Comment by LeifCarrotson
4 years ago
Lenovo Thinkpad is another popular line, seems conspicuously absent from your list. They're known to have good resale value, and to work well with Linux. If you're getting up to the Precision line, the Lenovo P series workstations are also worth considering, though given they're actually professional-grade machines with Xeon and Quadro parts they'll be more expensive than a Macbook Pro.
There are also boutiques like System76, that white label, upgrade, and manage driver compatibility for Clevo laptops which may be worth considering, they just came out with a new Lemur Pro like yesterday.
Check Thinkpad screens carefully as a lot of the new amd ones come with terrible 'business class' screens that I don't want to use as a developer, let alone as a designer .. and a repairman told me they are glued on these days so you can no longer swap them as you used to be able to.
Can confirm. I made the mistake of buying a T14s with a Ryzen 4000 CPU in it
The screen was something like 30% color accurate
Using something like F.Lux or Redshift to shift the color space at night resulted in...this
Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhLBx4mmPrM
Windows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgjqeDF9c50
Lenovo refused to replace the panel with a less atrocious SKU, claiming I could instead purchase it for a "mere" $600 USD(!)
Thankfully Australia has strong consumer protection laws and I was able to get the unit returned and refunded
Lenovo P series workstations are also worth considering
I have a P72 and it is garbage. Plugged into a docking station it works OK as really expensive mid-range workstation. Trying to use it as a laptop causes the fans to spin like crazy, performance throttled to shit and the and battery life of maybe 90 minutes for even fairly modest workloads. The similarly specced Dell Precision I had before was much better in every way and was actually usable as a laptop.
The P5X series that many of my colleagues have seem much better.
>Trying to use it as a laptop causes the fans to spin like crazy, performance throttled to shit
So, just like macbook?
I was going to say - that does sound very much like my MacBook Pro.
The P4X series is also working quite well - I went with that for the smaller footprint. Since I mostly dock it, the smaller screen is acceptable for the limited amount of time I use it undocked.
Lenovo might be known that way, but they are exceptionally bad at supporting Linux. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-admits-ThinkPad-CPU-thr...
As far as I know this issue is still not fixed so I have to use this hack: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled
I’ve also had tremendous Thunderbolt-related firmware issues that could only be fixed in Windows. If you use Linux, there are much better options than Lenovo. I still use my T480 daily but I miss my old XPS 13, which gave me no issues ever.
Exceptionally bad is a bit harsh. Windows is first tier support with Linux coming in as a second. In my experience they are pretty good about fixing remaining issues in firmware updates, which can be installed using fwupd (I don't have a Windows partition at all). I belive there's even a GNOME Software front-end if you prefer things being very easy.
I don't need to use throttled on my X1 Carbon 7th and they recently added mainline support for the fingerprint reader. All I had to do was enable it in GNOME Settings.
I have X1 Carbon 7th and need to use throttled to get full power.
Try to run performance test with s-tui if you see a difference.
On Arch the command to enable the fix is:
sudo systemctl enable --now lenovo_fix.service
I love my X1 (also 7th). This is the laptop which made me retire my actual desktop. Bought a docking station and a MOTU 8A for sound connectivity, and have no need for a classical desktop since.
I am not into gaming or graphics though. Still, with my (unusual) usage pattern I get almost 10 hours battery life time on the road, and all the CPU power I need locally. For heavy stuff, I compile remotely anyway.
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Thinkpad was one of the first laptop series which supported Linux explicitly.
Their competitor was Compaq NX series (HP EliteBook of today). Dell was late to the party and closed the gap by actively developing software for Linux (DKMS, Privacy Drivers, etc.).
I don't think you can conflate classic Thinkpad and current "Thinkpad".
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>Lenovo might be known that way, but they are exceptionally bad at supporting Linux.
Absolutely no trouble on x395. It's been running Linux (Arch) for a year, and it is my main system.
Piling on to say I cut on teeth on Linux installing Breezy Badger on a Thinkpad T20. Since then I’ve never struggled with a Debian based OS on Thinkpads.
I run Linux (Debian) on my Lenovo X1 Carbon and it works perfectly.
Linux works perfectly on mine as well, but I use Fedora.
The trackpad is bearable, and I have a 3rd generation so my 1080p screen isn't IPS, but it works well enough for $200.
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The firmware issues are fixed just fine with fwupdmgr. It also integrates nicely with Gnome.
You can even buy thinkpads with ubuntu out of the box now, so hard disagree.
I don't know about Ubuntu, but Lenovo offers machines with Fedora already installed.
> Lenovo has now admitted to the problem – and announced that it will be fixed.
How is that exceptionally bad support? I'd say that's the opposite.
I get firmware updates on my X1C because Lenovo decides to work with fwupd and the open source community, something most manufacturers refuse to do.
I sent my Lenovo in for warranty service for a faulty SSD ribbon cable and... they lost it. And they haven't replaced it. They've told me four times over the course of the last five months that I'll get a call in 3-5 business days. It has never come of course.
I know I'm not alone; even just in my circle there are two other stories of horrible mishaps with this company.
Lenovo makes some decent machines, sometimes, but their warranty service is not to be trusted.
I have always used their on-site service. Tech always comes out the next day and fixes the issue.
Lenovo took around 100 days, within warranty period, to replace my motherboard of my Ideapad Y500 because the parts were not available. I am never buying any Lenovo product ever again.
I've got a P51. It's essentially always on fire and the fans are really loud.
Not sure I'd recommend it. Build quality is very good however.
P51S might have been a better choice then.
The P51S is "slim" and has poorer thermals than the P51. Why would it be a better choice?
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Having used everything from xps to surface book 2, no laptop comes close to a ThinkPad. I am pretty much a fanboy of ThinkPad keyboards
I used to be too, until they changed them
Big bonus of the proper "business" laptops also is support. Wouldn't want a work machine I rely on without on-site support anymore (of course ideally you want a machine that never needs support, but since you can't rely on that from anybody...)
Indeed. Worth looking at the Thinkpads with this as well. A lot of the 3 year old discarded corporate units still have a couple of years of warranty left on them and Lenovo actually honour it!
Lenovo has got to be amongst the top, imho.