Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it... The Thinkpad Z13 is quite different from any other Lenovo machine that we have seen recently. It's a similar thin, ultra-light design to the Arm-based X13S, but this is not an unusual RISC computer: this is in some ways a relatively conventional X86 laptop. However, rather than the Intel processors typical of most Thinkpads …
This post has been deleted by its author
Or an inline USB-C hub that supports power pass through...those are way cheaper and you don't need shitty drivers for the dock to function...UGREEN makes one that is pretty robust.
You may not even need that if you have a modern-ish sort of setup...I charge my laptop off my monitor, which also acts as a USB hub...if you're the kind of person that spends £1,400+ on a laptop, there's a good chance you're also the kind of person that tends to buy higher end monitors.
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
That fixes the problem of having a USB-A device you want to use, but it doesn't really help with the inconvenience aspect. It's possible to argue that it doesn't much matter when you're using an external screen, because you can have a dock with lots of ports installed near that screen anyway. For portable use, however, if you have two of these adapters, you can still connect just two USB devices, which isn't a lot of them when one of those could easily be the charger. I'm also not sure what the point is; there's plenty of space to put more ports and it's not as if the hardware to add a port you already have is going to increase the price of the equipment very much.
Careful with the USB-C to USB-A converters, probably better is a small docking station if you have multiple things plugged in. On the 2021 Macbook Air the two thunderbolt ports are so close together that using the Apple-supplied thunderbolt power cable and a USB-C to USB-A converter on my trackball eventually loosened the topmost port, and now it is only partially working. But I still use the converter with the Asus laptop, they are handy in certain places.
1) Yes, a USB-C expansion hub is better, but they are much more expensive, and much bulkier to carry around. A USB-C to USB-A converter is tiny, fits in my little-box-o'-shite for site visits, and has saved my arse more times than I can comfortably count.
2) If you need more than 1 USB-A device at a time, you can plug a passive 4-port expander into the USB-A port that you now have. This stuff is not complex.
GJC
Once you get into having an expander, you're in the same general area as having a USB-C hub, which isn't that much bulkier and is generally more useful. Either way, you will have to carry around something which you can't leave attached and you have to be careful not to forget it on the desk on which you last used it. When the alternative is that the manufacturer puts some normal ports on the machine they expect people to pay so much for, which one seems easier?
Yes, indeed. However, I can't remember ever needing to plug in more than one device to get me out of a hole (in the specific case that started this discussion, it was a USB-A Ethernet adapter, which is a common requirement during setup in my experience), and USB-A multi-port hubs are scattered around the countryside like confetti, you won't need to actually be carrying one.
The whole point of the USB-C to USB-A converter is that it gets you back in the nice, comfortable situation where *everything* now fits your computer, so you can scratch around for stuff to fix a problem.
Manufacturers are not going to go back to putting USB-A ports on portable devices. Too big, too expensive (in manufacturing terms, *any* extra expense can be too expensive), not needed for 99% of use cases. The converter is cheap, small, and gets you out of trouble in that 1% of cases, and is trivial enough that if I ever leave one on site, I'll shrug and reach for another one from stock. Why are you arguing against this? What are you trying to prove?
GJC
[Author here]
> I can't remember ever needing to plug in more than one device to get me out of a hole
Well, in this particular instance, what I needed in order to get the machine back up and running was both the ability to boot from a removable medium, that is a USB key, and to simultaneously connected to a wired ethernet connection. That, it seems to me, would require two separate USB-C to USB-A converters.
Since on more than one of the machines which I have seen recently which only have two USB-C ports, they are located side-by-side, I suspect that trying to plug 2 USB-A devices into them would not have sufficient room and might well damage the ports.
That is not true on this machine, where the two USB-C ports are on opposite sides of the machine. Frankly, given the paucity of ports, that's one of the only good things about it.
"that are small enough to fit in a bag."
s/bag/pocket/ :-) Admittedly, mine doesn't have the SD card reader but it's small enough that I sometimes have to rummage around in the bottom of the laptop bag to find it. There's plenty of really small ones to pick from these days, pretty cheap, work just fine.
I agree with other posters about the limits of only two USB ports on this new model, but it's not as if a power user wanting to plug in multiple devices in all sorts of different locations isn't going to know what they are buying up front. They'll either buy something with the ports they need already built in or probably already have hubs/docks/adaptors they need anyway. I think someone earlier also wonder why Lenovo don't provide a PSU with ports on. Well, the answer is probably that they looked at the market and calculated that making it an optional extra or 3rd party purchase is better and cheaper for the few that want one rather than providing one in every box by default. Sort of the same argument for mobile phones often not coming with a PSU by default these days. Saving on waste and improving their "green credentials". Which kinda makes sense.
