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userbinator 7 minutes ago [-]
I agree with the other comments here saying that it smells of AI-generated marketing puff-piece --- ThinkPads have always been very repairable, with the official service manuals published (which is more of a guide to disassembly/reassembly, but that's sufficient especially given the availability of (leaked) schematics). Older Dell Latitudes are not too bad either.
tombert 1 hours ago [-]
I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook).
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.
vbezhenar 34 minutes ago [-]
I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop.
My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that.
Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow.
Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.
Cyph0n 47 minutes ago [-]
> Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS
My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.
Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other brands, obviously. Take a look at that repo to see if there's obvious compatibility stuff.
huddert 50 minutes ago [-]
Why are they so allergic to >60hz displays though? There is zero chance that I'm buying a laptop with a slideshow display like that in current year.
tombert 30 minutes ago [-]
I've never had an issue with 60hz. 30hz is unusable but 60hz has always been good enough for me; the Sega Genesis and SNES had 60hz and that's always been good enough for me.
nine_k 42 minutes ago [-]
Are you a gamer? Otherwise it's really not easy to notice a "slideshow" at 60 Hz.
thrdbndndn 1 hours ago [-]
Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".
tombert 52 minutes ago [-]
Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1]
I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it.
[1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
system2 1 hours ago [-]
I urge you to try HP.
cookiengineer 52 minutes ago [-]
^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.
userbinator 15 minutes ago [-]
Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed.
I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
emeril 20 minutes ago [-]
my dell is hot garbage from work
wraptile 1 minutes ago [-]
The best part about ThinkPads is the refurbished market that'll get you modern dev machine that'll work for you like a horse for years for 300 usd.
p1necone 2 hours ago [-]
Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere.
* "This isn't X. It's Y"
* "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier.
* The em-dash of course
* A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
foltik 2 hours ago [-]
Once you see it you can't unsee it. Although maybe this how corporate blogslop has always been, and we're just now noticing now that it's infected everything.
> "These are not complaints, merely observations."
> "There are repairable laptops, and then there are ThinkPads."
> "iFixit approached the relationship as collaborators, not critics."
> "[...] they didn’t declare victory and go home. They kept pushing."
> "Designing for repairability doesn’t mean compromising innovation or premium experiences; when done well, it actually drives smarter innovation, better modularity, and more resilient platforms."
> "It would be one thing to make a highly repairable but low-volume niche device or concept. Instead, Lenovo just threw down a gauntlet by notching a 10/10 repairability score on their mainstream-iest business laptop."
> "This is [...] how repair goes from being an enthusiast’s “nice-to-have” to being baked into procurement checklists and fleet-management decisions."
everybodyknows 48 minutes ago [-]
There's a desperate grasping for drama and simplicity about it -- same as most mass-media news stories. I recall reading somewhere that the two watchwords of journalism are "simplify, and exaggerate". Maybe add to that: "Make all your metaphors cliches, so the reader doesn't have to think about what is meant."
fallinditch 18 minutes ago [-]
I found a way to 'de-smell' LLM copy: tell it to take a second pass that processes the text output with the William Burroughs cut-up method. Works well for a small subset of use cases.
Presumably the smelly AI text problem is just ... a problem that will be solved. Or maybe we'll just get used to it.
sureMan6 1 minutes ago [-]
I believe it's already a solved problem especially with base models (pre RL) but they still push the LLM voice either to make it easy to identify or because they think it's likeable, so it's not that OAI, anthropic, Google can't get rid of the assistant voice it's that they don't want to
vbezhenar 41 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, it's weird. It's like one person writes articles for the whole world. Probably will be fixed in a few AI iterations to present more styles, but right now it's everywhere. Articles, even forum posts.
echelon 48 minutes ago [-]
We've gone the wrong direction on the verbosity scale.
Unless I'm reading for pleasure, I want everything in concise summaries. I don't need flowery language. Or even complete sentences.
Maybe an LLM verbosity slider that dynamically truncates text we don't need. I'll dial mine down.
I recently destroyed the screen on a Google Pixel during a repair following a shoddily-written set of iFixIt instructions. I wish I had checked the comments, where many people complained that the instruction was wrong.
It was about a very fragile part of the process, and so it seemed like an error of omission that seemed atypical for iFixIt. It made me suspect the instructions might not have been wholly human written. I feel a bit vindicated for that suspicion.
The most generous interpretation I can have for this type of article is that it's a second-order phenomenon. If it was written by a human, it was written by one who consumes a lot of AI generated content and whose standards for what they produce have slipped.
