I've had to use a ThinkPad T14s for almost a month now at my new job

And just

I'm sorry but it's so fucking awful. Every ThinkPad I've ever used from the T42 to the T60 to the T420 to this modern T14s has just been *awful*

I get why ThinkPad fans love them. Corporations buy a billion of them at a time and then e-cycle their fleets out and cause a flood of used machines and spare parts to hit eBay every few years for pennies on the dollar

But they're just terrible machines for day-to-day use

@CursedSilicon I have a P1 I like but I've never really used the T series

The thing that really crystalized this for me is I've daily driven a *Framework 13* since the beginning of 2022. Nearly 4 years ago now

When I talk to Mac people, other than the ARM chips perf/battery life. Everything else...feels roughly equal? The Mac trackpad isn't much/any better (to me) and the build quality feels roughly on par (though the M2 Max 16" machine I had felt like a goddamn brick)

I earnestly forgot what "bad laptops" are like. So I can see now why people jump ship to Mac

@CursedSilicon We got E-Series thinkpads for work and i despite it so much, the fingerprint sensor is incapable of detecting my fingerprint half the time, it came with 8gb ram from factory (but with a sodimm slot so you can upgrade up to 40gigs!), the ryzen is constantly overheating and i had to lock the cpu out of boost or else it would randomly freeze all usb devices.

dont even get me started on the lenovo usb-c dock..

@vikxin Work says I can have an X1 Carbon but they're perpetually out of stock

And then offer to send me a T14s instead

@blumlaut Mine at work if I connect two external monitors *disables* the onboard audio (???) and forces it out through HDMI

To a monitor that has no audio output

I guess I just have to use a USB audio adapter then, Lenovo???

@CursedSilicon oh yeah external displays cause fun breakages on mine as well, if i connect my main monitor (1440p at 185hz) and set it to anything above 1080p60hz it ends up putting all other displays (including the laptops own) to 1200x800 with no way to change it back to 1080p unless i switch the big display back to 1080p60hz

@blumlaut *That* sounds like an iGPU limitation in fairness

@CursedSilicon This is one of the largest issues I'm having in today's world of online-only, lack of in-person shopping options. Like, sure, there's Best Buy and Micro Center, but I'm legitimately looking for a Linux-centric laptop that doesn't feel like shit to use.

Hell, even the trackpad of my beloved PBG4 15" DL (last of the PBG4s) felt incredible vs. what was on the market in the PC world in 2005. I've been spoiled by Apple portable hardware for 2 decades and now looking to find a non-Mac portable, from a non-problematic vendor, and finding reviews that cover things like trackpad feel from trusted reviewers of things like System76, StarLabs, Tuxedo, etc. has been difficult.

Framework had been high on the list until their drama a month or two ago that made me question giving them money.

I just don't know where to look anymore.

@ktnjared Framework at least listened to the feedback (eventually) and backed off their problematic takes

I'd probably classify them as the "lesser of $number of evils"

@CursedSilicon @blumlaut Windows or Linux? And what generation of T14s?

@snep @blumlaut I've had both a 10th gen Intel and a Ryzen 5000 series model. Both under Windows and Linux

@CursedSilicon Are the “new” think pads like the X9 any better? I’ve used them for work and the trackpads are unusable garbage (and obviously the g-spot is useless to anyone normal).

@Charles I've not gotten to try one! Work does say I can have an X1 Carbon. But they're perpetually out of stock (And then immediately try to ship me...another T14s!)

@CursedSilicon I wonder, in all those ThinkPad generations across the last 25 years, what bothers you about the series overall *that* much?

@snep [deep breath]

- The T42 has so much chassis flex that it'll slowly crack the solder joints on its own GPU rendering it a brick

- The T60 required a BIOS mod just to run at SATA II speeds(!) not to mention the Wi-Fi shenanigans etc

- T420 had (has?) broken ACPI tables and can't boot any OS newer than Windows 7

@snep The T14 (AMD) version is so bad it gets its own post. In no particular order

- Single channel *Ralink* Wi-Fi chip (in 2021!)

- DRAM-less SSD

- Chassis flex would cause the Wi-Fi card to disconnect *in the mPCIe slot* if you moved it

- UEFI locked the video card to 512MB (and 0MB shared!) video memory. Causing the system to freeze if a YouTube video was played at 1080P

- The sound card would *disappear* if the system was put to sleep/hibernated

@CursedSilicon @blumlaut Ahh, sounds like a G1 and a G2? Or both G2 perhaps? Somewhere in that area at least. And the audio drop-out has been happening on both the Intel and Ryzen models across both Windows and Linux?

Just asking because I'm dailying a T14 (non-s) G2 with a Ryzen chip and I'd assume the internal circuits are similar enough between the s and non-s to be comparable to each other, if not largely equal 🤔

@snep @blumlaut As for the Intel T14s

- TrackPad scrolling is inverted only. Even when *disabled* in Windows it seems to be stuck with that behaviour???

- A TN panel in 2025 is miserable. The viewing angles suck, the colors suck and *my god* it's miserably dark even in a dimly lit conference room

- 10th gen Intel i7's run HOT HOT HOT! Especially when everything is a FUCKING electron app now

@CursedSilicon GPUs breaking off of their laptops really was trendy across manufacturers in the mid-2000s, wasn't it?

re: T60 Wi-Fi shenanigans, what was happening there? I'm more of a T61 guy, I've just recently got a T60 and yet to mess with it

But re:T420 ACPI tables, I can happily report that those seem to have been fixed for a long time, even looking back through 10 year old posts of people running Windows 10 without issues! (And can confirm with my own T420 :P)

@snep Iirc the T420 was *specifically the Nvidia model*. Wi-Fi issues though are just Lenovo's whitelisting bullshit. Wanna put an Intel 7260 in there? Fuuuck youuu says Lenovo

@snep @CursedSilicon To be fair that's because at the time everyone was transitioning away from lead based solder to lead-free, and the industry largely settled on a solder that seemed fine but failed after enough temperature cycles in a way they did not expect.

