Entries tagged as x1carbon
gentoo 3d ac100 addresssanitizer aiglx android asan beryl bufferoverflow c censorship clang compiz compizfusion composite cryptography developer english france freedomofspeech freesoftware gcc gebabbel gps gpsbabel idn iputils josm kde laptop lenovo libressl linux memorysafety merkaartor metacity mobiletrailexplorer nancy notebook openbsd openssl openstreetmap php ping politics rmll security smartbook ssl subnotebook thinkpad tls toshiba ubuntu useafterfree xgl xorg zensur ati bahn cedric debian display fma86t freifunk gatos hardware ibm ice modding modem olpc p30 p35 r300 radeon randr12 samsung steckdose strom t61 tv tvout webradio winmodem wlan benchmark bios cd dvd harddisk license mod optiarc performance sata ssd windows windowsrefund 1und1 4k apache apt artikel assembler augsburg augsburgerallgemeine backnang bash berlin bonn cacert camera canon cardreader ccc ccwn chemnitz chromium cinelerra clt come2linux compression console copyright core coredump cpu cpufreq crash creativecommons cve darmstadt deb delilinux demoscene desktop developingworld distribution dmidecode driver drm eltorito entropia essen esslingen exe fedora ffmpeg firefox frankreich freeculture freedesktop frequencies froscon froscon2007 gadgets gaia games gammu ghost glibc gnokii gnome gnupg google googleearth gpg gphoto gpn gpn5 graphics grsecurity grub gtk hacker hash hddtemp heartbleed homebrew howto hp http ico icons icoutils inkscape installparty iptables iso itu kgtk kubuntu lessig lit07 lm_sensors lpi lpic lspci lsusb ludwigsburg lug luga lugbk macos mandriva md5 memdisk memorystick messe metisse microsoft mobile motherboard movie mplayer mrmcd mrmcd101b multimedia network nokia nouveau nvidia omnibook opengl openpgp overheatd overheating packagemanagement passwörter pciids pcmagazin pcmcia pgp presse programming proxy ptp qt rar redhat reverseengineering ricoh rpm schokokeks sd sdricohcs segfault server sha1 shellshock siegburg signatures smart smartmontools sncf softwarefreedomday squid standards support symlink syslinux talk thesource theunarchiver time unar unicode usability usb usbids utf-8 vc-1 video videoediting vista vortrag vulnerability waiblingen web20 webhosting webinale webroot websecurity webserver wii wiibrew win32codecs wine wmv wos wos4 wrestool zeitung
Friday, October 3. 2014
New laptop Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 20A7
While I got along well with my Thinkpad T61 laptop, for quite some time I had the plan to get a new one soon. It wasn't an easy decision and I looked in detail at the models available in recent months. I finally decided to buy one of Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Carbon laptops in its 2014 edition. The X1 Carbon was introduced in 2012, however a completely new variant which is very different from the first one was released early 2014. To distinguish it from other models it is the 20A7 model.Judging from the first days of use I think I made the right decision. I hadn't seen the device before I bought it because it seems rarely shops keep this device in stock. I assume this is due to the relatively high price.
I was a bit worried because Lenovo made some unusual decisions for the keyboard, however having used it for a few days I don't feel that it has any severe downsides. The most unusual thing about it is that it doesn't have normal F1-F12 keys, instead it has what Lenovo calls an adaptive keyboard: A touch sensitive line which can display different kinds of keys. The idea is that different applications can have their own set of special keys there. However, just letting them display the normal F-keys works well and not having "real" keys there doesn't feel like a big disadvantage. Beside that Lenovo removed the Caps lock and placed Pos1/End there, which is a bit unusual but also nothing I worried about. I also hadn't seen any pictures of the German keyboard before I bought the device. The ^/°-key is not where it's used to be (small downside), but the </>/| key is where it belongs(big plus, many laptop vendors get that wrong).
Good things:
* Lightweight, Ultrabook, no unnecessary stuff like CD/DVD drive
* High resolution (2560x1440)
* Hardware is up-to-date (Haswell chipset)
Downsides:
* Due to ultrabook / integrated design easy changing battery, ram or HD
* No SD card reader
* Have some trouble getting used to the touchpad (however there are lots of possibilities to configure it, I assume by playing with it that'll get better)
It used to be the case that people wrote docs how to get all the hardware in a laptop running on Linux which I did my previous laptops. These days this usually boils down to "run a recent Linux distribution with the latest kernels and xorg packages and most things will be fine". However I thought having a central place where I collect relevant information would be nice so I created one again. As usual I'm running Gentoo Linux.
For people who plan to run Linux without a dual boot it may be worth mentioning that there seem to be troublesome errors in earlier versions of the BIOS and the SSD firmware. You may want to update them before removing Windows. On my device they were already up-to-date.