"Usable"

[TPFanatic]

I opine that Usable is too polysemantic to be a singular pretext against any particular tool.

As with the Lost Cause fallacy, wherein it must be asked about "State's Rights," "State's Rights to what?" As with the "Too Old To Be Usable" fallacy, it should be asked, "To be used for what?"

What is a ThinkPad?

A ThinkPad is a PC.

There are many ThinkPads like it, but this ThinkPad is mine.

What is a PC?

A personal computer. There are many PCs like it, but this PC is mine. I must master it. Without me, my PC is useless, & vice versa. I must use my PC more effectively than my enemy who is trying to kill me with their PC.

What made a ThinkPad better than other PCs pre-CS09?

1. Expansion solutions, internal, external, and docking
2. Redundant power options
-a. main battery
-b. ac adapter
-c. dc adapter
-d. ultrabay battery
3. Multi-billion dollar well-engineered innovative solutions
-a. the keyboard
-b. the trackpoint
-c. high quality materials
-d. high quality structures
4. Overwhelmingly positive social sentiment
5. IBM will come to your door and fix your ThinkPad

What makes a ThinkPad better than other PCs post CS-09 pre CS-12?

3. legacy innovative solutions
-a. the keyboard
-b. the trackpoint
-c. high quality materials
-d. high quality structures
4. Overwhelmingly positive social sentiment
5. IBM will come to your door and fix your ThinkPad

What makes a ThinkPad better than other PCs post CS-12?

1. cable expansion
3. legacy innovative solutions
-b. the trackpoint
-c. high quality materials
4. legacy social sentiment
5. Lenovo will come to your door and break your ThinkPad and then tell you to die rather than refund you

What makes any ThinkPad better than other PCs now?

6. because I assume they still Just Work and are Usable, which can be said about any ThinkPad that still Just Works is Able To Be Used, transcending any limited scope. Many of the folks on this forum enjoy their models from any period of time. Of course newer tends to trend with more relative speed and productivity. Of course newer tends to lead with more innovations responding to modern needs.

What Are Needs?

At their most Basic:

1. Shelter
2. Consumables
3. Mobility
4. Power
5. Relief

Of those, any ThinkPad can realistically provide Power and Relief. The ThinkPad empowers by not being a stupid unreliable piece of chintzy cheap crap, so long as it is not one of the known chintzy cheap crap models like T61p or E14. The ThinkPad with its engineered ergonomy is the most effective human interface device at providing the Power of a PC. Relief is whatever you want it to be.

The ThinkPad is my favorite tool for talking to printers, other PCs on my network, other PCs on the Internet, and .gov.

I have binders full of nearly 2 decade old ThinkPads that to this day still Just Work and are Able To Be Used.

So so long as the Relief Sought is not 240 fps in a $200 buggy AAA game made on abusive crunch time and international slavery payrolls that requires an RTX 4090, any ThinkPad can provide Power Sought and other Reasonable Relief Sought, so my point is that no ThinkPad irregardless of age should ever be disregarded or disposed of as not "Usable", unless and until it is the ThinkPad itself that has decided to Just Not Work, like every T61p, god bless their poor souls.

[unix_joe]

Usable overlaps a lot with durable and repairable when you are on the road a lot.

But there is also an element of, "I actually want to sit and use this instead of my phone or desktop."

Somewhere the trackpoint became less trackpoint-ish and the keyboard feel isn't the best any more.

It's like we are in the uncanny valley of ThinkPads now.

[TPFanatic]

it's the same reason i ride around in old lincolns, the sister cars to the infamous crown vic taxis, cop cars, and limos. they were built heavy duty, they built millions of them, there's spare parts everywhere, the enthusiast community keeps demand for spare parts everywhere. at this point there's so much history and experience with these devices that you know what you're getting into and you can predict what to look out for, what ameliorative action to take prophylactically, you can get multiples of them to serve as running spares.

they're so cheap they're basically free, you just have to be reasonable and responsible and you can empower yourself with anything Big PC or Big Auto* has already disposed of.

*i am an individual so i'm a bit more courageous. when families are concerned, safety is the utmost priority and i don't recommend an old lincoln for that job.

