sheeesh 15K views and almost 400 likes, holy.. didnt expect that, I'll be making more videos soon this month, I have some college exams to prepare for.
I would say one of the things I love about it is that it’s your machine. Yes there are limitations to upgrades, but you do whatever you want to it. Replace wifi cards, add msata, egpu, customize the looks … I have a Macbook Air M1 and the performance is night and day, but I never feel like it’s my laptop, just a commodity. Cool review.
Agree. I feel like I’m just borrowing it from Apple. When I read about the system integrity protection feature of mac that there are some area in the disk that even root user cannot make any change, I felt it a lot.
You say you're not good at reviews, but frankly this one was awesome: entertaining, too the point, and actually covered the user experience rather than just specs.
Hey bud, thanks for the vid. I've had a x220 for maybe 2-3 years. Never even knew it had speakers until i watched your vid. Opened her up and someone had unplugged them for some reason
Had an X220 for over a decade. Its my ideal work machine. Its not to big, the screen is usable, its very reliable, the Keyboard is beautiful, i can type 100 page reports with no problem. It is incredibly robust, and is waterproof. Spilt beer in a sordid bar, coffee on an aircraft etc. I have dual boots, SSD and MSATA. A dead drive on a remote Pacific atol isnt a problem. just boot on the other drive. I run virtual drives, keeping backups on a 128 Gb SD card. corrupted OS/Apps are not a worry. blow the image away and load another. running Win11 these days, with no problems.
Good review. I "discovered" the old X220 and like it so much I bought two! It probably has the best keyboard ever made. It is robust, and the key of course, unlike new laptops, you can repair them!
I love the X220 especially as the basic one got me through university. Mostly essays, reports, etc. but still did it flawlessly and the keyboard is such a joy to type with. A few months ago I got the Core i7 and IPS panel version and I'd say it's still quite competent for modern light workloads once equipped with one (or two) SSDs, the modified BIOS and 16GB of memory at the expense of a bit less battery life and slightly higher temps.
As a proud owner of the Thinkpad X220, I would recommend buying this if you love Thinkpads and you will be using mostly for typing and light browsing. Anything heavier than that will but a lot of stress on this senior machine. It hurts me hearing my X220’s fans roaring the more tabs I open on Chrome.
Yeah, heavy browsing, video editing etc is not fun on the X220. I have a very simple workflow and all the really heavy things I do, is either done using my MacBook (like video editing) or I find more efficient ways of doing it on my ThinkPad. For example, opening TH-cam on chromium and then watching a video in it can really upset the poor i5 2520M but if I use the more efficient method of using ytfzf to find TH-cam videos from the terminal and then play those videos in 1080p h264 inside mpv with hardware acceleration enabled, then there's little to no load on the CPU and I can watch TH-cam videos without upsetting my machine.
I have X220 and Archcraft. I noticed that bluetooth audio Is a Little low in pitch...really boreing. Also bluetooth audio glitches. I tried everything. Do you have any suggestion?
You can add second mSATA disk. Yes, it's not so fast, but you can use it for backups or for some data. You can add usb ports with MiniPCI Express card. You can change WiFi/BT card (ok, you need to use patched "whiteist" bios). You can easili change sata disks for different operation systems. Great thing.
Yeah there's a lot of options to choose from. I find the msata SSD option quite useless since i don't need that much storage anyways, still haven't used more than 40 gigs on my 240gig SSD yet, but I kinda wanna put in a WWAN card in it, which is what the ThinkPad came with. But idk if a 4G card will even work on this old machine. Also what else can I put inside the expresscard slot? I want the USB 3 option but also I don't move data that often to need a USB 3 port, but I would like to look into the other ways of using the expresscard slot, ive seen some person using it to connect a desktop GPU to the machine (which I don't really care but sounds cool) and wifi chip that came with my machine is pretty good enough, it connects to 5GHz wifi and all and I get full internet speed on it, so I see no reason to upgrade, and you'll need to patch bios or install coreboot etc to remove the shitty whitelist as well. Maybe I will LibreBoot or CoreBoot my machine if I have the equipments ready
Yeah the X220 is a killer laptop. I used it as my main machine from 2018 up until last year when I got myself an HP DevOne-unfortunately, the X220's hardware just couldn't keep up with a lot of my programming stuff. There's a ton of stuff I miss a lot though, like the middle mouse button, page keys, and not having function keys being tied to stuff-like audio, power, and keyboard lighting-that would just be better as separate buttons. (I've accidentally powered my DevOne down at least six or seven times because the power button is _right_ next to F12 and the print screen key-I don't know how HP thought it was a good idea to have the power key in that spot). Honestly, I wish there was a modern laptop like the X220-I would buy it in a heartbeat.
