I switched to a ThinkPad and I love it

A week or so ago my Dell laptop started to not charge from time to time until it stopped charging. The laptop has 2 USB-C ports for charging and both died. I checked and only one worked for data transfer. I could not find a solution. You know I am the “computer repair guy” normally and I fix people`s laptops but this time I could not fix mine.

Look at this:

No way I can fix these and not destroy the laptop. They make these impossible to repair for normal folks and too expensive to send for repair anyway. Likely would have cost me hundreds of euro in Spain and would take a long time.

So frustrating since it works just fine with the battery but I CANNOT charge it! WTF.

So I decided to drop this laptop for good and go for a much cheaper one. You see this 1.200 Euros Dell laptop that I had for the past 3 years had a bunch of issues anyway

1. From the start the trackpad did not work. I had to solder a wire inside of it to make it work. Insane!

2. The battery dropped to some 50% capacity in less than 2 years.

3. It was hard to open and overall not very well built (I realized that in time because in the beginning I thought it was very well built).

4. Lately some keys on the keyboard stopped working unless you really press down on them hard.

6. It was getting crazy hot. In the summer I could not hold it on my lap. And it was designed by a moron who thought sharp corners are cool…

I feel bad that I spent so much money on it. Overall I was happy with it, especially the screen, but the above issues were not easy to accept.

ThinkPad P1 Gen1

I have very little money and I thought why not buy a cheap ThinkPad. My sister has a small ThinkPad Yoga that she bought second hand a few years ago from ebay. And I LOVED it. The build quality, THAT keyboard….how easy it is to open and upgrade.

I was in a rush since I had no laptop anymore and after 2 days of searching I found the ThinkPad P1 series. 15.6inch screen, great keyboard, and very good specs. I was lucky to find it for 300 Euros on Wallapop (second hand store).

Here is why I LOVE this laptop and why it is better than that Dell.

Build quality.

This is properly built not a gimmick like that Dell that had a metal chassis but inside all plastic. This one has a metal alloy inside. Feels a lot more robust. And no sharp corners. I can easily handle this laptop.

It is the same size and weight as that Dell. It is quite thin and has all of the ports you need.

I also like that it opens flat like this. IDK why but I always hated when laptops only open half way through.

Overall it feels very well made.

Easy to upgrade.

Which one looks better organized inside?

Clearly the bottom one, ThinkPad. 2 fans that keep this laptop a lot cooler than that Dhell. I could easily add my 64GB of RAM and it has TWO, THWO M2 slots! Wow. Dell only had one. I added my 4TB on one slot and kept the 512GB it came with for system backups. I always wanted to Tmeshift my system backups to a different drive and now I can do it easily.

To open this ThinkPad you only need to remove 7 screws that are held captive to the bottom chassis “plate”. With the Dell it was a bit awful. Tiny screws that you can lose and a lot of sweat to lift that base. Noises, cracks…bad.

Multiple charging options.

Their proprietary charger port plus 2 USB-C. In case any stops working (DELL!!!) you have another way to keep the laptop charged.

That keyboard!

Wow. You have to use these ThinkPad keyboards to understand what a good fucking keyboard is. Most laptops wanna be thin and have almost touch-based keyboards. They suck. This one feels like you gave your fingers a comfy chair. For someone like me who writes a lot, a keyboard is more important than other things.

LOVE IT!

Performance?

Everyone is obsessed with numbers and names. This new CPU X12Nm V2! Bla-bullshit. Marketing nonsense.

Ok look at the numbers. The Dell had a Core i7-1260P with 12 cores and 16 threads. This ThinkPad has a Core i7-8850H with 6 cores and 12 threads.

On paper the Dell is some 40% better than the ThinkPad.

In practice I notice NO difference. Yes I only got the ThinkPad for a day, but the only CPU intensive tasks I do are multitasking (doing now, no difference), compiling the TROMjaro ISOs (now takes 10-20 minutes longer), and video editing in Kdenlive where I use proxy videos anyway so the CPU is barely used. Perhaps when I render videos it would take a bit longer. But just a bit.

The rest is total BS – just marketing. I do a lot of things including VMs, and my CPU is bellow 6%.

Where I was held back a bit was the video card from Dell. An Nvidia MX550 with just 2GB of RAM. ThinkPad uses an Nvidia Quadro P2000 with Max-Q Design. Kinda similar but it has 4GB of RAM. I could not run some Language Models for translating stuff in Kdenlive with the 2GB of RAM GPU from Dell, so this one should help.

What I need is a lot of is RAM. And I am using the same 64GB from the Dell. Also same M2 drive.

The screen is indeed better from the Dell one. That OLED…but this one is not at all bad. After a few minutes you cannot tell one from another. You simply adjust.

So I bet performance wise I will notice no difference, and this is the key. All of those CPU and GPU names make no difference. The real use is important.

Cheap is better!

When this laptop released some 5 years ago it was selling for around 2.000$. Now you can grab a good second hand one for around 3-400 Euros. In a way the advantage of this endless consuming society is that they release so many new models making the “old” ones very cheap very fast. So you can buy them second had and in very good working quality.

Before I was very concerned for my laptop since I paid so much money and I thought if I lose it I am fucked. But now, is fine. If I lose it or it breaks, I can get the same one for a few hundreds of euros.

Not so much stress as before.

Linux rocks!

The fact that I simply put my M2 driver with TROMjaro in the new laptop and booted into it, and all worked as before, is pure Linux magic. I had to do nothing except reinstall something for the finerprint reader. It means I can take that drive of mine of 4TB and put it into any machine really, and have my own stuff there. Making it my own.

Fucking amazing!

Overall

The speakers are decent, I managed to make the finerprint reader work which is fantastic, the keyboard is sane and in English, no nonsense keys, and the webcam is decent for a laptop.

(when you are prompted to use the fingerprint a little light turns on – neat)

In BIOS you can also change the FN and CTRL keys since for some reason ThinkPad Thinks it is a good idea to put the FN key where most laptops put the CTRL key. At least is easy to switch.

So overall a very cheap laptop and very good. If this one breaks at least I know I can cheaply buy another one like this, put my drive and RAM into it, and that`s it.

THANK YOU!

I made a donation campaign for this laptop and raised the money within hours. Thank you to those who donated. Thank you very much. My laptop is so important for me – allows me to do all of these TROM projects.

Many thanks!