Episode: 2318
Title: HPR2318: Talking about my thinkpads
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2318/hpr2318.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:16:32

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This in HPR episode 2,318 entitled, Talking about My Thinkpad.
It is hosted by Swift 110 and is about 45 minutes long and can rim a clean flag.
The summary is, I talk about why I love My Thinkpad so much and how I appreciate having
them.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthhost.com.
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Hello, this is Swift 110 and I'm excited to go ahead and do a recording.
I know it's been a really long time since I've been able to record on Hacker Public Radio.
And yeah, so right now I'm in a really good mood.
I went for a long walk in my house at a library, but one of the areas, you know, I actually
had the library in Silver Spring, Maryland, I liked this library quite a bit.
I was able to get a study room and so it allows me a good environment from which to do
this particular recording.
I happen to have two laptops with me and one of them, both made by Lenovo.
One of them is the T420 and the other is the X201.
Now the X201, I actually have two of them.
The very first one I was able to get in January of 2014.
It was really nice to be able to get this particular laptop because my daily driver prior
to that was the Fujitsu Lifebook 4215 from 2006.
A dual core, you know, a core 2 Duo is a CPU 1.83 gigahertz and it takes a maximum of
four gigs of RAM, but because it has a 32 bit architecture, something related to the
chipset, it will not be able to use anything beyond about 3.2 gigs of RAM.
So it was nice to add the RAM.
I did notice it gave me more headway when I would be on the internet web browsing and
whatnot, but at the same time it was annoying to not be able to use the full four gigs of
RAM.
So you can imagine with that laptop, used it for several years, it was the only one I had
until I got the X201.
Well now the X201, let's take a look at the specs of the X201 and I'm in a terminal
actually not in a terminal, and let's see.
It gives me the specs of this particular machine and I really like it.
Today in case you haven't figured out, it's kind of pretty much be a comparison between
the X201 and the T420.
So that would be my topic.
So now the X201 is a Core i5, second generation RAM, it's the first generation i5, m540, that's
a CPU, and it's running about 2.54 gigahertz, so it's a nice upgrade from the Core 2 Duo CPU
of the Fujitsu Lifebook Core 2 2015.
It was a nice upgrade from that, and this machine takes up to 8 gigs of RAM.
It's a very nice upgrade, very early 2017.
So I'm incredibly happy with that machine, I continue to be so to this day, just the same.
I actually ended up getting another X201.
Thank you, July of that year, maybe even the following year, I haven't been getting
another one.
It was this guy on IRC who needed to sell his X201.
The guy is awesome, by the way, because the X201 came with a 9-cell battery. It also
came with a display port to something adapter, came with an adapter, it came with two
docks, one to had the optical drive in set, and the other one had a caddy that contained
the little SSD.
So what was nice having those, plus he had upgraded the BIOS to the machine already done.
And it was all in all a nice package for $100, but now how much did I spend in the original
X201?
Well, I spent 320 bucks on that machine, it only came with four gigs of RAM, and the
battery had a life of approximately 17 minutes in Windows, which is some absolute garbage
to be very honest and delis bit.
Very much, I would say, at this appointment, you know, I didn't remotely think about the
thing about whether or not I would need a new battery at the very beginning, just insanely
crazy that I needed a new battery, but I didn't know what I know now.
And so I got through Microsoft, and you'll find this ironic in just a moment, I bought
a battery to do that, it's a third party vendor or whatever, supposedly a nine cell battery,
I'm thinking I'll get $7, $8 a battery life, new battery, the brand name, doctor battery.
It sounded good, right?
I paid them $100 for what was supposed to be a brand new nine cell battery.
I figured I'd get $7, $8.
You know how much battery life I got out?
Maybe three, maybe four hours, that's it.
And you know something else, here it is, 2017, and that battery is completely untoldly dead.
Isn't that crazy?
So later on, I bought a battery from a guy on IRC, for 70 bucks, it was a genuine Lenovo
branded, because finally I know the genuine Lenovo branded nine cell battery.
