Comment by errcorrectcode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by errcorrectcode | Hacker News Reader

I don't honestly get the appeal.

I have a ThinkPad T480 with:

- i7-8650U CPU

- Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated and NVIDIA MX150 discrete graphics

- WQHD display (2560x1440)

- IR and HD cameras

- Speakers are kinda crappy

- True 10 hour runtime (limited by extra batteries)

- Hot-swappable 72 Whr second battery

- 64 GiB RAM # (it's not supposed to work according to Lenovo's and Intel's datasheet but it does)

- 2 TiB M.2 SSD #

- WiFi 6E + Bluetooth 5.2 #

- 4G WWAN card

- TPM 2.0

- Fingerprint reader

- NFC

- Milspec drop rating

- Awesome IBM-heritage, water-resistant, backlit keyboard

- Multitouch glass touchpad &

- TrackPoint pointing stick (red thing in the middle of the keyboard)

- Magnesium top display cover &

- USB-C charging

- Smartcard reader

- Ports including USB-A and -C, SD, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio jack

- Security lock slot

- Thunderbolt 3

- Docking station (latest Ultra) that works

# Customization

& Parts swap

It's massively upgradable. 8 captive screws, and the bottom case pops out, the keyboard pops out too. ~10 screws, and the motherboard and everything else is out. People make frakenpads because the parts stayed so similar over the years. All the screws are Phillips. No hunting for weird Torx bits.

For me the appeal is that when a feature that I don't currently have becomes available it's straight forward for me to upgrade.

When the next iteration of motherboards come out, I won't be buying a new laptop, ideally I will go here https://frame.work/marketplace and just order the one that I want and follow the video guides to install it.

The potential to customize this is huge, larger than any other laptop that I'm familiar with. The ability to self maintain, to fix every piece of the hardware if necessary just makes this thing a win for me.

It remains to be seen how much the promise of upgradability turns into a reality.

I typically buy replace my laptops or desktops after around 6 years. That is a long time to expect things to remain compatible with a chassis.

My issues with Thinkpads:

- They seem to be getting worse for repairability and build quality with each new generation. Everyone who raves seems to be running older generations (yours is comparatively not too old).

- Trying to buy new is an exercise in frustration because of their ridiculous pricing. Either get gouged outside a sale paying a huge premium over competitors, or wait for the right sale and get a competitive (but not cheap) price.

many Thinkpad models in similar sizes are also also limited to 16GiB of RAM.

And while the are up and downs with the quality there seen to be a general downward trend.

Like my previous Thinkpad didn't had any major defects after the years but with my current one after not quite the years the mousepad broke (the coating is damaged getting slowly worse starting as just an annoyance to now frequently registering phantom middle clicks).

Similar while using custom secure boot platform keys have been working with Thinkpad T series for years, for the lastish T14 series a non distinguishable subset of them gets bricked by it.

I've been a ThinkPad user in the past and was using a ThinkPad as my last laptop before starting Framework. In many ways, the Framework Laptop is a modern take on where ThinkPads came from. The T480 is relatively recent, but even there, the current generation of it (T14 Gen 2) loses one of the SO-DIMMs and the swappable battery.

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