Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

Lenovo's Thinkpad X13s is a lovely, if odd, little laptop. It's a modern Arm machine that is trying as hard as it can to resemble a vanilla x86 laptop… and it carries it off. ThinkPad X13s gen 1 13-inch-Snapdragon laptop keyboard The Thinkpad X13s Gen 1 is not like most other Arm machines. There have been Arm-powered Windows …

[andy 103]

long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

"it needed to download umpteen dozens of updates, followed by a restart, followed by another dozen updates, another restart, and repeat until it's going-home time. We returned to it the following day, and there were some new updates."

Yeah, this is the thing I don't miss since switching to a Mac in 2015.

I'd really like to have a Windows laptop but this way it handles updates and annoying UI error messages are enough to make me never go back. Unless they fix that, it's an absolute deal breaker for me.

In the 7 years I've used a Mac I've never seen a single error message. Installing software and updates has been seamless.

The hardware doesn't particularly excite me. But it's interesting - and somewhat amusing - that 7 years on this kind of bullshit still hasn't been addressed in Windows.

[TonyJ]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I tend to just put updates on as they become available. That way, I get to choose the time for the reboots. It also tends to minimise the downtime. On average I reckon a regular set of updates adds around a minute to the boot time and even a large cumulative patch adds no more than 3 or 4 at the outside.

What I have noticed though with corporate machines managed by WSUS is that they send updates out at 9am with maybe one or two chances to defer, but then force them down when you logoff/shut down the machine and that is annoying as all hell.

[sebacoustic]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I principle I think it's a good idea to do install pending updates on shutdown, because that's when you just professed your intention to not use the computer for a bit.

Of course, no actual downloading should take place during the process, just installing pieces that have already been downloaded ion the background as you worked. Fedora does just that: install off-line updates, and it works fine, just a small number of niggles: 1) have to enter disk encryption passphrase during the restart that precedes the install 2) on my laptop, shutting the lid will suspend the update, it's be cool if it could get on with that as I pack up and go home.

Is Windows 11 more helpful in this regard? I doubt it but would be delighted to hear otherwise.

[hammarbtyp]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

What is this "shutdown" of which you speak of @sebacoustic ?

[doublelayer]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I think it's a good option, but it's useful that, when updates are available, normal user-managed Windows installs give you the option to shut down without updating as well, an option that corporate-managed machines often ignore. The reason is that, if it's a laptop and it usually is, I might need to take it with me. Having it installing updates while closed in a bag and not plugged in is inconvenient because the machine can overheat or lose power. My solution to this would be to put it into sleep mode instead of shutting down until I'm ready to install the updates. I understand why companies do this, because I've seen enough people who would never install updates except when being threatened with violence so I'm aware that my acceptance and compliance is not universal.

[the spectacularly refined chap]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

It's five o'clock and I'm going home. IT push out updates on an almost daily basis. No, I'm not sitting there at my computer's disposal - I'm doing the four second button press, bagging the laptop and heading out of there.

[SCP]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

To me it seemed like forced updates were arranged to occur 10 mins after you connected your laptop to a projector. Perhaps the reasoning was that your audience would be impressed that "security is our highest priority".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I did the same in 2006, the irony being that that wasn't the original expectation.

I just bough a machine for research, high spec as I had the intention to convert it to Windows (which you still could in those days) when I had finished my research.

Only that didn't happen, because after the month I gave myself I found I had saved so much time that degrading the machine to Windows would have been silly, as it also worked much better with the Linux machines I had around and online.

Where it gets more interesting is that from 2016 onwards I have had one machine on the beta channel, and even with that I have had no issue with updates on every machine as much as once. That said, there's no Microsoft and no Adobe on any machine (I looked at what they do online with Wireshark once, and that was the end of that).

About the only thing I found is that LibreOffice 7.5's spreadsheet is noticeably slower than 7.4, I assume that's because it still contains diagnostics code. So I re-installed 7.4 instead for the time being - I'll wait for 7.6 to be released which is imminent.

That all said, I must admit I was surprised to find an author who puts all that misery on display, normally authors too skip over that as 'veteran Windows users'. It's a shame the unit is rather limited in ports - it did read like it would have otherwise made a nice Linux machine and Lenovos *are* quite robust.

[Liam Proven]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

[Author here]

> That all said, I must admit I was surprised to find an author who puts all that misery on display, normally authors too skip over that as 'veteran Windows users'.

Well, I am the "Reg FOSS desk". ;-)

> It's a shame the unit is rather limited in ports - it did read like it would have otherwise made a nice Linux machine and Lenovos *are* quite robust.

It really is as shame.

For me personally, I find that 2 USB ports are *more* than twice as much use as a single USB port on a low-end Arm device.

As an example: you can have it on power, charging, and *also* connect an ordinary hub -- implying, not some special-purpose fancy powered hub that can charge the device, just any old ordinary USB2 hub will do... and then connect a PC-like assortment of devices top that hub: a mouse and a keyboard and an external drive, for instance. Say, an external 2.5" hard disk, powered off that hub, or a USB key, or both.

This is where the computer being on the mains suddenly matters, and that's why I specify a 2.5" hard disk. A 3.5" hard disk will be spinning rust, and that will need mains power. But a 2.5" notebook hard disk, although spinning rust, is powered off the USB port. So it will nuke a pocketable Arm device's battery. Suddenly being on a mains supply *matters*.

One port, and that port needs to power it, and if you want other devices too, that hub has to support providing power and I/O. That's not a given.

Two ports, and one can provide power while the other drives a hub and all your external kit.

*BUT* this is not a low-end Arm device like a cheap fondleslab. It's an expensive premium high-end Arm device. That's why I expected more than two ports.

Two is good. Two is much better than one. Two is a bare minimum. But for over a thousand quid, I expect more than a bare minimum. For a £1200 device, I expect a plenitude.

[Liam Proven]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

D'oh. Botched my own edit.

* It really is A shame.