And I have that battery to this day, in fact, I'm using it in my X201 right now, and
it gives me a battery life I would estimate at about three hours and 20 minutes, which
isn't the best in the world, the battery itself was made in 2014, but it's not the worst
either.
I can work with three hours, three hours gives me a nice amount of time before I need to
charge it again.
And I'm absolutely fine with that, I can work with it.
I still want another nine cell battery for the X201, because with the exception of two
of the batteries that I have, they're dead.
I, the original battery, ironically enough, with the 17 minute battery life, for some
reason, still lives, barely, you know, pretty much hanging on a prayer.
I don't understand why that battery still lives at all, but it lives.
My doctor battery that I paid $100 for, don't use Dr. Battery batteries, they will die.
Let's make that clear, they'll die.
Third party batteries you gotta think about, because they'll die on you in the worst, they'll
just die on you randomly, and you don't want that.
So you're better off paying the extra money for a genuine Lenovo battery.
That way, you want it as new as possible, and you want to find out how many cycle counts
that it has on it, you want to know all that.
And thankfully, that information is available via a program called TP-Smappy, TP-Underscore
Smappy.
You can go to www.thinkwiki.org, look that up, look at your model, and it'll give you
the terminal commands to put in to find out exactly information about your battery, how
many cycles are on it, how much the capacity it was built for, what's the capacity now,
you get an idea about the condition of it, and all that jazz.
So it's good to know that you have these tools at your disposal, so that you can have
something that's nice.
This battery I know was made in 2014.
So it's not super old, definitely not the original battery that came with my first X201,
and it's just, it's good to know that you have a good battery, a good battery is hard
to find, so to speak.
Now, we're talking about a machine that was made in 2010, so now we're talking about
seven years.
It's a lot to ask to have a new battery, seven years after this laptopless manufacturer.
So let's make sure that we understand that.
Now, I'm happy to still be able to get batteries for the machine at all, so I don't get another
night sale, and then I'll be happy.
Well, like I said, this was a nice upgrade, and that, like I mentioned before, the first
X201 I had only came before gigs of RAM.
So I had plans to get more RAM, had a little money difficulties, that took favor.
But this other X201, I'm actually on the second one now, already had eight gigs of RAM installed.
Yay me.
I got a great night sale battery in here, got eight gigs of RAM in here.
What I have not done yet, that would be an awesome upgrade, would be an SSD.
SSDs are awesome, just saying.
You get your duckets together, get you an SSD, it will change your life.
I guarantee it, okay?
You're going to like it, I promise, okay?
Get you an SSD, okay?
Despite not having an SSD in this particular machine, I'm still really happy with it.
I can still use it as my daily driver.
Now, however, in April of 2016, I just don't have it to be in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Just don't have it to walk by, a particular pawn shop, and I decided to go in.
I says to myself, I wonder if they have any Lenovo laptops in here, classic Lenovo laptops.
Think pads, you know what I mean?
I wonder what the price will be on it.
I was already looking at, you know, man, it'd be nice to have a T420.
It'd be real nice to have a T420, because then that boosts me up to 16 gigs of RAM, hot
dog.
So, I'm looking inside, there she is, and she's beautiful.
You could call her a black beauty, that would work, but this beautiful T420 sitting on a
show.
I say, can I see the laptop?
Sure.
Turn it on.
Of course, I got Windows on it, but I was able to check the settings on it.
I remember some stuff from my days using Windows, and it was nice.
I mean, a big screen, I'm looking at her now.
This 14 inch screen compared to the X201, which has a 12 inch screen, 12, 12.5, something
like that, but has this bigger screen.
The processor in here is an i7, which I didn't know at the time, by the way, but I would have
been perfectly cool with an i5.
But it turns out to be an i7 2620, that's the processor, 2.70 GPU, and that GPU, but giga
hertz, it takes up to 16 gigs of RAM, which I was to find out on the spot, has a screen
at 16 by 900, that's the resolution, resolution of my X201 is 1280 by 800.
What I really like about the X201 is that it's so dog on portable, and that's something
I noticed when I first got it, left the Fujitsu Lifebook 4200, 4215 rather, you basically
have this 5 pound laptop, and it's a convertible.
