Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere.
* "This isn't X. It's Y"
* "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier.
* The em-dash of course
* A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
Once you see it you can't unsee it. Although maybe this how corporate blogslop has always been, and we're just now noticing now that it's infected everything.
> "These are not complaints, merely observations."
> "There are repairable laptops, and then there are ThinkPads."
> "iFixit approached the relationship as collaborators, not critics."
> "[...] they didn’t declare victory and go home. They kept pushing."
> "Designing for repairability doesn’t mean compromising innovation or premium experiences; when done well, it actually drives smarter innovation, better modularity, and more resilient platforms."
> "It would be one thing to make a highly repairable but low-volume niche device or concept. Instead, Lenovo just threw down a gauntlet by notching a 10/10 repairability score on their mainstream-iest business laptop."
> "This is [...] how repair goes from being an enthusiast’s “nice-to-have” to being baked into procurement checklists and fleet-management decisions."
I recently destroyed the screen on a Google Pixel during a repair following a shoddily-written set of iFixIt instructions. I wish I had checked the comments, where many people complained that the instruction was wrong.
It was about a very fragile part of the process, and so it seemed like an error of omission that seemed atypical for iFixIt. It made me suspect the instructions might not have been wholly human written. I feel a bit vindicated for that suspicion.
The most generous interpretation I can have for this type of article is that it's a second-order phenomenon. If it was written by a human, it was written by one who consumes a lot of AI generated content and whose standards for what they produce have slipped.
>A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
This is the "Reddit" factor. I picked up on it being LLM written with this sentence:
"This is the treacherous, final-boss stage where repairability usually dies,"
Ugh I have actually started hating Gemini for this specifically.
What annoys me the most is that the information has become much less dense. There's a lot of unnecessary repetition. I feel like I need to feed every article through an LLM just to get a summary of it.
If only a human could edit the output before posting.
It indicates a baseline competency of the AI user or whomever they are trusting to use it and it will hurt brand trust and trusting humans even more.
I'm glad I haven't let AI write much for me, its better for it to help me develop my ideas and writing and do the work to learn, explore and end up with something where my brain is in the gym. . Passive generation might not always map well to passive consumption
I don’t mind the AI generated aspect. I mind the lack of carrying that it looks like AI slop.
Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO. Many people use them.
Surely you mean: Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO — many people use them.
It is though if the rest of the prose is trash.
There are dozens of us!
— dozens!
I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook).
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.
Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".
I urge you to try HP.
> LPCAMM2 memory that’s fast, efficient, and easily serviced [0]
Today I Learned about LPCAMM2, which is refreshing, seeing soldered-on memory always felt like some kind of slide into disposable barbarism.
[0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
It did worry me though, as I had also never heard of it. Is it highly available like more regular DIMM or SODIMM ram?
That is usually my concern with things like the modular ports and replaceable keyboards too. By the time I actually need to replace anything it could be 10 years from now, could I actually source these parts easily?
Regardless, that is a excellent problem to have compared to other less repairable laptops. I have been running my current laptop for 10 years, by the time it's unrepairable I might switch to this.
If this model of laptop is produced in high volume, at minimum it means that dead ones can be used for parts to cobble together a smaller number of functional ones. Well, unless it turns out that a design flaw means a few parts in particular are almost always the first to go...
Looks like the T14 Gen 7 is the first T14 to have a CAMM socket. The previous model has SODIMM DDR5-5600, more power hungry? Prior to that it was the more expensive P1 Gen 7 that had LPCAMM2.
Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen.
The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-t14-gen-7-hands-o...
I thought the issue with the soldered on RAM wasn't the fact that it was soldered, but that manufacturers would use chips that are not easy to source and in some way serialised. So even if you got larger chips, you would still have to figure out other parts to swap that tell the CPU it's 32GB now, not 24GB.
Being soldered on is a huge issue to 99% of people and businesses wanting to repair or upgrade something.
I don’t have the tools or skills to replace soldered on memory chips when they fail. Nobody at my place of work does. Nobody was doing that type of work in a warranty centre I worked in either.
I’d need to buy an entire motherboard, which will much more expensive, and likely more time consuming, than swapping a couple of memory modules.
Nice very cool. Unfortunately, the blog post looks like it's been generated by an LLM.
> Going from a high score to the highest score isn’t usually about making minor tweaks. It requires fighting for every small, boring, consequential decision—the ones that determine whether a repair isn’t merely possible or practical, but within easy reach.
I, as a non-native speaker, don't associate this with LLMs, but with corporate advertising texts.
They're basically the same thing. Machine language, just generated by a different kind of machine, one social, the other a transformer model.
At the same time, at least to me, the text reads like a transcript from one of their YouTube tear downs.
There are those times we may be seeing the source of LLM language training. I had the same reaction of sounding like one but agree it's likely not.
I have used not thinkpads but Lenovo IdeaPad from 2023. Very fragile. It has caused me to run many times to the repair shops.
