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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

It's a nice gesture, but I fear they've missed their target market. Most of the people who care about free software are programmers, and programmers need things this laptop doesn't have, namely modern specs and a great screen. Cheap is nice for toys, but not for the computer you use every day to do your job and entertain yourself. This simply isn't a good enough laptop to do everything you'll want to do with it, which means you won't use it all the time, which means your freedom and privacy are compromised.

Give me a laptop that can actually replace my MBP, instead of merely sit on the shelf while I watch movies and surf the web, and we'll talk.

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>Most of the people who care about free software are programmers, and programmers need things this laptop doesn't have...

The hardware is a bit antiquated, yes, but it's a step in the right direction. There are a good amount of programmers who care about freedom that are using Lemote laptops as their primary computers. So, I think that the Thinkpad X60s is certainly an improvement from a more practical standpoint.

>Give me a laptop...

If you really want freedom, you'll work for it and sacrifice some convenience instead of waiting around for someone to do all of the work for you.

Personally, I made a bit of a compromise and use a Thinkpad X220 with a hacked version of the proprietary BIOS so that I could replace the wireless chip with a free software friendly one.

I have a X220t and Linux runs great on it. Why did you have to use a hacked BIOS? What advantages does this BIOS give to you?

At least some laptop BIOSes have a whitelist (or was it a blacklist?) of approved wireless chips. So to choose your own, you'd have to get around that.

The BIOS includes a whitelist for which PCIe cards can be put it in the slot that the wireless chip is in. Intel wireless chips require nonfree firmware to be loaded into them in order to function. I replaced this with an Atheros chip that does not have this problem. In order for the chip to not be rejected, I had to flash a hacked BIOS that removed the whitelist.

I'm one of the programmers to whom this laptop is just perfect. Common hardware that's well supported on almost any platform, good reliability, excellent keyboard and, IIRC, a clit mouse, which I would prefer over the fanciest of touchpads. And not just because it superficially looks like a clit.

Most of my work revolves around programming devices with no more than a couple of megabytes of RAM, most often with no more than a couple of kilobytes. A MBP is far, far more powerful than what I need.

Fully agree, not to forget the screen ratio of 3:4 which cannot be found any-more! This together with the excellent keyboard and the trackpoint are me is THE criteria for a developper laptop.

Just ordered one ;)

Aye, I don't get all this widescreen crap either.

I far prefer to have half the screen devoted to my editor and the other to my browser/docs/terminal/etc. Makes things way more convenient.

Their page says you can get a US keyboard layout but I can't figure out how to order one like that. I could live with the UK layout if it weren't for that key in between the Z and left-shift.

A machine like that runs vim/emacs perfectly, I don't see the problem. And for compiling you can use build farms if you're serious. We're getting way to used to our shiny modern toys to realise that it doesn't take much for an OS to run and do actual work.

Up to last March I was using a first generation eeepc with a resolution of 800x480, 512mb of ram and 4gb ssd. It was stretching it but didn't stop me from doing actual work with vim, compile programs (although slow) and push to github. Plus ssh on my server for heavier work.

now... browsing the Web with elinks and framebuffer was kind of a pain...

After I stuck an SSD in it, my 2nd-generation Thinkpad X100e makes a fantastic little dev box. The damn thing boots in under 5 seconds. I've always been a fan of the smaller laptops like this (I used a Thinkpad 240Z for nearly a decade).

An rMBP would be nice to have but in the meantime this laptop suits me just fine. The keyboard is better on this too. Maybe if that iPad Pro rumor pans out and it ends up having a USB port I'd just use that with one of my smaller keyboards (KBC Poker) instead.

I use a newer eeepc with 1G of ram (Atom N450). It allows me to discern what software is horribly inefficient crap and what is actually decent. It allows me to see where code changes actually have a real impact on performance and UX. Profiling isn't always nearly as helpful: it gives you numbers, which you can compare relative to each other, but it doesn't tell which numbers actually matter. And how often do people really profile?

For me using cheap low-end hardware is a feature, for development. Plus it saves me monies.

A Thinkpad X60 certainly isn't as good an entertainment machine as a MBP, but with enough RAM and a SSD it's an excellent programming laptop.

I really miss my X60. If it had an LED backlight (I hack outside a lot) I would still be using it. The 1440x1050 resolution is better than anything currently available in this weight category.

Don't forget the keyboard! None of this chiclet insanity or new Lenovo mess.

Yeah.. Anything early 2012 onwards (x230/x1 and later) has the new style keyboard. I've heard reports that it's not that bad, but I don't know why they would do such a blasphemous thing..

I can live with the chicklet keyboard. But the new ThinkPads have their TrackPoint buttons integrated into the track pad. Insanity.

As far as I can tell the changes are purely cosmetic; the underlying switch hasn't changed at all. Still crap compared to any mechanical switch, but better than any other laptop.

The X60 has only a resolution of 1024x768. That was one of the main drawbacks of the X60 imo. The better resolution display was only available for the X60t. Some people hacked the X6x to use those [1].

[1] http://ithinkpad.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/x6xipsguide/

Some T60s came with a 15" IPS 1600x1200 UXGA display, which for years was the best display you could hope to have on a laptop. Only starting to become outdated now thanks to Apple's retina push.

And if you care more about real estate than perfectly smoothing your fonts, still better than pixel-doubled displays.

It's easy to switch from pixel-doubled to full-resolution.

http://www.quickresapp.com/

"Most of the people who care about free software are programmers, and programmers need things this laptop doesn't have, namely modern specs and a great screen."

Mr Hess seems to do ok with a lowish spec netbook and more recently a Lenovo Arm based tablet convertable. Perhaps many programmers need high specification hard ware, but even rounding error would be a significant market for this operation.

I think it depends on your workflow; for me, the keyboard is the single most important thing, then probably portability and RAM. Screen and CPU are pretty low on the list.

You're suggesting a different product and a different market at the same time.

I think your comment demonstrates that most programmers are always going to go for the most awesome laptop and will make the necessary sacrifices. To me, the natural target market for this is probably FSF & EFF members; those that are concerned enough about their privacy that they will accept a laptop that does less, isn't as shiny, etc.

That's not their target market. Their target market is people who care about having a completely free system (for the FSF's definition of free) over having good hardware. It think it would be pretty hard for a more modern laptop to get this sort of certification, since you'd need all the hardware manufacturers to agree to open up their drivers and firmware.

I think, if nothing else, this effort is useful as it serves to highlight to technically inclined people just how hard it is to get a system that meets these requirements. It is a wakeup call, telling us that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

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