A Thinkpad running windows is just disgraceful. Good hardware deserves good software
Exactly. Mine shipped w/ Windows, but it never ran Windows (at least I never did). Installed Linux day 1.
I wouldn’t even call the left side a “tech” enthusiast. More like a fad or clout enthusiast…
I ran over mine with my car (by accident, of course) and it survived, I’m still using it even though I had to take some acrews out to relieve the pressure from the fan because it was hitting the case and sometimes I have to fold it a bit to the other side so it doesn’t make noises.
So I guess I’m the second one
There’s a third.
biblically accurate computer
deleted by creator
I would argue this is the just the second kind
I took a dremel to my $20 case to install a front fan to cool my NAS drives. Taped that sucker right to the front bit of the face, and ran it that way for years.
It’s not quite as hardcore as this, so I’m not sure if I qualify for the second or third type.
“Can you stack peltiers? NVM I’m gonna try.”
“Cooling sucks? Drill a hole here and here.”
No joke, that was the workaround for a gaming laptop i owned in 2010 i think?
I fried a graphics card in college because the electrical tape i wrapped around the custom paper clip heatsink retention clip came off and shorted something lol
I miss those days when my builds had that level of jank. Learned a lot really quickly lol. Now everything I own is impossible for me to hack into without completely fucking it up, or is so expensive that I’m just not going to try it. I used to hold a RAID 5 array together with tape. I’d never try that now. Oh, youth lol.
Is that a toaster?
No? A modded Deskmini. This cooler fits turbo mode of the Ryzen 7 5700G.
I am the second one.
Battle scars are customizations.
My Thinkpad has survived drops from the countertop, kids standing on it, and the USB-C charge port is wearing out from years of kids fighting over it. It’s still running fine, though there’s certainly some surface damage.
It’s going on 8 years now and still running fine. Sucker refuses to die, and I refuse to replace it until it does.
Tech is a tool to me and tools shouldn’t be pristine and unused.
Any time I get a new toy, I do try to keep it a shiny as possible for as long as I can, but yeah eventually the battle scars come through and then it’s a different story.
Same, but “as long as I can” generally means a few hours.
I have a belief some phones are designed to be used without a case. So I have done that.
Phones are stronger than they used to be, and a phone no case is nice af.
Tools should be used for sure.
Still never a reason to carelessly step on cables, toss/shove the computer instead of set it down, etc.
Yup, roadie wrap those cables and maintain things well.
My laptop is nine years old and has done more travelling than most people and has been used at the beach, on boats and near a waterfall. It’s needed new memory, the spinning drive replacing/upgrading to SSD and a new battery but I’ve never cared about cosmetic damage. It’s also clean, because that’s part of maintenance.
My Kindle looks like the end of Rocky II.
Hey treat your stuff however you want. But generally tools are meant to wear out from their intended use. Ususlly, the better you treat your tools the more use you get out of them.
Me, still using my unscathed 2011 MacBook Pro
I’m astounded by how shittily people treat their stuff. My tools are also pristine. Just because something is mechanical doesn’t mean it has to be dirty and shitty.
That’s stupid, all my tools are in great condition. Just because it’s useful doesn’t mean it needs to be dirty and damaged and shitty.
You my kind of people!
A knight in shining armor never had his mettle tested!
Remember the old ThinkPad idiom: “If the cracks are just plastic, it’s still fantastic!”
So I started going to University recently, and the amount of people I’ve had actively chastise me for how I treat my laptop has been shocking.
This is a tool to get things done, it’s not some precious gem, I bought a cheap laptop with the expectation that it’s going to get gross and crusty and I’ll have to hose it down once a year, I’m going to wing it around and drop it and clean the screen with my sleeve.
Treating a telescope like a jackhammer isn’t going to work well.
They just haven’t figured out your jackhammer just looks a lot like their telescope.
Craftspeople treat their tools with respect and consideration.
My tap and die set sit on a shelf, my lathe is in the shop. I’ve dropped my hammer from 150 feet because the tether broke and the most upsetting part was climbing the ladder down and back up.
It depends on whether you view it as a lathe or a hammer. My nice computer is at home, my computer that I sit in the park under a tree and code on, then set it on the grass while it compiles is in my bag.
It may be news to you but generally people cannot tell apart semen from just crusty dirt.
It’s probably why your laptop has been such a hit around the campus.
I don’t think even the bioengineers are brave enough to take a sample
Crusty…?
Jesus
Yeah man, have some self respect and wipe it down regularly.
There’s a reason my CS department had to ban food from the computer lab.
The scratches on my thinkpad aren’t flaws. They’re battle scars!