[unix_joe]

it's the same reason i ride around in old lincolns, the sister cars to the infamous crown vic taxis, cop cars, and limos. they were built heavy duty, they built millions of them, there's spare parts everywhere, the enthusiast community keeps demand for spare parts everywhere. at this point there's so much history and experience with these devices that you know what you're getting into and you can predict what to look out for, what ameliorative action to take prophylactically, you can get multiples of them to serve as running spares.

they're so cheap they're basically free, you just have to be reasonable and responsible and you can empower yourself with anything Big PC or Big Auto* has already disposed of.

*i am an individual so i'm a bit more courageous. when families are concerned, safety is the utmost priority and i don't recommend an old lincoln for that job.

We liked the first Crown Vic so much, my wife got the Lincoln Town Car. It fits all three kids in the back seat. Even better now that they are out of car seats.

The only problem is the stupid blend door actuator. But that is fifteen minutes with a screwdriver to fix and I have cold (or hot) air again. Manually.

Also, the high beams aren't the brightest, but more worrisome is how every car on the road blinds us because new headlamps are too bright and this is not regulated at all.

[RealBlackStuff]

I had to look up what a "blend door actuator" is, and found these helpful tips.
Never heard of it before, and I have lived in USA for 13 years...
While there, I was driving Hyundai Santa Fe and Jeep Liberty.
Here in Ireland I drive a compact Hyundai ix20.
Don't know if either of those have such a thing.

[unix_joe]

Yeah, the blend door actuator is probably the only guaranteed failure on these old Panther platform vehicles. It's kind of like the "swing plate assembly" on old HP LaserJets. Plastic gears that grind and wear out over time, maybe once every 5 years. What it does is changes from cold air to hot air. Once the gears wear down, it just clicks, because the motor is trying to move a valve but can't. Open up inside the dash, it's just a lever that you can manually adjust, and so I do, seasonally.

Besides that one faulty part, these cars can go 300k miles easily. They were the most reliable vehicle platform of all time, IMO. Ford sold them for 30+ years with only one major engine/transmission change and they were used everywhere from taxicabs to police cars during that era. With different trims (leather seats, carpet, radio, suspension etc), they could be a fleet vehicle, or a luxury vehicle. But after about 1991 or so, the last time that the engine was really overhauled, the parts are largely interchangeable, and that's great because there's a huge aftermarket for upgrades, and there are OEM parts available cheaply. High supply, etc.

There are several million mile vehicles, on the original engine and transmission. Unfortunately, they were regulated out of existence with the new CAFE standards around 2010. The same standards that resulted in everybody in the States driving a pickup truck or large SUV now.

Being a vehicle that large, it's great for ... everything but going fast. We just took mine camping earlier this week and everything our family of five needed fits in the trunk. My wife has the Lincoln version, better suspension, quiet, sits a little higher, and has things like heated seats and the thing that remembers your seat, steering wheel, and mirror adjustments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Panther_platform

Kinda like the ThinkPad of cars. The final year there were only around 250 made, and mine has a production line number in the 220's; second week of December, 2010, and the final car rolled off in January, sold for several times its value to a car museum.

[TPFanatic]

im lucky the blend door hasn't busted in my car yet. i alternate between a 99 and an 87, depending on which i bore of first. i drive an 88 sometimes wherein the blend door armature busted after i changed the heater core, and i haven't gotten around to rigging a solution yet.

Mickey Haller in the book The Lincoln Lawyer was chauffeured in three identical Town Cars. I've effectively become Mickey Haller's chauffeur as I chauffeur myself in three Town Cars between the courts, wherein I become Mickey Haller.


edit to add, back on the topic of ThinkPads:

I have been browsing the social medias (Insta, FB, LinkedIn, YouTube) on my T60 while listening to music and sort of just bedrotting. Currently seeing 2.77 GB Physical RAM usage and 4 GB of Virtual RAM usage, with another 124 GB of Virtual RAM available for Windows to reserve if necessary.

Ergo the T60, the oldest dual core x64 ThinkPad, is clearly still Usable for Entertaining myself by providing that form of Relief, not limited to other forms of Relief.

Arguendo I wonder if a T43, the oldest ThinkPad with Expresscard, could be just as Usable if I toss an NVME into the EXP slot which is just an MPCIE slot and tell Windows to use it as Virtual RAM.

I could almost simulate the matter with my 1C1T R500 sporting Windows Vista, but I rather use the T60 or that nebulous T43, should I be blessed to own such a machine. I likely shall not, as I like the T60 more, but it beckons my memories of running Windows XP on my T42p back in the day, up until July 2015, which I played Need For Speed World on, spammed the EA Forums with, wrote a large number of stories, made friends with other people of similar interests, and discovered much about myself through the power of the Internet and all the Communities and Communications therein.