RockRobotRock 2 hours ago [-]
>A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
This is the "Reddit" factor. I picked up on it being LLM written with this sentence:
"This is the treacherous, final-boss stage where repairability usually dies,"
yunnpp 39 minutes ago [-]
Ah, yes, everything needs to be phrased as an existential crossroads now. Same thing the other day when I was debating between olives or pickles on my pizza.
latexr 50 minutes ago [-]
> I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
Why would you hope to be more easily fooled?
2 hours ago [-]
koyote 2 hours ago [-]
What annoys me the most is that the information has become much less dense. There's a lot of unnecessary repetition.
I feel like I need to feed every article through an LLM just to get a summary of it.
basch 1 hours ago [-]
If only a human could edit the output before posting.
nurettin 44 minutes ago [-]
Ironically, the editors probably haven't opened a text editor for months.
aardvarkr 1 hours ago [-]
Ugh I have actually started hating Gemini for this specifically.
2 hours ago [-]
SilverElfin 2 hours ago [-]
Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO. Many people use them.
layer8 2 hours ago [-]
Surely you mean: Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO — many people use them.
bluGill 27 minutes ago [-]
Maybe he isn't one but has a close friend who is? That would describe me.
pennomi 2 hours ago [-]
There are dozens of us!
yellowapple 1 hours ago [-]
— dozens!
conception 2 hours ago [-]
It is though if the rest of the prose is trash.
ThunderSizzle 14 minutes ago [-]
Jokes on you—humans write trash all the time.
conception 1 hours ago [-]
I don’t mind the AI generated aspect. I mind the lack of carrying that it looks like AI slop.
j45 1 hours ago [-]
It indicates a baseline competency of the AI user or whomever they are trusting to use it and it will hurt brand trust and trusting humans even more.
I'm glad I haven't let AI write much for me, its better for it to help me develop my ideas and writing and do the work to learn, explore and end up with something where my brain is in the gym.
.
Passive generation might not always map well to passive consumption
chrisss395 19 minutes ago [-]
Do folks have any security concerns with Lenovo? An IT leader at a medium-large US bank recently told me they won't use Lenovo due to security risks from Chinese firmware (or something to that effect, referencing and older incident I don't recall). I've only seen such policies with defense players ten or so years ago.
That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repairability as the article covers.
kemotep 8 minutes ago [-]
Would that not be a concern for most computers? Aren’t most of these motherboards manufactured in China (or at least close proximity to China? Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.)
But older Thinkpads (not sure about newer (~5 years old) ones, certainly not brand brand new models) have great support of alternative firmware such as coreboot and libreboot, other projects that disable Intel ME and the like.
Terr_ 3 hours ago [-]
> LPCAMM2 memory that’s fast, efficient, and easily serviced [0]
Today I Learned about LPCAMM2, which is refreshing, seeing soldered-on memory always felt like some kind of slide into disposable barbarism.
Looks like the T14 Gen 7 is the first T14 to have a CAMM socket. The previous model has SODIMM DDR5-5600, more power hungry? Prior to that it was the more expensive P1 Gen 7 that had LPCAMM2.
Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen.
The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article.
It did worry me though, as I had also never heard of it. Is it highly available like more regular DIMM or SODIMM ram?
That is usually my concern with things like the modular ports and replaceable keyboards too. By the time I actually need to replace anything it could be 10 years from now, could I actually source these parts easily?
Regardless, that is a excellent problem to have compared to other less repairable laptops. I have been running my current laptop for 10 years, by the time it's unrepairable I might switch to this.
idle_zealot 1 hours ago [-]
If this model of laptop is produced in high volume, at minimum it means that dead ones can be used for parts to cobble together a smaller number of functional ones. Well, unless it turns out that a design flaw means a few parts in particular are almost always the first to go...
varispeed 2 hours ago [-]
I thought the issue with the soldered on RAM wasn't the fact that it was soldered, but that manufacturers would use chips that are not easy to source and in some way serialised.
So even if you got larger chips, you would still have to figure out other parts to swap that tell the CPU it's 32GB now, not 24GB.
doubled112 1 hours ago [-]
Being soldered on is a huge issue to 99% of people and businesses wanting to repair or upgrade something.
I don’t have the tools or skills to replace soldered on memory chips when they fail. Nobody at my place of work does. Nobody was doing that type of work in a warranty centre I worked in either.
