My ThinkPad (T480s) is turning 8 this year, and only got its first battery replacement last month. I've been carrying it with me everywhere, on every single trip (office or holidays alike), on all continents. In that same timespan, I used up 3 backpacks and 2 suitcases along the same routes. All I want for its replacement is not to cost an insane amount of money because of the made-up by AI components shortage, and maybe now that I'm older I would prefer a smaller form factor like the X1.

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tasuki 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've had a X1 since 2017. The CPU is pretty weak, but it's still solid overall. Still on the original battery too (yes the capacity has gone down from 57 Wh to 25 Wh). I've gotten other computers through work since, but the X1 is still my favourite laptop! In fact I'm typing on it now.

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nirui 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm curious how much slowdown a "weak" CPU can cause for real-life programming task, assuming the CPU is at least gen 4 Intel.

I never used a mobile/power-efficient CPU myself, but I do use old CPUs. For example, this I5-4210M on my T440p, it's obviously not fast compare to newer ones, but when writing code on it (Go and a bit of Rust), I don't really feel a day-or-night level difference. Sure, it's slower, but not unbearably, in fact for most cases I barely notice it.

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nehal3m 2 hours ago | parent [-]

My boss used to have an apt sticker on his ThinkPad that said 'My other computer is a data center'. In my case that's also true; I just use local I/O for KVM but the heft is in whatever I'm SSH'd into.

I daily a T480 at home and an X280 on the road. Swapped the batteries for fresh ones last week, they do around 6 hours on a charge for my use case and they run Linux so personally I don't see any reason to upgrade any time soon.

	▲	nirui 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't remember the T480 I had was any slow, except of course when running games. So I do agree that the machine is still capable for most use cases today. But I also saw people (usually X series users) complaining on YouTube saying something like their "mobile" CPU is trash etc. My thinking is, if the slowdown is actually insignificant for real-life use cases, then I rather have longer battery life than better performance.

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nullhole 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where did you get the battery?

Lenovo no longer sells T480 batteries afaict, and 3rd party vendors are a (dangerous) crapshoot.

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dgxyz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I went from a T490 to a T14 gen 3 (Intel). Was a nice upgrade. The GPU sucks, which I don't need or care about, but the rest is fine. I got a NOS one for a reasonable amount of money.

The X1 looks nice but colleagues had thermal issues with theirs and the CPU is a bit limp so I skipped that particular problem.

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ezst 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, it seems like the perfect device for me would be a X1 with current gen's AMD!

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vkazanov 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I wouldn't suggest going for a recent X1 as there are some driver issues on Linux.

My current one is a Thinkpad 14s AMD. As somebody who had most smaller Thinkpads and Dells in the last 15 years, this is my favourite machine so far: great battery, a decent GPU, still a Thinkpad, perfect Linux support.

	▲	dgxyz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Which generation is that T14s? I am in the market for a new one.

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kingkongjaffa 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I guess you spent x000's on your thinkpad but not anywhere near the same amount on luggage.

You can absolutely get 'buy it for life' backpacks and luggage for a few $000

https://www.briggs-riley.com/collections/carry-on-luggage still have a great repair and warranty deal for example.