Lenovo ThinkPad T450s Broadwell Preview

[shmerl]

Of course it only have two cores at maximum. It is the ultrabook broadwell CPUs since Intel hasn't released any other yet.

Do they plan to? It surely can sport more cores with its 14nm technology. I wouldn't but a CPU with less than 4 cores for desktop or laptop these days.

[Ericg]

Do they plan to? It surely can sport more cores with its 14nm technology. I wouldn't but a CPU with less than 4 cores for desktop or laptop these days.

Broadwell might not get quadcore chips, but Skylake (which is also 14nm) will

[shmerl]

Broadwell might not get quadcore chips, but Skylake (which is also 14nm) will

I'll wait for it before getting any new laptops then Not sure why would Intel produce such intermediate truncated options.

[carewolf]

Broadwell might not get quadcore chips, but Skylake (which is also 14nm) will

Skylake will apparantly also start with he ultrabook versions just like Broadwell.

[Ericg]

I'll wait for it before getting any new laptops then Not sure why would Intel produce such intermediate truncated options.

Because Broadwell got delayed a solid year later than it was supposed to, but they still had to get SOMETHING out the door.

[hubick]

I'm running the Fedora 21 KDE spin on the 2015 Broadwell based Thinkpad Yoga (Core i7 5600u w 5500 graphics, 1080p multi-touch screen, 8GB PC3-12800 DDR3L, 256GB SSD w hardware encryption). The hardware is 100% awesome.

I switched to KDE on my desktop after Gnome 3, but made the mistake of giving Gnome another go when I first got this laptop. That was a bad idea. Even with a mountain of extensions, things like switching desktops were still a multi-touch PITA. I now have KDE configured to make everything finger sized for touch based use, and it works great.

Firefox addons "Theme Font & Size Changer" ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...-size-changer/ ) and "Grab and Drag" ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...grab-and-drag/ ) made it touch friendly as well (what's up with Firefox's shitty Linux touch support!).

My touchpad buttons didn't work in Gnome (they acted as PgUp/PgDown), but work great in KDE out of the box.

The touchpad settings applet in KDE let me finally get it setup to where I don't feel the intense need for a mouse anymore (equiv to 'synclient MinSpeed=0 MaxSpeed=90 AccelFactor=0.1').

The problem with the touchpad is that it goes nuts when you plugin an external monitor ( I think https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31636 ).

KDE was also able to correctly consume my OVPN file and setup my VPN, where Gnome couldn't ( https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633337 ).

Network manager seems to do weird things when plugging in ethernet while on wifi (leaving both enabled but neither working).

I still haven't been able to get the ACPID stuff to correctly disable the touchpad and buttons when I fold it into a tablet. The touchpad settings button for the KDE panel to disable it easily has made that less of a priority for me.

So, yeah, the new Thinkpads are great... but Linux support is still a bit rough.

[Ericg]

Samsung 850 EVO came today, I got Fedora 21 KDE installed and configured. I'll start working on tests / review tonight.

Any requests?

[deepankar]

Realistic battery life numbers under Linux

Samsung 850 EVO came today, I got Fedora 21 KDE installed and configured. I'll start working on tests / review tonight.

Any requests?

Would be interested in seeing

a. What the battery life numbers are under light / moderate load (some programming / compiling)
b. What idle draw does powertop report. (Would appreciate if you could report the idle draw numbers under gnome, kde and dwm)

[Ericg]

Would be interested in seeing

a. What the battery life numbers are under light / moderate load (some programming / compiling)
b. What idle draw does powertop report. (Would appreciate if you could report the idle draw numbers under gnome, kde and dwm)

Battery life is a harder one for me to measure since I rarely use my laptop straight through for say 12hrs without ever putting it to sleep. I can say this though:

Yesterday was my longest day of classes. My laptop is open from 1000-1050, 1055-1150, 1200-1250, 1330-1450, 1500-15:50, 1600-1710, and 1800-2100. I've got 9 cells of battery. Battery 1 is a 3cell, that was 100% at the end of the day. Battery 2 is a 6cell, that was at 22% at the end of the day. "Open" tends to be brightness at 40%, wifi always on, web browser open and actively browsing, occasional youtube video, and libreoffice open for notes.

I can't check idle right now cause ive got PTS running, but it tends to be around 6watts if it really is sitting idle at the desktop at about 50% brightness, and wifi on.

[mibo]

My first impressions

My T450s also arrived.
It replaces a 2008 Dell Latitude D630 which I also run with OpenSuse. My first impressions are mixed - probably because I got so used to the Dell notebook which starts falling apart. So, I wanted to carry 1kg less and have a good screen which can be used for editing raw photos. Also, I didn't want to live in the adapter/dongle/cable hell as most of my MacBook Pro/Air using colleagues do. That's why i ended up with the Lenovo T450s with a 1920x1080 IPS screen and a real Ethernet connector. I also like trackpoints more than touchpads...

The performance (actually, the feel/responsiveness of the KDE desktop) did not yet impress me. I see no difference to my old Dell (which has a 2.5GHz dual core, 4GB ram and also a SSD). But, this is just the first impression...

Other things that I noticed are the noise from under the keyboard on the right side when it's really quiet at night (it's not a fan, but rather 'electronics' noise).
The trackpoint keys don't work for me.
The most annoying things for me are the missing LEDs and buttons/switches. Unfortunately, I only now realized how important are some of those to me.
1. LEDs: there is no caps lock LED. Especially, before entering passwords I'm used to look at this LED.
2. HDD/SSD LED: when the old notebook felt slooooow, I looked at the HDD LED to see if it was busy reading/writing data from/to the SSD. I really miss this indicator.
3. WiFi switch: Most of the times I'm connected to Ethernet to have fast access to some databases to work with. When traveling or just checking emails I would use the WiFi switch of the Dell to activate the wireless temporarily. On the T450s WiFi is enabled when booting - I really don't like this.
4. The F1..F12 keys are shared with brightness, volume, mic disable keys. separate keys would have been much more comfortable. To access the F1-F12 keys the Fn key has to be pressed. The Fn key is the left-most key at the bottom of the keyboard where normally sits the Ctrl key which I use often. Luckily, in the BIOS one can 'exchange' the Fn and Ctrl keys to have the 'Ctrl' key in the same bottom/left position as on a standard keyboard.

When opening the sleeping notebook (where my power monitor through which the T450s is connected shows 0 W) I measure 25 Watt which drops to 6 to 10W in a second.
The 'mute' (F1) and the 'disable mic' (F4) keys have LEDs in it. The 'mute' LED works. I didn't get the 'disable mic' LED to light up, yet.
The Fn key also has a green LED which I saw light - but I don't remember when... Maybe it's possible to use it as a HDD LED?

As I sayd - just some first impressions.