joining a cult

Hello again, been it’s been a few months. School is a bit hectic lately, so I don’t really have time to goof off and write blogpost these past months. So to take a break from working on my bachelor’s thesis, I thought I about goofing off and writing a blogpost.

Today, I would like to write about my new (to me) Thinkpad T440P. If you don’t know thinkpads you’ve probably just closed a google tab with a question like: “WHY HAVE YOU BOUGHT A 12 YEAR OLD LAPTOP?” in some form. And you’re right, it is kinda dumb, but let me explain myself. I bought it accidentally :P.

Well not entirely by accident. I’ve been into thinkpads since around the time I discovered linux. Then active Luke Smith was preaching about the holy grail of laptops, the mighty thinkpad. Since I was a kid, I couldn’t exactly go out and buy one, much less ask my parents to buy me one (We already have a working computer at home&@đ~ blah blah…). So since then, I’ve kept my eye on them, joined r/thinkpad and kept looking. One birthday I got a chance to actually pick out a latop that would be my own to enjoy. I immediately went to look at used thinkpads and picked out a X270 that would be within budget. But since my parents are irationally afraid of buying used things, my budget was increased and I chose a Thinkbook 14 G2 ITL instead. This was a choice I regret just a bit, but for the most part I love the damn thing, it is reliable, sleek, portable and kinda upgradable, the keyboard being passable. The only possible thing holding it back is the i3-1115G4, which is sometimes caught offguard, whilst it handles jetbrains IDEs fine(except Android Studio ofc).But even after being mostly happy with it for the best part of 4 years, there was still an itch, one that could only be scratched by a laptop with a red LED on the lid.

But let’s get back to the “accident”. Since I already have a “modern” laptop, I looked at the last models of holy grail era: the chunky but tiny X230, the Mighty T430 with it’s seemigly limited posibillities and its bigger brother the T530. Before you bring up the xx20 series, I deem them to old for what I would consider usable, even on linux, though I haven’t used them personally. I almost won a X230 in auction for 30€ and was on the verge of buying several T430-s and a T530 but I didn’t really need them or had the money to just throw at a second computer. But when I got a part-time job over summer, I thought fuck it, let’s think about buying a thinkpad again.

And then it happened one random Wednesday I came back from work, looked at an auction site at the T440P I’ve added a week ago to my watched items and saw it was ending in about 20 minutes. So I waited, the price was around $30 so I bid on it. There was a second guy bidding on it, so I just set a limit I wouldn’t mind losing and bid away. At the last bid I thought the price was fair and I wouldn’t bid anymore, but other guy just stopped so before I knew what had happened, I won myself a thinkpad computer.

Since it was sold to me without a charger, a second purchase was needed. I also got kinda lucky, since I bought a 90W charger, but the guy sent me a 135W one. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive and when it did, of course the first thing was to install linux on it. To try something more exciting than tumbleweed I install everywhere, I chose a distro I only briefly tinkered with: void linux. So far, I like it, especially the blazing fast boot from hibernation.

The main thing that bothered me and was as terrible as foretold, was the trackpad, or clunkpad as some call it. It sounds like a washboard when clicked down and mine is probably even worn down, which I don’t mind, if it wasn’t constantly zooming in when scrolling in a browser. It also keeps me from using the trackpoint, since using the “buttons” is just a horrible experience. Around the trackpoint is the keyboard, the thing thinkpads are revered and loved for. And it didn’t disappoint, this is definitely the best laptop keyboard I’ve had the pleasure to type on. Of course my Akko keyboard is still leagues above it but, it isn’t as usable on a lap or in a bed. Shame it doesn’t have a backlight, altougtn supposedly the keyboards around this generation have better texture or something. Still, I wish the legends were readable in the dark. Above the the magnficent keyboard is a horribly outdated 1600x900 screen with awful viewing angles. Atleast it isn’t the 1366x768. One thing I do have to say is that I prefer the resolution/scale since I set my full hd thinkbook screen to 125% and the 900p screen at 14" seems to match that very closely to my eyes.

The performance isn’t as bad as I expected. I got the i5-4210M, which mainly chugs when trying to play youtube at 2x speed. The thing that limits me the most is probably the measly 8GB of ram, which is fine for one window, but not for three desktops that contain 2 firefox tabs with 40+ tabs, spotify and a text editor, altougth it seems to do it just fine now, hovering around 5.2GB used. The battery life is better than I expected, lasting around 1-2.5hrs on a single charge with the original(?) battery.

• The T440P(bottom) compared to the Thinkbook 14 G2

It is also lighter than I expected and I also seem to not mind the chonky-ness as much as I thought I would. The DVD drive is fun to fidget with and I think it might even come in handy someday. I already ordered a new trackpad from a L460, so I hope it will be an upgrade that will take this thiccboi to even better usabillity levels. I will also upgrade the ram and hope to upgrade it to an i7-4702mq + get a better screen.

All in all I very much enjoy using this machine and hope it will be as exciting to use in the future.

Since I last posted on here, the visitor count passed 10000 (and its even on 12k now)! That’s so cool, although I wish more people would sign my guestbook :/ Well as long as atleast one person’s day got somewhat better by visiting this page thats enough for me. I want to post some more photos and will probably create a gallery of sorts so that I don’t have to post a cohesive post everytime and can just dump some cool photos. That is if I figure out how to do that in hugo lol. Also I changed some design stuff and added a recent posts section on the main page, hope it looks ok.