Using a generator to power a computer is a really bad idea. You’ll significantly shorten the lifespan of the power supply. Ask me how I know.
I ran a full sized office photo copier off a generator once, it ran fine, but you could really hear the engine chugging when the fuser started to heat up.
I’m trying to figure this out at the moment.
What is the best way to power a laptop in an off-grid setup? Mine will be primarily solar + AGM battery.
I think the simplest “just works” set up is to get a “pure sine” inverter and go:
solar > battery > inverter > power supp > laptop
The thing is, if I understand correctly you have a big inefficient inverter to AC only to transform back to DC, with the only benefit being that the plug fits in the socket.
I’m curious to know how a generator ruins a power supply? Is it something to do with the arcane sine wave magic from the inverter?
But why would it? Is the output not voltage controlled?
sterileness is the aesthetic of rulers
I mean… tools, not jewels. It has a robust design for a reason. Develop that patina, kid. Don’t lose your mind over a scuff.
I’ve been buying second hand thinkpads for the last decade or so.
They arrive pre-scuffed so I don’t need to worry.
Mum?
ah, remember the time that Lenovo shipped spyware in the UEFI of Thinkpads?
I certainly remember when lenovo pushed a keyboard firmware update so bad that it physically damaged a part on thousands of legion laptops and then refused to own up to it. Fuckers. Never again.
*ok I half remembered, I don’t actually know that a part was physically damaged but the only permanent fix involves soldering so close enough
Some context…
For one, it wasn’t spyware, it was UEFI that, if a user had admin/root privilege, they could modify the firmware despite signinging procedures that should have prevented that. There was no spyware, there was no root kit, there was a vulnerability.
For another:
IdeaPads, Legion gaming devices, and both Flex and Yoga laptops.
Technically it never touched the ThinkPads. Despite some areas where things blur, ThinkPad is still relatively independent of the rest of the product line. While I may not think Lenovo is trying to actively spy on their consumer brands, they do screw up enough that I wouldn’t want to touch them (not just security, they cut too many corners in general).
Indestructible little fucker
Apple: The Gucci of the tech world.
I dunno man, I’ve made it a point of pride to be rough with my Macbook over the years. They hold up well to repeated beatings and last a long time. I’d rate my 2017 Macbook Pro as hardier than the Thinkpad X1 Carbon I had as a company computer for my last job. And the MacBook might have been cheaper new too.
It really is. I once dated a girl that would rip on me for having a Samsung. She said she needed an iPhone for work cause she takes a lot of pics and uses socials a lot. She couldn’t fathom that my Samsung could do all of that and arguably more
needed an iPhone for work cause she takes a lot of pics
She takes a lot of pictures…so she needed a worse camera?
Whoa, I dislike iPhones for plenty of reasons, but the cameras are consistently among the best. Maybe not spec wise, and you can complain about post processing all you want. But to an average user that’s just clicking the shutter they turn out great.
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Her problem was that her fans would then see a Samsung phone in the social pics, instead of the seasonal variety ornament that is the iPhone.
Not sure if it’s changed by now but a lot of the social apps for Android would just take a screen grab when taking a picture, so when uploading from Android the pics looked much worse than iPhone.
Apple vs Samsung aside, she wasn’t concerned with using her own phone for work?
I hope they used the official Apple cleaning cloth that’s certified compatible with that model of MacBook
You mean the iRag?
Bravo… sneaky bastard
Oh you crafty SOB.
Is that little red thing a dead body?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/saddam-husseins-hiding-place and a word-play on Iraq.
Saddam Hussein
Comes as part of the iRack.
The cleaning cloth pictured is the one that comes with the particular brand of screen cleaner that Apple recommends using.
299.99$ and can connect with the cloud
*Will not work without an active internet connection.
No they actually cut that feature in the latest model, which retails for $499.99
Apple Cleaning Cloth Pro, coming this October
Normal: too small size to be useful, have apple logo
Pro: super expensive, includes 6 gallons of cleaning fluids, is enormous, logo in gold
Actual gold, so it actively scratches your device; Apple Support blames you for it.
Well maybe you were cleaning it wrong
Also now you have to buy a special cloth from Apple to clean the gold logo on the Offical Apple MacBook Cleaning Cloth Pro without scratching it.
(It’s cleaning cloths all the way down!)