* devices TO that hub

>_<

[DJV]

Re: D'oh. Botched my own edit.

Ah, so Reg authors are also restricted by the annoying 10-minute edit window!

Maybe there should be a longer moderated window - i.e. a form where you submit a requested change to one of our posts but someone on the staff has to moderate that it really is a valid spolling or trypo correction! (sic)

To save the staff from getting unduly hassled, maybe you could only submit one per day and never more than one for the same post.

[Liam Proven]

Re: D'oh. Botched my own edit.

> Ah, so Reg authors are also restricted by the annoying 10-minute edit window!

This one is, anyway. But I had my Reg commenter's account long before I wrote for the Reg as a freelancer, and I was a freelancer for more than a decade before I joined the staff.

[David 132]

Re: D'oh. Botched my own edit.

> Reg authors are also restricted by the annoying 10-minute edit window!

But on the plus side, as an official Reg staffer, you’re allowed to drive in bus lanes, take a shopping trolley through “baskets only” checkouts, you’re accredited to perform weddings and register deaths, and as a team you are collectively third in line to the throne.

Plus, of course, all that attention from screaming Reg groupies, although I dare say that gets a bit tedious.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: D'oh. Botched my own edit.

@liam, do you go to computer shops, try to pay with an utterly invalid card, then whip out your Reg staffer's card and say "wanna writeup?"

[dharmOS]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I use a Snapdragon 7c Win 11 PC as my main driver at work. Definitely not a machine that you would consider for all computing duties, but does work well enough if you stick to Win ARM64 software religiously.

www.apcsilmic.com/products/dot-mini-pc (about the size of a Mac Mini or NUC, no screen, keyboard, mouse etc)

To find ARM64 software, you often have to download beta versions tucked away on the developer's website rather than the MS Store (which often delivers the x86/X64 version!). I have managed to find Win ARM64 versions of Spotify, Signal Desktop, 7-Zip, DOSBox-X, Office 365 (obviously), MS OpenJDK 11, MS Keyboard and Mouse Center, MS Teams, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio 17, Firefox, Notepad ++, OpenVPN and Wireguard, Powertoys, VLC, Winmerge and from the MS Store: Debian for WSL, and Pengwin for WSL, fedora Remix for WSL, WSL itself and WSLg, Xbox app with integrated xCloud streaming, Minecraft, Leonardo, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+. Sadly this list is probably comprehensive for ARM64 versions.

For the rest of software need, it involves using the x86 or X64 versions, which run noticeably slower (e.g. screen/GUI interactions sluggish, slow to load, slow to perform in application processing).

For the cost of ~£300, the DOT 1 Mini PC is fine, runs silently (passive heatsink case). Sadly £1300 for the ThinkPad is just a bit too pricey...

[fromxyzzy]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

One of the curiosities I hadn't considered in many years (a quirk of some 90s laptops), which I found to be the case with the Pinebook Pro and many other ARM devices, is that the power input is routed through and dependent on the battery. So, when you mention that this machine won't power on when the battery is completely dead without allowing it to charge a bit beforehand, it does beg the question: Does this £1200 device use the same sort of power 'management' methodology as the lowest priced ARM devices? And is there a reason for that related to it being ARM-based?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I've come across a few brands of laptop where certain models exhibit that same behaviour, including both HP and Lenovo. It's usually because the charger has failed, the user broke the charger or simply didn't have somewhere to plug in and HAD to get some work done before reporting the issue to IT and totally flattened the battery. It usually only takes a few minutes on charge before the laptop will switch on. On the other hand, with it stripped down for diagnostics/repair, they will power on via the PSU with the battery disconnected. Maybe the power management simply sees a fully dead battery as needing all available power to jump start the charging process for a couple of minutes. I've no idea how the charging process works with various battery technologies in that situation, just a best guess. I do seem to vaguely remember one some years ago that didn't power on with the supplied 45W charger but did with a 65W charger, then later worked perfectly fine with it's 45W charger. As I said, best empirical guess. Not enough data to be definitive in my case.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

Cheaper devices structure the power system as charger-to-battery-to-device, with no charger-to-device path. This is bad, as the battery is now being float-charged all the time the device is on, and connected to the charger. Float charging == death for LiPo cells.

[Liam Proven]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

[Author here]

> And is there a reason for that related to it being ARM-based?

Interesting point, and thanks for that.

Yes, I suspect it probably is, but I am not privy to details. Sadly, I did not get reams of datasheets and things with the machine!

The reason that a lot of Arm machines have strange similarities to one another, even competing models from rival vendors, is that they're highly-integrated SoC based systems.

When an OEM vendor puts together an x86 laptop, they have a wide choice of components, and I've seen unusual combinations such as an AMD laptop with an nVidia GPU before now.

But ever since Acorn invented the SoC with the ARM250 in the 1990s, Arm has been different. Most of what in an x86 box is the motherboard logic is all one silicon chip: the processor, the chipset, the GPU, the memory controller, the bus interfaces, etc. are all one part, and you can't mix and match.

That is in part why Apple spent billions acquiring chip companies (e.g. PA Semi) and processor design talent: to be able to initially design their own SoCs in house, and then later, design their own CPU cores and GPUs, and integrate those into their own SoCs. The results have been exceptional, although sadly, a lot of the top talent has left now. OTOH the same is true of the NeXT top talent that built OS X, and yet development on that continues.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

"Two is good. Two is much better than one. Two is a bare minimum. But for over a thousand quid, I expect more than a bare minimum. For a £1200 device, I expect a plenitude."

While I agree, you are not the target market if you need all those extra ports. After all, it's a laptop, and a slim one at that, not a desktop :-)

I'd not have one for the same reason. It's also a bit pricey in my view for that and other short-comings. On the other hand, every site I visit, the desks generally all have screens on them which are also USB hubs, and you just plug your laptop in via (one of) the USB-C port(s) and get screen, keyboard, mouse and sometimes networking. Or you carry a small port replicator that gives you power, USB, Ethernet, HDMI etc. There's even on in the X13s manual which it says is supplied with some models or available as an optional extra. See Page 21 [PDF} Theirs even has an SD-Card slot too and looks easily small enough to keep in the laptop bag. No idea of the price, not cheap I suspect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

Speaking of ports, how are people feeling about port-limited and no-wired-ethernet configs, which seems to be a growing trend on laptops and portables?

