[GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Peter King via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

A wonderfully clear and evocative elegy!
All rational.

| To: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
| Cc: Peter King <peter.king at utoronto.ca>
| Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2023 13:11:24 -0400
| Subject: Re: [GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands
| 
| All points about brands/branding noted and appreciated.  I got the Lenovo
| Legion T5 because I wanted a desktop, and it seemed to me that the niche for
| high-quality and well-built desktops -- what used to be called "enterprise" or
| "business" models -- had largely collapsed, being supplanted by either
| high-end laptops that business users would tote around and if necessary plug
| into a docking station, or by cheap consumer-grade desktops that were shoddily
| built, under-powered, and meant to be thrown away in a few years (more
| economical than investing in long-lasting hardware that would be outmoded too
| quickly).  So what is someone who wants a good desktop unit to do?

I don't mean to push Lenovo.  I pick them to discuss because I'm slightly 
more familiar with them (mostly on paper).

As far as I can tell, there are still full-sized business towers.  Here's 
a page from Lenovo.

<https://www.lenovo.com/ca/lenovopro/en/desktops/subseries-results/?visibleDatas=1033%3ATower%2CTower%25C2%25A0&sortBy=bestSelling>

They aren't particularly inexpensive.  Some might be missing important 
features.  I favour AMD processors but they are under-represented.  None 
is offered with Linux.

Interestingly, they include your model (newer variants).

Lenovo has a separate category "Workstation".  It includes desktop 
ThinkStations and notebook ThinkPads.
<https://www.lenovo.com/ca/lenovopro/en/d/deals/workstations/?sortBy=priceUp&visibleDatas=1035%3AThinkStation>

Some of their servers (ThinkServer) look a lot like "desktops" (towers 
that go under desks):
<https://www.lenovo.com/ca/lenovopro/en/d/deals/servers/?tabkey=Server%20%26%20Storage%20Deals>
The one inexpensive model has a Celeron processor.

======================

Perhaps you are inferring too much about the quality of your Legion box 
from a few datapoints.

==============================

My desktop is a decade old (HP Envy).  The only things I changed inside 
the box in that time (mostly in the first year):

- replaced the GPU (to drive my high resolution displays)

- added RAM

- added an SSD

For my next desktop, I expect to live with the iGPU.  That leaves disk 
bays the only issue with SFF or smaller boxes.

Personally, I don't really fill up modern disks (they are big!).  I do 
want backups, but they need to be separate from the computer anyway.

| A few years ago one of my desktop units failed.  I replaced it with a miniPC,
| a minisform model I put more RAM and two 2TB SSDs into, and it runs just
| fine.  Maybe that is the way to go.

Ah, so you are quite familiar with that form factor.

|   (I have a portable high-resolution LCD
| screen now, and I think I'll eventually just carry around miniPCs rather than
| laptops.) 

A laptop really is more portable than mini PC + display + keyboard +
mouse.

| But then again I also have a 14-year-old ThinkPad that still runs
| like a dream once I put in an SSD; one of the last models with the "real" IBM
| keyboard in it.

14 year old laptops have processors that use a lot of power when sleeping.  
Kind of annoying in a laptop.  They probably don't have USB 3, also 
annoying.  They don't have good displays.  They are surely heavy.  They 
won't have HDMI-out.  The DisplayPort probably cannot drive UltraHD.  By 
now, the battery is probably worn out and it isn't easy to get decent 
replacements.  The oldest processors generation that I'm happy to use in 
notebooks is "Haswell" (launched 10 years ago).

We still use a ThinkPad T530 (Ivy Bridge), but always plugged in and 
without an external monitor.

| Perhaps mistakenly, I thought that the combination of new hardware with the
| rough requirements gamers have for their machines -- able to be run hard for
| long periods of time, for instance -- would give me durability and was the
| Next Best Thing to the trouble of actually assembling a desktop machine
| myself.  (I actually like to build computers, but I just don't have the time
| these days, unfortunately.) Seems I was wrong, or at least wrong that this
| model from Lenovo would be like that.

Reasonable.  One has to look at what makes a cheap model cheap.  What 
corners are cut?  What proprietary things make replacement / upgrade hard?