At this point the T60 and I are closer in age than either of us to anyone or anything born today.

There are many ThinkPads like it, but dare I say I love my T60.

[Medessec]

since everyone in here brought up cars, I've got a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited as my sort of fun, road-trip and long-distance car. I'm driving it a lot right now too because it's the winter. It's a real shame it's hard on gas because it's such an awesome machine to operate, and I've done a lot of the fixing on it myself. As you guys mention with your cars, the parts network is plentiful and thanks to the many zaney off-road enthusiasts, there is a huge support community. The first-gen Jeep GC was a pretty basic vehicle normally but the 5.9 Limited is super nice, it's great that it all transfers over. I don't plan on selling it anytime soon, in fact I did an engine swap shortly after buying it and have since replaced the headliner, spent $600 on the sound system, and I might even try a sound dampening mod.

As for Thinkpads, my attitude when people ask me about it is "what exactly do you use your computer for?" Depending on what they say, you might not even need a T480 or T430, even a W500 or T61/X61 would be good enough or at least, made to work well enough. Laptops have changed so much that some old tech enthusiasts really do greatly benefit from using the older stuff. The keyboard, displays, end-user configurability and versatility. For me and a few others I know, it's also like being constantly involved in a tech museum piece- the way Thinkpads worked back then was so fascinating and interesting, in the manner of solutions they came up with to solve different design challenges and get around limitations of the time. UltraPort, all the varieties of UltraBay, Slice batteries, the Docks and especially Dock II (2877) and Advanced Dock (2503).

No one needs to tell anyone what laptops are usable or not, least of all Lenovo. Anyone should just figure out what exactly they need to do on a computer, then get a computer that suits those needs best. Of course NVMe Storage is recommended, it's fast and futureproof... with all the background activity with modern OSes it always keeps things snappy. And you might as well have a newer, efficient multicore CPU to go along with it, which in turn will also ensure lengthy battery life and a thin design that won't run too hot. Buuuuuttt... do you need NVMe speed? Do you need your OS to boot in 5-10 seconds, rather than 30 seconds? Do you need a multicore CPU that bad, or does your grade of computer activity work well in a dual-core machine? Do you need battery life? Thinness? Lightness? Of course it would be nice to have all those things... but if losing one of them means you gain something else that you strongly prefer, you might want to try it out, see if you can make it work with your workflow. Try out a T430. Or a T410, if you like 16:10. Or a 15" T60, if you like 4:3. All these machines are still relatively cheap and attainable too, with plenty of parts and varying degrees of tweaking needed to work well- but that's all well and good if you're not opposed to a little bit of hands on work and customization.

[TPFanatic]

what you spend in gas you save on premiums, taxes, financing by the finance bros, depreciation. i have no qualms putting gas in my 302s or 4.6Ls.

[RealBlackStuff]

It also depends on how little or how much you drive.
In USA I drove ca. 30K miles per year.
I moved back to Ireland from USA in 2019.
My yearly mileage in Ireland is staggering:
2020: 2,254 miles / 3,606 KM (covid)
2021: 4,029 miles / 6,446 KM
2022: 3,655 miles / 5,848 KM
2023: 4,230 miles / 6,768 KM
2024: 3,753 miles / 6,006 KM
My gas guzzling 2015 Hyundai ix20 (1.6/125HP/petrol/automatic) uses ~30.5 MPG / 10.7 kmL.
Odometer at last tank-fill (30/12/2024): 74,626 miles / 119,402 KM
I keep track of that on my 2014 Thinkpad T440p with 2009 Windows 7 and M$ Office 2010.
All of it still very "usable" in 2025.

[Medessec]

For sure, financial independence I agree is the important thing. As long as your car payment is just upkeep and not also an expensive car payment that you might be underwater on, as well as upkeep (especially now, that newer cars aren't as simple or as well made as older cars that are tried and tested, and been slightly refined with remanufactured parts), you're still "winning". That said though, in my situation in California, it still does you well to factor in economics since gas is easily $5 a gallon in the summer Doesn't stop me from putting between 2 and 3k miles on my Jeep in the winter because it's cozy, makes a great noise, and can do the easiest donuts and burnouts in the rain Sometimes in these rough economic times, you have to balance saving money against... well... just living and enjoying yourself. Right?

