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Comment by keldaris | Hacker News Reader

I still use X220s for all my portable computing needs as it was the last model before Lenovo ruined the keyboards. As they invariably die off or just get too slow (or architecturally different - can hardly profile code on them nowadays) I have no idea what to do. Every single modern laptop, irrespective of price, looks like a huge downgrade in every aspect I care about other than the CPU.

Are there any options out there at all for laptops that have at least usable keyboards, hot swappable batteries, proper Ethernet ports, basic maintainability and solid build quality instead of the insane thinness fetish?

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I'm not sure if there's one for the X220, but there's an unofficial motherboard available that turns an X61 into an "X62":

https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/

Unofficial motherboard mods for X220 and X230 are called X320 and X330, respectively.

I've since bought an X210. It's an X201s chassis with:

• A Core i7 8550u (4 cores, turbo boost up to 4GHz)[1]

• 2 DDR4 SODIMM slots. I put 32 GB of RAM in.

• 2x mini PCI Express slots. There's an 802.11/Bluetooth card in one. The other is empty but could be used for LTE.

• An M.2 NVMe slot. I put a 2TB SSD in it.

• An upgraded screen (2880x1920, 450 nits, wide gamut). The bezel is cut to make room for the 3:2 aspect ratio, sacrificing the webcam.[2]

I have small hands so I slightly prefer the X62's keyboard, but everything else is much better on the X210.

1. https://ark.intel.com/products/122589/Intel-Core-i7-8550U-Pr...

2. http://i.imgur.com/lj7g7CV.jpg

I didn't think the X201s ever had a camera to begin with. The X200s doesn't.

I didn't know that. I figured the webcam was removed since the 2nd batch X210s had them.[1] It looks like the 2nd batch chassis is the X201, not the X201s.

1. https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/1019773411688570881

If you want to see (most) of the many "TYPE xxxx-xxx" variants of a given older ThinkPad model number, and don't mind doing some detective work, you can Google for "PSREF" PDF files.

The PSREFs were/are catalogs of the variants available for sale and their specs, issued periodically. There were also PSREFs for withdrawn variants, covering year ranges.

(I got well-acquainted with these when stockpiling X200 units for Coreboot, a large-screen workstation model I like, and an older model that has better build-quality keyboards that can be swapped into certain newer models.)

Various Lenovo Web site lookups of specs have come and gone, and TYPEs seem to disappear from them sometimes, but the PSREF PDFs are forever.

Sorry I don't seem to have PSREFs covering X210S, but I suspect they're out there.

Oh wow. I have an X62 and T70, but skipped the X210 because of the display. If I knew you could get it with a 3:2 display I'd have been really tempted to get one. Do you do the mod yourself or purchase it pre-installed?

It came with the display pre-installed. I think all 3rd batch X210s have the new display.

@ggreer,

would you consider writing a review, please?

I'm interested in

- how often the fan goes on

- whether it runs Linux/BSD flawlessly

- where you can buy it (without speaking any Chinese)

Here you go: https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/

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