So the screen can turn around, lay flat, and you can use it just like a tablet, it has
styles and everything.
So you can imagine going to a machine that's almost half the weight of it, especially before
you factor in the 9-cell battery, which is almost something that's half the weight.
So I remember first putting that in my bag, going on for a stroll, and then, hey, I left
my laptop in the house, and I was really upset, and I look at my bag and I keep dummy,
the laptop's in there, that's how much lighter it was, so you can imagine how happy it was
to have that X201.
I just thought of that, so I thought I would leave that in this story here.
So now, back to the T420, the T420 is heavier, but as I mentioned, we go from the
first generation, I5, M540, to a second generation, I7, that takes 16 gigs of RAM.
So I go from using 3.2 gigs of RAM to 8 gigs, to really 4, officially, in the first
X201, in 8, 16, oh my goodness.
Let me go back to being in a pawn shop, though, I'm in a pawn shop, and I see the price,
the price is like 180, that's stamped on here.
So the salesperson says, well, saleswoman, rather, I give it to you for 125, and I'm like,
word, alright, I'll do it, I'm happy, the screen looks nice, there's no cracks in, there's
no cracks in the chassis at all.
The keyboards have a nice, have a nice looking feel to them, they're just downright nice.
The only thing, cosmatically, that I noticed at the very break, was the track pad is worn
down quite a bit.
Like the middle is worn all the way to the point where it's smooth, like it has a textured,
the pad is textured, but in the middle, it's worn smooth.
So somebody was moving their finger around here a lot, a lot, a lot, like a lot, you heard
me?
Yeah, then you get it.
But I see the only thing cosmatically wrong with it, and it's nice to just, because I'm
the type of person that opens up a bunch of tabs and stuff, and I like having that extra
amount of power.
So when I'm doing something in Blender, Gimp, working with Maps, now I have more resources
to throw at these programs, it's quicker, it's more efficient, and it just works really
well for me.
The only thing about the T420, I mean it's bigger, I carried around with me, and clearly
I have both of these laptops with me in addition to an iPad 3.
So I got a nice amount of weight in my bag today.
I literally walked from my house, and I put North West DC, to come, and it was a heck
of a walk, maybe an hour, maybe 45 minutes to an hour, I walked, and I was just able to
have both of these laptops, I caught them blessed the rest of the way.
And it was just nice.
Due to the thickness of having both of the laptops, it makes my messenger bags sit kind
of high on my back, and it's a very comfortable kind of plates for it to be, and it's having
those laptops, it's almost like a heating pad on my back while I'm walking.
I know that sounds real goofy, but that's just how I feel about it.
And I'm just happy to have both of these machines.
Now, T420, I carry around quite a bit, but I have one problem now.
It's battery that was original, died on me a while back.
So I'm forced to, when I do take it with me, that I gotta always have it plugged in.
There is no battery life, the battery's dead.
The X2-1 is a lot lighter, because the T420 has gotta be life.
I don't think it's five, I don't know if it's five pounds, let's see how much it weighs.
Remember all that.
So let's see, details, specifications from manoevo.com.
Oh, here's an dimensions according to CNET.
Oh yeah, so I'm gonna go into also what makes this machine even cooler in a second.
I'm gonna just hang away.
Good, good, good, why can't you just tell me how much it weighs?
Oh, configured system weight about five pounds, okay, battery, battery, five pounds, not
whatever, whatever.
So it's about five pounds.
Let me talk about the upgrades I made to this machine.
This machine, the T420 initially came before gigs of rain.
When I bought it, four gigs of rain, okay, with windows, painful, painful, painful, painful.
So I knew at that point I could upgrade it to 16 gigs of RAM.
So the following week, I added an 8 gig RAM stick, the week after that, took it all
all the way up to 16 gigs of RAM.
You know it's so good about putting in the 16 gigs of RAM in here?
Well, I was able to take the four gigs of RAM that was already in this machine, because
it was a single, it was a single four gig RAM stick, thankfully not two gig RAM sticks.
That drives me nuts when people do that.
I understand you want the dual channel RAM in a situation like that for better system
performance, but then I have two gig RAM sticks that aren't really gonna be the best that
I can use, okay.