Yes yes, wireless nics are great and all that, thanks for providing one of those. But sometimes you need a cable.

I admit: my first reaction was "ugh, no network port? That's out, then". Not the first time, either. Disclaimer: I'm not a regular traveling road warrior, other than trips to the local datacenter.

But while I don't own such a device (yet?), I'm slowly coming around to the notion of "keep a known-good USB GigE dongle in your go-bag". I mean, I typically do that anyway, but I guess I'm (admittedly somewhat grudgingly) starting to accept the idea of somewhat permanently spending a USB port on a NIC for gadgets like this.

My daily driver laptop still has a wired NIC, and while it's years old by now it's still entirely capable with Debian and XFCE, so I don't expect to need to sort this dilemma right away. But I can see the day is probably coming....

[Down not across]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

Two is good. Two is much better than one. Two is a bare minimum. But for over a thousand quid, I expect more than a bare minimum. For a £1200 device, I expect a plenitude.

You don't say. For a "pro" device wired ethernet is a must, although Dell for example has ultraportables that require their "puck" or other USB device for wired ethernet so I suppose it is the unfortuante trend. I'd rather the devices stayed thick enough for RJ45 and make use of the space for larger battery or something. They even charge 10 quid for ethernet dongle on 1500 quid laptop (at least looking at Lenovo's site)

Anyway, i digress, I was expecting the price tag to be less than half. For ~500 (quid,euro,dollar(US)) it could be worthy of consideration. Anything over 700 and it isn't (for me anyway) any kind of value for money. Pleased to see WWAN (well 5G in this case) is an option but costs 200 quid extra.

[jaduncan]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

You could do worse than an M1 Apple - Asahi Linux is coming along and will soon be a Fedora spin.

[Matt_payne666]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

Yes, Mac OS never fails to be better than Windows...

My M1 mini needed updates when I unboxed it... Then out of the blue Apple announces the death of Profile manager - in 3 weeks time!

so after Apple Depreciating Profile manager, I cant update the OS as it will disable that last remaining slice of Mac Server.

but even with updates disabled I get a prompt in the top right that I have to dismiss every time I log in.

Apple Configurator too, just works*

*when it feels like it, with many a force close/server restart when it decides to just hang.

and as a side note - Windows 11 runs faster and the battery lasts longer doing comparable tasks on my 8GB i5 Macbook12 than Ventura does...

All Operating systems need updates, all software can be flaky

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I think the whole Mac Server idea was one of the things that Apple never got right. Heck, even a Linux box with the same functionality was easier to use IMHO, the UI was definitely not up to their usual standards so I'm not surprised they eventually walked away from that idea - it just didn't fit well.

As for profile creation, I prefer to use the free one from the iMazing guys. It feels more thought through.

[Sgt_Oddball]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

So not a developer then? The fun and games moving from Intel macs to Arm macs has been..... Interesting what with getting installers to work, rosetta to behave other misc stuff.

That said, fine once done and I'm still shocked at being able to work for a day in the office without worrying about bringing my charger with me.

[Steve Channell]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

The predecessor of this machine was the Lenovo Yoga which was released with Windows RT 8 – I used it for years as my main email/browser laptop. Its ARM processor meant it was instant-no and could run so long I never took the power-brick with me. Sure there was a big update when Windows 8.1 came along, but for email/browsing it never needed to be updated (thanks to Edge, hackers didn’t target it either).

It’s not really a fair comparison to equate the recent Windows-11 update with the walled garden of an Apple Macintosh or Windows-RT: All those updates are to enable functions that the (long-term) target audience would not be interested in.

It probably doesn’t compare to an Arm-powered modern Mac (unless quality keyboard is a large driver), but should be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

"t’s not really a fair comparison to equate the recent Windows-11 update with the walled garden of an Apple Macintosh or Windows-RT: All those updates are to enable functions that the (long-term) target audience would not be interested in."

F.F.S. Macs are not in a walled garden. If macOS warns you not to open some software it is dead easy to get round it. For fuck's sake, Apple even tell you how to do same.

[doublelayer]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

I agree that Macs are not a walled garden and the original complaint is baseless. However, I have to disagree with "Apple even tell you how to [get around software they block]". No, they don't. I know how to do it, and one reason is that I've been called for assistance by everyone I know who got hit with the message that Mac OS gives when you try to run something untrusted. The message that makes it look like the file's been corrupted and does not tell you that you have to open the menu and select "Open", even though you just did that by clicking on the application, then possibly go into the settings to change a policy, then go through that menu again and then it will be trusted. They don't tell you how to do that. Still, because it is still supported, it would not be fair to call them a walled garden. Just a garden whose gate latches are weird and confuse people.

[Steve Channell]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

To clarify, the "walled garden" I was referring to the operating system, where the core operating system, drivers and sub-systems can only be sourced from Apple. Windows-11 WOA has had a major upgrade to host x86 and AMD64 binaries in a sub-system and WSL2 Wayland - these personalities have no equivalent on the Mac, or franking interest for most laptop users.

You're right to suggest that the Mac does not provide a walled garden for app - that after all is why you can't run iPhone apps on a Macintosh

[doublelayer]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

"To clarify, the "walled garden" I was referring to the operating system, where the core operating system, drivers and sub-systems can only be sourced from Apple."

You can install drivers and kernel extensions from third parties. By default, you will need to get a special certificate from Apple to do this, but they still allow you to build them and a user who is willing to deactivate their security checks can use unsigned ones. They have deprecated some interfaces used by kernel extensions and migrated behaviors to system extensions, but the ability to attach others' system modifications is still there. I don't think this qualifies for walled garden status as IOS does, where you cannot add something to the system unless it fits in narrow approved channels and Apple has approved every step of the process.

