ThinkPad T420 | Hacker News Reader

ThinkPad T420

thinkwiki.org

43 pointssteponlego48 comments

What is this post? Are we just posting a spec sheet and making claims in the title now? Why is the last one? I don’t think so. I have some thinkpads, I have the revered x220, it was great until I used a good current laptop. Newer ones are just better. It’s ok if you want to use older hardware, no one is saying you shouldn’t, but go out in the world and be honest. New one Doesn’t get as hot, battery actually lasts like 3 times longer without having to add 8lbs of lithium, and the touchpad is actually usable (I don’t get along with the nipple in the middle of the keyboard). Same can be said about the t420. I have an x1 too, the screen is ok, much lighter, touchpad is much better, but it’s plasticky and the speakers are as good as not having any.

Compare these with a MacBook Air and idk man, I rather have the much nicer screen, speakers and touchpad. The keyboard is not that much worse, I may even prefer it. No heat, you can use it on your lap, lighter, longer battery life. If I want more ports I have a desktop.

When the first Lenovo Thinkpads came out people trashed the new keyboard in particular as being a weight cutting compromise which was inferior to a true IBM keyboard. Although people seem to have forgotten this scandal and now wax poetic over the superior T420 7 row keyboard.

Nowadays? It's a computers which has the sole strength of having a good keyboard while simultaneously having a 1600x900 230 nit screen that can't render text all that well, it's bulky and heavy, it runs out of battery fast, it can't do large swathes of modern internet activities (like high-resolution video), and it burns through battery cells relatively fast compared to a new laptop so it's not even as low maintenance as it's chocked up to be.

I've noticed quite a few people who are taken with this idea of late aughts/early 10's tech in general, not only these Thinkpads but they buy old smartphones with replaceable batteries and desktop computers and wired headphones. I got rid of my old tech and became less sedentary and healthier because something common to all of it is the requirement to be tethered to something more often compared to modern tech. In the case of the Thinkpad, I always used my laptop next to a power outlet, and now I just don't care where I use my laptop because I moved on.

Heh, iToddler.

I do not agree.

ThinkPad W520 is so much better while having all features of T420 and more.

Things in W520 is better:

- FullHD (1920x1080) screen instead of only 1600x900

- USB 3.0 ports instead of only USB 2.0 ports

- powerful GPU instead of limited one

- will have 4 cores and 8 threats instead of 2 cores and 4 threads

- has 4 RAM slots so 32 GB RAM is possible

In case you really need smaller size - the T420s is better:

- has USB 3.0 port

- has the same 1600x900 resolution

- is smaller/thinner/lighter

- can use UltraBay battery instead of CD/DVD

... and I would even say that even X220 is better then T420:

- even smaller

- with i7 CPU will have one USB 3.0 port

- can have IPS screen

- the only downside (and that is bad to be honest) is 1366x768 resolution

The T420 seems to be the worst of the series ...

From the daily user of FreeBSD on W520 and X220 depending on the needs.

Regards.

Past the 420, the keyboards went to crap, and the intel management engine was built-in though, right?

T420 can be modded easily to have 1080p full hd IPS screen, 4C8T ivy bridge CPU and 16GB ram. The only thing it's missing is usb3 which can be solved with a cardbus extension card. W520's full hd screen is not IPS (and can't be modded) so viewing angle is somewhat limited (but still ok for a laptop of its age). The discrete GPU on w520 is indeed better than the integrated GPU in ivy bridge but still hopelessly outdated for pretty much any graphics intensive task today so you are probably better off saving some battery life by not having it.

Btw X220 can be modded to have a 2K 16:10 display (I'm using one rn), although it's a nontrivial mod. W520 is the only model that can't (or at least hasn't) be modded at all.

> The discrete GPU on w520 is indeed better than the integrated GPU in ivy bridge but still hopelessly outdated for pretty much any graphics intensive task today... Btw X220 can be modded to have a 2K 16:10 display

I just replaced my long suffering w520 for the daily driver... with an HP z840. Yes, I intentionally stick with old business-class hardware. I rarely used it as a laptop though - it lived on the docking station and the displayport happily pumped out 4k at 29.xxx hz. No, it couldn't handle modern-ish FPS at that resolution - but it could handle the strategy/rpg games I occasionally play and I never felt constrained with the hardware video decoder. As far as mods - you can definitely hotrod a w520. The CPU is socketed, and my memory is hazy - but I remember it being very easy to exceed the stock thermals with a non-stock CPU. RAM is socketed, and exceeding the spec capacity/clock is pretty common. Various bios mods are out there. For the really adventurous, undervolting isn't that hard - because the board schematics and logic diagrams have been floating around forever.