@@jiayili437 I do a lot of programming in Julia, a just-in-time compiled language that's used for a lot of scientific stuff-I mostly use it for physics calculations. The X220, owing to the age of its hardware, just wasn't able to really keep up with what I was doing-compiling packages from the AUR was a slow process, and it was impossible to program and have a web browser open at the same time. If you're not doing a bunch of super resource-intensive programming, and you're willing to use more minimal software, by all means keep using the X220-it's a great laptop.
@@monochrome_linux Yeah the DevOne sold out, but it looks like there will be support until 2023-it's basically just a System76 laptop, so once my DevOne bites the dust I'll probably just get one of their laptops.
I have one of these. Upgraded to 8gb ram and put in a 128gb ssd. Loaded windows 11 with bitlocker working, TPM 1.2 working. Shame it does not support secure boot. Great for plugging into routers for firmware updates/resets, monitor testing, service calls, etc.
Same. put in 16g ram (probably dumb cause no use), a 256 ssd and a 2tb SSD. I also disassembled the entire machine, cleaned and repasted it, and replaced the screen with an IPS in the same resolution. Looks a lot better with an IPS, not gonna lie.
LOL Ports mother**ker do you speak it. That caught me off guard. Very funny. Good review, I'm looking for an older Thinkpad to learn Linux and the CL on and not care if I mess it up, will just reinstall as many times as needed.
My dad has always had 3 or 4 of these around, some in the loft, I have put linux on them before, but only recently tried putting a tiling wm on one, and wow, for an old machine, boy does it feel responsive now. If you don't need extra horse power anyway, then why put up with modern anti-consumer bs... some come with that 360 mono hinge, docks, batteries still work decently, can't complain really. I still use my xps13, and I'll probably switch to a framework (or tuxedo or starlabs) but respect to these old machines.
oh damn i just bought one of these after missing linux for a bit when i got a m1 pro. It's pretty fast running bspwm without a bar or anything (which is normal usage for me). disabled the trackpad pretty much as soon as I got it. the worst part is easily the screen resolution. i truly forgot how terrible 1366x768 really was. you *can* get a nicer ips panel but it has the same crappy resolution. I got mine for 100 bucks with a 6 cell battery, a 9 cell battery, an ultrabase, 8gb of ram and a ssd so pretty good deal (I'm in the US). Do you live in India by any chance? If so come visit nj :))))) Nice video.
Yeah the display is trash. The low resolution I can manage, I use a small pixelised font (Terminus) so it's pretty sharp on my display, but the TN panel has horrible colors. So I ended up buying a better monitor to use with the ThinkPad Crazy how you got an x220, 2 batteries, a dock and 8 gigs of memory and an SSD for a hundred bucks, cus I paid a 100 bucks for my broken x220 which came without a battery, storage or memory or any other accessories (atleast I did get a 90w charger) Yes I am indeed Indian and by NJ you meant New Jersey?
@@monochrome_linux Hi! Yeah, New Jersey. ended up selling my thinkpad to a fellow linux club member and got myself a titanium powerbook g4 1ghz, running Gentoo on it. Despite being a decade older, the screen is a lot better.
I only now realize how important it is that laptop edges are not sharp under your wrists; just got T490s which is supposedly premium laptop and this edge is really downgrade and painful
My screen broke and I just took my X220 in for repair and thought I'd upgrade the disk drive to SSD. I had upgraded it years ago to windows 10 for free. The repair shop just called me to say that they had to return it to windows 7. I'm not sure how I should feel about this. Any ideas?
"I don't know how to properly review something" yeah, sure… Good one ! Review. Love the ThinkPad models, have an X240/T430, which does not have the backlight which is great.. These things are great under Linux, crazy fast and usable, even 12 years after being delivered. This is what computer should be. Long-lasting. Good job.
My dad used to use a T60 back in the day and he said the ThinkLight was a nightmare to use. He said sometimes it wouldn't properly illuminate his keyboard and he prefers behind-keys backlighting.
I haven't used T60 to confirm but the X220 light is bloody bright and miles better than my MacBook backlight, so from my side ThinkLight is better, but T60 is a really old model so maybe Lenovo made it brighter later down the line
You can upgrade it to Ivy Bridge with a modded BIOS. P.S. to each his own. I EQed my T430's speakers and it's acceptable now, and the touchpad is the nicest I've ever used as my hand can rest naturally while I do, so no cramping. I also find the touchpad size argument nonsensical as you use the same amount of space on a ThinkPad's touchpad as you do on a modern one. Modern touchpads require you to physically operate your wrist to get the cursor from one side to the other without lifting off, and they stop you from typing properly as you partly rest on them, so what's the point? Because you want to be Apple?And in my experience, have a higher resolution due to size, so you can't simply increase the sensitivity.