I’d need to buy an entire motherboard, which will much more expensive, and likely more time consuming, than swapping a couple of memory modules.
evil-olive 21 minutes ago [-]
> We noted a similar lack of modularity on the Wi-Fi module, where repairs or upgrades will be impractical at best.
I'm the current owner of a T14s (gen3 AMD) and the non-replaceable wifi chip has been my biggest pain point with it. I'm somewhat disappointed to see them give this 10/10 score with that problem unresolved.
according to lspci it's a Qualcomm QCNFA765 and it works great under Linux...until you suspend the machine. after it wakes up from suspend, it will only stay connected for a few seconds to a minute before dropping the connection and re-establishing it.
I've replaced wifi chips in other Thinkpads I've owned, so I naively assumed this would be the same as well - just swapping out the M.2 card. but no such luck, it's soldered in place.
I ended up using systemd to rmmod-then-modprobe the ath11k_pci module when the system resumes from sleep. this is annoying because it adds a delay of several extra seconds before the machine is ready to use, but none of the "smaller hammer" workarounds I attempted worked at all.
alabhyajindal 3 hours ago [-]
Nice very cool. Unfortunately, the blog post looks like it's been generated by an LLM.
> Going from a high score to the highest score isn’t usually about making minor tweaks. It requires fighting for every small, boring, consequential decision—the ones that determine whether a repair isn’t merely possible or practical, but within easy reach.
aleph_minus_one 1 hours ago [-]
I, as a non-native speaker, don't associate this with LLMs, but with corporate advertising texts.
idle_zealot 1 hours ago [-]
They're basically the same thing. Machine language, just generated by a different kind of machine, one social, the other a transformer model.
mceachen 3 hours ago [-]
At the same time, at least to me, the text reads like a transcript from one of their YouTube tear downs.
pjjpo 2 hours ago [-]
There are those times we may be seeing the source of LLM language training. I had the same reaction of sounding like one but agree it's likely not.
mushufasa 2 hours ago [-]
This commitment by Lenovo must have been driven by customer demand -- in this case, the IT departments. I wonder how much of that demand may be attributed to questions about comparisons to Framework. Even if Framework is not mainstream, it has mindshare among the IT-crowd.
nine_k 38 minutes ago [-]
The replaceable Thunderbolt sockets connecting to an internal Thunderbolt socket are a direct... homage to Framework.
_ache_ 54 minutes ago [-]
I switch from ThinkPad to Framework because they couldn't send me a replacement keyboard. They want me to send the keyboard back to get a refund but I never receive it so... I never did get a refund.
Later, Framework send me a laptop in 1 week and later a replacement screen in less then a week. It's been 3 years ago now.
carefree-bob 48 minutes ago [-]
What do you think of the build quality of your Framework? Have you had any issues over the last 3 years?
kiddico 32 minutes ago [-]
I'm rocking a framework 13" intel 12th gen still and I love it. The only issue I had was being part of the few that got a batch of bad hinges. I didn't know there was a replacement program I could have used and just replaced them myself with the heavier hinge option. At this point I have every expansion port thing they offer and keep them in my bag. My laptop can have any I/O I want :) pretty cool.
owenversteeg 35 minutes ago [-]
Yikes. Has iFixit jumped the shark? An AI generated press release on behalf of Lenovo, who is (from my perspective) essentially paying them for good PR? And this paid relationship - Lenovo paying iFixit - isn’t disclosed until the very last line of the article, so you have to first read 1500+ words of AI slop?
That made me start looking into their scores. The Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 gets a 9/10 despite soldered ports, a pile of easily breakable plastic clips, a flimsy plastic case, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly. To me that sounds _worse_ than the M5 MacBook Pro, which scores 4/10 (soldered storage unlike the E14, easily replaceable ports, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly.) I would personally rather have replaceable ports than non-soldered storage, but putting my personal preferences aside, I think it’s hard to argue that difference between the two is worth going from a 4/10 to a 9/10.
lenaivo 29 minutes ago [-]
Thank you for saying it. There was somehting nagging me after a while. Even the quotes from Lenovo read as being AI generated, which begs the question if the quotes are real or paraphrased of factual at all.
owenversteeg 25 minutes ago [-]
You’re welcome. It’s a real shame IMO. I used to be a huge Lenovo guy, until the quality of the products dropped off a cliff a decade and change ago. Disappointing to see that instead of making a better product they decided to pay iFixit to write AI-generated puff pieces.
internet2000 31 minutes ago [-]
iFixit makes sense when you think of it as a content mill made to sell overpriced screwdrivers.
nickorlow 2 hours ago [-]
Lenovo (and their subsidiary Motorola) seem to be on a consumer friendliness streak
a-dub 9 minutes ago [-]
they've been the framework laptop since before there was a framework laptop.
worldwide onsite service response times and parts availability are top notch as well.
ggm 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not in a refresh cycle, but I would seriously consider this platform having used the older X series, and found them workhorses. I destroyed an X30 keyboard and the replacement was fast and easy. Bringing that experience into the modern era is a good thing.
