkPads back when were certainly good, sturdy machines, though I could never get along with the nipple. Another great older machine for me was the purple Sony Vaio - magnesium alloy, came with Win2K installed. I bought one, and then immediately bought another - the first I repurposed as a Linux server and I carried them both (easily) around for demoing this and that.

My latest, which I think is going to be in the ThinkPad and Vaio class is my new Asus Zenbook - brilliant light chassis and great performance.

interloxia 4/3/2025|

Yes the T30's nipple was a bit strange.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dctaft/413198278/

I quite like the cup style trackpoint even if it tended to leave a small circle on the screen.

That particular laptop died in middle age due to motherboard hardware defects.

yummypaint 4/4/2025||

Once Apple ends official support for a machine the user has to buy a new MacBook or use an increasingly compromised system. Apple hardware uses an arm architecture that cannot ‘dual boot’ Windows or Linux easily. Once macOS support dies for a modern MacBook it becomes obsolete.

This helped me realize why I don't like MacBooks. They aren't really computers. They are big folding smartphones with keyboards.

shmerl 4/3/2025||

Side note, but I noticed now practically all Thinkpads are available with Linux as an option. That's a big improvement from when Windows tax was practically unavoidable with them.

oever 4/3/2025|

I recently tried to buy a ThinkPad with trackpoint and a high-resolution screen. The X1 AMD G5 is available with Linux but the 2880x1800 version is only available with Windows. Initially, I thought there was no 2880 version, because the OS selection comes before the screen selection in the Lenovo configuration tool. Once Linux is selected, the 2880 version disappears.

It's not been delivered yet, but I'm sure installing Linux will not be a problem.

A ThinkPad with ~14" 4k OLED touchscreen and trackpoint and AMD processor is what I was looking for, but those do not seem to exist.

Melatonic 4/3/2025|||

At 14" doesn't 4K just seen like crazy overkill ? Sure on a laptop your face might be closer to the screen - but that's a lot of pixels in a small form factor. I'm still rocking 1440P 27" monitors for my desktop and find those good enough (although at that size you can see a benefit from 4K for sure).

kev009 4/3/2025|||

The 4k OLED and touchscreen kind of cancel each other out if you care about maximum optical quality.

coro_1 4/3/2025||

From what I know the entire purpose of the Macbook "Pro" line is literally that they're made to be modular. They were at least. I maintain a 2011 Pro. The build quality is noticeably nicer than the cheaper chassis they produce today. The experience itself is actually much nicer too, smoother, feels better. Added, modern displays have great resolution. But the aged units carry an interesting and rich in depth projection ability you don't find today.

maratc 4/3/2025||

Modularity hasn't been the proclaimed goal for the Pro line, as far as I can remember. Granted, they were modular once. Today, not so much. The RAM is literally sitting on the die of the chip that includes the CPU and the GPU. This allows for tremendous increases in performance, but RAM upgradeability is sadly out of question.

dangus 4/3/2025|||

I think this is something of a rose tinted glasses nostalgic look.

I remember my iBook G4 took 30 screws to get into it and swap a hard drive.

Yes, it was “modular,” but it wasn’t specifically designed to be easily repaired.

There have been times when the systems were designed to be easy to change components like the disk and RAM in the original Core 2 Duo MacBooks, but these seem to be the exception, not the rule.

Let’s not forget the “no user serviceable parts” original Macintosh. Apple has never really been repair-oriented company, they just occasionally make products that are coincidentally easy to repair.

rmnclmnt 4/3/2025||

Agreed. Brought back to life my MBP 2015 last summer (battery replacement, keyboard replacement, thermal paste, etc) and thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher, now running latest MacOS versions ensuring at least 3 years more of security patches. Also these machines run Linux and Windows pretty fine

dmwilcox 4/3/2025||

Wow! Just discovered OpenCore Legacy Patcher! My wife's ten year old Macbook Air can get updates!!

Thank you for the tip this will help a lot since it is not the "year of the Linux desktop" for her. :)

rmnclmnt 4/3/2025||

Try to give it a shot first on a dedicated partition if you can, then make the switch (IME, I used the old SSD drive for that, then used the 1TB one for daily usage with OCLP). Pretty smooth for most users apparently. Good luck, keep repairing and maintaining old electronics!

comment_ran 4/3/2025||

Pretty much the same trajectory. I started at my T420 around 2010 and that time I just main laptop, computer. Then, as I have a more powerful desktop, this T420 becomes my secondary computer and I started to experience Linux with it. After almost 15 years I end up converted it into a PVE host and run just one or two virtual machines on it and it's quite durable I can still do functional work on it, quite remarkable how a computer can last so long.

thi2 4/6/2025||

I want to line thinkpads, I really do. But trying a touchpad of a macbook and going back to a thinkpad is a truly horrible experience.

I'm forever gratefull for the ancient 100€ T400 thinkpad that carried me through my CS degree when I had no money but spending 700+ on something that feels inprecise and jiggery when using is painfull.

AlecSchueler 4/3/2025||

My daily driver is an x200 upgraded to 4gb of RAM. It runs as well as it ever did except the web has become slower and slower in that everything became an app. Things like GMail and YouTube are slow but honestly still fine, and in the worst case scenario I can jump onto my phone.

My main use these days is recording and mixing music through an interface from 2014. With Reaper the experience is even better than when I picked the laptop up back around 2010.

octygen 4/3/2025|

Its funny you say thay it's the browser slowing you down on your PC. I have an MBP from 2011 and the browser (Safari) is the only thing it can still run extremely well.

AlecSchueler 4/3/2025||

The latest browser itself runs fine as well as most old school websites like Hacker News, it's only the "web apps" that run slowly.

Melatonic 4/3/2025||

Can't throw more than 4gb in there ? Even 8 makes a big difference.

bikenaga 4/3/2025|||

Lenovo only officially supported 4 GB, but you're right - the MB supports 8 GB, and I can confirm it works: that's what I have in mine. That and an SSD make a huge difference.

AlecSchueler 4/5/2025|||

I maybe could but I dont feel like I'm missing anything with web apps honestly

VirusNewbie 4/3/2025||

Back in the day, I heard all sorts of great things about how durable Thinkpads were, I bought one with my hard earned money in ~2004 when doing contact web development work. It was my least reliable laptop I've ever had.

My Vaio notebooks always lasted quite a bit longer. Eventually got a macbook and haven't gone back, but yeah, the one Thinkpad I owned was the least reliable computing device I've bought in the ~40 years of my lifetime.

amunozo 4/3/2025||

Lindy effect, as the author said, is for non-perishable items. ThinkPad as a brand could be included in this categoty, but an individual ThinkPad is not.

Good article, though.

vermaden 4/3/2025|

I daily use FreeBSD on 2011 (14 years old now) legendary ThinkPad W520.

Details here:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...

Article is about FreeBSD 13.1 - but as time passed I followed all new versions and its at 14.2 now.

Config did not changed - still running strong.

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