[GTALUG] Thinkpad choices today?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Scott Sullivan <scott at ss.org>

| Looks like most of the current generation is a wash with that horrid 
| clickpad. Shame too since the x240 was looking rather like what I 
| wanted.

Do actually try the clickpad.  I've got one on my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
and it isn't clearly terrible.  For your use, it would depend on
whether you could turn off the touchpad functions while keeping the
button functionality (I don't know whether you can).

There's a fair bit of Synaptic touchpad hacking going on.  I have been
meaning to read up on it since there's a lot of room for improvement.
This might be a place to start:
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics>

| The x140e, still has the mouse buttons I want. But I'm tired of 1366x768.

Agreed.  I really like my 3200x1800 resolution in 1 13.3" screen.
That's overkill for cramming text on the screen, but the text is nicer
for that.  1920x1080 is probably enough from the text-cramming
standpoint.

For working, I like a physically bigger notebook.  For carrying, I
like a smaller one.  1366x768 seems nice on a 10", for example.  Only
you can make that trade-off.

| The helix gen 2, although not on the Canadian market yet, does show a 
| return to the trackpad and buttons. Great feature set, but the Core M 
| processor leaves more to be desired in raw performance.

It depends on what you do.  I always feel better knowing I have a lot
of power, but I don't think that I've actually needed much.  Old Atoms
were noticeably weak, but usable.  The Brazos chips like you
currently have are actually OK, not great -- they fixed the horrible
video performance of the Intel chips.  But all current Intel chips
based on Haswell seem good enough, even the Celerons.

Haswell beats earlier processors due to power management and
efficiency.  It has taken a great discount to coerce me to buy older
chips (my T530 has an earlier chip).

Core M is *probably* better still.  I don't yet know enough.  I really
like battery life and I think that it wins there without giving up
performance.

Datapoint: I can leave my Haswell-based Yoga 2 Pro sleeping for a week
without totally draining the battery (probably longer).  My
Ivy-bridge-based T530 lasts about a day.  That really changes how I
think about and use these machines.

One thought is a cheap throw-away notebook as a placeholder until
something good comes along.

The Atom Bay Trail based notebooks might be OK.  But that collection
of notebooks is rather odd.  Some are minimal and will only run
Windows well (firmware only supports 32-bit UEFI and no main stream
Linux distro supports UEFI32).  I find this deal intriguing:
<http://forums.redflagdeals.com/microsoft-store-asus-x205-11-bay-trail-12-hr-battery-laptop-179-a-1594669/>
The battery life is great.  I've not tried Fedlet (a Fedora port to
the Asus Transformer T100 which is also 32-bit UEFI) but it might
work.

In the US, the Acer Aspire E11 is like the Asus x205 but better: 1G
ethernet, USB 3, $200.  Not available in Canada.

This generation of dirt-cheap Windows notebooks use eMMC SSDs: small,
slow, and soldered in.  The M.2 SSDs used in the Acer C720 Chromebook
we have is much better: faster and replaceable (but smaller still).
And the C720 has a Haswell-based Celeron.  I discovered yesterday that
it can even drive my UHD TV set (3840 x 2160 @ 30Hz).

| It's almost enough to consider a Surface Pro 3 paired with a compact 
| thinkpad usb or Bluetooth track-point keyboard.

There are great tablets.  For example, my aging Nexus 10 has an awesome
screen (10" 2560x1200).  I just haven't found something that adds a
keyboard as well as the conventional laptop clamshell.  The Surface's
Kickstand seems quite inferior.

The Surface Pro 3 looks good for what it does (Windows tablet +
secondary keyboard).  It's not what I want and its tabletty strengths
are lost when running Linux.

The Yoga 2 Pro seems pretty good to me.  Better than the Surface 3.
Sometimes there are really good deals on the Yoga 2 Pro since it is
being replaced by the Yoga 3 Pro (Core M).

There are a lot of other choices that seem better than the Surface 3
Pro.

| It's a tough time. Thanks again for you feed back.

Good luck and have fun!