But you have to ask the same question about business desktops too.  The 
sheet metal is likely of a higher gauge, but they still may put in 
proprietary traps.  I have old Dell business computers that require you to 
buy extra "sleds" to install more hard drives (why??) and those have all 
the problems of proprietary bits.  They often have lovely tool-less
access to all the parts.

I have a ThinkCentre M75s to which I added an NVMe drive.  But I cannot 
easily source the odd gizmo that is a support and heat sink for it (I have 
faked it).

| I didn't even consider ThinkCentres, which word-of-mouth had rated as
| overpriced and underpowered, and in any event I wanted (and still want) an
| extremely reliable machine that I can re-use my 3.5" spinning disks in along
| with other desktop-sized hardware.  My three desktops are located in different
| offices, and they make a mini-cloud of backups etc.

I don't buy new ThinkCentres.  I opportunistically buy used ones -- not a 
quick process.  Underpowered only matters up to a point.  My decade old i7 
is actually fast enough for me.

Having lots of drive bays isn't something that desktops do.  Servers, 
maybe.  You probably need a bespoke system (i.e. made to order).

| Most of my academic colleagues took an entirely different route -- by and
| large they use a high-end laptop as their main computer, and either go for a
| docking-station setup or just use a cheap "business" desktop for email/web
| work, a reversal of the old approach where the laptop was for light duty and
| the desktop for serious work.

Quite sensible.  But a bit wasteful: you have to replace the whole
computer when the weakest component pinches.

| I am not a market of one (yet).  But there are times when it is starting to
| feel that way.  And not working in tech, I don't hear what's current, whose
| machines are reliable, and the sort of unwritten lore that would help inform
| sensible purchasing choices.
| 
| I suspect this list of desiderata would apply to many in this group:
| 
|  - reliable and long-lived
| 
|  - user-upgradeable and user-fixable
| 
|  - high storage capacity
| 
|  - fast, or fast enough for work purposes
| 
|  - able to manipulate high-end graphics (and sometimes high-end audio) files

No longer mainstream:
- 5.25" bays (optical drives; 5.25" floppies).
- 3.5" bays (hard drives)
- 2.5" bays (laptop HDDs, older SSDs)

Only these internal expansion capabilities remain:
- PCIe slots (video cards, a few after-market expansion card)
- m.2 slots (NVMe drives, WiFi / BlueTooth cards)
- DIMM / SODIMM slots for RAM (endangered)

The "user-fixable" requirement is clearly not binary.  You might want
to be a bit flexible on this because it's not a good use of your time
on an academic treadmill.

| Things I don't need are: high framerate, portability, small form-factor,
| Windows, the latest wireless speed standard, anything more than ordinary
| ethernet, optical disks.  I can plug in USB peripherals for keyboard, mouse,
| portable devices, or even optical disks.  I can even use offboard DAC high-end
| audio over USB, which works quite well.  I have thought about building a NAS
| system, to reduce my need for local high-capacity storage, but every time I
| look into it, the plethora of software choices and the difficulty of
| configuring a server to do what is normally done locally makes me just, well,
| give up.

The paradox of choice.

You can buy NASes off the shelf.  For our household, I bought a few
many years ago.  Now they are no longer supported, even though the
hardware is fine.  In future, we'll roll our own so that they won't
get orphaned.

William Park made a good point: why not skip the NAS.

| Essentially, for a desktop unit I want a server-type machine that is also
| capable of working with large graphics images, mostly static.  I don't think
| there is anything like that for general sale, and so it isn't just branding --
| it's having enough people to sustain a market for such a product.

What aspect of "server type" do you require?

I think that almost any machine these days is capable of working with
large graphics images, mostly static.

You might want to think hard about how many 3.5" drive bays you want.
You can get HDDs with really high capacities these days.  It isn't
obvious to me that RAID works well with drives that big.

| For that matter, I far prefer manual transmission in cars, but that's a
| preference that is hard to sustain these days.  Fortunately that's just a
| preference and not a matter of work.

Manual exists but makes less sense when the automatics get similar or
better fuel economy.  And EV's are a whole different kettle of fish.

| Thanks to everyone for all the reflections; there is more to the problem than
| I was properly aware of.  Today I will open up the Legion and see how
| easy/difficult it is to replace the CMOS battery and to bypass the high-end
| graphics card.  The saga continues.

I hope that went well.