Technology

twinkpads have always been extremly based. writing it from my l540

I picked up a 2025 P14s Gen 6. Wanted Ethernet and the ability to easily swap both RAM sticks in the future. Apart from the soldered WiFi chip, this computer is by far one of the most modern and repairable ones I’ve seen. Perfectly runs Fedora KDE, too.

T series are also fantastic, but at the time it wasn’t as repairable given one RAM stick was soldered and the other was replaceable. Also because of the form factor it didn’t have Ethernet.

Can’t go wrong with a P series if your needs are similar to mine in a computer for long-term use.

Edit: Forgot to add that while my P14s Gen 6 is great, the biggest complaint is the soldered USB C ports for power delivery. That's a huge point of failure. I mitigate the weak point by using a magnetic USB C cable. It's nice to see the the new T series has modular USB C / thunderbolt ports and remediates the weak point that was a common complaint for users.

In six years I have burnt through two Lenovo ThinkPads. In the first the USB C charging port malfunctioned, and it turns out the charging port is soldered directly to the motherboard so they had to replace the whole thing. Ever since I got it back from repairs it enters into kernel panics all the time, no matter which distro I install.

I was in the middle of writing my thesis so I had no time for repairs when it broke, so I ordered mysef a new ThinkPad. I had to choose between pre-assembled models, and I wanted a high resolution display, a good processor, and some other things. I got one with not quite as much RAM as I really needed, and found out when I wanted to upgrade that they had rendered upgrading RAM completely impossible in that model of ThinkPad. It wasn't even one of the new slim ones, but a pretty traditional bulky one. Complete bullshit.

Both of these laptops are recent enough that had they not sucked I would still be using them years from now. I'm happy Lenovo appear to be changing their ways, but I wouldn't touch another ThinkPad with a stick after my experiences with them.

Currently I'm using a Framework 13. Hopefully it'll last me decades.

I'll never buy a ThinkPad again after the T16 Gen 1 that I have at work. That thing was overheating from day one, absolutely terrible for a 3000€ business laptop.

Besides Lenovo's shitty BIOS issues (which they have tried to fix about five times in the last 3 years), sometimes boot-up still takes a minute to get past the Lenovo logo.

I don't even have a lemon or anything, several coworkers have also complained about the same issues. One got so angry he smacked the laptop a few times on his table out of frustration (no actual damage) and forced IT to give him a different more powerful model with better cooling.