@krutonium @snep Nope, it's specifically the chassis flexing that causes the damage. Because the larger capacity heatsink causes structural rigidity issues!

@CursedSilicon @snep Heatsinks played a role but ~2005-2010 Laptops with dead GPU's were largely bad solder. It's the same issue the XBOX 360 had.

@krutonium @snep The T42 came out in May 2004

@CursedSilicon @snep So they were a bit early shrug

@krutonium @snep It's *specifically* not lead solder cracking. That came later (though I don't know if it bit Lenovo)

This was just IBM shoving off the ThinkPad line due to declining sales. It was the last "real IBM" ThinkPad and it was an absolute slapdash job of a product

@CursedSilicon @snep 🤔 Fair enough, most cases though...

@krutonium @snep The Radeon 9600 models had a *larger* heatsink (because the heatsink was required to cool the GPU now, not just the CPU)

You can see compared to the original it has an extra heatpipe "appendix" grafted on

That caused tons of board flex and would damage the GPU over time

@CursedSilicon Single channel Ralink? On a T14s AMD? And you're sure that's not something someone somewhere installed as a replacement after it came from Lenovo? As far as the ThinkWiki is to be believed, Lenovo only shipped the T14s AMD (regardless of generation) with at least Dual-Band B/G/N/AC, 2x2 MIMO M.2 WiFi cards, Ralink would be a new one for Lenovo, let alone single channel o.O

@snep That's what mine came with! Along with the miserable TN panel. I ended up swapping it for an I think AX210?

The *awful* LCD panel was far more egregious. Though Lenovo helpfully offered to replace it for a better quality IPS

...For $600 USD. At my expense

@CursedSilicon Officially sealed by Lenovo shipped directly to you and not being a refurb device or anything? There aren't even Ralink drivers for that model line that I can find

The TN Panel and DRAM-less SSD are unfortunately still the "budget" option nowadays (into which IME 600USD still falls for business class devices), it's getting much better tho, but you still see them too often across cheap configurations from different vendors :/

@snep I mean (at the time) the laptop was $1800 AUD. Not a "cheap" laptop by any stretch

And iirc I bought it at a retailer. No idea if they did anything sketch with it?

@CursedSilicon The AX210 is a solid replacement tho, did the same with the Qualcomm chip that was in my T14 mostly for that WiFi 6E upgrade

@snep I'm using one again since the RZ616 in my Framework 13 shit the bed after Win11's October update fiasco

(For some reason there's no official *driver download* for the 616 anywhere. Just Windows Update and the FW13 driver bundle)

@CursedSilicon Was the AUD just so terrible compared to the USD at the time or are you talking about two different points in time? Because if 1800 AUD == 600 USD in this context then that's still quite cheap for its class

Not impossible tho

@snep The laptop was $1800 AUD to buy at retail

The LCD panel replacement was quoted in USD because "we have to ship that from the US"

So it was (currently) $903 AUD *more* to buy just the LCD panel. Literally 50% of the cost of the already (unusable) laptop

@CursedSilicon Interestingly enough Mediatek doens't seem to offer OEM drivers just specifically for the Filogic chipset that Wi-Fi card is based on, it also appears very OEM-y-not-for-consumers on their homepage

@snep To Framework's credit. At least I could just pop the Wi-Fi chip out and replace it. Without needing to jump through the terror of BIOS flashing

@CursedSilicon @ktnjared wait they did?

@cinebox @ktnjared That's what I was told, at least!

@CursedSilicon I used an X1 Carbon at my last job. It was...okay. It was definitely a laptop.

@vikxin @CursedSilicon i am using a t470 and honestly raccompared to racconsumer sludge it has been great

@vikxin @CursedSilicon it’s also slower than my phone but who is keeping track

@charlotte @CursedSilicon the bar is so fucking low these days. It's miserable.

@CursedSilicon thank you i've had EXACTLY this same experience! (typed on a framework 13 despite their recent troubles)

[friend lets me try his thinkpad] "this is the best laptop ever made"

[me after 30 seconds] "i see. ... this tells me more about the windows/pc world than any book ever could."

@tanaki I'm sure good ThinkPads exist(ed?) but I've yet to find them

@CursedSilicon I still feel like a lot of the fandom is recursive, and I say that on a thinkpad at the moment.

These are made okay, but what people are fondly remembering are the truly tankish IBM machines.

It's a meme, at this point.

@patcharcana Even the IBM "tanks" seem like they got muddled in nostalgia

I've used an IBM era ThinkPad. An A22P. It *weighs* as much as a tank and has a truly unreal 1600 x 1200 screen (in 1999!)

But at the same time it didn't feel any "better" than a laptop from a competing vendor

Jumping forward to the mid 2000's. My Dell Precision M70 feels "better" than an IBM T42. And doesn't have the disastrous design flaws

@CursedSilicon

My work is a 100% latitude shop er... "Dell pro plus" now, I guess.

I take no issue with them other than some quirky display driver issues when swapping from dock to internal screen.

But they are heavily customizable at order time, and our IT makes some questionable choices. Like piling in the highest TDP Intel available and adding a discrete Nvidia GPU, for a user who might spend all day in Jira and Zoom. But when I buy used ones for myself I can always find a reasonable configuration.

@lackthereof I've yet to encounter any enormous blunders in the (brief) times I've used Dell gear. They seem to be simple and reliable. If a bit "boring"