One thing which worries me, is how easily the Qualcomm core platforms run novel OS because I don't see indications they are avoiding blob dependency either in the core, or in peripheral control. It will probably be fine if you run the Lenovo tailored linux release, but if you want to run a BSD or something else you might find either you're on a slower path, or you have less battery life, or you simply can't drive some devices. (I am a user not a kernel/devicedriver developer so if I misunderstand blobbyness and why things like wifi cards often don't work please don't hate me)
But for hardware replacement? This is ace! I like the other sources which people use too, but Lenovo has a worldwide warranty, and has agents almost everywhere so your ability to be on-the-road, pick up a phone, quote a number and get a part is significantly enhanced. (in my experience)
WD-42 2 hours ago [-]
This is great. I’m still rocking a nearly 10 year old T470s. Great machine with Linux on it, still snappy enough- Tailscale is there when I need to do serious work (on my desktop at home!)
I replaced the batteries a few months ago and it was painless.
abdullahkhalids 2 hours ago [-]
I have a T470. I have changed the screen (after I dropped water on it and shorted it), changed the batteries after 5 years, increased the RAM, and added an M2 drive. All of these were painless operations. Couldn't be happier with my purchase.
cbenz 2 hours ago [-]
Same here. The only problem is that I "only" have 24Gb of RAM. I wish I could upgrade but it's a hard limit. And keyboard quality seems to have been degrading over the years since 2020. Is this new model good in terms of keyboard?
kev009 2 hours ago [-]
If you are ever bored, maxing out a T440p, T430, or T480 is a fun exercise and not very difficult nor expensive. CPU, RAM, SSD, coreboot, modern LCD panel, Liteon keyboard. Load with Linux, BSD, OpenCore.
leidenfrost 11 minutes ago [-]
I have a hard time finding a good battery.
I bought an internal and external battery and the external one quickly started bloating.
nine_k 31 minutes ago [-]
I had al of these. The CPU is the weakest component here, and only T480 supports 32 GB RAM.
(Typing this from a T14 gen 1.)
stuxnet79 2 hours ago [-]
> nor expensive
With OpenAI completely destroying the component supply chain in 2026 I think this requires citations
nine_k 35 minutes ago [-]
DDR3 was not so much affected as DDR4 or DDR5.
Guestmodinfo 1 hours ago [-]
I have used not thinkpads but Lenovo IdeaPad from 2023. Very fragile. It has caused me to run many times to the repair shops.
Whereas Lenovo laptops (non Thinkpads) from 2007 and 2021 are very solid nearly unbreakable.
WillAdams 3 hours ago [-]
The last time my ThinkPad 755C was in the way and shuffled around as part of re-arranging, it still booted up.
The only other device I've owned which might have that sort of longevity is my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 (which I quite miss for its transflective display).
Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was in the ThinkPad line and that it had a Wacom EMR stylus....
drewg123 1 hours ago [-]
Do they still block third party PCIe (eg, wifi) devices in their firmware?
esseph 37 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like that might be a specific model problem, but not a company policy. I've had Lenovo devices since they purchased the brand from IBM, for personal use and work, and this is not something I have run into across T/P/X series.
furryrain 2 hours ago [-]
> There are “repairable” laptops, and then there are ThinkPad T-series laptops
By elevating ThinkPad T-series above other laptops by reputation, do iFixit weaken their notion of objective repairability ratings?
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3 hours ago [-]
Nice, also my thinkpad required a full dismantle to change the keyboard, so I am rightly pissed given it's a premium product.
cosmic_cheese 2 hours ago [-]
This is great and should be applauded, but repairability is but one aspect of many in a good laptop. I wonder if other aspects had to suffer to achieve this, and if they did by how much. The answer to that question could make or break the laptop for many users.
tripdout 2 hours ago [-]
The article states:
> Lenovo tells us, “The biggest challenge in getting to a 10/10 was balancing repairability with all the other expectations of a commercial device: performance, reliability, thermal efficiency, form factor, and design integrity. Repairability isn’t achieved by a single change: it requires many small, intentional decisions across the entire system, and each of those decisions can introduce trade-offs.
cosmic_cheese 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, however companies say a lot of things. We'll need to see some hard numbers and reviews based on real world usage to know if their claims ring true.