Same thing with older versus newer laptops. I've had a Clevo X170KM for over 4 years now. When I first got it, there were numerous kinks I had to work out that not even Sager or the first owner could help me with. I had to repeatedly diagnose it multiple times over a few months and use it in a crippled state (it would randomly drop USB3 devices, Wifi, and NVMe drives) until one day I decided to completely disassemble it, where I found the northbridge had a misaligned thermal pad. Replacing it and centering it completely fixed all of those issues. The tabs in the USB Type A ports threatened to punch inwards (common on these and the previous P870DM), so I had to disassemble down to the MLB again, push them carefully back out, and epoxy them in place.

But I absolutely need an RTX 3080 16GB 185W laptop for what I do. Do you? If you don't, do you want to buy newer tech- only for it to perform marginally better for your needs, and risk having problems that you'll have to follow up with the manufacturer or retailer with, and then likely be nudged constantly to update software and change your workflows to accommodate ever-changing and updating software? Sure, there are a lot of advantages to newer tech- Thunderbolt, USB4, Type C, PCIe 4.0, day-long battery life, are all amazing. But... you also want to carry around a $1100 device on your travels where it can get broken, stolen, or demolished in check baggage?

Be open minded, and find something that works best for your needs and budget.

[astral]

I need a new-ish laptop for video editing, light gaming, and other occasional heavy tasks, but for the rest of what I do (web browsing, typing, website development), an old ThinkPad works perfectly fine. The oldest one that I'd consider to not be obsolete (being defined as "can't do modern internet things anymore") is the T61. It's teetering on the edge, but with an SSD and 8GB of RAM, it's still "fine". Slow, but you can use it. Step back another generation to the T43 and the modern bloated internet is unusably slow.
As for oldest that doesn't feel slow? Sandy Bridge is definitely still fine. I don't have any Sandy Bridge ThinkPads, but the Latitude E6420 was perfectly snappy with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. Not sure about Nehalem as thusfar such a laptop has evaded me.
I'm just glad that progress has slowed enough that a 13 year old laptop is still not only usable, but still quick with basic web tasks. The longer I can use the modded T430, the better!

My "fleet" looks like this right now:
Mobile Desktop: ASUS ROG GL504G - i7-8750H, 16GB RAM, 3TB SSD storage, 1920x1080@144hz IPS, RTX 2060, Windows 10
Main Portable: Lenovo ThinkPad T480 - i5-8350U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD storage, 1920x1080 72%NTSC IPS, Intel HD, Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC
Other Portables:
Lenovo ThinkPad W541 - i7-4710MQ, 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD storage, 1920x1080 IPS modded, NVIDIA, Windows 8.1
Lenovo ThinkPad T430 - i7-3840QM, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD storage, 1920x1080 IPS modded, Intel HD, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 w/ Windows 7 UX conversion pack
Dell Latitude E6430 - i7-3720QM, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD storage, 1920x1080 IPS modded, NVIDIA, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 w/ Windows 7 UX conversion pack

[TPFanatic]

Responding to New-ish laptop for light gaming and editing:

My anecdote is the P3000 (1060-equivalent) paired over MXM with my P71 is satisfactory for video editing, reasonable game performance, and some casual 3D rendering. I use some unoptimized programs that fail without sufficient VRAM under which I wish I had the 16GB P5000, but i went for a modular/expandable TB3 egpu 12GB 3060 solution rather than deep dive into a GPU swap.

P71 has a lot of quirks and features superior to P72 and later.

After P71 im buying a server.

[RealBlackStuff]

@astral:
Just out of curiosity, where does your "Windows 7 UX conversion pack" come from?

Is that Windows 10 (21H2-22H2) to 7 Transformation Pack on Deviantart?

Or is it Windows 10 Transformation Pack 7.0 on Windowsxlive?

[astral]

The Deviantart page you linked is the method I use currently. For my E6430 (which was the first one I did) I followed a much more complicated manual tutorial. Only disadvantage of the automatic one is that it uses the trial version of StartIsBack which expires after 30 days - you should be able to use the Classic Shell start menu to override it (which is what I used on my E6430) in combination with StartIsBack's taskbar, which continues to work after the trial expires.

[astral]

Photos of the results:





full-res:
https://embed.macdat.net/tpf/01.jpg
https://embed.macdat.net/tpf/02.jpg
https://embed.macdat.net/tpf/03.jpg