My old MacBook was first too shiny and new to put stickers on, then it lived so long that I didn’t want to waste stickers on a machine that I’d need to retire. It made it ten years before having weird bootloop issues.
To try to counteract my own neuroses I went sticker mad on its replacement immediately. It also helps with easily telling which way is up at a glance (I don’t know how many times I had to rotate the old one when I went to open it).
You know, aside from the i9 MacBook pros, these are really resilient machines that will last quite a while. They don’t deserve the hate they get. They easily outlast gamer laptops that bake themselves to death.
The butterfly keyboard models are definitely not included in that statement, but all other models yes they’ll live forever. BUT i also have a bunch of old laptops from other companies that live forever running linux
i recently bought a used macbook from 2015 and immediately installed archlinux on it. Now, free from macOS, it can really “live forever” :)
Oof, I forgot about the damn butterfly keyboards. Apple really shit the bed with those.
I still use my 2011 MacBook Pro hahaha. I’ve added a SSD and maxed out the RAM, but it runs amazingly.
That’s why I buy 'em. All other personal laptops I’ve had over the years don’t make it past the two year mark but I’ve been really impressed by Macbooks. I expect there’s probably some amazing Linux machines with similar hardiness but I’ve not had reason to roll the dice on that front.
It will be interesting to see the long term of the asahi linux project. They are doing some absolutely incredible work without apple’s help.
it better be getting ready to be linuxed
No I was planning on using it with Nvidia drivers and secure boot.
Only a little bit. Genuinely go grab a laptop and try to get everything up and running with Nvidia drivers, secure boot, full disk encryption, and tpm unlock (server application, no typing password allowed).
It’s not particularly easy. (Except, somewhat ironically, with arch).
My experience was following the fedora instructions immediately broke the boot, following the opensuse instructions worked up until I had an unexpected power loss and then it wouldn’t boot anymore (truly bizarre as the thing that lost power was the external zfs drives not the os drive). Only arch had a fully sane and functional set of instructions.
Or just avoid nvidia in the first place and it mostly just works.
I’ve done it with Suse more than once, but not with ZFS. Using ZFS with Linux still tends to be a crapshoot. I’ve given up on nvidia; if they want to be money grubbing assholes they can get other people money, but not mine.
https://blog.entrostat.com/installing-nvidia-drivers-on-a-linux-laptop-with-secure-boot-enabled/
That’s not been a problem for a while now
Oh I know, and as of 2025 fedora even has it built in from what I read. We are truly living in the future.
I am the left one until the first scratch appears, at that point i manage to do worse than the Right one.
Looks at hp stream that’s been choking for 5 years in cnc shavings.
hp stream that’s been choking for 5 years in cnc shavings
Now here is someone who knows how to treat an hp
Y’all hatin on the first image, but that’s me 🥺
So I’m hating you now
I admire your conviction
That’s me for about a week with any new device. Then I slowly get more and more lax, until eventually I’m the one on the right.
Buy used, best feature is that it comes with scratches so you don’t have to be so careful
This is 100% the way. Not only is it cheaper, but it’s so much more enjoyable to just use something rather than worry about keeping it perfect.
I’ve actually ran a server for a few weeks with a heatsink just sitting on the CPU with a dab of thermal paste.
I was waiting for mounting hardware. Thankfully it was a PGA so mounting pressure didn’t match much.
The one on the right needs a surge protector.
One isn’t a tech enthusiast, but a tech idiot.
Yeah, who hooks a portable generator up to their laptop without using a surge protector??
The caps in the power supply should be enough to eat the noise in that power source.
That model (yamaha ef2000) has an inverter. Nice and quiet, too. Little fucker is touchy about the fuel, though.
I mean, if you like to live dangerously, sure. Those power supplies can be expensive, though, and surge protectors are dirt cheap.
Those power supplies can be expensive
Used official ones are like $20 on ebay.
To be fair, a lot of those are counterfeit.
Not used. Nobody really sells knockoff chargers used.
Also in the age of USB C it’s not even relevant. At this point I just buy USB C to whatever laptop charger port I need.
Lol, how is this not more common in the answers? Lotta people on Lemmy don’t know how to use a generator…
That shit also isn’t grounded, though I think some specific generators may be alright without that.
You’re just gatekeeping.
ThinkPad with a generator? Nothing wrong with that — maybe add LoRa, get a ham license and add some packet radio or digital modes and you have a neat disaster setup.
MacBook that you don’t want to scuff? Well, I’m not that precious with my gear, but you do you. Many Mac laptops last a very long time, and the performance of modern Apple silicon is really, really impressive — and you have UNIX out of the box. Plenty for a tech enthusiast to like.
On the right, but with a solar panel.