Daz912 2 hours ago [-]
why are you so negative?
cosmic_cheese 1 hours ago [-]
All the repairability in the world is moot if the laptop isn't good enough to sell itself on its other merits. If it turns out to be hot and loud or have poor battery life for example, that's going to steer many to buy elsewhere.
varispeed 2 hours ago [-]
Probably because this is not repairability, but rather dividing device into smaller not repairable parts that can be replaced by purchasing parts from the manufacturer at inflated cost.
system2 1 hours ago [-]
Is there any laptop that you can replace individual pieces of the motherboard? Laptop motherboards are all the same.
varispeed 2 hours ago [-]
Does it mean I can buy chips that are on the boards and solder them if they go bad?
It sounds like repairability means dividing device into smaller not repairable parts and make extra money off of it.
For instance, can I get those replaceable ports on Mouser?
Repairwashing.
megous 1 hours ago [-]
I love this. T14 gen 7 was the first NB I a actually bought for myself, and it's great to know that USB-C ports can just be replaced that easilly without soldering and that it was designed from the start with repairability in mind. Non-A USB ports is something that always ends up failing.
quotemstr 2 hours ago [-]
Shame the keyboards have a copilot key. That doesn't sound so bad until you see that the thing emits a key chord, not a scancode, making it annoying to remap. But you can.
The most annoying part is that the key matrix isn't set up to 3-key rollover with the copilot key like it would be for a real modifier key. (I'd assumed they'd just keep the matrix they used when there was a modifier in that spot. Nope.) Consequently, some key combinations, e.g. ralt-rcontrol-spacebar, don't work. Press them, nothing happens. Infuriating.
dvorak007 1 hours ago [-]
I love my Thinkpad!
brikym 1 hours ago [-]
No thanks. I don't like all their awful plastic. Make it from metal and glass.
ezst 35 minutes ago [-]
Mine has a magnesium chassis, did that change along the way?
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.
My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that.
Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow.
Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.
My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.
In the case of my ThinkPad, you can see there is literally no extra work required: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/lenovo/t...
Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other brands, obviously. Take a look at that repo to see if there's obvious compatibility stuff.
I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it.
[1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
* "This isn't X. It's Y"
* "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier.
* The em-dash of course
* A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
> "These are not complaints, merely observations."
> "There are repairable laptops, and then there are ThinkPads."
> "iFixit approached the relationship as collaborators, not critics."
> "[...] they didn’t declare victory and go home. They kept pushing."
> "Designing for repairability doesn’t mean compromising innovation or premium experiences; when done well, it actually drives smarter innovation, better modularity, and more resilient platforms."
> "It would be one thing to make a highly repairable but low-volume niche device or concept. Instead, Lenovo just threw down a gauntlet by notching a 10/10 repairability score on their mainstream-iest business laptop."
> "This is [...] how repair goes from being an enthusiast’s “nice-to-have” to being baked into procurement checklists and fleet-management decisions."
Presumably the smelly AI text problem is just ... a problem that will be solved. Or maybe we'll just get used to it.
Unless I'm reading for pleasure, I want everything in concise summaries. I don't need flowery language. Or even complete sentences.
Maybe an LLM verbosity slider that dynamically truncates text we don't need. I'll dial mine down.
It was about a very fragile part of the process, and so it seemed like an error of omission that seemed atypical for iFixIt. It made me suspect the instructions might not have been wholly human written. I feel a bit vindicated for that suspicion.
The most generous interpretation I can have for this type of article is that it's a second-order phenomenon. If it was written by a human, it was written by one who consumes a lot of AI generated content and whose standards for what they produce have slipped.
This is the "Reddit" factor. I picked up on it being LLM written with this sentence:
"This is the treacherous, final-boss stage where repairability usually dies,"
Why would you hope to be more easily fooled?
I'm glad I haven't let AI write much for me, its better for it to help me develop my ideas and writing and do the work to learn, explore and end up with something where my brain is in the gym. . Passive generation might not always map well to passive consumption
That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repairability as the article covers.
But older Thinkpads (not sure about newer (~5 years old) ones, certainly not brand brand new models) have great support of alternative firmware such as coreboot and libreboot, other projects that disable Intel ME and the like.
