[coreboot] latest greatest thinkpad with coreboot

Nico Huber nico.h at gmx.de
Thu Dec 1 19:46:07 CET 2016


On 01.12.2016 18:50, Klemens Nanni wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 01, 2016 at 05:04:36PM +0000, ron minnich wrote:
>> what's the latest best one? What's the battery life like (can't be worse
>> than this mac pro  that's always hot and now seems to have a life of 90
>> minutes, always). How much dram/ssd can I jam in it?
> X230 if you'd ask me: 16G RAM, 12M ROM. runs fine with reduced (830K) ME
> and has a powerful Ivy Bridge CPU. USB3.0, miniDisplayPort as well as
> docking station has been working just fine for me although handling
> suspend/resume as well as mounted external storage *can* be somewhat
> tricky (in some scenarios the X230 would instantly resume from suspend
> after having been docked once).
> 
> Battery life under linux has been somewhere around 8 hours for me,
> OpenBSD gets about 5-6 out of it but YMMV.
> 

The problem with the X series is that the UI degraded with every gene-
ration. Keyboard layout got worse with every generation. X220/X230:
only 1366x768 pixels, from X230 on: chiclet keyboard, X240: no track-
point buttons!!! The X250 was the first fully usable again, but sup-
posedly with BootGuard enabled :-/

If you can't live with the 1366x768 resolution (I couldn't), you can
look for a T430s with 1600x900 screen, optionally with a replacement
keyboard (the oldest that fits). Everything Klemens said about the X230
should also apply to the T430s. It's just 14" instead of 12".

> The X series never features more than one disk bay, but this again
> depends on your use case: I'm totally fine with an 120G SSD, other
> people prefer a RAID on their W/T model ThinkPads.

Any 2.5" (7mm height) SATA drive should fit.

Nico



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