The W520 screen is actually decent though. At least the one in my unit. I had the 1600x900 T430 (which I think is the same panel option as T420) and it was awful with horrible viewing angles for anything not directly head on.

I like the X220 but it runs hot

The w520 is bigger and heavier (it’s in the name) are you confusing models?

As nice as some of old-ish business and workstation laptops like Thinkpads, Latitudes, and Precisions are in some ways, one aspect that’s looking increasingly aged is battery life and brick size. I don’t necessarily need my laptops to be powerhouses, but it’s nice to not need to carry the charger brick most of the time, and on the odd occasion I do it’s better if it’s not literally a brick.

I have a circa 2008 15.4” Precision that I’ve upgraded quite a lot thanks to its modularity and expandability, and it’s still pretty serviceable except that even with a brand new larger-model battery it’d be a stretch to get 4-5 hours of life out of it, and its charger brick is monstrous. It’s a stark contrast to a 16” M-series MBP, which is also a high-performance (if not quite workstation) class laptop, but gets somewhere between 2-4x the battery life and can charge up overnight with a compact 30W USB-C phone charger without any adapters.

It’d be interesting if one of those projects that retrofits old ThinkPad shells with modern mainboards were built around an ultra-efficient ARM SoC instead of the usual x86 fare. That’d address the issue pretty well.

You can use a modern USB-C charger with old laptops, you just need a cable. I was successfully charging my T420 for years using a Baseus GaN 65W charger.

I had one at one point, in a long line of thinkpads.

I just bought a new T16 that I hope actually IS the last liaptop I'll ever need.

The T420 (even as much as I liked the part number) just doesn't cut it anymore.

16 core? 4K graphics (without NVIDIA)? 48G RAM?

These are things that are not coming with the T420...

I do miss the early thinkpad keyboards 8-( Especially from the era when it was still IBM...

I have a much more powerful computer in a rack in the basement. If I need extra core or CPU I will just use that.

So you can get a T16 with just Intel Video ? None of that two video chip crap ?

Interesting, what do you run on it ?

I've been using a T420 or an X220, sometimes both, for about 6 years now since I gave my last newly-purchased Mac to my wife, the keyboard was just so awful but she doesn't care. I bought a Thinkpad 25th year anniversary edition (basically a T470 with a classic era keyboard) but the case cracked by the hinge, which is a design flaw that's inevitable as the metal hinge is screwed into the plastic frame. Once it failed I "went back" to the T420 and found it's aged like fine wine. The keyboard's great, even the stock screen while limited in viewing angle, is perfectly tolerable.

Perfectly tolerable is what I always shoot for in a screen :)

I am currently posting from my T420 and giving up this keyboard when the time finally comes will be a very sad day. I would gladly take a little more girth on a newer laptop if it meant I could have a real keyboard instead of typing on zero travel chiclet keys. I think the constant drive to make laptops a tiny bit thinner every year has been a detriment to usability. Luckily I have upgraded the display on my poor old T420 and don't use windows, so I still have some years before I have to think about it too hard.

Are there any guides to repurposing the removable "Serial UltraBay" which houses the CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives?

I have a T430s, and I've been wanting to stick an SDR in that bay for years. But I'm not sure where to start, and I don't see many technical details about how it connects to the mobo on this wiki (admitted I didn't look too hard).

It's essentially just SATA with some extra proprietary bits for adding a second battery there instead and a thingy to make it easier to pop out.

Oh cool, I didn't realize they made battery packs to fit in there. Have you ever seen a pinout listed anywhere?

For the battery portion I have no idea. For the SATA portion it's just literally the same connection as a SATA laptop optical drive.

Browse the site I linked, it shows you all the peripherals you can install. One is just a drawer, heh. I usually keep a cigarillo in there just for fun.