Whereas Lenovo laptops (non Thinkpads) from 2007 and 2021 are very solid nearly unbreakable.
Lenovo (and their subsidiary Motorola) seem to be on a consumer friendliness streak
I'm not in a refresh cycle, but I would seriously consider this platform having used the older X series, and found them workhorses. I destroyed an X30 keyboard and the replacement was fast and easy. Bringing that experience into the modern era is a good thing.
One thing which worries me, is how easily the Qualcomm core platforms run novel OS because I don't see indications they are avoiding blob dependency either in the core, or in peripheral control. It will probably be fine if you run the Lenovo tailored linux release, but if you want to run a BSD or something else you might find either you're on a slower path, or you have less battery life, or you simply can't drive some devices. (I am a user not a kernel/devicedriver developer so if I misunderstand blobbyness and why things like wifi cards often don't work please don't hate me)
But for hardware replacement? This is ace! I like the other sources which people use too, but Lenovo has a worldwide warranty, and has agents almost everywhere so your ability to be on-the-road, pick up a phone, quote a number and get a part is significantly enhanced. (in my experience)
Do they still block third party PCIe (eg, wifi) devices in their firmware?
If you are ever bored, maxing out a T440p, T430, or T480 is a fun exercise and not very difficult nor expensive. CPU, RAM, SSD, coreboot, modern LCD panel, Liteon keyboard. Load with Linux, BSD, OpenCore.
> nor expensive
With OpenAI completely destroying the component supply chain in 2026 I think this requires citations
This commitment by Lenovo must have been driven by customer demand -- in this case, the IT departments. I wonder how much of that demand may be attributed to questions about comparisons to Framework. Even if Framework is not mainstream, it has mindshare among the IT-crowd.
This is great. I’m still rocking a nearly 10 year old T470s. Great machine with Linux on it, still snappy enough- Tailscale is there when I need to do serious work (on my desktop at home!)
I replaced the batteries a few months ago and it was painless.
I have a T470. I have changed the screen (after I dropped water on it and shorted it), changed the batteries after 5 years, increased the RAM, and added an M2 drive. All of these were painless operations. Couldn't be happier with my purchase.
Same here. The only problem is that I "only" have 24Gb of RAM. I wish I could upgrade but it's a hard limit. And keyboard quality seems to have been degrading over the years since 2020. Is this new model good in terms of keyboard?
> There are “repairable” laptops, and then there are ThinkPad T-series laptops
By elevating ThinkPad T-series above other laptops by reputation, do iFixit weaken their notion of objective repairability ratings?
This is great and should be applauded, but repairability is but one aspect of many in a good laptop. I wonder if other aspects had to suffer to achieve this, and if they did by how much. The answer to that question could make or break the laptop for many users.
The article states:
> Lenovo tells us, “The biggest challenge in getting to a 10/10 was balancing repairability with all the other expectations of a commercial device: performance, reliability, thermal efficiency, form factor, and design integrity. Repairability isn’t achieved by a single change: it requires many small, intentional decisions across the entire system, and each of those decisions can introduce trade-offs.
Yes, however companies say a lot of things. We'll need to see some hard numbers and reviews based on real world usage to know if their claims ring true.
why are you so negative?
All the repairability in the world is moot if the laptop isn't good enough to sell itself on its other merits. If it turns out to be hot and loud or have poor battery life for example, that's going to steer many to buy elsewhere.
Probably because this is not repairability, but rather dividing device into smaller not repairable parts that can be replaced by purchasing parts from the manufacturer at inflated cost.
The last time my ThinkPad 755C was in the way and shuffled around as part of re-arranging, it still booted up.
The only other device I've owned which might have that sort of longevity is my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 (which I quite miss for its transflective display).
Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was in the ThinkPad line and that it had a Wacom EMR stylus....
No thanks. I don't like all their awful plastic. Make it from metal and glass.
I love my Thinkpad!
Nice, also my thinkpad required a full dismantle to change the keyboard, so I am rightly pissed given it's a premium product.
I love this. T14 gen 7 was the first NB I a actually bought for myself, and it's great to know that USB-C ports can just be replaced that easilly without soldering and that it was designed from the start with repairability in mind. Non-A USB ports is something that always ends up failing.
Does it mean I can buy chips that are on the boards and solder them if they go bad?
It sounds like repairability means dividing device into smaller not repairable parts and make extra money off of it.
For instance, can I get those replaceable ports on Mouser?
Repairwashing.
Shame the keyboards have a copilot key. That doesn't sound so bad until you see that the thing emits a key chord, not a scancode, making it annoying to remap. But you can.
The most annoying part is that the key matrix isn't set up to 3-key rollover with the copilot key like it would be for a real modifier key. (I'd assumed they'd just keep the matrix they used when there was a modifier in that spot. Nope.) Consequently, some key combinations, e.g. ralt-rcontrol-spacebar, don't work. Press them, nothing happens. Infuriating.