So having that single four gig RAM was nice because I could stick in the 8 and then go
all the way up to 16.
So this thing is maxed out with RAM, 16 gigs of RAM.
Oh, then, wait, there's more.
I decided to drop an SSD in there, and not just any SSD, okay, let me take some Flaving
here for a second.
The SSD I put in this thing, wasn't A data, wasn't even crucial, the Samsung 850 EVO.
Samsung 850 EVO is in here, 250 gig, I paid 90 bucks for it.
Take my money, please.
So now at this point, I also had to get the caddy for that particular SSD, bam, done,
that was 20 bucks, whatever, whatever, don't care.
So maxed out the RAM, got an SSD in here, not bad.
Once later, I mean a good, long time after all this was done, actually before I even
go into that.
You wanna know how much I spent on this machine?
The machine plus the upgrades of the SSD and the RAM.
I put a total of what, $300, yeah, not even $300, had been invested in this machine.
And then I got the caddy for the SSD.
Yeah, and that includes the caddy for the SSD for another one, okay, $300.
So then later on, quite a good months later, I saw that Microsoft had the actual, that
I knew that there was a port for M-SATA, so I was like, well, now I can have three storage
drives on this machine, and I bet, three storage drives.
So I was like, all right, I have a choice of another, I think it was, you'll see, what
is that thing called?
It's a way for you to use cellular communication, it's a mobile chip that you put in, one of
the names is goby, and I can't think of what is called to save my life, it probably will
come to me later, it doesn't matter, but it allows you to have cellular internet so you
can always have internet on your laptop and you're not depending on Wi-Fi.
I can't think of what it's called, so anyway, I had the option of either doing that on
M-SATA, I put the M-SATA in here, 20 bucks, it's only 60, what size is that thing?
One thing of the size of that particular M-SATA is the, because for the life of me can't
sing to, I think it's a 64, I'm not even seeing it listed on it, just, oh, I'm on it,
so, let's look at properties, free space, that doesn't tell you, and it doesn't, okay,
so let's go to home and let's see what's going on, oh, it's 64 gigs, one here, yeah, 64
gig, bad for 20 bucks, what I decided to do was put solar, so S on here, I decided to
put solar's operating system on here and check it out, and that's what's running when
the M-SATA on the SSD, the M-SATA SSD in this T420, the other operating system that I had
on the original SSD in here, well, the other SSD rather, that's in the other group, I swapped
out the optical drive and put it in that SSD, and that one has Lou Boom 2 on there, but
for some reason, I may have to mess up that distro on here, whatever, having 60, it doesn't
matter, so I have Windows 7 on here, that's when the original hard drive, I never moved
that, that's in the main slot, that's the Windows on that hard drive, that's the original
320 gig, yeah, 320 gig hard drive, and that's SATA 2, it's the original, so it's the
old conquer conquer, I intend on putting a terabyte drive in there, it's going to be a traditional
hard drive, but I intend on it being a terabyte drive, bigger, newer, better, okay, so that
will make things even better in that regard, and it also gives me a tremendous amount of
storage space on this particular laptop, I'm happy with the SSD where it is, MCADA, I
may get a bigger MCADA at that point, but you know, something else that's cool about
the T420, is that wow, I have an i7 processor in here, it's dual core, there's the ability
because the motherboard, on the motherboard, the CPU on it is socketed, so it can be replaced
with what you want, so I can literally upgrade the CPU from a dual core i7 to a quad core i7,
now the only caveat with that is making sure that I don't overwhelm the cooling system
of this particular laptop, this laptop is designed to work with the CPU that is designed
to work with 35 watts, so while there are a quad core i7s that are 45 watts and they
would work, it would overwhelm the system, unless I change the heat sink and pipes and
other things, I don't want to do all that, I would like to simply drop in a quad core i7
that's also 35 watts, that starts with the letters QM, I believe, I don't remember exactly
which one, I think there's two of them that are still 35 watts and have run just fine
the system, in fact, I can upgrade to the next generation of CPUs and go from a sandy bridge
to an ivy bridge CPU, now that requires working with the BIOS, that requires core booting
the machine, doing certain things that I just don't really feel comfortable doing, so I'm
going to stay in the same generation, sandy bridge, I'm considering sandy bridge, quad core i7,
that's 35 watts, QM series, I'm considering it very strongly, that would be a very good means
