Friday, July 1, 2022

A minor tech rant

I have a Lenovo T480s, and I like it a lot. It has been with me across the country and around the world, and it has treated me well over the years. Recently, it has displayed some problematic charging issues (especially after a Windows 11 "upgrade") and it's also had some difficulties starting. It will hang on the "Lenovo" boot screen. 

That instability is going to drive me to purchase a new laptop, and probably another Lenovo. It's the price of doing business, and one that I will begrudgingly pay. 

What I don't understand is how difficult it has been to find fixes to some of the problems I have experienced, and how I seem to be reliant/I am resorting to searching Reddit threads to see if someone else has run into this problem. Even the various user forums sometimes are no match for the bajillion copycat websites attempting to Get My Clicks when I type "Lenovo t480s charging problems Windows 11" into Google. 

(For that record, Google is not what it used to be, and I feel like I need to start using quote marks more and more to avoid stupid ridiculous helpful AI-driven suggestions for my search terms. I quail to think about the difficulty of migrating my email and blogs away from Google/Alphabet in my dotage...) 

Well, that's enough ranting. I wish I knew what to do other than fork over another $1600....

5 comments:

  1. $1600?! I just got my newly-hired lab technician a $275 basic-model laptop. Unless you're doing something that requires a lot of processing power, that's an awful lot of money to spend on something you're likely to accidentally leave in an airport, spill coffee on, etc.

    If webpage designers weren't a bunch of obnoxious show-offs writing memory-hog bloatware full of bells and whistles, you could get away with keeping old computers and tablets a lot longer.

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  2. If you want a really portable thing, get a Surface Pro 8. It's not my first choice if I want a big laptop with a big screen, but for travel the whole setup, especially with the keyboard cover, pen, and a portable mouse is really pretty good. Plus, I can leave the power brick at home and charge it over USB-C.

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  3. id recommend apple M1 Macs for anyone okay with Macs. the lowest spec 8GB RAM + M1 Mac minis were on sale for $600? at Costco some weeks ago, and the same spec Macbookair were $800? they work really, really well as far as ultrabooks go.

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  4. I'm having a battery issue with an ancient Surface Pro 4 (the battery is not user-replaceable). My "computer guy" won't work on it. The combination of my love for its trip-portability and how much I hate setting up a new computer means I'm not yet ready to cough up $1800 for a new machine, yet. I've resorted to making sure I arrive at meetings early enough to find an outlet if the meeting will go more than an hour or so.

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  5. Try here? https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+T480s+Battery+Replacement/144009

    I have a T490s and like it a lot too. I'll try to avoid Windows 11 then.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20