Today I Learned about LPCAMM2, which is refreshing, seeing soldered-on memory always felt like some kind of slide into disposable barbarism.
[0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen.
The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-t14-gen-7-hands-o...
That is usually my concern with things like the modular ports and replaceable keyboards too. By the time I actually need to replace anything it could be 10 years from now, could I actually source these parts easily?
Regardless, that is a excellent problem to have compared to other less repairable laptops. I have been running my current laptop for 10 years, by the time it's unrepairable I might switch to this.
I don’t have the tools or skills to replace soldered on memory chips when they fail. Nobody at my place of work does. Nobody was doing that type of work in a warranty centre I worked in either.
I’d need to buy an entire motherboard, which will much more expensive, and likely more time consuming, than swapping a couple of memory modules.
I'm the current owner of a T14s (gen3 AMD) and the non-replaceable wifi chip has been my biggest pain point with it. I'm somewhat disappointed to see them give this 10/10 score with that problem unresolved.
according to lspci it's a Qualcomm QCNFA765 and it works great under Linux...until you suspend the machine. after it wakes up from suspend, it will only stay connected for a few seconds to a minute before dropping the connection and re-establishing it.
I've replaced wifi chips in other Thinkpads I've owned, so I naively assumed this would be the same as well - just swapping out the M.2 card. but no such luck, it's soldered in place.
I ended up using systemd to rmmod-then-modprobe the ath11k_pci module when the system resumes from sleep. this is annoying because it adds a delay of several extra seconds before the machine is ready to use, but none of the "smaller hammer" workarounds I attempted worked at all.
> Going from a high score to the highest score isn’t usually about making minor tweaks. It requires fighting for every small, boring, consequential decision—the ones that determine whether a repair isn’t merely possible or practical, but within easy reach.
Later, Framework send me a laptop in 1 week and later a replacement screen in less then a week. It's been 3 years ago now.
That made me start looking into their scores. The Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 gets a 9/10 despite soldered ports, a pile of easily breakable plastic clips, a flimsy plastic case, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly. To me that sounds _worse_ than the M5 MacBook Pro, which scores 4/10 (soldered storage unlike the E14, easily replaceable ports, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly.) I would personally rather have replaceable ports than non-soldered storage, but putting my personal preferences aside, I think it’s hard to argue that difference between the two is worth going from a 4/10 to a 9/10.
worldwide onsite service response times and parts availability are top notch as well.
One thing which worries me, is how easily the Qualcomm core platforms run novel OS because I don't see indications they are avoiding blob dependency either in the core, or in peripheral control. It will probably be fine if you run the Lenovo tailored linux release, but if you want to run a BSD or something else you might find either you're on a slower path, or you have less battery life, or you simply can't drive some devices. (I am a user not a kernel/devicedriver developer so if I misunderstand blobbyness and why things like wifi cards often don't work please don't hate me)
But for hardware replacement? This is ace! I like the other sources which people use too, but Lenovo has a worldwide warranty, and has agents almost everywhere so your ability to be on-the-road, pick up a phone, quote a number and get a part is significantly enhanced. (in my experience)
I replaced the batteries a few months ago and it was painless.
I bought an internal and external battery and the external one quickly started bloating.
(Typing this from a T14 gen 1.)
With OpenAI completely destroying the component supply chain in 2026 I think this requires citations
Whereas Lenovo laptops (non Thinkpads) from 2007 and 2021 are very solid nearly unbreakable.
The only other device I've owned which might have that sort of longevity is my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 (which I quite miss for its transflective display).
Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was in the ThinkPad line and that it had a Wacom EMR stylus....
By elevating ThinkPad T-series above other laptops by reputation, do iFixit weaken their notion of objective repairability ratings?
> Lenovo tells us, “The biggest challenge in getting to a 10/10 was balancing repairability with all the other expectations of a commercial device: performance, reliability, thermal efficiency, form factor, and design integrity. Repairability isn’t achieved by a single change: it requires many small, intentional decisions across the entire system, and each of those decisions can introduce trade-offs.
It sounds like repairability means dividing device into smaller not repairable parts and make extra money off of it.
For instance, can I get those replaceable ports on Mouser?
Repairwashing.
The most annoying part is that the key matrix isn't set up to 3-key rollover with the copilot key like it would be for a real modifier key. (I'd assumed they'd just keep the matrix they used when there was a modifier in that spot. Nope.) Consequently, some key combinations, e.g. ralt-rcontrol-spacebar, don't work. Press them, nothing happens. Infuriating.