of upgrading this machine, why? Because it allows for any programs that do something called
multi-core processing, it speeds it up, it amps it up, it gives it even more oomph than it already has
and that's nice as far as I'm concerned, so that's an option, I don't have to do it, I'm good
what I have, but having that option is a beautiful thing, how many laptops do you know that
for that option? Would you get that option if you had a Macintosh? Let's say I had a T420 that was
an i3, the lowest of the low with regards to configuration of the CPU that is, I can still drop in
and i a quad core i7 that's 35 watts and bam go all the way up, so there's a lot of options when
it comes to upgrading this machine, the upgrades, I mean think about it, I put three hard drives,
there are three storage drives in here, how many laptops can you do that? This doesn't even have
a DAC attached to it, so imagine if I had a DAC attached to it, well now that's four storage drives
attached to one laptop, but wait there's more, there's an express port in the back,
there are storage drives that can fit there, you can use the SSD, yes you can use the SD card slot
as storage medium as well, so there's plenty of ways to enhance your storage on here,
I like that, I love it, if something goes old, if something breaks, I have an accent, a fall,
I can replace the parts pretty easily and inexpensively, and there's all kinds of videos available
online that will help me in my endeavor to make my laptop great again, any event of something happening
to it, can you do that with the Mac? No, I don't need a warranty on this thing, everything on here
can be changed by me, I don't need nobody else to touch my stuff, I can do it myself, isn't that nice?
I spent $125 on this basic machine, on this machine, and I have all these possibilities to improve
how it functions, this machine from 2011, that'll be relevant after 2020, okay, that's good,
and to those that's an ordinary looking machine, it's just a black machine, it's boring, it's
old, it's crap, this 2011 was up with the new stuff, excuse me, I didn't ask your opinion,
what I have works for me, I feel that way about my T420, I feel that way about my X20 once,
goodness, I feel that way about the Fujitsu for crying out loud, and that was made in 2006,
a 2006 machine that I can do whatever you do, okay, in fact anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you want a 10 year old machine, as long as you're not doing video editing,
photo editing, you know the heavy hitter stuff, if you're just a traditional consumer, I can
rock it, especially with the fact that I put Linux on all my machines, that's automatically an
advantage, Windows is heavy, it's heavy, it's fat, it's bloated, Windows with Linux, the light system,
you know, most of my machines I run Linux Mint, which is light, with the Mate desktop, fine,
I can make it lighter and put open box desktop environment on there, I can use a window manager,
I can put i3, a tiling window manager on there for crying out loud, and make my system even
lower with regards what it needs from the machine itself, I can make it lighter, I can cut the fat,
and have the same functionality that I would have otherwise, and that's a beautiful thing in itself,
that's nice, I like having that option, that as soon as I install an operating system on my machine,
I instantly have, I instantly have, what is it called, I instantly have media player
and multiples of shoes from, I instantly have an office suite, I instantly have, at my
fingertips, any number of programs, games, for free, I have access to all that stuff for free,
and I mean good quality stuff, that's just fine, lenders for crying out loud,
have you seen what it can do? Watch Sintel, S-I-N-T-E-L, look that up on YouTube, watch it,
it's done with open source software, elephant stream, big butt bunny, it sounds funny,
but imagine being able to do that kind of stuff on free software,
do you realize that there are movies, there are full-fledged movies being made with open source software,
Lord of the Rings is one of them, you don't believe me, hey, let's take a look,
but let me stick to the, I can get a little passion when I talk about Linux, and I'm going to do
that in a future, a future recording, I want to stick to the hardware, and now I've got
off an attention a bit because I'm passionate about what it is that I do, and I'm passionate about
what I'm able to do because Linux will forgot my machines, okay, my machine stays able to be used,
okay, for many years, this X201, I can always choose another Linux distro that's even lighter than
Linux, and work with the specs, I can still do that, and I like it, I like it a lot,
as far as when I know I'm going to be going for a long walks, I prefer the X201 for that,
I prefer it with regards to typing on it, definitely more portable, something that's an unfair