[big_D]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

Except that Windows generally only needs a single Windows update, maybe a couple of .Nets, the rest should just be drivers, which Vantage takes care of.

I rebuilt my Lenovo last month, it went back to 22H2, February roll-up update for Windows and .Net and about half an hour for Vantage to update all the drivers.

Also the Office 365 thing, if they had logged Office into their account, it would simply keep running...

I'm not a big Microsoft fan these days, I still have to use it at work, mostly, but I use macOS and Linux at home, and my backup laptop at work is a MacBook Air, but a lot of the whinging in the review certainly isn't true of Intel based Windows devices, and I have a hard time believing that the update process on ARM is much difference. When we get a new laptop in, out of the box (Dell and Lenovo mainly), it generally takes 2-3 hours to get it updated and the key apps installed. Under Windows 7, that was a very different story.

[Liam Proven]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

[Author here]

> Also the Office 365 thing, if they had logged Office into their account, it would simply keep running...

Your assumptions (plural) are invalid.

[1] If you look at the screenshots, you'll see that it *is* logged into my personal Microsoft account. You should also note my mention about the ongoing nags about my OneDrive being full, which tells you the same thing.

That made no difference. This is because...

[2] I do not have an Office 365 account. This is because:

[a] I strongly dislike Office 365, or any Ribbon-based version, as I have often stated.

[b] I already own, and prefer, Word 97 and Office 2000, and they do all I need.

[c] I usually run an OS that these apps and suites do not support.

[d] I object to giving money to one of the richest corporations in the world.

[e] My work email account isn't an Office 365 account either.

So when I said that Office expired very quickly unless I were to buy it, then your response boils down to:

"That's not true. You don't need to buy Office if you've already bought Office."

If you will forgive me for saying so, I don't think that is a helpful contribution.

Additionally to that:

> a lot of the whinging in the review certainly isn't true of Intel based Windows devices

This is *completely* wrong, but you entirely bear out my observation in the story:

«

long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice.

»

[big_D]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

OK, that explains it. But if you don't have an Office account, that is hardly the fault of the PC. In that case, I would have just skipped over it with, "Office 365 is pre-installed, for those with a subscription".

As I said, I install several new PCs a month and, since Windows 10, the updating, once they come out of the box, usually only takes a couple of hours, at the most - we only have had a 50mbps line at the previous office, so it wasn't as if we were downloading the patches over a gigabit connection.

There are plenty of things to moan about in Windows and with each new "Moment" for Windows 11, it seems to get worse, but initial patching and monthly patching is now, generally, better than macOS and Linux, in my experience. Every time I look at my Ubuntu or openSUSE machines, there seems to be at least a couple of dozen packages that need updating and Apple still has monolithic updates, which seem to take forever to install, even if they aren't as frequent as Linux or Windows, generally.

[Marty McFly]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

"Yeah, this is the thing I don't miss since switching to a Mac in 2015"

Love my Macs too. Except about two months ago EVERY ONE of the Ventura Macs started DAILY prompting to verify my Apple ID. While it doesn't take me off-line for a reboot, it is really damn annoying when I have 4 of them in daily use. Mac OS has almost become as annoying as Windows. I will note my two older High Sierra Macs just keep quite and don't annoy the hell out of me.

Crap. I guess I just said it. My older Mac OS versions are less annoying than the current Mac OS versions. I could substitute XP/Win 7 and Win10/11 in that sentence. Dang.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

The hardware doesn't particularly excite me. But it's interesting ...

At £1,258?

Surely you jest.

.

[Updraft102]

16:10 != 1920x1080

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

Suspect it's 16:9 like a normal HD screen. Having non-square pixels is just asking for trouble. You might get away with it on a laptop screen, as you can't sensibly rotate the screen.

[Liam Proven]

[Author here]

> Suspect it's 16:9 like a normal HD screen.

No. I got the Y res wrong, not the ratio, which was correct.

That part was correct. If it was just another 16:9 then I wouldn't have called out the aspect ratio.

Now fixed.

[Liam Proven]

[Author here]

> 16:10 != 1920x1080

Good catch. Sorry about that. It *is* 16:10 and the true resolution is 1920x1200. My mistake.

[David 132]

I’m glad that PC/laptop screens have finally moved away from the annoyance of a few years ago where they were all 720p or 1080p (because those panels were manufactured by the bajillion for TVs, and hence cheaper).

It’s so nice to once again be able to buy computer screens with decent vertical resolution!

[James Dore]

Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

I want to see a roundup of the Linux flavours you can install on it, then I'll be opening my wallet.

[werdsmith]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

I was thinking the same until I reached the £1258 part.

[mark l 2]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

Id love to have a play around testing some Linux distros on it, as Linux on ARM is probably more mature of a platform than Windows on ARM since the popularity of the Raspberry Pi.

But at that price I think ill have to wait til one turns up used on ebay in a couple of years time.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

It's £1,309 on the Lenovo web site today. Inflation?

[Liam Proven]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

[Author here]

> I want to see a roundup of the Linux flavours you can install on it, then I'll be opening my wallet.

The story was _written_ by the FOSS desk, i.e., me.

Running FOSS OSes on it is planned part 2 of this article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

Isn't that called foreshadowing?

Good writing technique :)

[andy 103]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

@Liam Proven - Does "[Author here]" appear automatically when you reply, or are you actually putting that in yourself?

Because, that red badge above, is usually a giveaway.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

> are you actually putting that in yourself?

All manual, I'm afraid.

(As evidence, I didn't bother here.)

I noticed in my early days as a full-time writer that in the comments people didn't check and compare byline with commenter name, and so didn't realise that I was trying to explain something I actually wrote, or correct a misunderstanding of it, or something.

I do the same on HN, Reddit etc. now.

