Lenovo halves its ThinkPad workstation range Lenovo has halved its range of portable workstations. The Chinese PC giant this week announced the ThinkPad P16. The loved-by-some ThinkPad P15 and P17 are to be retired, The Register has confirmed. The P16 machine runs Intel 12th Gen HX CPUs, all the way to 16-core i9 models. Nvidia RTX A5500 graphics are an option. Memory …
I have a P15S provided by my employer.
I have no complaints. Seems well-built, can take some abuse and for me the keyboard is excellent.
Only downside is the fan gets noisy. I have bigger issues with Win 11 on it..
When i read the article, I'd honestly assumed that the P16 shipped with Linux, and Win 11 was the downgrade option.
Lenovo has a rather confusing lineup of machines, although for some time, there has been a slim variant of the workstation line denoted with an "s" which basically is a T-series with Quadro graphics.
Inadvertently, you have shared the specification of the P16s, not the upcoming P16, which will have up to Nvidia A5500 16GB dedicated GPU, NOT Intel Xe as standard, with an optional T550. Of course the P16 will also feature a 4k+ display option, not to mention the OLED Touch option with pen support shared in the press release.
If you write an article based on a press release, why not read it first?
I wish I could see "a pair of USB-A sockets are on offer, along with...'' on their 14-inch range. Alas.
...
give them five years, they might wake up to the fact that macbook pro mumble mumble sd slot mumble mumble. Another five, to make it flush with the chassis (new! revolutionary! idea!). By which time, apple will have gone through another slot-slaughtering phase, so give it another five years and lenovo...
For tech workers that run nothing more than outlook, some web browser tabs and Teams locally is there ever going to be a decent mid-range lenovo that doesn't struggle?
The only ones that don't seem to fall over were the 20gb T-series models I used but even then their CPU tended to get into Nuclear Fusion temps
The P15 range has a number of variations. I remember getting excited about the pricing on the S and W models before noticing their specific limitations (which I no longer remember). The current P15 Gen 2 model is very capable with up to 128GB RAM, RTX graphics cards, an i7, i9 or Xeon processors (but all limited to 8 cores), and 3 SSD drives (one Gen 4 and two Gen 3). That's pretty good for serious number crunching and it's a first time in a while that the new laptop was faster than the daily drive desktop.
Alas, as other have noted fan noise is an issue. I have run it for many hours at 100% CPU with stable CPU speed and temperature without issues along as you can stand the white noise.
I don't consider this an improvement by any stretch of the imagination, and would like to know what drove them to it.
Or is it that after two years of COVID-induced teleworking, programmers - pardon, developers - are now in such poor physical shape that they can no longer carry a P17?
BTW, where I Iive we have trains that come with 240V sockets at every seat and WiFi connections, so while you may be travelling for eight hours, you're not losing a day's work. Beats flying.
Workstations from Lenovo, Dell, HP are disappearing into low end trash. Sealed in batteries, limited RAM slots or slots requiring taking the damn thing apart to reach. M2 slots same, on the inside of the MB. I don't need thinner and lighter, I need capable, reliable and up gradable - by me without 4 hours with a zillion teeny screws and delicate ribbon cables.
The new Dell Precison Workstation laptops have NO ETHERNET PORT, only wifi, because ???? F**K thinner and lighter.
Only the thin and light options which are mostly derived from the XPS chassis have not ethernet to my knowledge? e.g. Precision 5570 and 5770
You have to use a USB c adaptor.
The full on purpose built Precision 7000 series retain ethernet, e.g soon to be launched Precision 7770 17.3 inch see spect sheet
https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/workstations/technical-support/precision-7770-spec-sheet.pdf
It's only the 5000 series such as the 5570 and 5770 that a lacking ethernet ports. The soon to be launched 7000 series (7670 16 inch and 7770 17.3 inch) still have ethernet ports and upgradable Ram (well CAMM) m.2 ssd and its relatively easy to do so.
Plus dell Pro Support is excellent next business day or 4 hour optional onsite support to fix issues and replace components at no cost. That is a big factor for both large organisations and individual contractors, Downtime = loss of productivity and money.
While we use it rarely its certainly paid off, when something goes its minimal hassle to get it fixed the support staff really know their stuff, whereas when we had basic support it was off a script and very poor.
Even had one usercrecently with an almost 3 year old laptop where they couldn't get the spare parts quickly to fix it... Instead Dell gave them a latest generation equivilant with much better specs, no quibbling just sorted it
I still use a P50, and I regret not getting it with the Xeon so I could have ECC memory. Currently with 48GB (max 64GB). Not that I have (m)any issues without ECC just would like it with this much memory. I don't know what I was thinking when I opted for the regular i7.
IMO anything with more than say 4GB should be on ECC where possible, and IMO again beyond say 64GB regular ECC isn't adequate anymore (feel free to do web searches on HP Advanced ECC, IBM ChipKill, and Intel Lockstep mode(Introduced with Xeon 5500), though I like HP's implementation the best by far(as it offers better than regular ECC protection and has zero memory overhead).
Note that HP's Advanced ECC was first introduced in 1996, it's not new technology. Shocking that so many are still relying on regular ECC these days.
HP have done the same with their Zbook Fury range they will now only offer a 16.0 inch model which like the Lenovo is pretty much a 15.6 inch chassis with a slightly taller screen. However Dell have gone to Precision 7670 16.0 inch but have also kept their 7770 17.3 Inch.
From what I hear Dell have far more volume in the Workstation market so it may well be this is the reasoning behind the changes.
I'm not convinced that you can cool the ever more powerful graphics like the A5500 topping 150W as well in a 15.6/16.0 form factor especially with the Cpu demands also increasing. so for me the 17 inch form factor is going to my choice for performance until I can test options.
Having said that I have the current Precision 7760 17.3 inch myself putting it up against a colleagues 7560 15.6 inch chassis it is a significant size difference so for hybrid work the smaller size is likely a tempting factor!
Dell have also added a 14 inch 5470 which looks similar to the XPS range but is exclusive to workstations so seem to be going the opposite way and adding more form factors.
Also of interest is that Dell have worked with intel to create their own thinner single pcb CAMM memory format rather than using 2 or 4x SO-DIMM. I believe this gives them more space for cooling and may smaller chassis in futur.main downside is upgrades mens removing existing Ram, and to get ECC Ram you have to use an inteposer and are limited to 64GB ECC. Dell are hoping CAMM will become the new standard but time will tell.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/693366/dell-defends-its-controversial-new-laptop-memory.html/amp
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