1. No I can't upgrade to an Ivy Bridge with a bios update because the CPU in the X220 is soldered on. You can replace the CPU on T420 because it's socketed. 2. Larger trackpads are required if you use gestures. Because you'll need to place 3 or 4 fingers on the trackpad and then move left and right or up and down. So you'll need trackpads big enough to move atleast 3 or 4 cm after placing your 4 fingers on it. For me, placing 4 fingers on the trackpad, I'll need atleast 7cm of space and I'll need more space if I want to move left and right with those 4 fingers (kde workspace switcher is bound to 4 fingers swipes iirc, same goes to windows) so a MacBook pro 13's 13cm wide and 8cm tall trackpad is not huge but infact the proper size for a gesture based navigation experience. If you only use the trackpad to point and click, then you can do it in a small space, because you only need enough space to rest 1 finger and then move a few centimetres from there. Also, the small trackpad of my ThinkPad still gets in the way when I use the trackpoint, so I disabled the whole thing entirely.
Great video! You can use some liquid metal to cool the CPU better. Just cut a small piece of sponge and place it around the cpu die, like a fence, so it doesn't spill. Also, if you can find it for a decent price, I higly recommend the 1366x768 IPS panel which is a drop in replacement. There are even 1080p kits but require soldering a board on the mobo. Enjoy yout machine!
I do want the IPS panel, but finding one in India is quite the task and even if I got em shipped somehow, it would cost me like 100s of dollars worth of money, and I dont have that much money lying around
@@monochrome_linuxbro I am thinking of getting a 2nds thinkpad for studies but it is very hard to find a legit seller at affordable prices. U got any definitive places to search online or offline(Bangalore)?
Wait until you have your hands on a x330 (which is an x230 with a 13.3" FHD IPS screen) or a X2100 (which is a X210 with an intel 10th gen CPU and a FHD IPS 13.3" screen).
@@monochrome_linux The X2100 is modded by Xue Yao. It's built on top of the 51nb modded of the x210. 51nb did the screen, Xue Yao added the 10th gen Intel and USB-C to the laptop.
I love this old laptop, it gave me some kind of nostalgia when I use it, I use it as my main laptop but only for study and normal stuff, because tbh this laptop can't handle intellij, so I use x1 carbon instead lol, but beside that I appreciate it, very solid device
Chetta, I got a x220i with a celeron 847 chip, Im planning to install kali, is there any other light weight linux you would recommend for this tiny machine
That celeron might just be too slow for anything modern, it's only got 1 core and 1 thread. If you're not familiar with advanced linux stuff, then window managers will be too much to learn. If that's the case (which it might be given how you mentioned Kali, please don't use that distro 🤦♂️) I would say, try something like lubuntu or xubuntu, if those are still slow then antix, crunchbang++, archbang, bensen labs could be good options.
PS . PS flat mounted inside battery are not able to regenerate (mount new cells). You can buy only original or cheap chinese replacement battery . Sadly but true.
yeah ive heard it somewhere that the IC inside the battery will kill itself if i remove the cells, im using a cheap chinese battery but that too is in bad condition, maybe i will try replacing the cells on the chinese one and see
@@monochrome_linux Well i mean that , there is no possibility to buy good quality flat cells to flat batteries. I pay to local company for replace Li ion cells and reset controller.
I got it from a seller in Malleswaram,Bangalore, who i found on OLX. I forgot the name but there are way too many sellers in Bangalore who sells old ThinkPads
The laptop only has vga and display port, and most likely was released before Type C was released, so im not sure if a type c to vga/display port dongle will work or not. Wont monitors with type c also have hdmi or display port?
I got it from a seller in Malleswaram,Bangalore, who i found on OLX. I forgot the name but there are way too many sellers in Bangalore who sells old ThinkPads
Does it work with an external monitor/TV??? I installed W10 on X220 but dos not recognize the external monito/TV (The plan was to use it as a multimedia station based on small dimension and dock station) Microsoft drived me around with edge making me loosing time and getting crazy. No one word on compatibility ... that is the issue: in a group I discovered that W10 video drivers aren't compatible with X220 and suggest to install (not MS !!!) Lenovo W7 driver. Done, and at 3/4 of process the external video appeared but... the process to end requires reboot. Done, it doesn't work any more. I must reinstall W7 driver without reboot every time a start the machine. MS is pure shit!!! By the way... with Linux MX it works flawlessly!
