ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by NikolaNovak on Friday December 30, 2016 @05:39PM (#13288110)

Errr.... T530 had titanium cover and endoskeleton chassis. My friend routinely walks over his while it's powered on, as a demonstration. How is it possibly an example of a "plastic, flimsy, bendy" laptop?

Yes it has screw holes and grills... it's a working-person's laptop :). The new ones don't, because they're becoming more like apple - which means I cannot as easily replace battery, hard drive, memory, etc as I do on the older Thinkpads.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by tsomctl on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:01PM (#13288997)

I have a T530 laying on my lap right now. I would call it plastic, flimsy, and bendy. Pick it up by one corner, it creaks and I can feel it flexing. I can see and feel the screen flex as I adjust the angle. Close the screen by pushing down on the top right corner, and it doesn't latch properly because it flexes so much. I can feel and hear it flexing as my left wrist rests on the palm rest while typing. I would not want to walk on it, I would be willing to bet money that I'd break it. This is not a solid laptop, and I will not be sorry when I replace it. My previous one was a T500, and it was well built. My next laptop will probably be a Dell Latitude, the ones I have held were solid as a brick. I saw one that was kicked as hard as possible by a large guy. The screen was broken, and it was visibly bent, but still solid.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by karussell on Saturday December 31, 2016 @04:11AM (#13290269)

> My next laptop will probably be a Dell Latitude

You'll be disappointed by battery time and sometimes CPU whining/noise. Coming from there and love the price-performance ratio, silence and battery from the T460 now ;)

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by josh64 on Saturday December 31, 2016 @03:36PM (#13293010)

Yes, my Dell latitude experience was filled with coil whine - highly irritating!

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by adamweld on Friday December 30, 2016 @06:17PM (#13288360)

Yes, this is Hacker news. Since when did having screws accessible to the user become a bad thing?

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by freshhawk on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:44PM (#13288746)

When they became less fashionable and calling yourself a "hacker" because you use social media became fashionable.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mjolk on Saturday December 31, 2016 @04:24AM (#13290306)

As a non-social-media using "hacker" (HN is the closest thing to social media that I use), I think portability in laptops should be picked over ease in hardware replacement (if you're often needing to change hardware, that's a quality problem). Recessed screw holes and bulk are a departure from that and feel like stepping into the past after using a macbook.

Similarly, I spend far more type writing software than with the soldering iron.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by pyre on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:15PM (#13288619)

The screws are accessible on my MBP 2015. They are just not in recessed screw holes, and are flush with the body of the laptop.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by Scoundreller on Friday December 30, 2016 @08:20PM (#13288864)

Ya, I'm really not sure what they're on about. I took parted-out a Macbook Air, and it was the easiest laptop I've ever disassembled. Having everything built for the specs of one manufacturer means a lot less 'glue' to make it all one piece.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mjolk on Saturday December 31, 2016 @04:15AM (#13290282)

It's possible to have screws to access case-internal hardware without a laptop being bulky and hard to look at.

I'm also hungry for a macbook pro alternative (after Apple's courageous decision to remove function keys and magsafe and not meaningfully improve hardware), but I've yet to find something that isn't at best a flimsy clone -- I travel a lot and don't want to sacrifice look and feel for the 30 minutes every three years that I'd need to swap ram/hdd.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by chris_wot on Friday December 30, 2016 @08:50PM (#13288960)

There were quite a few models where the RAM wasn't upgradable - I believe they were soldered directly to the main board. Is this the case for this revision? I can't tell!

Seriously, I used to be able to tell from product spec sheets, but Wikipedia also used to have model lists for each major product line with detailed specs. Wikipedia doesn't do this any more? Not even as part of Wikidata?

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by CountSessine on Friday December 30, 2016 @11:35PM (#13289509)

T530 had titanium cover and endoskeleton chassis.

Titanium?

walk over to my work T530, leaned up against the wall...

What 'cover' on this is made out of titanium? It's all black plastic. I've heard it has a magnesium skeleton...? Maybe you mean the hinges? I guess those could be titanium - they're some kind of metal.

Dude - the whole case on this thing is made out of plastic. I'm scratching the whole thing to find anything on this that's metal at all. What are you talking about?

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by noufalibrahim on Saturday December 31, 2016 @12:20AM (#13289624)

I don't know about the modern ones. I've been a thinkpad user since 2005 or so and my impression is that the quality has been dropping consistently. Traditionally though, many of them came with a magnesium alloy roll cage that protected the internals quite well. It considerably reduced flex and made the whole thing quite solid. The X1, it seems, has a carbon fibre roll cage. I don't have any personal experience with it http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/thisisthinkpad/innovation/roll-c...

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by sorokod on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:51PM (#13288766)

There are so many factors to consider in a laptop: CPU and TDP, memory, disk, screen size and quality, size and weight, keyboard, track-pad, maintainability, OS, price ...

Different people give these factors different weights according to their resources, needs and preferences.

There is one more factor - the image the laptop projects. To each his own, but if you give the image a high score compared to the other factors - be honest about it.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by Kalium on Friday December 30, 2016 @06:42PM (#13288480)

Laptops are status symbols now. Design commentary is beginning to reflect that. Screw are so declasse.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by rayiner on Friday December 30, 2016 @08:46PM (#13288947)

The MacBook has screws. What it doesn't have is cheap plastic held together with clips (like most Thinkpads).

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by nerdwaller on Saturday December 31, 2016 @12:44AM (#13289692)

I'd agree with others that it (t530) feels flimsy, it creaks and moans when I moved it. However it did fly off a car (in a backpack) at 85mph in the middle of Nebraska and survived with only minor damage. I was sold on the build quality, regardless of the sound it made. What killed me and eventually drove me to buy a mac was the size, weight and battery. I'd love to not be on mac, but still nothing else has been a compelling enough option. I hope this changes by time I am ready for something new.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by gonzo on Friday December 30, 2016 @08:59PM (#13288991)

The Carbon-X1 has screws, and the battery is easily accessible. https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/PD103715

The body is made out of carbon fiber. Technically this is 'plastic', but not in the context of your comment.

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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by jpalomaki on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:24PM (#13288672)

At least on the T-models I'm aware of, the important parts are still easily accessible. And the rest is also replaceable, it just may require some more work.

Here's for example the maintenance guide for T560 http://ok1.de/thinkpad/HMM/t560_p50s_hmm_en_sp40k04930.pdf

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