X201s slowly dying - now what?

Hi all,

My old X201s seems to be slowly giving up the ghost[1], and I'm trying to figure out what to do. Like, "upgrade" is the obvious answer, but is there even such a thing as an upgrade?

I don't care about price; this is my main (only) machine, I spend 10+ hours a day on it, and I carry it around on my back everywhere. I absolutely need:

• 1440x900 or better
• similar weight
• perfect Linux support (it's all I run)
• decent international support (I spend months in both the US and Europe over the year)

I really like:

• the wonderful thinkpad keyboard
• the wonderful trackpoint (Maybe a touchpad would be fine? I don't know because I haven't touched mine in years?)
• the matte screen
• the VGA out

I guess I could get an X1 Carbon non-touch or T430s, but AFAICT they're bulkier, weigh more, the screen has barely any more pixels, and I'm not sure what to make of the new keyboards. I'm not too keen on dropping that much money and then spending years with a machine that ends up being a disappointment from the start. By far my biggest frustration with the X201s is that it doesn't have *even more* pixels, and I always thought I'd eventually upgrade to something with 1080p+, similar pixel density, and the same or lighter weight... Or I could pick up a "new" X201s on eBay, which is not cheap, but at least it's cheaper ($600ish). Or I could give up on Thinkpads and get a ____ instead. Or keep this machine limping along for a few more months until Lenovo (and everyone else) refreshes and hope something good comes along.

None of these options are terrifically appealing, and I'm not sure what to do, so, I'm curious what you guys think.

What do you think?

[1] It's eating wifi cards? It started with the wifi driver occasionally losing its mind until I rebooted, then crashing on suspend, then these became more and more frequent until I re-seated the wifi card, which would fix is for a while, but eventually that stopped helping so I replaced the wifi card, and then it was fine for a month, but now it's started again. Perhaps replacing the motherboard would help, perhaps not, and of course I'm out of warranty...

 

I suspect that X1 Carbon is the best bet at the moment, if you can live without Ultrabase. Size/weight wise it's in the same ballpark as X201s, and the screen is a bit larger. Sure, the new keyboard has its issues with layout, but on any other new laptop you'll get about the same or worse, coupled (if it's not a Thinkpad) with worse or no TrackPoint.

If the existing laptop is just dying, but will manage a few more months, it might be worth waiting until the next generation with Haswell inside is announced. Should run a bit longer on battery when used as typewriter.

 

i recommend T430 or, if u must have the old-style keyboard, T420. it's not really much heavier if u use x201s with 9-cell battery. how do i know? i used x201s for over 2 years as my daily machine. when i finally made the switch to T420, i didn't really notice much difference, except that i'm looking at the bigger screen.

 

I say try a different card. There's quite a few choices for the X201s. That'll be much less expensive than a new planar and you seem to like your X201s.

As far as the new keyboard goes, they're quite good, but if you're one of those people who uses all the keyboard shortcuts, you probably won't like the new one. Being an Ultrabook, the X1 Carbon is a bit shallow and does not allow for much key depth.

 

^^^^^ This. I'd try sourcing an Atheros-chipped card from that era since they tend to have better Linux support, and apply a modded BIOS (I'm certain that there is one) to bypass the whitelist in BIOS.

Truth be told, there is no ThinkPad that would match X201s anywhere in the current Lenovo lineup. You might be better off just hanging on to yours for as long as you can.

 

Thanks everyone, this is helpful. I guess if I can keep it working for a few months longer I ought to -- no-one ever regretted waiting a bit longer to buy!

Is the new keyboard basically the same as the one in the X100e? I've got one of those, and I'm not sure who around here would have a showroom with a T430 or X1 Carbon to play with. (The X100e keyboard is... okay... but... not really comparable to the classic thinkpads IMO.) I don't use an ultrabase, so that's fine. Or I don't know, maybe I could adapt to an XPS 13 or something.

As far as keeping this machine limping along: I'm really not sure what to make of this failure mode, or whether just dropping in a new card will help, so let me give more details. My first card was an Intel 6200 (FRU 60Y3231). It worked rock-solid for several years, and after the problems started I tried dropping back to earlier drivers and they didn't help, so I'm confident that the drivers are fine. (And I'm reluctant to mess around with hacked BIOSes when the whole problem is that I can't replace the machine if something goes wrong!)

Symptoms: wifi driver would crash and be unable to reset the hardware; or, machine would just freeze and then turn off when going into suspend; or, a few times, the wifi card would just disappear from the PCI bus (!?). These would gradually increase in frequency until they were happening multiple times per hour, at which point pulling the card and re-seating it would -- at least at first -- fix things for a few days or a week. When pulling the card I noticed little black spots (corrosion?) on all the pins on the card.

So, I bought a new card, identical to the first. This worked flawlessly for a month, and then the same symptoms came back. It's still not as bad as it was with the old card, but it's getting worse. I've also noticed that the new card also now has little black spots on all the pins, that I can't seem to rub off (haven't tried sandpaper or anything like that though). They weren't there when I bought it. But I don't know, maybe these are normal.

So one possibility is that I just got unlucky, and happened to get two different cards that went bad in exactly the same way. This seems kind of weird and unlikely, but *maybe* getting a different model of card instead might help? But it seems more likely to me that there's some sort of flaw in the planar or short in my antenna or something that's killing these cards, and I don't know how to debug that. Ring any bells for anyone?

Now that I think of it, the simplest solution might be to just throw away the card entirely, and get a USB wifi dongle...

 

There certainly are other cards than the 6200. If you don't want to mess with the BIOS, just make sure you get ThinkPad branded card. It'll have the FRU printed on it. USB is certainly an option too.

I'm not familiar with the X100e, but I gather it's the some idea. I've used the T430 and X1C. They're both excellent in my opinion, though like I said the X1C is a bit on the shallow side.

 

The X100e shares the same keyboard as the X120e, which I have. The X120e's key pitch is less than that of the T430, T530, X230, etc, so its typing feel is a bit worse. Not sure about the X1 Carbon though; the key pitch on that may be the same as the laptop is so thin. An X1C owner would probably have to chime in here.

 

The X201s was such a unique model that you'll find it hard to replace. I guess a USB wifi dongle would solve your problem in the short term. I think I would go that route until the dust settles on the new line-up of Haswell notebooks. I picked up a lightly used X301 last year and love it. It has the same resolution as your X201s in a slightly larger display. The keyboard is perfect. There is nothing out there ATM that I would rather use as my primary office notebook. We also have a T401s in our office and it feels quite large compared to the X301.

 

Huh, I didn't know the X301 had that resolution -- that's at least another option to eBay for a cheapish replacement if necessary.

I guess I'll have to bite the bullet on the chiclet keyboards sooner or later regardless, but it's good to hear people's feedback.

I went ahead and ordered a USB dongle, and I'll cross my fingers and toes that Lenovo pulls something worthwhile out of the bag in a few months... Thank you everbody!

 

The X301 really isn't up to the task anymore. Even back in the day I found it under-powered for daily mundane tasks (with an SSD). Stick with your X201s. There are plenty of tiny little wifi usb dongles like this one, that you can just plug in and forget about.

Amazon.com: Edimax Wireless Nano USB Adapter: Computers & Accessories