I've only used Linux on it, and display output works on mine without any issues. I've only tested the VGA port because I don't have any monitor or TV that has DisplayPort. My tv only has HDMI and I had a dying monitor which only had VGA, so I know that VGA works flawlessly. Drivers on windows is a pain in the ass, my dad has to go through it almost every day on his laptop (similarly old as the ThinkPad) and he runs Windows 10 on it, which BSODed like 4 times during install and took me a whole 2 days to fix. Meanwhile on Loonix land, plug drive in, boot into linux, hit install, wait 5 minutes and reboot. Works like a charm, every fucking time.
I sold x220 to my cousin couple years ago… i still have x200s and i thought x220 will have same keyboard but it didnt feel as nice as on x200s and it drove me insane. Now years later im starting to search for x230, i’m still amazed by x220 videos but i still have memory that keyboard there felt cheaper and not that good… i liked chicklet keyboard in b590 that i was running during my uni years so x230 seems like good choice
ThinkPads are used to be the best of Premium laptops, they were designed to get the job done practically, unfortunately now they're trash with small and shallow keyboards, weak hinges, minimal ports and no upgradeability
True, there's not a single laptop that can properly replace an old ThinkPad, to a point I feel like, me and the boys should start our own laptop company to make something that can actually be a retro ThinkPad replacement.
sheeesh 15K views and almost 400 likes, holy.. didnt expect that, I'll be making more videos soon this month, I have some college exams to prepare for.
I would say one of the things I love about it is that it’s your machine. Yes there are limitations to upgrades, but you do whatever you want to it. Replace wifi cards, add msata, egpu, customize the looks … I have a Macbook Air M1 and the performance is night and day, but I never feel like it’s my laptop, just a commodity. Cool review.
💀💀
Agree. I feel like I’m just borrowing it from Apple. When I read about the system integrity protection feature of mac that there are some area in the disk that even root user cannot make any change, I felt it a lot.
"ports mfer, do you speak it?" 💀💀💀
You say you're not good at reviews, but frankly this one was awesome: entertaining, too the point, and actually covered the user experience rather than just specs.
aww thats so sweet
Hey bud, thanks for the vid. I've had a x220 for maybe 2-3 years. Never even knew it had speakers until i watched your vid. Opened her up and someone had unplugged them for some reason
haha, why would someone unplug the speakers tho? maybe they opened it to do something and forgot to plug em back in.
Had an X220 for over a decade. Its my ideal work machine.
Its not to big, the screen is usable, its very reliable,
the Keyboard is beautiful, i can type 100 page reports with no problem.
It is incredibly robust, and is waterproof. Spilt beer in a sordid bar, coffee on an aircraft etc.
I have dual boots, SSD and MSATA. A dead drive on a remote Pacific atol isnt a problem. just boot on the other drive.
I run virtual drives, keeping backups on a 128 Gb SD card. corrupted OS/Apps are not a worry. blow the image away and load another.
running Win11 these days, with no problems.
Good review. I "discovered" the old X220 and like it so much I bought two! It probably has the best keyboard ever made. It is robust, and the key of course, unlike new laptops, you can repair them!
I agree, it has the best keyboard I've used on a laptop, great keyboard.
I wish modern laptops had good keyboards like this, but noooo they wanna make it thinner and thinner for no reason
Bought one in 2013 and it's been my only laptop for 10 years. Never thought I'd see a review of it in 2023 lmao
Now you have 😉
I love the X220 especially as the basic one got me through university. Mostly essays, reports, etc. but still did it flawlessly and the keyboard is such a joy to type with. A few months ago I got the Core i7 and IPS panel version and I'd say it's still quite competent for modern light workloads once equipped with one (or two) SSDs, the modified BIOS and 16GB of memory at the expense of a bit less battery life and slightly higher temps.
My Main machine is a X200. Its a sturdy a solid laptop
As a proud owner of the Thinkpad X220, I would recommend buying this if you love Thinkpads and you will be using mostly for typing and light browsing. Anything heavier than that will but a lot of stress on this senior machine. It hurts me hearing my X220’s fans roaring the more tabs I open on Chrome.
Yeah, heavy browsing, video editing etc is not fun on the X220.
I have a very simple workflow and all the really heavy things I do, is either done using my MacBook (like video editing) or I find more efficient ways of doing it on my ThinkPad.
For example, opening TH-cam on chromium and then watching a video in it can really upset the poor i5 2520M but if I use the more efficient method of using ytfzf to find TH-cam videos from the terminal and then play those videos in 1080p h264 inside mpv with hardware acceleration enabled, then there's little to no load on the CPU and I can watch TH-cam videos without upsetting my machine.