[doublelayer]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

It's probably useful to do, because I have seen at least once where Liam commented on someone else's story and several people assumed he wrote it and accused him of contradicting himself when what he really did was not entirely agree with the original author. Clarifying that he's the author makes it clear that it's not another person employed here, though looking at the username would confirm this.

[Dante Alighieri]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

So are you trying ARM native apps like

!Impression

!Photodesk

!Artworks

!Zarch

a HAL and RISC OS would be most impressive.

Still waiting to see if Cloverleaf on PineBook Pro launches...

[AdamWill]

Re: Now hand it to the FOSS desk....

so, uh, I've been holding my breath for this one, and I'm starting to look a bit blue around the gills...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...There's also no RAM access hatch. Our machine had 16MB..."

Very impressive if it'll run Windows 11 in 16MB!

[Liam Proven]

[Author here]

> Very impressive if it'll run Windows 11 in 16MB!

D'oh! I was having a bad day. Now fixed.

[David 132]

I didn’t even notice. Thanks to a commenter on the Xerox Star article a few days ago, I’ve been deep in the rabbit-hole of reading old BYTE magazines from the 80s. All computers now in my conception have a million discrete components, RAM measured in the megabytes, and multiple 5-1/4” disc drives. Anything beyond that is witchcraft. Witchcraft, I tell you.

[John Brown (no body)]

"RAM measured in the megabytes"

Megabytes? Pah! Kids today!. Now git orf ma' lawn!

[DoctorPaul]

I refer you to Elite running in kilobytes of RAM on the BBC Micro

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! Luxury!

Running WUMPUS in the 1k of RAM a KIM1 has with nothing but a hex keyboard and display, that's real computing.

Now, has anyone seen my Zimmer frame?

:)

[Dickie Mosfet]

I can lose myself for hours in those old BYTE Magazine PDFs. As you progress through the years, you can see a shifting emphasis:

• The articles from the late 70s are concerned with building your own hardware

• The articles from the early 80s are all about writing your own software

• And then from the mid-80s, it's all about stuff you can buy off the shelf

I must say that the recent development of the CB2 microcomputer (http://cb2.qrp.gr/) and the Agon Light (https://www.thebyteattic.com/) are tempting me to travel back to a time of 16-colour screen palettes and 4kB memory chips.

[David 132]

You're right, and in the early 80s editions there's some really good in-depth discussions of how to write compilers, or plot lines on screen efficiently, or about object-oriented vs. functional programming. As the decade turns towards the 90s it's noticeable that the tone becomes more "look at this new ready-built PC from vendor X".

What struck me, more than anything I think, is how vibrant the ecosystem was at the time. Thousands of small companies touting their hardware/software/services, with varying degrees of hyperbole. "AI" cards for the PC/AT. Serial port printer sharers. 2MB!!! add-in memory boards. 19" monitors that can do a stunning 1280x1024 - in monochrome ;)

Maybe there's just as many small vendors now, but seeing them all shouting for attention in the small/classified ads really made me think that we've lost something, now that the personal computer is so much more standardized.

And less of the "kids today" please, sarcastic one above. I lived through that era the first time round and have the ZX81 RAMpack-blutack PTSD to prove it :)

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

Really?

A few of this type of device works just as well.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-Converting-Thunderbolt-MacBook-Devices/dp/B07CVX3516

Yes, a hub can provide more connectivity but if space/weight is at a premium then these little things will save the day and they don't cost LoadsAMoney

[Liam Proven]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

[Author here]

> A few of this type of device works just as well.

There's only 1 spare port when it's on the mains. So you can't connect a few of those. You can connect 1 of them, which isn't much help.

I suppose you could connect a USB-3 hub to that, but that seems more work than... connecting a USB-C hub, which is what I did.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

I hate to shill for any specific product, but I went for a compact, pass-through targus hub, DOCK412, to reduce (somewhat) port starvation in an offspring machine. I think these hubs were given away for pandemic to many people and they flog them on ebay for around 20-30 quid these days. It offers a handsome port selection, a vga, hdmi and old-style thunderbolt/mini-display, lan and 2 x usb3 (A). The only thing missing is sd-card reader, and pass-through usb-c is only up to 60W, I think, so perhaps slower charging. Otherwise, I'm very pleased, though the 'end user' shrugs, they really don't use any peripherals these days, just need to re-plug that power every now and then ;)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

For around £40, that looks pretty good.

[Catkin]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

I just wanted to say how excellent it is that you're taking the time to respond to requests for clarification in the comments.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

> I just wanted to say how excellent it is that you're taking the time to respond to requests for clarification in the comments.

Thank you for that! I do try. :-)

[David 132]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

> Thank you for that! I do try. :-)

As my mother used to retort ambiguously... "Yes. You certainly are trying."

[NeilPost]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

Too few authors do that. It makes the community feel far more engaged. Appreciated here too.

[NeilPost]

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

Sounds like a ton of modern laptops, MacBooks.

Just buy a cheap USB C hub, preferable one that can do Power Pass-Thru, and perhaps give you a 3rd display option - I’m sure Lenovo rather flog you a ThinkPad Travel Port Expander at £10, where and Anker USB C hub at £20 will do.

[PerlyKing]

ThinkPad pricing

I think you may be missing a zero from the ThinkPad price....

[Peter Christy]

Linux?

There's quite a few Linux distros out there for ARM64 (aarch64) architecture, and of course, they come with all the apps you're likely to need. I've got a version of Slackware-current running on a Pi-400, which whilst not lightning fast, is perfectly acceptable. I can even edit video on it, though rendering takes a while!

Of course, a more powerful machine would be desirable, and if it wasn't for the price, this would fit the bill nicely - IF it would run stock aarch64 distros. It probably should, if it will run Windows, but it would be nice if reviewers would try this. There are plenty of "live" distros that run from a USB key, so it doesn't even need an install to test it. The thing has USB-C ports, and USB-C to USB-3 adapters cost pennies.

So come on, lets have a more in depth review and see what this thing is really capable of!

[Liam Proven]

Re: Linux?