> the last laptop you’ll ever need

Why? The linked page is essentially a spec sheet and doesn’t include any text remotely stating that…

It's cheap enough to be careless with, just fast enough to do laptop things, there are aftermarket parts, it's meant to be upgraded, and it's hardware is well known with many firmware options.

It's kind of like a "naturally evolved" framework laptop but not niche.

The best thing is about travelling with a second-hand cheap Thinkpad is no one wants to steal them. Also it's a nice fuck you to consumerism IMHO.

Good points. My only gripe with the thinkpads are the speakers.

My go to disposable laptop is now 2013-2017 macbook airs, they share the same MB/Battery/16:10 LCD and can parts swap any years to your heart's content.

Typing this on a T420 with OpenBSD. Yes, the T420 still works great. Some cleaning and paste once in a great while, it should last for a very long time.

I am a long time ThinkPad user. I've replaced screens to add IPS, re-pasted CPUs, changed out 'clunkpads' and all the rest.

Not so long ago, my employer bought me a Dell Latitude. I think it's a 54xx. It has a pen-capable touchscreen and it is the best laptop I've ever owned. I don't care if it ever gets upgraded.

My IBM ThinkPad T41 is about 20 years old and just won't stop.

When it does, maybe I'll think about a Lenovo.

Keeping the T420 and T420s goings gets expensive, battery replacements get too pricey.

A new Chinese battery's like $30 and will last years. How is that expensive? Most people on HN spend more per week on beard pomade and IPAs.

My old company bought so many of these, and they all had their monitors die in exactly the same way after just over a year.

They would get a 1” wide band of noise going vertically up and down the entire screen, you could tap on the base of the bezel around where the noise was and it would go away for a bit and then come back. (a dying ribbon cable or connector?)

Eventually tapping would have to be harder and harder to get the noise the stop, until it would never stop.

It was certainly the last ThinkPads I ever bought.

Does anybody have a recommendation to a source of consistently good replacement batteries for the X230? The last (/first) time I tried buying an aftermarket battery, the thing lasted perhaps 6-12 months and then turned into trash. I've got it in my head to do some DIY cell swaps some day, but it's so far down on the list I'd settle for an off the shelf answer if I knew I could avoid fraud.

Check out DuracellDirect [1]. I had the same concerns as you when I needed new Thinkpad batteries in 2019. Absolutely no complaints. They are still going strong today.

[1] https://www.duracelldirect.com/

Thank you for the recommendation. I'm a bit surprised by the brand!

The big disadvantage of the T420s/430s is the s batteries do not use standard cells. The T420/430, X220/230 (and I assume w series) battery packs use standard 18650 cells.

In the x220 battery packs the controllers are not locked down hard (the later x230 batteries appear locked down and cannot be reset the same way... likely need either special software or may be able to connect directly to flash). The controller (bq8030 or bq2090 or similar) nvram can be dumped and written using the laptops built-in battery management smbus.

I recently re-celled mine; dump the calibration nvram before starting (not the end of the world if you didn't). Buy whatever power tool battery is on clearance. Swap the 18650 li-ion cells. For a cheap and cheerful spot welder, you can buy a board with some FETs to switch power from a car battery. Restore the firmware. Run Lenovo battery calibration.

Lots of info at http://www.karosium.com/2016/08/hacking-bq8030-with-sanyo-fi... (no affiliation, but found it a great resource!). If you didn't save your firmware or starting from a toasted battery, compare and contrast to calibration dumps found online. TI also has general specs available on a similar controller.

The battery controller will set a bit to disable the battery when the cell voltages get out of sync when removing/adding cells (other ways of dealing with this too.... holding controller in reset, voltage in parallel). Restoring the nvram calibration data resets this. Finding most data in the dump was relatively easy by comparing to battery statistics available through ThinkPad tools. I have detailed notes and posted to comments at above site.

There's some debate on different cell charging profiles as the original cells were 4.1v versus modern chemistry being 4.2v and so potentially will end up undercharged... but I've had great success just dropping in and don't feel the need to squeeze out more capacity.

Took an afternoon to do....not necessarily worth it, but was a fun project to figure out. My 9-cell is back to 10 hours of runtime/way better than any aftermarket I've tried.