advantage right now is the fact that it has a 9 cell battery, whereas the T420 has a dead battery,
I'll be getting another battery soon, so I pretty much have the best of both worlds here, I have a
small compact portable machine, and then I have a larger, more of a workstation kind of laptop,
that's still portable, just a little bit less, and today when I left the house, I couldn't really
decide which one I was going to bring, so I said to myself, why don't I go ahead and just bring both of
them, I don't do that a whole lot, and I'm fine with it, so I'll bring both of them, let me take
a sip of this tea rookwood, and the stuff is delicious, so I was able to go ahead and get
these laptops, I have yet to actually do a blender project on this T420,
I know I know I've had it almost a year, and I haven't done anything on blender on here,
so I'm going to do that, and I'll do a future recording about that another day,
but I'm so happy to have these machines, they're both classic thing parts that will be in good use,
almost to infinity and beyond, I will have these machines years into the future,
and be able to use them, they ain't going nowhere, you know, so I want to help you just kind of think
about that, one point I want to leave with you guys before I end this, unless I can think of more
to say about these machines, oh the T420 has really good sound on here, I get good volume on there,
I love that extra power, I love having the 16 gigs of RAM because I can tap, tap, tap,
internet taps to my heart's content, and I don't even think about it using the ball of RAM,
I don't even know how to use all the RAM on here, I mean, honest with you, because it just
appears to be, it's almost unlimited, like you saw the steps that I took over time,
so to be able to have 16 gigs in my disposal, goodness, I appreciate this stuff,
and I'm just happy for what I have, because I didn't have to spend a fortune on these machines,
in fact, for all of my laptops, which I have six, I spend less than $600 on six laptops,
two of them were free, so that just ups the ante even more, I'm happy to have this stuff,
I started with nothing, and now I have this, and so the goal is to put this stuff to work,
and I have a lot of fun doing it, it's nice having a variety of hardwoodies to be able to compare,
you know, maybe you're comparing, maybe you're comparing the particular build quality,
and what have you, but it's just incredible, I love these machines, something
that I love about the traditional about ThinkPads in general, I mean, they're just a plain black
machine, they're not shiny, they're not pretty, they don't really catch the eye,
but I like that, because them, they're not as tempting for someone else to steal,
what's the purpose of having something really nice, just for it to get taken by someone else,
you no longer have it, you know, now, for those of you with the shiny, pretty stuff, I mean,
that's fine, if that's, you know, what you want, and it makes you happy, then fine,
but this is what makes me happy, I'm very happy with the build quality, oh, I meant to talk about this,
if I want an upgrade or repair anything on this machine, I can't, anytime I want,
there's something called the hardware maintenance manual,
hmm, basically, for each model, a ThinkPads, and it gives detailed information about it,
I mean, a lot of information, information how to tear down, information how to repair stuff,
AppleCare, I don't think so, you can take that somewhere, I don't rely on other people
to do something that I can do myself, what else can do that, nobody, baby, basically,
and I'm happy with that, I'm happy to know this is my machine and I can do anything I want with,
and even if I was to break it, do some stupid or something,
okay, fine, I can repair it, all that's possible,
because of the upgradable parts that are in this machine, without even thinking about it,
and I really like that, so all in all, I'm happy with these machines, they're functional,
they do what I need to do, and who knows what I'll do in the future with regards upgrading,
I look forward to putting an SSD into this X201, and then I can compare it with the other one,
and I really be able to see just how much of an improvement an SSD is in the machine,
and that really makes me happy, I mean, I can afford to have two of the exact same machine
and I enrich, so that says a lot in itself, I spent quite a bit on the first X201,
that's from, you know, a brick and mortar store, that's fine, but it opened up the door
of a beautiful relationship with regards to classic thingpad,
so anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and end this recording, and I hope you all have a fantastic day
the way I have and the way that I am, having, and I'll see you next time, take care.
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