I have X220 and Archcraft. I noticed that bluetooth audio Is a Little low in pitch...really boreing. Also bluetooth audio glitches. I tried everything. Do you have any suggestion?
I don't have any Bluetooth stuff, so can't test
Another best thing - it runs freebsd perfectly.
You can add second mSATA disk. Yes, it's not so fast, but you can use it for backups or for some data. You can add usb ports with MiniPCI Express card. You can change WiFi/BT card (ok, you need to use patched "whiteist" bios). You can easili change sata disks for different operation systems. Great thing.
Yeah there's a lot of options to choose from.
I find the msata SSD option quite useless since i don't need that much storage anyways, still haven't used more than 40 gigs on my 240gig SSD yet, but I kinda wanna put in a WWAN card in it, which is what the ThinkPad came with. But idk if a 4G card will even work on this old machine. Also what else can I put inside the expresscard slot? I want the USB 3 option but also I don't move data that often to need a USB 3 port, but I would like to look into the other ways of using the expresscard slot, ive seen some person using it to connect a desktop GPU to the machine (which I don't really care but sounds cool) and wifi chip that came with my machine is pretty good enough, it connects to 5GHz wifi and all and I get full internet speed on it, so I see no reason to upgrade, and you'll need to patch bios or install coreboot etc to remove the shitty whitelist as well. Maybe I will LibreBoot or CoreBoot my machine if I have the equipments ready
"Ports motherfucker. Do you speak it?" Killed me 😂💀
I hope this doesn't come out as an insult, but this is the most English fluent Indian accent I've heard
Really great video! Gonna be getting one of these (or a x230) so this was really helpful! Nice rice btw, what wm is that?
Sway
Yeah the X220 is a killer laptop. I used it as my main machine from 2018 up until last year when I got myself an HP DevOne-unfortunately, the X220's hardware just couldn't keep up with a lot of my programming stuff. There's a ton of stuff I miss a lot though, like the middle mouse button, page keys, and not having function keys being tied to stuff-like audio, power, and keyboard lighting-that would just be better as separate buttons. (I've accidentally powered my DevOne down at least six or seven times because the power button is _right_ next to F12 and the print screen key-I don't know how HP thought it was a good idea to have the power key in that spot).
Honestly, I wish there was a modern laptop like the X220-I would buy it in a heartbeat.
Hii, I just bought one for programming 😮 how is it not keeping up with you? Mind sharing your experience? Thanks!
ive heard that the Dev One is discontinued now or something along those lines
@@jiayili437 I do a lot of programming in Julia, a just-in-time compiled language that's used for a lot of scientific stuff-I mostly use it for physics calculations. The X220, owing to the age of its hardware, just wasn't able to really keep up with what I was doing-compiling packages from the AUR was a slow process, and it was impossible to program and have a web browser open at the same time.
If you're not doing a bunch of super resource-intensive programming, and you're willing to use more minimal software, by all means keep using the X220-it's a great laptop.
@@monochrome_linux Yeah the DevOne sold out, but it looks like there will be support until 2023-it's basically just a System76 laptop, so once my DevOne bites the dust I'll probably just get one of their laptops.
I see. Thats good to hear
I have one of these. Upgraded to 8gb ram and put in a 128gb ssd. Loaded windows 11 with bitlocker working, TPM 1.2 working. Shame it does not support secure boot. Great for plugging into routers for firmware updates/resets, monitor testing, service calls, etc.
Same. put in 16g ram (probably dumb cause no use), a 256 ssd and a 2tb SSD. I also disassembled the entire machine, cleaned and repasted it, and replaced the screen with an IPS in the same resolution.
Looks a lot better with an IPS, not gonna lie.
it doesnt support secure boot? never knew.
qual melhor upgrade para fazer em um x220 desses? tenho um...
your rice is sooo clean... 👍 you should make a video about it and your workflow...
