Long lasting battery is the feature I appreciate most from a laptop. My T430 with the extended slice battery gives me 7-10 hours, and could probably get another 3+ if I swapped out the CD drive for the Power Bridge battery.
Long live the ThinkPad.
Edit: This is with mostly casual use on an Arch Linux setup.
I think the next killer feature I want/look for in a laptop is the ability to see the screen in bright sunlight. It's a gorgeous day today and I would mind spending a few hours by the waterfront coding.
This year's models are doing away with replaceable batteries for the most part. T490 has a built-in 50 Whr battery and no ability to extend or replace that without removing screws. It also gets rid of the 2.5 in drive option, one of the RAM slots (but it adds a soldered one), and it replaces the full size SD with a micro-SD. All of that for a small reduction in weight and thickness.
So, basically, the thinkpad line is gone now, it's just another poor macbook pro knockoff. I expect to see articles like this one for years to come, given that there are almost no options left if you want power, expandability and battery life in a single laptop package.
Well if it was a MacBook, everything would be glued-in or soldered, but yes the trend is worrying. I guess the popularity of MacBooks, despite their form-over-function, is what is driving this. But surely they could have kept the T490 like the T480, especially as the T490s exists.
There’s maybe a billion-dollar opportunity there: maybe someone could invent a hybrid screen that switches from (O)LED to e-ink mode under bright lighting conditions.
Somebody did invent a hybrid screen, Pixel Qi, it was used in the Notion Ink Adam tablet from 2010.
But it wasn't a billion-dollar opportunity and Pixel Qi are so forgotten they were reported by the media as closed down, although might technically still exist (and might have released their IP to the public, I haven't read too far on it just now).
Long live the ThinkPad.
Edit: This is with mostly casual use on an Arch Linux setup.
I think the next killer feature I want/look for in a laptop is the ability to see the screen in bright sunlight. It's a gorgeous day today and I would mind spending a few hours by the waterfront coding.