[Author here]

> There's quite a few Linux distros out there for ARM64 (aarch64) architecture,

It is _very much_ not that simple.

Not all x86 computers are PCs. You can't run DOS on an Intel MacBook Pro: there's no BIOS. It's the BIOS that made an x86 computer a PC-compatible, not the CPU. Early Apricots and the Sirius and the Victor were x86 computers which ran MS-DOS, but they weren't PC compatible and they couldn't run PC apps.

There is no standard firmware for Arm.

Arm Ltd encourages people to use UEFI for Arm64, but not everyone does. The Raspberry Pi 4 is an Arm64 machine but it has no UEFI: its "firmware" is the entire ThreadX proprietary RTOS, now owned by Microsoft and branded Azure RTOS.

This means every Arm OS has to be individually ported to every separate SoC and every motherboard that supports that SoC. Every device is a whole new port.

As I explained here:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/03/armbian_project_releases_version_2202/

So, for instance, openSUSE Tumbleweed supports Arm64, but it won't boot on the X13s because it doesn't support this model of Snapdragon.

GRUB loads, but once you pick a kernel, it's hold-down-the-power-button-for-10-seconds time.

[cookieMonster]

Re: Linux?

Re: “ its "firmware" is the entire ThreadX proprietary RTOS, now owned by Microsoft”

Probably the most disturbing thing I’ve read this year

[Liam Proven]

Re: Linux?

> Probably the most disturbing thing I’ve read this year

Yup. That's why I keep pointing it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX

That's also why the various efforts to write FOSS Pi firmware have all stalled.

https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware

Note especially the author's explanation of why that effort stalled:

https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware/issues/37#issuecomment-388551489

The real computer in the Pi 0/1/2/3/4 (but not the Pico) is the VideoCore GPU. The Arm is an afterthough, masked onto a corner of the silicon. The GPU starts the machine, loads the "firmware" from GPU, runs it, then loads an Arm payload from SD, puts it in RAM, wakes up the Arm and points it at the payload code in memory and sets it off.

[WaveSynthBeep]

Re: Linux?

It is very much not simple, but there is device tree for this laptop in the kernel. So I suspect a suitably-compiled kernel could be persuaded to boot on it, and then you can run a distro of choice, maybe not perfectly but enough to try it out.

(it's the same chip as the Windows Dev Kit 2022, and that one doesn't have an official device tree. Folks are working on that)

[Anonymous Coward]

lovely machine

shame about OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: lovely machine

well, slapping my own wrist, it would be lovely machine with non-arm processor. Then it'd run a regular OS (or even W10!), in which case, f... about with software wouldn't be an issue, though Windows would haunt it either way. I wonder what the reasoning behind arm-based machine was for Lenovo. Surely not profit, it's not like it's gonna fly off the shelves? Even at half-price reduction (which will come surely enough). Or is it just the typical lenovo 'metoo', i.e. apeing apple?

[doublelayer]

Re: lovely machine

When you call it a "lovely machine", what are you referring to? So far, you've indicated you don't like the software, the processor, and the price. This seems mostly incompatible with calling it lovely unless you're particularly enamored of something else, like only having two ports or having non-replaceable batteries and RAM.

I'm not that impressed with it either. I'm glad they're using some open firmware for ARM, so maybe eventually we'll have more generic support for alternative operating systems, but since we don't have that, I'm not that interested. It's also expensive for something that's not a great machine. The only benefit I can see is the battery life if you don't use emulation, which is nice but I don't really need it at the moment.

[Liam Proven]

Re: lovely machine

[Author here]

> shame about OS

Actually, yes, I agree. It's not perfect and frankly for nearly 5x the cost of an Arm ChromeBook, I would expect the thing to have more ports than the ChromeBook! But yes, it _is_ a nice machine and it _is_ a shame about the OS.

Apple has good reasons for not reproducing the iOS experience in macOS: macOS came first, and I damned well do expect to be able to just install my own apps on my Macs, and not to have to go through Apple's app store and live inside their walled garden. So, in fact, on my own x86 Macs, there are almost no apps from the App Store, and the the handful there are, are things which are closed shops anyway, such as Slack. I can't directly get a 3rd party Slack client for the simple reason that there aren't any 3rd party Slack clients.

(In fact I use Franz, which cheats: it embeds the Slack web "app".)

In the much smaller walled garden of Windows-on-Arm, I expected MICROS~1 to have fixed some of the issues of the mad melée that is Windows-on-x86.

It hasn't.

Why can't Windows Update also update apps from the MS Store?

I might look to the MS App Store for native Arm apps, because there aren't that many Arm-native Windows apps out there. But the MS Store won't tell me if they are native Arm apps or not. I can't tell. Why not?

[dharmOS]

MS Store x86 x64 ARM ARM64 ?? - how to tell

Hi Liam

In the MS Store app, if you scroll down to the "System Requirements" drop down arrow, it will tell you which ISA it is natively compiled in.

e.g. Amazon Prime Video for Windows

OS: Windows 10 or greater

Architecture: x86, x64, Arm, Arm64

Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS

Architecture: x64, Arm64

etc etc

[NeilPost]

Windows RT back

Sounds like not a great deal of progress has been made since the days of Windows RT/Windows Phone.

I guess Web-apps like Office 364/Google have come on a bit since then.

[Anonymous Coward]

And for its very significant £1,258

so... for about a grand, I can get a 14-inch, touch-screen and pen, 4K, great sound, convertible lenovo. Plus usbA port, physical cam shutter, W10 and no need to f... around hunting for apps that work / might work. Minus: micro-sd, 5K webcam/hello, thinkpad nipple, extra 500g weight. OK, also minus the crappy, horrible keyboard, which is standard on any lenovo laptop these days anyway.

Or I could use my x220 ;)

[CrazyOldCatMan]

"and alarmingly, even plugged in it won't turn on until the battery has some charge"

Modern Macbook Pros do this.

