X220

I have one that was built in 2012. I added an SSD and run Ubuntu on it. You can get cheap and poor quality batteries off eBay. It was the first time I was exposed to the special Thinkpad black rubbery coating. Some people hate that color and coating. I like the feel of it a lot.

Some people love the keyboard. I do like the feel and travel of it, but the keys are a bit noisy.

It’s also quite a small form factor - smaller than 13” even, which makes it look quite compact against a modern 14”. The form factor is great for writing on the train, but the screen and touch pad are a bit cramped for other work.

The power consumption is high compared to the other machines I have. Just browsing and writing will pull 15W! In comparison my T14 G1 pulls 3.5W for such tasks.

It’s reputation as a tank is well deserved.

I once walked through a downpour and water got into my backpack and then into the beloved X220. I didn’t notice until later in the day.

I turned it on and the whole display was flickering and there was a giant diagonal splotch on the LCD. I was devastated. I turned it off (it had been sleeping in my back back) took out the battery and put it my desk.

I waited 24 hours before plugging it in without the battery. The display had stopped flickering and the giant diagonal splotch was now a smaller splotch covering less than a quarter of the display.

The next day the splotch was even smaller. By the end of the week, it was as good as it had been when I first got it many years ago.

T14 G1

They got the feel of it right. It’s slim, substantial (i.e. heavy for its size) and sturdy. Nothing wobbles. All the parts fit together precisely. And of course, it has that matte black semi-rubberized grip that I personally like.

I like the keyboard, perhaps even more than the X220’s one because it is quiet and feels good to type on. I even

(Here we take a swipe at whatever abomination Apple puts on their machines: somehow simultaneously noisy, spongy, and feel like the world’s shallowest popits)

I have the lowest end i5 (Intel) version and it works just fine browsing, writing and compiling code. It’s also very power thrifty, barely breaking 5W and most of the time sitting at 3.5W.

I have the 45% NTSC, 300 nit touchscreen. It’s what I could find. I don’t really need the touchscreen and I’m not too fussy about color. The 300 nits is bright enough.

This is my current favorite and I think I’ll be able to use it until it completely falls apart. Fedora 42 runs excellently on it with a few annoyances.

Battery life

Battery life with a three year old battery which is at 90% design capacity (50.45 Wh design, 45.95 Wh currently) is phenomenal. For my typical task of writing things using a terminal based editor, I see about 3.5W or 10% battery charge per hour of working, which translates to about 7-8hrs of working time since I usually charge the battery to 80%.

I was a little worried by notes from people online saying that the Intel motherboards were terrible at power consumption and gave very poor battery life, but I see nothing concerning here.

E14 G4

(Unfairly compared to the T14 G1)

The keyboard of the E14 G4 is similar to that of the T14 G1. The sizes are similar. The similarity ends there.

The E14 G4 feels more plasticky and flimsy. The fact that mine has a gray plastic casing as opposed to the traditional black rubberized shell doesn’t help.

The one I have has the 250 nit touchscreen and it is difficult to use outdoors. The speakers on the E14 aim downwards for some reason and are too soft. I don’t think they pass even for business use. Perhaps the assumption is that everyone is using a headset.

All in all, I prefer the T14 G1 over the E14 G4 by far.

Using the track point

There is a joke that no one uses the trackpoint and to be honest it took me over a decade to actually try using it. Once I got in some practice, however, I’d say it is superior to the touch pad. Thinkpad’s placement of the buttons right below the space bar is especially ergonomic.

I can mover the cursor faster and with much less finger movement, compared to the touchpad. Left clicks are conveneient. Scrolling, which involves holding the middle button down while pushing on the trackpoint, is particularly more comfortable than swiping with two fingers.

Only the right click is a little awkward (I have to bend my thumb to get to the button) but the fact that middle click opens links in a new tab in Firefox means I have to use the right click far less often.

PgUp PgDn keys

I was first exposed to the five navigation key cluster on the X220 and I hated it because I’d fat-finger the PgUp/Dn keys when aiming for the cursor keys and would lose my place in the document.