Idk how scratch-prone the post-touchbar models are, but I’ve had a series of MBPs that I’ve been profoundly uncareful with and never had a problem.
Used a 2009 model until 2016, no scratches. 2016 model that I use to this very day, no scratches. 2017 I used for work until 2019, I ran it across an exposed screw-tip on a broken desk and it left a line you could see if you held it just right to reflect a light, but I can’t imagine anything shrugging that off. 2019 model I used for work until a month ago, no scratches.
Meanwhile, the other devices that have coexisted in the same backpack have not done as well. Dented USB hub, dented dock, broken screen on an Android device, shattered screen protector on another device.
Edit: That said, I did just buy a Thinkpad to derp around with NixOS on, so I can compare and report back in a couple of years if anyone wants.
there’s a specific technology you can look for when buying a phone. this is not an apple/android phone issue. many mid and high end phones have the same anti-scratch technology apple uses. you’re looking for the latest version of corning’s ‘gorilla glass’ product. honestly anything made with ‘victus’ or newer is kind of ridiculously hard to scratch.
this is not a special apple-only feature, this is a part/technology they buy/license from another company, non-exclusively.
there are also cheap android phones. those exist. for people who prefer a cheap phone to a mostly indestructable phone, or cannot afford to spend 400 dollars on a ridiculous premium phone. or however much apple charges for an equivalent product with worse features and less compatibility.
ThinkPads do scratch, but they are ugly from factory so that no one has to be anxious about it. That’s the beauty of it. They also are very prone to collect finger smudges with their strange plastic soft coating. Very hard to clean even with detergent. I would know because I am a freak about keeping my laptop clean, and I can tell you from all the ThinkPads have used in the past 10 years that you will touch them the first time taking them out of the box and they will never look clean ever again.
I have a pretty recent thinkpad that supposedly has “military grade durability”. The plastic is literally falling apart at the corners after 2 years, and my fan grille is gone.
Fucking lenovo
I have a 16 year old T420 that’s survived numerous falls drops spills and still ticking to this day and I love it. It’s the best damn keyboard to type on. Only Thinkpads for me.
Military grade is bullshit marketing. Basically anything is military grade
I was in the Marines and I had to buy some of my shit on my own, so yeah, agree 100%.
It depends, sometimes milspec is very demanding. For example, crayons need to be non-toxic even if you eat the entire box.
Specifically in electronics there are actually milspec versions of some microchips, different from the consumer grade ones (they have a wider range of operating temperatures plus I also believe higher resistence to electromagnetic radiation and mechanical vibration, similar to microchips “for
automobileautomotive use”), but I suspect that when it comes to actual consumer electronics devices the words “military grade” are not a protected tag (as in, electronic devices said to be “military grade” are not forced by regulation to have certain characteristics) so those words are generally marketing bullshit.
Military grade is code for “cheapest bidder”
Military grade means literally nothing. Actual military equipment is “mil spec”, and not something the average consumer needs, or can afford, in most cases.
Even when military spec equipment is made by the lowest bidder, this stuff still has to be blast proof, bullet proof, work from -60°C to +85°C, be water/dust resistant, and many other requirements depending on what is being made.
You can definitely get plenty of Mil spec shit, just not what you really expect. My hat is a Swedish army cap worn by some dude named Albert Kempf in Tunisia circa 1991.
Is it possible to show the hat? I kinda wanna see that hat and how it looks after such a long period of use.
Note it probably hasn’t had constant use cause I only got it a couple months ago, before that it was at a surplus store in Idaho falls. Now it is in SoCal, before Idaho though it could’ve been in a crate for all I know.
That looks like a good hat! I’d be happy with that.
Fair enough, I was thinking more in the direction of electronics, mechanics, etc
I also have a 1960s wire field phone that they would use in Vietnam. I am still trying to figure out how to get it working with an Aux jack.
“Military grade” means that it went through one extra round of inspection before it was sent out as far as I’m aware. This round of inspection is basically just putting it through certain weather conditions to simulate “will this survive a deployment”
literally Military Grade is just marketing fluff with no standard. Mil-Spec is the real term for meeting military specifications. think ceramic and gold instead of plastic and tin for computer chips.
Okay I just double checked and you’re totally right. When I was in the military someone had told me there was actually regulations around “military grade” and they were just different from milspec. Technically military grade is supposed to refer to milspec but in the private world they don’t check if it’s actually true or not
Sounds military grade to me.