We nearly sent a bunch back - they'd been bought with end-of-FY funds and had sat in a cupboard for 9 months[1]. And got flatter than yer average Belgian crepe.

I got one out to build, connected it to the power and turned it on. Absolutely nothing apparently happened.

One minor panic later and a few DDG searches I discovered that this was now the default. 10 minutes later, I get the friendly startup chime and could do the (re)-build.

[1] Turns out that some of them did have to go back to the supplier for them to turn the battery back on - if they get *too* low, the battery firmware turns them off and they have to be reset by the supplier (which was free - we have a good relationship) before they'll charge properly. There is a reason for it but I've forgotten it - more important stuff (like buying some nice Rum) has taken over the neurons required to store the info...

[eszklar]

Quick Ubuntu 23.04 Daily Build Test

Liam:

Anyway to do quick down-and-dirty test with say Ubuntu 23.04 Daily Build for ARM and a 6.3.x-RC kernel build? Canonical is working on support for this Thinkpad and Ubuntu 23.04 is supposed to be released on April 20th, but in the meantime......

Great review. Really looking forward to you testing Linux on this.

[DrXym]

Seems pointless

Given that the majority of Windows applications are (and always will be) x86 (32-bit or 64-bit), then what's the point of an ARM device? Any power savings will be lost just by having it run typical software through emulation. Not only does it drain the battery but the performance will be bad compared to running natively. Might as well buy an AMD / Intel based laptop and be done with it.

The weird thing is that Microsoft could have made processor architecture an irrelevance if they had adopted LLVM or something like it - i.e. software is compiled to a virtual instruction set which is then compiled natively and cached the first time it is run. Or maybe it is compiled natively before downloading from the store. They could provide x86 emulation but over time it wouldn't be such a big deal. But Microsoft still haven't done it, despite the likes of iOS and Android demonstrating the virtues of not being tied to one architecture.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Seems pointless

[Author here]

> if they had adopted LLVM or something like it

Er, that is not how LLVM works, or at least not AIUI.

What you are asking for is what Inferno (son of Plan 9) does. It's what Taos, and its successor, Intent and Elate, and the OS based on them, AmigaDE, could do.

There _is_ Arm-native Windows software. I personally would like a ticky-box in Arm Windows that said "disable x86 emulation"... run as a pure Arm device, it'd be fine, and you'd have no risk of binary Windows viruses. (Although of course macro viruses would still be a threat.)

I have a nasty suspicion it is absent because then half of the OS might stop working.

[DrXym]

Re: Seems pointless

LLVM is a low-level virtualized machine and instruction set. You compile C or C++ (or Rust, Swift etc.) to LLVM bitcode. Then the bitcode is compiled to native executable via a backend. This native compilation can happen in the toolchain, or it can be deferred to installation / invocation. This is how iOS works - devs ship apps as bitcode and they are compiled natively during installation. Android does something similar with its Android Runtime albeit with a different bytecode. Even Microsoft has an intermediate language IL for .NET that could have been the basis of something.

Then it doesn't matter if the OS is running on Arm, or x86 or whatever because devs ship a single binary and it runs anywhere.

But Microsoft don't do this. If I fire up Visual Studio I have to make a choice which target architecture I want to build to. It costs money and time to support multiple targets and naturally companies go for the lowest common denominator (x86_64 and/or x86) and forget about the rest. This is why Microsoft has tried porting Windows multiple times to Arm, Itanium, PowerPC, MIPS, RISC-V and Alpha and it always fails. Maybe some day the penny will drop with them why that is the case.

[doublelayer]

Re: Seems pointless

"Microsoft still haven't done it, despite the likes of iOS and Android demonstrating the virtues of not being tied to one architecture."

You might be surprised what would happen. IOS is on one architecture: ARM64, Apple chips only. They've switched once, from 32-bit ARM, and that might be termed a change, but it's not guaranteed that they could just push a button and have it all recompiled to X86 or something else. Android does use interpreted byte code in many places which makes porting easier, but a lot of applications use compiled components that are architecture-specific. Take apart an APK of an application you use sometime and check what's in the lib directory. There's a chance there isn't one and there's a chance you see a long list of architectures (if Google wrote it, there probably is), but for most apps, expect to see armeabi-v7a and maybe arm64-v8a if they've produced optimized code for 64-bit, and that's it. Those apps will need a recompile if the architecture changes and emulation isn't good enough.

[DrXym]

Re: Seems pointless

This is why Google discourages using native libs and spells it out in the documentation. Any app that doesn't have native lib deps should work on any future architecture just fine. I also think Google should offer LLVM as a target too for these native libs, i.e. the app has a dependency on a lib which is bitcode. Regardless of what architecture the phone is, that bitcode can be turned into a native lib during installation.

[doublelayer]

Re: Seems pointless

Google may discourage it, but you'll find it everywhere. I have a collection of APKs from a system image for a device I was analyzing. I've checked about twenty packages. The small applications like the Latin IME and contacts app don't have any native libraries. All of the rest have them.

But Google says not to? Here are some of those:

com.android.chrome

com.google.android.apps.docs

com.google.android.apps.maps

com.google.android.apps.photos

com.google.android.gms (Nobody should be surprised with this one)

com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox

Everybody uses native libraries and for a good reason. Google can't pretend it's a bad idea when they do it all the time for the same reasons that others do, and you can't assume that Android is platform-agnostic when it uses so many things that would need recompiling even at the user-installed application level.

[gerryg]

£1250? Why?

I suppose the 24-36 hours battery life might be useful but both my laptops must be around 8-10 years old, one's a second hand show pony but still more than adequate, the other, the workhorse, is a second hand X230 updated with an SSD, bought with a surprisingly good condition battery for about £150 with none of the limitations regarding USB (A), monitor, Ethernet. Both are on full fat Tumbleweed and are doing fine.

I suppose I need people to want to own these things so they sell their old stuff to bottom feeders like me but I do find myself wondering if these devices go alongside a £3,500 carbon framed push-bike and £15,000 turntable.

