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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

Everytime I want to use my macbook, the cold metal isn't very inviting. Especially if I want to lay it on the lap with shorts on. It is always cold as hell.

Compare this with Thinkpad's soft-touch coated magnesium chassis - almost as sturdy but feels so inviting.

People get woo'ed by something made of metal. Yeah, its nice from an engineering standpoint but it is not the "best industrial design" just because its made of metal. IMO, best design is the one that is more human centric than marketing bullshit and luxury quality cliches.

I really think Thinkpad X1 series is the best laptop ever in terms of its industrial design (not OS, display quality etc). Keyboard is so incredible.

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The X1 is awesome, but Thinkpad T-series had it down in the 2010s. The T440p, the T460s, the T420, and so many other legendary laptops were born from that line.

As a side note, it's a shame they never made any "true" successors to the x230s, I'd love to see them made with today's technology.

Presently over two years into the T480s. I love this machine and have no intention of upgrading any time soon.

As a counterpoint, I find our corporate X1 yogas the worst laptop I’ve ever had, going back nearly 20 years. A device that makes me close the display just to reset the touchpad driver every time I want to work on it, and this has been reported by others for at least 2 years... if you don’t wanna support it, don’t sell it with that component.

The T480s I had before that was indeed a fine device, if only I could have kept it...

>T460s

:barf: I upgraded from a T430s (great machine for it's time) to a T460s.

the T460s wasn't very good, the track pad was awful, the trackpoint was a new low profile and incredibly stiff style that had no alternative cap styles for it, if you got the innolux display you where fucked (had to replace it with an after market LCD due to the bad colours and viewing angles on an IPS panel). Ram was also soldered.

The only two good things I can say about the T460s was it was incredibly light and the keyboard was my favourite laptop keyboard, it just felt right.

Yeah, I have the opposite feeling.

My 2020 MBP is so hot I hate using it on my lap.

I have an X1 Carbon 7th Gen that I've been using as a laptop pad for my MBP the last few months... MacOS is just so much more convenient.

And the M1 macs are freezing cold now. Can't Apple find a happy medium for my exposed thighs?

You need the M1 macbook air with a thermal mod then. It connects the chassis to the heatsink. The entire bottom gets warm and the area around the heatsink can get up to 50-55C. On the plus side, with the thermal mod, it doesn't really throttle at all, so on longer workloads it performs about the same as the pro.

Wild. I can't wait for the 16" to come out!

Surface metal isn't aluminium it's a "magnesium, PVD finish". Feels more like stone to the touch than metal and doesn't seem to get as cold as macbooks can.

The X1 display and sound are definitely a big improvement over the x220, but the trackpoint is terrible (drifts all the time) and the keyboard is a big step down. Both sacrificed at the altar of thinness.

I've noticed this too. The trackpoint on my X220 is excellent, but something about about the later notebooks feels very wrong. For example, I'm using a T460, and the trackpoint is always drifting, and can't be calibrated to the right sensitivity.

They do have thicker models if thinness isn't your thing.

If they work as well as the x220 did, I would get one. But it looks like the keyboard and trackpoint are similar to the ones in the X1. Which would make sense from a manufacturing perspective. Do you have a model you could suggest?

I had a fully loaded P15 three years ago - I can't really comment on trackpad - I only use it in rare situations like traveling and doing work in a coffee shop where I can't really pull out a mouse. Keyboard was great but then again I use a BT keyboard and an external monitor 90% of the time anyway. I switched from that machine to a fully loaded i9 2018 MBP - and while that's more portable and has a better screen the thermals and the performance is waay off, not to mention this thing sounds like a jet plane about to take off as soon as I start a VM and play a video. Also the keyboard is utter garbage in comparison.

It's a chunky device and I haven't checked out the lates ones, but if I wanted a portable workstation with a great keyboard I would get another one for sure. Right now I'm leaning towards getting a desktop and a ultraportable I can use to SSH to the desktop when I need to work on the go - but the HW market is a joke right now, I'm probably going to wait it out till Q3/Q4.

I love the fact that the Thinkpad X1 has dedicated physical home/end/pgup/pgdown keys. I wouldn't consider buying a laptop without them anymore.

I actually enjoy using my Mac laying it on my lap because it gets warm almost instantly. Like cmon, its cold for not even a minute.

> Everytime I want to use my macbook, the cold metal isn't very inviting.

You could apply some skins.

I actually like the heat dissipation the metal provides.

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