💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~stack › gemlog › 2023-12-17.thinkpads.gmi captured on 2024-07-09 at 01:27:24. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
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I've used many portable computers in my time, from a CP/M Kaypro to many Macs, HPs, Dells, but mostly Acer and Asus machines in the past few years, but never a ThinkPad.
Earlier this year I, for no good reason, bought an i5 T470 for under $100.00. After investing a few more bucks into a hard drive adapter and an M2 SSD drive, I installed linux and was floored by the battery life of the old gray mare. Everything worked. The display was great. The keyboard, tolerable.WiFi, power management, brightness, everything just worked. The little nipple mouse thingy was great.
I picked up a small secondary battery (which can be hotswapped) and my battery life is over 10 hours. I picked up a 12V car adapter and I can now code anywhere.
I was also surprised by the performance: I was fully expecting the old i5 to be sluggish, but it is actually almost as fast as the rest of my much newer i7 notebooks... Subjectively, I haven't felt any slowdown.
Last month I spilled almost a liter of water right onto the keyboard. Yeah, stupid. At the tail end of a 48-hour coding session I knocked a wide-mouth water bottle directly onto the open laptop, and by the time I grabbed it it was empty.
It was on, connected to a monitor and a keyboard. I totally expected it to be fried, but the display was still displaying. I flipped it over, sending a wave of water to my already wet pants. As I drip-dried it in my hands I was watching the screen, which stayed up...
So I didn't turn it off. I placed it onto a chair, keyboard down, after drying it with a towel the best I could. I backed up my work to tildegit, figuring I might never be able to restart the machine. I waited for it to die, but it didn't. So I mopped up the floor and went back to work.
It dripped out for a bit, leaving a keyboard-shaped wet spot, then dried up, and that was the end of it. I am typing on it now -- it works fine.
Amazing.