Lenovo ThinkPad P1

1. Plea to anyone doing TrackPoint projects: consider using a 6mm TrackPoint, which can accommodate an off-the-shelf 6mm Soft Rim cap. See this comparison of the shortening and changing of the TrackPoint cap over time, and you can imagine how the current 3mm caps end up requiring more finger pressure than the 6mm soft rim cap, to get pressure to register: https://saoto28.wixsite.com/trackpoint4life/comparison I own a very nice modern-looking ThinkPad P1, but my daily driver is currently a ThinkPad W520 battleship from 2012, entirely because its TrackPoint is more comfortable to use. (I could acclimate to the P1's chiclet keyboard easily, but the slippery TrackPoint cap was definitely harder on my finger and hand.) On the W520, I can type prolifically, all day and evening, 7 days a week, without discomfort. I don't want to break the TrackPoint soft rim magic that helps make that possible. 2. If someone in the US wants to try to make good soft rim 3mm caps that will fit modern ThinkPads, and save Lenovo from losing TrackPoint adherents, here is a starting point that Saoto kindly shared: https://grabcad.com/library/softrim-trackpoint-cap-for-3-mm-... If you can do soft rim with high-quality molding (not 3D printing, and determine the right materials, and red top), some people are so desperate that they're paying $50+ for a single tiny 3D-printed cap to be mailed from Japan. If I was confident that high-quality caps gave a W520-like experience, I'd gladly pay $100 for 10 o…

My recent experience switching from Windows to Linux (NixOS) suggests otherwise. I use a ThinkPad P1 Gen 3. My dGPU actually died due to overheating caused by Windows failing to sleep properly. On Windows, the fans were always noisy and temperatures stayed above 60°C. Since switching to Linux, the fans are very quiet and temperatures sit between 40–50°C. What surprised me most is that sleep mode works much better on Linux than on Windows, where the frequent failures eventually killed my GPU.

1. 120Hz screen with a HIDPI resolution. 60Hz feels very stuttery after using 120Hz on my phone/tablet/desktop. 2. S3 suspend or at least a good S0ix implementation. 3. Good support for replacing UEFI Secure Boot keys. 4. No numpad so that the keyboard is centered. 5. Absolutely no coil whine. My Dell XPS 9560 had this since day 1, while my work MacBook Pro and Lenovo P1 developed it over time. 6. Biggest battery possible. I don't care about charging time or weight. 7. Good Linux support (including firmware updates via LVFS).

Let's include some players from the EU: Tuxedo ( https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note... ) - brand new, released a month ago KDE Slimbook ( https://kde.slimbook.es ) - with an AMD processor For home computing I myself am running a 9343 XPS 13 from 2015, not the Dev edition, just because it was not available at the time I was ordering... I have been using Thinkpads (L4xx, T4xx, X1 Carbon, P1) for work, and despite what everyone says, I'm not too happy with them. The trackpad is low quality, the keyboards have been getting worse and worse - I much prefer my trusty XPS. The latest P1 also weighs a ton and the battery life is a joke. Also, suspend/resume is still sometimes a hit-and-miss (unbelievable in 2021?). But YMMV.

I wrote about my experience with a Thinkpad here[1]. It was the P1, a great laptop on paper. [1]: https://lovesegfault.com/post/2019-01-24-thinkpad-nightmare/