Petter Reinholdtsen

Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts using FrancEcrans, but it might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.

One tip I got was to use the Skinflint web service to compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.

When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with Debian Sid/Unstable according to Corsac.net. The reports I got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good. Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to replace it. I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I'm also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.

I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was Pro-Star, another was Libreboot. The latter look very attractive to me.

Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot as I keep looking for a replacement.

My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a replacement soon. The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the flickering.

My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is still as I described them in 2013. The last time I bought a laptop, I had good help from prisjakt.no where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin, wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually. Three button mouse and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and G2) lack three mouse buttons). It is also unclear to me how good the keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are. I hope Lenovo have not messed up the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have deteriorated since X41.

I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options seem sensible to me? Are there better services around to search the set of available laptops for features? Please send me an email if you have suggestions.

Last oktober I was involved on behalf of NUUG with recording the talks at MakerCon Nordic, a conference for the Maker movement. Since then it has been the plan to publish the recordings on Frikanalen, which finally happened the last few days. A few talks are missing because the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the talks are available. The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available from the Frikanalen web site. The unedited recordings are available on Youtube too.

This is the list of talks available at the moment. Visit the Frikanalen video pages to view them.

• Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art to robotics (Kyrre Glette)
• Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)
• Making a one year school course for young makers (Olav Helland)
• Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of Inspiration (Hege Langlo)
• Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)
• How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)
• Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)
• Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)
• Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)
• Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)
• Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)
• Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde Sevens)
• How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too! (Jennifer Turliuk)
• Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of Connected Exploration (David Lang)
• Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens Dyvik)
• The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)

Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line argument changes). In addition, we needed better audio normalization, which sent me on a detour to package bs1770gain for Debian. Now this is in place and it became a lot easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.