Typing this on my lovely Lenovo X220.
I bought this on Ebay for £110, and immediately installed CentOS (Linux, very much like Red Hat Enterprise Linux), and it’s a dream. Has 4GB RAM and an SSD, and feels pretty zippy.
Good points include:
- The keyboard. The x220 was the last model of the x2** series with the old-style keyboard, before they changed to the chiclet. Also has the keys in the right pace, and given that I do use the pipe and backtick ( that’s | and `) for sysadmin work this really is a big deal.
- The larger battery. This was *not* what I wanted at first, as I wanted light, but now I’m used to it, the battery life is lovely, as is the fact the battery gives me something to hold n to.
- The design. Bizarrely, I *like* the functional Thinkpad design. Matt black, matt screen.All very Hotrod Desiato know, but actually this suits me fine.
- The strength. This thing feels like it can take what I throw at it. I can hold it by the screen edge without fear. It has the fluid draining points so a spillage on the keyboard shouldn’t be fatal. The right hinge feels a little loose, but this is a second-hand (and cheap!) machine so I can’t expect perfection.
- The hardware wifi switch to easily turn that off and on. Small, but a nice little thing I remember from my previous Thinkpad.
- Oh, the nipple. Really, this is a killer aspect for me. I’ve turned off the touchpad as it’s useless.
- Proper mouse buttons, not some fake areas of the trackpad I need to guess to use.
- A real CPU (an -M model, not a -U one).
- I can turn the screen brightness down to save power. Hardly exciting really, only this does extend to the backlight being completely off. Now *that’s* power saving. Also makes the screen unreadable save for in really bright light.
…and the down sides?
- I was unconvinced by the screen resolution at first, but choosing decent zoom and font sizes has made it okay. Might have been nicer to have had FHD, but this wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.
- Not sure that the 3G function works as I’ve not seen it mentioned in Linux. Might have been fine under Windows, but that boat sailed. Not really a biggie.
- The screen doesn’t lock shut. Really nickpicking here as it does close securely enough, but it would have been nice.
- The age. Newer machines have better power/performance figures.