![]() ![]() If any individual part fails, there's a freely available Hardware Maintenance Manual, complete with part numbers that you can look up and order from 3rd party suppliers. You can get a Thinkpad T480 for around $200 USD, and upgrades will cost you around $150 total on AliExpress. For what it's worth, I've been trying to get a stable Linux development machine since at least 2010, and I always ended up back on a MacBook. The user experience isn't as polished as macOS, but this is the first time I've installed a distro where it Just Works. ![]() I haven't had to screw around with anything. I installed Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS as I've had quite enough of Microsoft's constant nagging to upgrade to Windows 11, and honestly, I like it?Įverything works out of the box. So far, none of my development workflow is slower on the T480. Hot reloads of OnlineOrNot's development server take < 1 second, alt-tabbing doesn't lag (it did on my Intel-based MacBook Pro 2019), and booting up is as fast as my MacBook Air. M1 scored 2355 on single core, and 8241 on multi coreīut is it noticeably 2x slower than the M1? Nope.T480 with throttling removed scored 1229 on single core, and 4240 on multi core.T480 scored 1136 on single core, and 2522 on multi core with default settings.You might be thinking, "wtf, isn't the M1 significantly faster?" - and it is! Update 2: I bought an Intel AX210 card which Just Works with Pop!_OS, supports WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, so I'm using that now. I'm not here to dig through forums and run scripts to tell you "it just works!", so I'm keeping the default wifi card that does Just Work. Update: The Intel AX200 card causes boot issues for Pop!_OS (at least for me), so I just installed the old one back in. I've also ordered an Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 card for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. Swiping to change workspaces feels just as nice as in macOS (though you'll need to learn new gestures). ![]() Tap-to-click actually registers my clicks, unlike on the default T480 trackpad, and scrolling is extremely precise. Update: The new trackpad from the Thinkpad X1 Extreme is fantastic. I've ordered a glass trackpad that comes with the Thinkpad X1 Extreme (and is compatible with the T480), so I'll update this article once I've installed that. The trackpad is good, compared to other Windows laptops, but terrible compared to the MacBook Air. (It takes two DDR4 2666 MHz SO-DIMM sticks) Not that I need that much as a web developer/writer (VS Code, GitKraken and Chrome take up 8GB), but it's nice to have. While upgrading the LCD screen, I noticed I had a spare 16GB RAM stick lying around my home office, so I also upgraded to 32GB RAM. Update: After the brand new 72wh battery came in (for a total system capacity of around 90wh), my battery life is now 14-15 hours. I can also undervolt the CPU to cut power consumption further, but 8 hours is enough for me when traveling.Īfter a week of testing (using the machine as I normally would), the battery life on the new 1920x1080 screen ended up being around 6 hours, I must have just been slamming the CPU/RAM when I first tested it. Note that the battery that came with my T480 is not brand new: as it's a 5 year old enterprise laptop, it had about 80% max charge of its original design. Unfortunately upgrading the screen cut battery life to about 4 hours 15 minutes (with the screen set to high brightness), so I've ordered a 72wh battery, which should bring that back up to around 8 hours. So I ordered a replacement 1920x1080 IPS screen (Innolux N140HCE-EN1 Rev.C2), followed the ifixit guide, and had a decent screen after 30 minutes of tinkering. (one quick boot into Windows to check specs before blowing it all away) It hurt to look at, the resolution was too small for anything except using the terminal, and I couldn't use it sitting next to my window unless brightness was turned up to 100% (on a cloudy day!), and even then it wasn't great. ![]() The base model LCD screen that the T480 comes with is incredibly bad. Short of the CPU, which is a downer, but this isn't exactly an MNT Reform laptop. I don't know if you noticed a theme in the specs, but everything in this laptop is upgradeable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |