Ordered a New Laptop

[Tall Timbers]

My current laptop is dying. It's a Lenovo Legion Y520 and was good while it lasted. I've noticed over the last few years that the notebooks I'm paying around $1000 and less for seem to experience some point of failure within 2 to 4 years. There was a period of time maybe around 15 years ago that I could purchase very inexpensive laptops for the kids and those things would seemingly last forever. Only the forward march of ever more capable technology would eventually require they be replaced.

Normally I buy a new laptop that meets my requirements before I need to replace the old one. I get it at a good sale price and am happy. This time around I didn't have the luxury of time because our old desktops at home are dropping like flies (they've all had very long lives now) so I don't have the backup systems I like to have. I could not find what I consider to be a reasonably priced Laptop that had everything I wanted... specifically I need at a minimum of 2 terabytes storage and more would be highly desireable and there was just nothing out there at all in the price range I search in and even at higher prices there wasn't much with that amount of storage.

So, uncharacteristically for me, I just dropped a big chunk of change on what I hope is a laptop that will last beyond when I start hankering to replace it. It'll be about a week before it arrives. Here's some of the specs:

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 3

Intel Core i9-10885H (8C / 16T, 2.4 / 5.3GHz, 16MB)
Memory: 64 GB DDR4 3200 RAM Storage: 2 X 2 TB SSD PCIe, NVMe
Display: 15.6" OLED Touch Screen backlight 3840 x 2160 / Ultra HD 4K Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti / Intel UHD Graphics

• 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (1 always on)
• 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with Intel Thunderbolt 3 (Power Delivery, DisplayPort, Data transfer)
• DisplayPort*
• 4-in-1 SD card reader
• Headphone / mic combo
• HDMI 2.0
• Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 802.11AX (2 x 2)
• Bluetooth® 5.1

 

[Andy C]

Sorry, all the tech information is like Chinese to me....

I have not used a laptop since I retired from working 10 years ago. I now only use an IPAD.

 

[Tall Timbers]

I use Dell as it is an American company. I think Lenovo is a Chinese company. I'm not that trusting with the ChiComs.

Lenovo was a unit of IBM sold to the Chinese. I purchased too many Dells for the Air Force... hundreds of desktops... I always felt like the govmint was paying more than the desktops were worth. There was always a piece of old technology in them that I figured Dell was pawning off on those in the govmint who tell us what we can buy... I've got a positive history with HP laptops... but all of the innards come from the same places no matter what name is slapped on them. This one came in at $3.5K which is too expensive but I was between a rock and a hard place. When I built it at the Lenovo site it came in around 6K. Then later they were discounting it to a little over 4K. I bought it on Amazon., They're probably emptying the shelves to bring in the next generation.

The specs on the one you shared in the post looked pretty good. I did want SSD all the way this time. I don't need 64 GB of memory but the upcharge wasn't that much so I had to . I also for the first time ever bought a 4 year free fix or replace plan just in case this one doesn't last as long as it should.

Quite a few years ago we had a few desktops fail at the house one after the other. I used to purchase one each year whether we needed it or not. Since we used six desktops... the oldest was never older than 6 years. It was probably power fluctuations that led to the damage even though all that stuff at the house is theoretically well protected... Recently we've got some very old desktops that are dying and we're pretty much leaving the desktop market behind us and going all in on laptops. I'm leading the people, businesses, and families I provide support to in the same direction because where there used to be more bang for the buck in desktops, that's switched to laptops...

 

[Andy C]

Lenovo was a unit of IBM sold to the Chinese. I purchased too many Dells for the Air Force... hundreds of desktops... I always felt like the govmint was paying more than the desktops were worth. There was always a piece of old technology in them that I figured Dell was pawning off on those in the govmint who tell us what we can buy... I've got a positive history with HP laptops... but all of the innards come from the same places no matter what name is slapped on them. This one came in at $3.5K which is too expensive but I was between a rock and a hard place. When I built it at the Lenovo site it came in around 6K. Then later they were discounting it to a little over 4K. I bought it on Amazon., They're probably emptying the shelves to bring in the next generation.

The specs on the one you shared in the post looked pretty good. I did want SSD all the way this time. I don't need 64 GB of memory but the upcharge wasn't that much so I had to . I also for the first time ever bought a 4 year free fix or replace plan just in case this one doesn't last as long as it should.

Quite a few years ago we had a few desktops fail at the house one after the other. I used to purchase one each year whether we needed it or not. Since we used six desktops... the oldest was never older than 6 years. It was probably power fluctuations that led to the damage even though all that stuff at the house is theoretically well protected... Recently we've got some very old desktops that are dying and we're pretty much leaving the desktop market behind us and going all in on laptops. I'm leading the people, businesses, and families I provide support to in the same direction because where there used to be more bang for the buck in desktops, that's switched to laptops...

Im curious why being retired you need such a high tech computer?

If I need more capabilities than my IPAD can meet, then I ignore or forget whatever it was I wanted done. Simple life. Im on my 3rd IPAD since 2010.

 

[Chris]

Oh no, we keep selling our companies to the Chinese!

Well, this is my first Dell I am using. I've had it for 8 years now and it is acting up at times, but that might be some of the software on my computer. I had my light on the front of the desktop staying continuously lighted because it was freezing up. I took some programs off like iTunes, iCloud, and about 5 others and the light is now blinking and not freezing up. So, maybe there were too many things running at one time in the background. I don't know.

In the evenings I'm on the computer usually from 5-6pm until early morning hours. I've used Packard Bell, Compac, and HP. I always bought them in the local stores and never got more than a year or year and a half out of them before something happened and I needed a new one.

The Dell has lasted 8 years now. I've been absolutely blown away by that. I don't know if I had bad computers or what, but I've always used them a lot for web design and the Internet. I spent more on this desktop and got a higher end machine than the ones i mentioned above. Maybe they were built better than the middle of the road models. I don't know.

I do have a laptop from work but it has a small screen and I have the laptop and the desktop connected to one monitor as I don't have room for two monitors on my desk. I use Dell Display Manager to toggle in between the desktop and laptop. So, I am using the laptop on the 27 inch monitor. So that takes care of the small screen size problem. I think 17 inch is about as high as I saw on the Dell site for laptops. Even if I got a laptop, I'd want to connect it to the desktop screen.

I'm still on a HDD and I'm just itching to go to NVMe SSD. I did buy this desktop originally with 8GB of RAM, but I upgraded after a year or two to 16GB.

I've got about 1TB on the HDD but only use only about 140GB. The drive shows 917GB drive with 788GB free. So, I don't think I use a lot. The biggest space outside of the Windows 10 is my website stuff including images for the RF site.

I think I might could get by with a 500GB SSD drive.

The machine I have now only has one drive. I've noticed that they seem to make computers like servers now with the backup drive. Two SSD would probably be nicer than a SSD and a HDD.

So many options to choose from, not enough money!!! LOL

 

[Tall Timbers]

Im curious why being retired you need such a high tech computer?

If I need more capabilities than my IPAD can meet, then I ignore or forget whatever it was I wanted done. Simple life. Im on my 3rd IPAD since 2010.

Like a fighter pilot might feel the need for speed, I need a fast and powerful laptop. I need the storage because I've accumulated that much in the way of personal data and graphics files. Though I'm mostly retired, I do a lot of pro bono work in the tech arena. I'm a tech guy, a computer scientist by acquired skills over the many years and I do a good bit in the community with those skills. I now spend hours in front of the laptop on most days. Just about every aspect of my life has time and space on the computers I use. One thing that is decreasing is I used to need a powerful GPU... that's just not the case anymore and the current GPUs built into the last couple of generations of intel i-series CPUs would be enough for me. I'll always have a backup up computer as well, so never just one, and my data is redundantly replicated. Since this laptop is on its very last leg, I'll buy a new one later in the year as a backup... but one much less expensive than the one I just purchased for too much.

I've been retired from a paying job since the age of 46, but I'm far from dead.

 

[Tall Timbers]

The Dell has lasted 8 years now. I've been absolutely blown away by that. I don't know if I had bad computers or what, but I've always used them a lot for web design and the Internet. I spent more on this desktop and got a higher end machine than the ones i mentioned above. Maybe they were built better than the middle of the road models. I don't know.

8 years is a very respectable lifetime. I've had desktops I've built go for over a dozen years, but I manage to coax the owners to upgrade on account of I'm sure those boxes won't last forever... It sounds like you had some bad luck with the ones previous. I have a pretty good history and I blame the ones with short life spans on power issues to the home. We have a lot of power issues...

 

[Tall Timbers]

I think I might could get by with a 500GB SSD drive.

The machine I have now only has one drive. I've noticed that they seem to make computers like servers now with the backup drive. Two SSD would probably be nicer than a SSD and a HDD.

I usually tell folks they should aim for getting at least twice the storage they think they need. In your case I think 500 GB sounds about right. That's what I usually recommend for most people unless there's a good deal on a computer with more storage. I'm somewhere just under 5 TB of data I've created and it would take too much of my life to see what I could part with. So with a laptop with 4 TB, like I'm getting, I'll have to choose what to leave off it. That won't be hard. I'll likely plan to only populate it with about 2 TB of programs and data files so I've got plenty of room to grow.

 

[Andy C]

Like a fighter pilot might feel the need for speed, I need a fast and powerful laptop. I need the storage because I've accumulated that much in the way of personal data and graphics files. Though I'm mostly retired, I do a lot of pro bono work in the tech arena. I'm a tech guy, a computer scientist by acquired skills over the many years and I do a good bit in the community with those skills. I now spend hours in front of the laptop on most days. Just about every aspect of my life has time and space on the computers I use. One thing that is decreasing is I used to need a powerful GPU... that's just not the case anymore and the current GPUs built into the last couple of generations of intel i-series CPUs would be enough for me. I'll always have a backup up computer as well, so never just one, and my data is redundantly replicated. Since this laptop is on its very last leg, I'll buy a new one later in the year as a backup... but one much less expensive than the one I just purchased for too much.

I've been retired from a paying job since the age of 46, but I'm far from dead.

Thats great you can help others like me who are barely literate in computers. My wife bought me my current IPAD, and it has a facial recognition system on it for logging on. It took me about ten minutes to set that up. The next day, I thought my IPAD had a security flaw because every time I picked it up for use, it unlocked the screen. I had forgotten about the facial recognition system, and I wont further embarrass myself by saying how many times I let it time out, and checked the faulty system again and again until the light bulb turned on in my brain.

 

[3 Nails 4 Given]

Buy a MacBook and they’ll quit crashing like Windows programs them to. I’ve bought my last Windows operated laptop.

My daughter bought the latest Windows based laptop a little over a year ago, nothing but problems.

Both my last Windows laptops have crashed. My son forked out the $$ for a nice MacBook. When my daughter comes home, she uses my son’s laptop. My wife uses it too, it’s lightning fast, doesn’t have tons of bugs like our Windows laptops.

The only trouble free computers we have are my son’s MacBook and my wife’s IPad. My next laptop will be a MacBook.

Our church runs all it’s systems on MacBooks.

 

[Amethyst]

I love my MacBook Pro laptop. I needed Apple because I believe it operates better with all the Adobe photo programs I need.
I bought it in 2015. Only last year upgraded operating system.

 

[JSTyler]

Intel Core i9-10885H (8C / 16T, 2.4 / 5.3GHz, 16MB)
Memory: 64 GB DDR4 3200 RAM Storage: 2 X 2 TB SSD PCIe, NVMe
Display: 15.6" OLED Touch Screen backlight 3840 x 2160 / Ultra HD 4K Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti / Intel UHD Graphics

And you can hear the gasps of covetousness cry out from all around the gaming world.

That's a beast of a machine. I run high end music creation software, game environment/development software and fairly high end graphics/video creation software and my new machine (aside from the graphics card) only has about 1/3-1/2 the specs of that monster. And the fun part is, I don't stress any aspect of what I have. In other words, there's no bottleneck in the pipes.

You can practically run a small country with the processing power you now have available to you. What will you call your small republic? Tallisburg? Timberstan? TallisTimberoppolis?

 

[Tall Timbers]

Buy a MacBook and they’ll quit crashing like Windows programs them to. I’ve bought my last Windows operated laptop.

No thanks. I'm well pleased with the Windows OS, and compared with Apple, the very vast universe of Windows based hardware and software options.

 

[Tall Timbers]

. And the fun part is, I don't stress any aspect of what I have. In other words, there's no bottleneck in the pipes.

That's awesome. Throughout the history of PC hardware development there have been lots of bottlenecks for the hapless user to contend with whether or not they were bottleneck aware.

Talltimistan does have a certain ring to it but wouldn't leave me room to include a date

The actual name will somehow identify it as mine so I can find it easily over the network from pheripheral devices and will include the month and year it goes into service.

 

[MePlus6]

And you can hear the gasps of covetousness cry out from all around the gaming world.

I don’t even game and I’m frothing at the mouth over this. If you need a babysitter for that that laptop, TT, sign me up!

 

[JSTyler]

I don’t even game and I’m frothing at the mouth over this. If you need a babysitter for that that laptop, TT, sign me up!

Oh boogers...you got dibs. I didn't even think of that. Smooth move.

 

[MePlus6]

Oh boogers...you got dibs. I didn't even think of that. Smooth move.

Brother, when @Tall Timbers lets me babysit that thing, I’m having you over so you can use it too!

 

[Tall Timbers]

You're both welcome to come by on or about 24 March and help with the burn in.

Hmmm, never had so many visitors before...must be my warm and welcoming personality that has so many folks dropping by...

 

[Jonathan]

My current laptop is dying. It's a Lenovo Legion Y520 and was good while it lasted. I've noticed over the last few years that the notebooks I'm paying around $1000 and less for seem to experience some point of failure within 2 to 4 years. There was a period of time maybe around 15 years ago that I could purchase very inexpensive laptops for the kids and those things would seemingly last forever. Only the forward march of ever more capable technology would eventually require they be replaced.

Normally I buy a new laptop that meets my requirements before I need to replace the old one. I get it at a good sale price and am happy. This time around I didn't have the luxury of time because our old desktops at home are dropping like flies (they've all had very long lives now) so I don't have the backup systems I like to have. I could not find what I consider to be a reasonably priced Laptop that had everything I wanted... specifically I need at a minimum of 2 terabytes storage and more would be highly desireable and there was just nothing out there at all in the price range I search in and even at higher prices there wasn't much with that amount of storage.

So, uncharacteristically for me, I just dropped a big chunk of change on what I hope is a laptop that will last beyond when I start hankering to replace it. It'll be about a week before it arrives. Here's some of the specs:

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 3

Intel Core i9-10885H (8C / 16T, 2.4 / 5.3GHz, 16MB)
Memory: 64 GB DDR4 3200 RAM Storage: 2 X 2 TB SSD PCIe, NVMe
Display: 15.6" OLED Touch Screen backlight 3840 x 2160 / Ultra HD 4K Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti / Intel UHD Graphics

• 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (1 always on)
• 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with Intel Thunderbolt 3 (Power Delivery, DisplayPort, Data transfer)
• DisplayPort*
• 4-in-1 SD card reader
• Headphone / mic combo
• HDMI 2.0
• Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 802.11AX (2 x 2)
• Bluetooth® 5.1

You like making other people jealous, don't you. Hehe. Seriously, looks like a good piece of kit. Good Ram, excellent CPU, very nice graphics card, and the Type-C USBs are always icing on the cake. Enjoy!

BTW, If I remember correctly, The thinkpads were originally IBM but Lenova bought them out. Do they still have the "red dot" pressure sensor in the middle of the keyboard that serves as a mouse? I always thought that was superior to a track pad.

 

[Tall Timbers]

You like making other people jealous, don't you. Hehe. Seriously, looks like a good piece of kit. Good Ram, excellent CPU, very nice graphics card, and the Type-C USBs are always icing on the cake. Enjoy!

BTW, If I remember correctly, The thinkpads were originally IBM but Lenova bought them out. Do they still have the "red dot" pressure sensor in the middle of the keyboard that serves as a mouse? I always thought that was superior to a track pad.

I usually post here when I get something new. I like to hear what others have gotten too. Yes, IBM sold the division to a Chinese company. The Thinkpad does still have that little red thingie in the keyboard. I'll play with it but I'm not good with trackpads... I always use a mouse.