Posted: 2023-04-26

The old Thinkpad X201 has become my daily driver

Lenovo Thinkpad X201

The X201 is a machine from 2010, and one of the last Thinkpad X-models with a classical keyboard. And like all Thinkpads, it has a great TrackPoint.

I upgraded the RAM to 8 Gb.

Some specs of the laptop:

So, in this present day, this is not a real number cruncher.

However, the machine holds it own.

This is my setup:

Screenshot of the ThinkPad X201 running the suckless dwm window manager

On a typical day, you will find the following on my X201 desktop:

Emacs, compiled from a recent git pull
Firefox
ssh to local shell server, running tmux with irssi, mcabber, and some other stuff

The X201 runs these tasks surprisingly well.

Once you start using Emacs, more and more tasks are done in Emacs. Because of this, e.g., I tend to use Tmux less.

I own several laptops, including the much more capable Thinkpad X270. Still, I prefer to use the X201. There is mainly one reason for this:

The wonderful keyboard of the X201.

This is a classic Thinkpad keyboard. Typing on this keyboard is so nice!

The Trackpoint also works very fine, after I set some lines in .xinitrc.

The keyboard and the TrackPoint make a feast of using this small laptop!

Because of the 8 Gb RAM, I can run a virtual machine, using vmd, the OpenBSD hypervisor. I have done this once, as a kind of proof of concept.

For running virtual machines the X270 is a much better choice.

Also, my X270 runs FreeBSD, so it can run jails, something that OpenBSD does not facilitate.

So, I still boot my X270 on several occasions, but for most of my every day things, the X201 is the machine I prefer.