I need to upgrade my laptop and one of the things I’m looking for is repairability/upgradability. I’ve been told thinkpads are good in this respect, how true is that? In terms of replacing batteries and memory, at least. I’m also looking at the frameworks, but those black friday deals are looking alright at lenovo.
With that in mind, any particular series of thinkpad (L, S, whatever) I should look for? I’m hardline against nvidia but is there a reason to pick AMD over Intel (or vice versa)? They both are privacy nightmares, right? And there is no “good alternative?”
Why not framework? Thinkpads were good but I doubt the new ones follow the same principles.
Can you get a used framework for $200?
If you’re willing to repair it I’m sure you could
I have a T580 with nVidia graphics. Repairability is great. You can find a manual with step-by-step instructions for every part online.
But the thermals in that thing are awful. Especially on Linux and doubly so with the GPU. It has some stupid on-lap detection which heavily throttles the system to not burn the user. Up until a few years ago there wasn’t a driver for Linux so it always defaulted to on-lap-mode. But even worse, the GPU has some hardcoded 70° limit and it throttles down to the lowest clockrate when it reaches that. And it reaches that quickly because CPU and GPU share a heatpipe.
Nowadays I just run it on the integrated Intel graphics on Wayland and it’s great. But it would be cool if I could use the GPU that is at least theoretically able to run Doom 2016 at 30 fps. But practically it struggles with Quake 3.
It’s just a shame that you probably won’t know about these kinds of problems on a new laptop because people only notice them after a few months to years.
Go with T-Series not with E or L. Better quality of materials, comes with better warranty (you can get up to 5 Years), longer spare parts availability, and usually you can replace more by yourself.
True! T series or P series are much better made. I’d also advise heading over to Lenovo support site and checking the service manual for any machine you’re interested in, just to make sure that the features you may want to upgrade are upgradable.
I’ve noticed Lenovo doing a lot of SOC style systems ala Apple where your RAM is one and done. It’s mostly been on the thin/light segment but…
My biggest complaint has been the fact that they don’t put the USB C inputs on a daughter card. I don’t know what the cost savings is, but I literally had two machines that users had killed the USB on that spent close to 10 months waiting on parts for a warranty repair.
Got an E14, easiest laptop to open ever (at least compared to the HPs and Toshibas I had the pleasure to own)
