Written by Serban Spirescu
Published on: 2022-07-08
I am a proud member of the ThinkPad Cult
And I fking love it! I’ve always thought of the ThinkPad as being reliable machines, onto which I can install whatever the hell I want (like Linux! xoxo) with amazing keyboards and RED nipples, but it never occurred to me to have such a cult-like following (in a good way) with people being so passionate and proud of their devices. From my perspective, this is Apple level of followers and I find it absolutely delicious. I find it very relaxing to browse the thinkpad subreddit or others’ blogs about it.
I do own a M1 Macbook Air, but after a year, year and a half, I have moved completely to Linux and I wanted a device that shares the same portabilty and also comes with the perk of installing my distro of choice, Linux Mint. This Thinkpad T14 Gen 1 on AMD CPU and 16GB of ram soldered, was a perfect gift for myself for Christmas. Bought it refurbished for an acceptable price, above average battery and all in all in Mint (pun intended) condition. The keyboard is amazing, all keys are working, the nipple is janky and jumps around like crazy, but I’ve read this is a Linux thing, on Windows is way smoother. I’ve only reduced the sensitivity of the trackpoint from the command line. The trackpad is horrible, but we all know that and I don’t see a reason to upgrade to a glass one, it does it’s job. The case has no visible scratches. It came with a skin attached around the keyboard and on the top cover, but I’ve removed the skin around the keyboard, it looks way better now and is more comfortable as the skin had a very rough texture. I did grab the short end of the stick with the lower quality BOE display, but this also does it’s job, I won’t complain. Also, the keyboard is not illuminated, but is not a selling point for me.
As for the performance, I was right, is at least as powerful as a M1 Macbook Air. I did play some of my favorite games like Lord of the Rings Online and Classic WoW, which both work beautifully. Can’t wait to check out Final Fantasy XIV , which I’m also sure it will work. I did upgrade the RAM to 32 GB where I added it to the remaining available RAM slot and it made a difference for sure especially in gaming, since the RAM is commonly used by both the system and GPU, with it being dual channel now. Can’t complain for my gaming sesh. Besides gaming, I am not really a power user. I just want to do some websurfing, checking email and some coding, like building this website, which I’m sure it’s going to be extra fun! I also want to be able to access my NAS at home via a VPN wherever I go and backup my photos from phone and also view them on a larger screen, sync my address book, calendar and cloud storage from Mailbox.org
Don’t get me wrong, I could do all these things on my Macbook as well, but I need my Linux, where is my Linux????