Which Thinkpad do you have? The “Thinkpad” line has been expanded to basically all professional grade laptops now.
the x131e is definitely not professional grade
No, none of the X line are. I really like the L line of Thinkpads. Those are still pretty solid and reparable.
IBM would’ve never
Sell their product to lenovo?
No? They did that.
Sorry, if you were making a joke it flew right over my head, lol
I think it was a joke.
My MacBook survived after I left it on top of my car as I drove off. It was flung off into a pedestrian area at the first intersection and has a nice dent on the corner.
Lol I drove at least a mile with my Thinkpad on top of the car. Some dude next to me at a stop light honking and miming saved me. Got up to 40mph with it still on top though!
Also did this with my cell phone and numerous water bottles. I really need to stop considering the roof a viable temporary storage location.
It’s so funny to see how macbooks are either super durable, or die from the smallest dust particles. My dad’s macbook fell down 3 flights of stairs, and embedded itself into the wood floor boards at the bottom floor. There’s not even a scratch on it even though if fell from pretty high up.
And my mother’s macbook dies every year because dust ends up in between the display cable which then punctures it when the lid is closed
That’s Apple engineering for you: 60 percent of the time it works every time. I grew up with Apple products and the company’s history is lined with head-scratching design choices. It’s been like that since the Lisa.
I like repairable, self-built desktop PCs myself. But for work, the MacBook has been a tank.
I gave my old macbook air to my kid for Minecraft and he dropped it several times, still just fine with no problems. Also my 10 year old macbook pro still works perfectly fine with a quad core i7 and 16GB RAM for anything I need a laptop to do. Still has the original battery with decent runtime too.
Never regretted a purchase more than my macbook after visiting their subreddits.
I bought a MacBook Pro in 2011 to play games when I’m not at home (installed Windows on it) and it still works amazingly to this day. I did swap the DVD drive out for a solid state drive and increased the RAM to 16GB. It lasts 1.6 playthroughs of Beetlejuice on maximum brightness on the original battery… but the battery only has like 26 cycles cuz I always had it plugged in.
Zero regrets.
I got a MacBook for free and I regretted even that. Someone spent money on it, what a waste, even if it wasn’t me. I have a refurbished ThinkPad now and I love that one.
That’s all I’ll buy laptop wise. I’d be a fool to buy a new laptop for my use case.
Give me an off lease Thinkpad with no SSD
I’ll furnish my own drive and OS.
I thought of getting a laptop from tuxedocomputers, the original reason I got a mac was I was fed up with windows, my last laptop was toast, and needed something asap, that i didn’t need a time investment to use since uni courses were starting soon. Learning there’s a company that makes fair priced, built for linux machines with their own distro, that now seems like the perfect device for me.
The one good thing about macs is they don’t loose that much value, so I can resell it and buy something other than a mac
ThinkPad is a work tool. MacBook is a fashion statement.
Not where I work. My thinkpad is managed by the understaffed IT department, and is severely crippled by clownstrike and other garbage and bloatware. Linux is not allowed, only windows.
But my colleagues who chose a MacBook don’t have all that crap because said IT department haven’t figured out how to remotely manage Macs yet…
It was sad when my work figured out how to lock down the Mac’s. It’s not too restrictive, but it’s more than nothing.
Yeah, the firmware lock is some crazy bullshit. My old job was dissolved which means I get to have a perfectly usable iMac but… oh wait. I can’t do anything with it because of the firmware lock and I can’t return it because the company literally shuttered. So, I keep it for the day that MAYBE I will be able to use it. LOL
Nobody cares about thinkpads getting scratched up because the shell shows fingerprints like a motherfucker.
I love my Thinkpads though…namely because I use Linux at home and I’m cheap about laptops…used T-series is probably the best cheap Linux laptop, in general.
i don’t worry about scratching them because they already came scratched used
MacBook user:
omfg, my MacBook got that big scratch. Gonna buy a new one then
ThinkPad user:
draws ThinkPad logo on the back using scratches
Love it
Essentially average MacBook fan vs average ThinkPad enjoyer
Mine is covered in stickers.
If your Thinkpad isn’t covered in stickers, is it really a Thinkpad?
The hot rod flames make it go faster
The stickers hold it together!
Structural stickers
