Use to be 100% linux person. I've gone through many thinkpads. M1 Air is so far beyond them it's not even close.
Battery life is (not exaggerating) 5x or more in my experience.
It's honest to god, much faster.
Completely silent and cool. (one of my thinkpads almost burned me it got so hot, and the fans get so loud)
I've never had a single crash, random restart, failure to sleep, failure to charge, driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads.
My M2 MBA routinely goes past 10-16 hours of life time with simple coding stuff (phpstorm and PHP in Docker), and it stays comfortably cold all time. Most Windows laptops struggle to get more than 3-4 hours and will fry off your balls if used as actual laptops.
The poster was apparently a 100% Linux person previously, though. I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke. For example on Reddit I see somebody complain that they only get 5 hours with my laptop model (zenbook flip 13)
To be fair, Windows has better battery optimisations for new laptops. Many hardware supported sleep modes are still missing from Linux kernel, for example, when I checked last time.
Huge differences come probably from the lack of user skills, less about the OS. Or just broken drivers.
> I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke
Nah, it's common across all x86 devices. Even Apple's old lineup... which is why they went for M in the first place, Intel couldn't be arsed to deliver something power efficient.
I guess I find this troubling because it would seem to indicate that I spend multiple hours a day typing at a dead laptop, hallucinating that it is still working.
Most recent Thinkpad was X1 Carbon with Kubuntu, running intellij / browsers / docker would last around 3 hours or so. M1 Air is 15+.
I also have a Anker 737 battery, with it I can double the macbook's battery if fully charged. The Thinkpad would only charge partially, so wouldn't even double.
I typically get a day of work out of my Zenbook flip 13; I haven’t really measured the battery performance rigorously because it is easily long enough that I don’t think about it (the battery indicator will say 14 hours, but those are of course pretty flaky). I’m a vim/Firefox with ads blocked guy though so I guess I must not be making it work very hard.
Incompatibility is a two-sided issue, there are enough laptops out there that work perfectly fine in Linux. But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others.
People always complain about Lenovo in these threads, I think because they are held up as the “good non-Apple laptop” brand for whatever reason. I suspect this reputation makes people assume they can just grab any random model and it will work perfectly. That’s just a roll of the dice, maybe weighted in favor of working, but still random.
That only matters in a technical sense -- as a consumer, I want a flawless out-of-the-box experience. I don't care if X isn't working because of Y or Z; I only care that it isn't working.
Maybe some HW companies don't have the budget to write drivers for the 3% userbase that is PC Linux users, especially since most commodity HW is in a constant race to the bottom in terms of pricing so profits are slim as it is.
So better check for the HW you're buying it, if it's compatible with the SW you intend to use, especially now that there's almost a dozen laptop brands selling Linux-ready laptops. Like you don't buy an X-BOX hoping it will run your Nintendo games collection and the blame Mycroft when you realize it doesn't work, do you?
And calling those driver devs "lazy" is a huge slap in the face, especially if you knew how overworked and underpaid people in that industry tend to be, as the profits are also very small. Not everyone is rolling in cash like Nvidia, AMD and Intel.
> The ThinkPads are pretty good laptops, especially if you put Linux on them
I used ThinkPads for 7 years until getting new M2 Pro, mostly with Linux.
Touchpads on Thinkpads are not getting even close to Macbooks. You need external mouse.
Also the the basic screen quality on current Macbook Pros is beyond their top quality products. Try to look for 1000 nits screen? Not even gaming laptops have quality ones.
And battery life...
And performance...
When you have enough performance on your machine, the physical touch, screen and overall stability goes beyond everything else.
Thinkpads have better durability on keyboard tho.
I also used to have one of those OLED Thinkpads and that was the biggiest mess I ever hard. They even cancelled OLED screens on all products for 4 years after that.
The screen just broke every one month.
I have tried to use nipple many times but maybe I was unfortunate with it.
I was not able to get good enough drivers on Linux for it, and as a result it was never accurate, but very clunky instead.
Actually this is my favourite feature of my work thinkpad. Especially during winter. Really. Besides tons of disadvantages of the platform for the price.
Agreed. I got a gen10 thinkpad (with Linux). The power supply makes a crackling noise. After 6 months the fan starting making grinding. The screen flickers when the CPU is loaded, and once a week the whole thing just locks up. Worst laptop I've owned.
I have an M1 Pro 14 and a work-issued P14s, which is awful. Creaky plastic, the worst trackpad I've ever used, has a terrible display, spongey keys and runs unfathomably hot. All. The. Time. Every time I see someone recommending Lenovo, I cringe. It is night and day when compared to the MacBook Pro.
Weirdly I have both of these as well and feel total opposite. Give me the Thinkpad keyboard any day of the week. The mac keyboard feels down right anemic.
I wish mac would stop making the track pad so damn big though, the amount of palm activations I have on that thing drive me bonkers.
I'm intrigued by this. I'm typing this one-handed on the MacBook with my other hand resting on the trackpad without interference of any kind. The hinged trackpad on the P14s takes between 5-10 minutes to be useable from a cold start (these happen often due to the combination of an anaemic battery and power-hungry Intel processor); it's as though it needs to warm up. It is a pile of overpriced junk not worth the value of the parts it's made with. I've had other ThinkPads and generally disliked them - even the X series, but that boiled down to personal taste - not a fan of the aesthetic - and a crap trackpad. This P14s, though, is unmitigated shite.
My experience of the P14s says that either I have a dud (other colleagues complain vociferously about them, too), your MacBook is defective, or both. None of which are ideal!
I've found Thinkpads to be trash for the past few years. Could be bad batches, but I sent back my X390 three times for warranty repairs and its replacement T14gen3 once so far.
The ThinkPads are pretty good laptops, especially if you put Linux on them.