Awww thank you
the bent screwdriver lol
LOL Ports mother**ker do you speak it. That caught me off guard. Very funny. Good review, I'm looking for an older Thinkpad to learn Linux and the CL on and not care if I mess it up, will just reinstall as many times as needed.
yup yup yup, old thinkpads work well on Linux. Have fun learning Linux
My dad has always had 3 or 4 of these around, some in the loft, I have put linux on them before, but only recently tried putting a tiling wm on one, and wow, for an old machine, boy does it feel responsive now. If you don't need extra horse power anyway, then why put up with modern anti-consumer bs... some come with that 360 mono hinge, docks, batteries still work decently, can't complain really. I still use my xps13, and I'll probably switch to a framework (or tuxedo or starlabs) but respect to these old machines.
oh yeah Tiling Window Manager life is quite nice, everything is soo bloody fast.
oh damn i just bought one of these after missing linux for a bit when i got a m1 pro. It's pretty fast running bspwm without a bar or anything (which is normal usage for me). disabled the trackpad pretty much as soon as I got it. the worst part is easily the screen resolution. i truly forgot how terrible 1366x768 really was. you *can* get a nicer ips panel but it has the same crappy resolution. I got mine for 100 bucks with a 6 cell battery, a 9 cell battery, an ultrabase, 8gb of ram and a ssd so pretty good deal (I'm in the US). Do you live in India by any chance? If so come visit nj :))))) Nice video.
Yeah the display is trash. The low resolution I can manage, I use a small pixelised font (Terminus) so it's pretty sharp on my display, but the TN panel has horrible colors. So I ended up buying a better monitor to use with the ThinkPad
Crazy how you got an x220, 2 batteries, a dock and 8 gigs of memory and an SSD for a hundred bucks, cus I paid a 100 bucks for my broken x220 which came without a battery, storage or memory or any other accessories (atleast I did get a 90w charger)
Yes I am indeed Indian and by NJ you meant New Jersey?
@@monochrome_linux Hi! Yeah, New Jersey. ended up selling my thinkpad to a fellow linux club member and got myself a titanium powerbook g4 1ghz, running Gentoo on it. Despite being a decade older, the screen is a lot better.
You have the best and funniest review ever on this. You e sold me on this model, bro. Do you make content on this pc ongoingly…?!
I did, but now I have an old HP desktop now, cus I play a bit of vidya gaems, and ThinkPad won't run gaems.
Dang bro to I love your review video 😂
Just as I'm thinking of x220
The TH-cam algorithm overlords have noticed that you like ThönkPads 😂
@@monochrome_linux definitely 😂 nice video bro! I hope you do more with another ThinkPad
nice video man, thinking about getting one
Go for it!
I only now realize how important it is that laptop edges are not sharp under your wrists; just got T490s which is supposedly premium laptop and this edge is really downgrade and painful
My screen broke and I just took my X220 in for repair and thought I'd upgrade the disk drive to SSD. I had upgraded it years ago to windows 10 for free. The repair shop just called me to say that they had to return it to windows 7. I'm not sure how I should feel about this. Any ideas?
"I don't know how to properly review something" yeah, sure…
Good one ! Review. Love the ThinkPad models, have an X240/T430, which does not have the backlight which is great..
These things are great under Linux, crazy fast and usable, even 12 years after being delivered. This is what computer should be. Long-lasting.
Good job.
Good review bro, thank you for the video
My dad used to use a T60 back in the day and he said the ThinkLight was a nightmare to use. He said sometimes it wouldn't properly illuminate his keyboard and he prefers behind-keys backlighting.
I haven't used T60 to confirm but the X220 light is bloody bright and miles better than my MacBook backlight, so from my side ThinkLight is better, but T60 is a really old model so maybe Lenovo made it brighter later down the line
You can upgrade it to Ivy Bridge with a modded BIOS.
P.S. to each his own. I EQed my T430's speakers and it's acceptable now, and the touchpad is the nicest I've ever used as my hand can rest naturally while I do, so no cramping. I also find the touchpad size argument nonsensical as you use the same amount of space on a ThinkPad's touchpad as you do on a modern one. Modern touchpads require you to physically operate your wrist to get the cursor from one side to the other without lifting off, and they stop you from typing properly as you partly rest on them, so what's the point? Because you want to be Apple?And in my experience, have a higher resolution due to size, so you can't simply increase the sensitivity.
1. No I can't upgrade to an Ivy Bridge with a bios update because the CPU in the X220 is soldered on. You can replace the CPU on T420 because it's socketed.
2. Larger trackpads are required if you use gestures. Because you'll need to place 3 or 4 fingers on the trackpad and then move left and right or up and down. So you'll need trackpads big enough to move atleast 3 or 4 cm after placing your 4 fingers on it.
For me, placing 4 fingers on the trackpad, I'll need atleast 7cm of space and I'll need more space if I want to move left and right with those 4 fingers (kde workspace switcher is bound to 4 fingers swipes iirc, same goes to windows) so a MacBook pro 13's 13cm wide and 8cm tall trackpad is not huge but infact the proper size for a gesture based navigation experience.
If you only use the trackpad to point and click, then you can do it in a small space, because you only need enough space to rest 1 finger and then move a few centimetres from there.
