So, I really like my go-to travel laptop. It's a Lenovo #ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but it's literally a first generation. Gen1 was first released in 2012, and while it runs pretty well considering its age, more modern software is starting to be pretty slow. I've got my eye on a Gen7 X1 Carbon, but I was hoping to hear about other people's experience with them. Of course I'd be running Linux, probably #ZorinOS 18. Does anybody have any experience with that generation that can give me their thoughts?
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@mike ZorinOS should be fine with it. Biggest unknowns are firmware and power management. Saw one person in this thread indicating a freeze when they disconnected power.
Here's what gives me pause.
- buggy ACPI tables
- Some drivers fail to handle PM transitions cleanly
RE: The lid behavior the same person in this thread indicated, did some digging here as well.
- Firmware assumes Windows power policy
- My units for example, stabilize this in firmware. Many other brands do not & slop it.
@mike I'm on a P1 Gen 3 (2020) which came out within a year of the X1 Gen7 (2019), the P1 and X1 have similar specs (10th gen Intel), but the P1 has discrete graphics and no touchscreen.
On Ubuntu, the 80wh battery life is underwhelming. Dead in 45 min if I'm not micro-managing the battery. Fingerprint reader works great w/o issue.
2 major issues I've had is the OS freezing when you unplug power, and the laptop not hibernating when closed—things to look out for.
Otherwise a solid work horse.
@mike Does the 1st gen X1 Carbon have UEFI or BIOS?
The 7th gen model I had does have a bit less key travel than the prior 6 generations, but unlike the newer generations, it's still great, especially compared to modern low travel keyboards.
I currently don't use it, but it should be fine for anything non GPU intensive. I would use it more if it had an SD card or microSD card slot and an extra port or two. And a removable Wi-Fi card.