[WaveSynthBeep]

Re: £1250? Why?

Lenovo pricing is all smoke and mirrors - I've seen 50% discounts between the web pricing and account quotes. Probably not as much on this one, but wouldn't be surprised if it drops a hundred or two.

Anyway, it's a thin-and-light, and there's often a price premium for those (Macbook Air, XPS) over a chunky laptop (Vostro, Latitude etc).

[karlkarl]

I deserve better than Windows these days (everyone does).

So the question is, do I buy it now and leave it in storage until it is supported by a usable OS, or do I just assume this is going to fail due to a non-typical user market.

The Windows RT aarch64 stuff failed because they were artificially locked down and crippled. This machine doesn't seem to be so possibly there is potential there...

[Roland6]

At this price point it’s going to be for a non-typical user. Why shell out a premium for something that doesn’t really compare with x86 AMD based Thinkpads.

[karlkarl]

Its a good point.

So it is really currently aimed at tech enthusiasts. I guess we just wait for the open-source developers to get it working on Lenovo's behalf. Perhaps that is what they are banking on.

Though I am certain that once support is in place for FOSS platforms, Lenovo will no longer be manufacturing, selling or even admitting the existence of these machines. Yet another "thing" to shove in my tech junk cupboard ;)

[elsergiovolador]

ARmchair

I am waiting for when some company releases an ARMchair for people using ARM powered laptops, like me.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: ARmchair

My wife has a powered recliner ARMchair with a USB charging port :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Another ThinkPad review?

Yawn

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Another ThinkPad review?

May be one day, Cupertino will send review machines to The Register

[Fruit and Nutcase]

The Thinkpad X13s gen 1 is a very cute ultraportable laptop.

Now, if Lenovo were to re-work IBM's 240...

keep the old style keyboard, but update the rest

A precursor to the X range...

https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:240

[cosymart]

Requires Office

"The thing is, though, that to get the best out of this, you will need to observe an almost monastic asceticism: pay the extra to unlock Office" Why not do what most sensible people do who want Office but don't want the abomination that is the 365 version. Just buy a stand alone pro version of Office 2021 for under £20? One big advantage is that you don't need to be connected to the mothership to do your work.

[dharmOS]

Re: Requires Office

Office for ARM64 is not sold as the standalone 2016,-19 etc but only as the M365 subscription.

Only X64 versions are available as standalone and running Office for Intel/AMD would suck on this Arm cpu.

[The Unexpected Bill]

Too bad about the price...

I like the idea. I'm looking forward to the reporting on its use with Linux (or whatever other non-Windows OSes might be compatible). I'd have even considered buying one. Like at least a few other commenters, though, I think the asking price is way too high.

Hopefully that won't deter Lenovo or its competition from offering something similar at a lower price point. (Yes, I saw the competing Acer product mentioned in the review. It seems to have been discontinued and it has some other limitations -- the paltry 4GB of RAM in particular -- that would keep me from being too interested in it.)

[Henry Wertz 1]

Ubuntu time!

I ran Ubuntu on an ARM Chromebook (Acer Aspire) with a Tegra K1 2 or 3 years back... a quad-core 2.2ghz ARM (with "big.little" so it had a 5th like 1ghz core to run on when it wasn't totally idle but didn't have much to do). 22 hour battery life, over 12 hours if I ran video encodes on it (which ran pretty quickly). Ubuntu ran totally normal (the Nvidia driver on there even had CUDA support), and Ubuntu (like most ARM-supporting distros) has virtually every package available on ARM as it does on x86-64. I was running a regular, full Ubuntu desktop, firefox, chromium, libreoffice, video encoder and playback, etc.

I put on qemu-user-x86 and qemu-user-x86_64 and (since Debian supports "multilib") installed the base 32-bit and 64-bit x86/x86-64 libraries so things would run. It only got about 10-20% speed -- BUT, again, since almost everything is available in Linux ARM-native all I ran under emulation was 1 "binary blob" printer driver (which used more CPU time than on native x86 but still generated pages faster than the printer could print them, so no real harm); and some Android Studio binaries (... I'd run a build that took like 20 minutes to run on the previous system I had, with about 2 seconds of it being native x86-64 binaries, the rest ran under Java; on the ARM it took about 5-10 minutes with about 20 seconds of it being the same x86-64 binaries.) I tried running wine, it worked for simple apps but qemu didn't handle threading right (due to ARM not having strong memory ordering guarantees between processors and qemu not handling that.)

Now? There's apps called box86 (32-bit) and box64 (64-bit) to run x86-64 apps on ARM; and unlike qemu it DOES support multithreading, and does not require all sorts of x86/x86-64 libs to be installed; apparently supporting OpenGL and Vulkan including running games under wine. And several of the apps that DIDN'T exist for Linux on ARM yet a few years ago now do. (For exmample Android Studio now has native ARM builds) (Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about running x86 & x86-64 apps under Wine; native wine for ARM does support running Windows for ARM apps, if you really want to do that.)

[eszklar]

Re: Ubuntu time!

This, right here, is the stuff I'd like Liam to test with Ubuntu for ARM 23.04 Daily build + 6.3.x-RC kernel. Again, looking forward to Liam's testing Linux on this particular ThinkPad.

[GrumpyKiwi]

Bought a bunch of the Gen1 X13's in 2021 and early 2022 as it was pretty much all that Lenovo had available to sell down in NZ at any kind of reasonable timetable. They took over from the X390's that had been the default platform before then and they .... really failed to impress. Part of that is my fault, Windows 11 and 8GB of RAM (7.85 available) doesn't play nice. But the performance was in every way inferior to the X390's despite supposedly being of similar spec.

Lenovo's inability to provide anything more than guesswork on when orders might be delivered ("oh sometime in the next 4 to 6 months" was typical) meant that we dropped them as a brand and are now running a fleet of Surfaces (which have their own issues, especially the 8GB versions) but at least there is consistent supply.

Nothing in this review makes me think of switching back.