Also, the small trackpad of my ThinkPad still gets in the way when I use the trackpoint, so I disabled the whole thing entirely.
I bought one fully specced in 2010. Stopped using it in 2018 - I want an easy way to use the keyboard as it's own KB.
Great video! You can use some liquid metal to cool the CPU better. Just cut a small piece of sponge and place it around the cpu die, like a fence, so it doesn't spill. Also, if you can find it for a decent price, I higly recommend the 1366x768 IPS panel which is a drop in replacement. There are even 1080p kits but require soldering a board on the mobo. Enjoy yout machine!
I do want the IPS panel, but finding one in India is quite the task and even if I got em shipped somehow, it would cost me like 100s of dollars worth of money, and I dont have that much money lying around
@@monochrome_linuxbro I am thinking of getting a 2nds thinkpad for studies but it is very hard to find a legit seller at affordable prices. U got any definitive places to search online or offline(Bangalore)?
Wait until you have your hands on a x330 (which is an x230 with a 13.3" FHD IPS screen) or a X2100 (which is a X210 with an intel 10th gen CPU and a FHD IPS 13.3" screen).
Ivent heard of the X2100 but I've heard of the X330. Is the X2100 a mod by 51nb? The Chinese modding team? They make some cool stuff.
@@monochrome_linux The X2100 is modded by Xue Yao. It's built on top of the 51nb modded of the x210. 51nb did the screen, Xue Yao added the 10th gen Intel and USB-C to the laptop.
Holy!
@@monochrome_linux someone managed to frankenpad a 1990s IBM 701c thinkpad with framework motherboard.
@@jan5504 yeah Ive seen that, pretty impressive ngl
I love this old laptop, it gave me some kind of nostalgia when I use it, I use it as my main laptop but only for study and normal stuff, because tbh this laptop can't handle intellij, so I use x1 carbon instead lol, but beside that I appreciate it, very solid device
mine handles it without any sign of struggle... maybe you got lower spec x220?
Best laptop, unless you are willing to pay a whole lot more. The keyboard is unbeatable.
how is the battery life of x220 with linux installed?
I have x220 and x230. Put 16gb ram + ssd and it will be a beast
qual frequencia de ram ele suporta?
@@estudodecaso555 1600 max
@@mangableu o x220 suporta 16gb de ram?
Yes
@@monochrome_linux obrigado!
nice setup
What's better than getting acknowledged by Guts
From where did you buy it?
im your 100th subscriber
Wait I have 100 subs!? Dang.
103
Hey, what window manager are you using?
Sway
it's useful, thanks to your video !
🫂
Your rice is so nice ngl, any chance I can have a link to your config files?
Codeberg.org/monochrome/monochrome-sway-dots
how much to pay for this in India? and any good place where I can buy
@2:00 Nice video! What is it? i3?
Sway, its like i3 but wayland
BTW, he uses Arch 😂
Yup 🤣
Can you share your WM setup? It looks cool
Codenerg.org/monochrome/monochrome-sway-dots
Cheers
The rice is gorgeous! Release the dot files cmon man 🙏 do it for the community
haha, i will soon, i recently fucked up my system and had to wipe everything, so slowly building it back up, i will put that on my repo soon.
@@monochrome_linux make it a video with all the steps and reasons behind every choice
Might as well be a biography lmao. You interested in watching a dude ricing his system for hours while speaking in an indian accent? 🤣🤣🤣
Why doesn't Lenovo make the new generation of this model ..ect gen 1, gen 2... ?
@1:50 Is that an animated wallpaper you're using?
Nah thats just urandom on a terminal
Chetta, I got a x220i with a celeron 847 chip, Im planning to install kali, is there any other light weight linux you would recommend for this tiny machine
That celeron might just be too slow for anything modern, it's only got 1 core and 1 thread. If you're not familiar with advanced linux stuff, then window managers will be too much to learn. If that's the case (which it might be given how you mentioned Kali, please don't use that distro 🤦♂️) I would say, try something like lubuntu or xubuntu, if those are still slow then antix, crunchbang++, archbang, bensen labs could be good options.
@@monochrome_linux sure, I want a simple Linux which should be light weight and should be able to do all sort of stuffs. Will try this out!
Can I please know what your vim colour theme?