That's much more of an explanation than I expected from my comment, thank you very much!

Reading between the lines, I think you've confirmed what I figured I had to do to replace the cells in my X230 - apply voltage across each of the cells as I swap them out, so the chip doesn't lock down.

But now I'm wondering if I can simply get a busted X220 battery to repair and use in my X230. The first search result says that it fits, but the X230 won't charge it due to DRM crap. But it also mentions a modded BIOS to get around this, and I'm running coreboot, so it seems that avenue might still be open - assuming it's really the "BIOS" and not the EC (embedded controller) chip checking.

BTW is gutting power tool batteries really a practical way to obtain reliable 18650 cells? It seems like that would be an expensive source, even on sale. But I admit my experience is with Dewalt 20V, which have their own premium. I figured I'd be hitting up the vape community to see their recommended sources when I got down to it.

The x220 battery definitely works with the x230 but requires the DRM patch. I'm running an x230 mainboard in what is otherwise an x220. It's an EC not BIOS path so should work with coreboot. Files at https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec

While swapping cells, just be careful to match voltage and severely limit current to avoid any danger/excitement. Sure you can find some forum posts on this. Also, the new and old cells must be brought very close in voltage as discrepancies are flagged disabling the battery. This also goes for between cells but allowable differences are larger. I think this battery has 3s3p configuration.

I've bought quality 18650 cells online 10 for about $100CAD for a x220 battery rebuild. More recently got 2x 2Ah 18v Ryobi packs which yeilded 10x cells total for $29CAD on clearance at Home Depot....

I had a T410 for a while, really enjoyed the 14 inch size and the keyboard. However the screen was relatively poor, not bright and poor viewing angles.

I still think my (coming up for) thirteen-year-old Lenovo T410 laptop is my 'peak-laptop' machine, even though I have replaced it with a more modern Lenovo P53. And that was mainly due to the P53 having a slightly larger display screen with 4K pixels. And it took me twelve months or so to finally settle on the P53.

The T410 was just a more enjoyable machine overall to use.

Not wild about it, since it lacks the major innovation which gave the series its name, a stylus --- see the book, _ThinkPad: A Different Shade of Blue_ for the backstory.

That said, I'm hoping that the dual-screen Lenovo Yogabook 9i does well in the market, so that Samsung finally does a dual-screen Windows tablet w/ an S-Pen.

I just bought a second hand T480 last week and installed Fedora in it. I'm loving it but the resolution 1336x768 is underwhelming.

I ended up going with a second hand T580 last year myself. It was a hard choice between the T480 or the T580, but I've been extremely happy with my decision. It's now maxed out with 64GB ram, and a second SSD in the WWAN slot. I'm running Debian Sid with ZFS root on it.

Cool, I chose a brand-new T580 from the factory in 2018. I had nowhere near the resource demands that you have, so I am happy to be chugging along with the i5, 128GB SSD, 16GiB RAM. Two upgrades I probably didn't even need are a touchscreen and a medium-size second battery, but otherwise, it's perfect.

Initially I put CentOS on it, which was really broken, so I swapped in Fedora which worked great. The T580 is RHEL-certified (other models are Ubuntu-certified, so it's interesting you chose Debian for yours.) Eventually I reverted to Windows 10 and upgraded to Pro.

It's now my only home computer and daily driver, for work and personal both, for the time being.

The RAM was a lucky find. Amazon warehouse had an open box 64GB kit for $180ish, which the price of a new 32GB kit at the time iirc. I figured I'd take a chance on it, and ran memtest on it for 32 hours or so and it checked out. I tend to run a lot of VM's and docker containers to minimize the need to VPN and use the corporate test/dev environment.

Mine has the i7 and the touch screen, I ended up I talking the seller down to $800 BIN on eBay and at the time it still had a year left on the warranty.

All in all, RAM and extra HDD I'm only in it for $1200 which I think was great deal for the last Lenovo Thinkpad that doesn't have soldiered RAM.

You can get a much brighter 1080p panel for it for not a lot of money. Do a search on reddit for T480 display upgrades.

The install itself is pretty easy, and it is so much better than the shitty 768 panels that most of these secondhand 480s came with.

Edit: typo

Wow I didn't know this, thanks!

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