It's just black and white bruh. Terminal color is black and white, so vim also becomes black and white. Nothing special
great review, great voice
I got myself x220 wirh i7-2640m and usb3 IPS display and original lenovo 9cell that lasts over 3h for 100eur :D
damn bro, nice flex. (meanwhile me on the TN panel, (i do have a 1080p monitor now, so its fine) and with a battery that lasts 1 hour at best)
such a legend
PS . PS flat mounted inside battery are not able to regenerate (mount new cells). You can buy only original or cheap chinese replacement battery . Sadly but true.
yeah ive heard it somewhere that the IC inside the battery will kill itself if i remove the cells, im using a cheap chinese battery but that too is in bad condition, maybe i will try replacing the cells on the chinese one and see
@@monochrome_linux Well i mean that , there is no possibility to buy good quality flat cells to flat batteries. I pay to local company for replace Li ion cells and reset controller.
where did you source it from ( considering you are from India as i am too)
I got it from a seller in Malleswaram,Bangalore, who i found on OLX. I forgot the name but there are way too many sellers in Bangalore who sells old ThinkPads
@@monochrome_linux thanks for the quick reply , will look one on olx
What are you using at @5:30 the white windows ?
just a terminal in white theme
Can we use this laptop on type c moniter. Will it support the display? Please tell
The laptop only has vga and display port, and most likely was released before Type C was released, so im not sure if a type c to vga/display port dongle will work or not. Wont monitors with type c also have hdmi or display port?
how much did you pay for it?
8000 rupees
@@monochrome_linux demn thats nice deal. I couldn’t find any that cheap so had to settle for a new 2nd gen E14 2 years back
@@monochrome_linux from where please?
I got it from a seller in Malleswaram,Bangalore, who i found on OLX. I forgot the name but there are way too many sellers in Bangalore who sells old ThinkPads
@@monochrome_linux I need one x230 thinkpad but I am in Gujarat. They don't have website?
What If we replace 256gb ssd and 8gb ram? Is it work fastly then ?
replace it with what? you can have a lot of storage and you can upgrade to 16 GB RAM, is that what you were saying?
like your clip
Clip?
Does it work with an external monitor/TV???
I installed W10 on X220 but dos not recognize the external monito/TV (The plan was to use it as a multimedia station based on small dimension and dock station) Microsoft drived me around with edge making me loosing time and getting crazy. No one word on compatibility ... that is the issue: in a group I discovered that W10 video drivers aren't compatible with X220 and suggest to install (not MS !!!) Lenovo W7 driver. Done, and at 3/4 of process the external video appeared but... the process to end requires reboot. Done, it doesn't work any more. I must reinstall W7 driver without reboot every time a start the machine. MS is pure shit!!!
By the way... with Linux MX it works flawlessly!
I've only used Linux on it, and display output works on mine without any issues.
I've only tested the VGA port because I don't have any monitor or TV that has DisplayPort.
My tv only has HDMI and I had a dying monitor which only had VGA, so I know that VGA works flawlessly.
Drivers on windows is a pain in the ass, my dad has to go through it almost every day on his laptop (similarly old as the ThinkPad) and he runs Windows 10 on it, which BSODed like 4 times during install and took me a whole 2 days to fix.
Meanwhile on Loonix land, plug drive in, boot into linux, hit install, wait 5 minutes and reboot.
Works like a charm, every fucking time.
How much would you say these are worth for?
You can get one for $100 (US) or less, unless it's a mint condition one, which might cost a bit more.
@@monochrome_linux ah, thanks mate!
@@monochrome_linux I subbed ya
I sold x220 to my cousin couple years ago… i still have x200s and i thought x220 will have same keyboard but it didnt feel as nice as on x200s and it drove me insane. Now years later im starting to search for x230, i’m still amazed by x220 videos but i still have memory that keyboard there felt cheaper and not that good… i liked chicklet keyboard in b590 that i was running during my uni years so x230 seems like good choice
still good in 2023 ?
Still good
ThinkPads are used to be the best of Premium laptops, they were designed to get the job done practically, unfortunately now they're trash with small and shallow keyboards, weak hinges, minimal ports and no upgradeability
True, there's not a single laptop that can properly replace an old ThinkPad, to a point I feel like, me and the boys should start our own laptop company to make something that can actually be a retro ThinkPad replacement.
@@monochrome_linux Framework motherboard will help you do that.
Oh, please do. I would love to buy it.
Non ips screen is reallu bad...
The rest is great:)
It's not horrible, but yeah, not great. I use a monitor now
2:42
the minimalism scam ruining fun. pc cases are almost all cosmetic waste now compared to older ones
❤
dotfiles pls
its a bit of a mess and i lost some, but most shit are there in codeberg.org/monochrome/dots
I ve t420
the trackpoint is trash.
Such blasphemy
Try Windows 11
No way in hell
indian....
Insert Muhammad Avdol saying "Yes! I am" here