"Why are you arguing against this? What are you trying to prove?"
I'm arguing against this for a pretty simple reason: I disagree with you. I think you figured that out already, though. I don't think that a single USB port is sufficient for the way I use a computer as I have experienced it before, and I imagine I'm not the only one who has that situation. Hence, when I see computers that have very few ports on them, I find that setup inconvenient, as did the reviewer in this article and at least one other person in the comments.
I find your question a bit strange; clearly we have different views on the usefulness of ports. Why do you assume that stating my opinion, as you have stated yours, is trying to prove something? In my usage of a laptop, sometimes none of the ports are in use, but sometimes I've got the charger plugged in, some mobile device charging or syncing, a USB authentication token, and then I want to connect a cable to some piece of hardware I'm working on. I use USB for a lot of peripherals, from audio equipment to hard drives. Two ports is not enough for that use case, so I prefer to buy computers that have more. If that's not something you are dealing with, no problem. As for the mechanics, another USB port is not very expensive when you're looking at the prices mentioned in the article, and if thickness is a major issue, they can always be more USB-C ports which clearly already fit.
Based on that, you are not the target market. the Z16 is more what you'd be looking for. 2xUSB4 & SD card reader on the left side and 1xUSB3 on the right edge.
Looking at the shape and size of the Z13 and Z16 system boards, I'm not sure they could fit more ports there without interconnects and daughter boards. They both look to have some pretty hefty heatsinks and dual fans too.
The Hardware Service Manual is interesting. The entire screen assembly is classed a single unit, so no replacement of a failed camera without a new screen and even the CPU cooler is not classed as a Customer Replaceable Unit, which is unusual even for Lenovo. WiFi is built-in on the system board, Wireless WAN and SSD are both plug-in devices and, unusually for a business grade Thinkpad, soldered on RAM with NO DIMM slot for additional RAM, which will be a deal breaker for many readers here.
The reason I asked should be clear now - you are having a different conversation to the one I am having, and I wanted to make sure that was the case.
Yes, for normal day-long operational use, absolutely go for the nicest, most powerful USB-C hub that you can find and afford. I was addressing the situation in the article, where you need to get the laptop configure and running, you are probably not in your home office, and you need to get it talking to the outside world as a one-off exercise as part of the installation process. For that, a USB-C to USB-A converter is the absolute right tool for the job.
Clearer?
GJC
That's not entirely true, UGREEN makes a USB-C expansion hub with 100W power passthrough that is £14.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Multiport-Adapter-Delivery-ThinkPad-Space-Grey/dp/B0BR3M8XHK/ref=sr_1_6?crid=ZDRYMJQHB3O2
Yeah, its 4K 30hz if you want to use the HDMI, but for a few quid more you can bump that up.
being / buying pedantic, 6 quid is not a couple. I think I got them for 1.50 off aliexpress. That said, you never know what you're getting from China. That said (2.0), how many people will be bothered to chase a fake / mis-loaded converted they spent 6 quid on on amazon, then follow up, etc, etc...
Unless you're not massively tech savvy and rely on your PC generally being able to get up and go by itself without much user tinkering.
Win10 isn't an amazing OS, but for all its faults, you can generally rely on installing it on a PC and expecting it to work without needing to worry about hardware compatibility.
There's also the fact that most businesses use Windows or Apple OSes as their default so it's easy for users to learn how to get around one OS for personal and professional use.
Linux gaming has made great strides over the past few years, but games are designed & built for Windows PCs.
Win11 has some deplorable design choices. Top of my list are the limited places you can put the taskbar and the contextual menu so pathetic that they give you a button to just use the old one, but for all its numerous flaws, it has the same benefits as Win10.
I'm not asking you to like Windows, but do remember that *Nix Is Not For Everyone.
<shrug>
I have worked with computers for 40 years. I've used pretty much every OS out there, and will happily work with anything that fits the requirements in front of me at the time - my current estate covers Windows and three flavours of Linux (all of them on our own hardware, plus AWS, Azure and VMware), some MacOS, some OpenBSD. In the past I've used VMS, various other flavours of Unix, OS/400, all sorts of weird minicomputer and PC server OSs the names of which have mercifully vanished from my memory.
Yes, it's a bias. That it matches your bias doesn't make it any less so.
GJC
I really miss the 'old' slot-in 2.5'' ssds. With my old (current) lenovo, I can carry a couple of those and if one won't play, I'll slot in another. Sure, it's big, but quite light and sturdy. With those 'new' m-satas, they're a f... nuisance to replace on the fly. I'm hoping for some new standard when you can plug it in via a standardised port. But things are going the opposite way of course, built-in batteries, built-in ram, built-in hard-hdds, etc.
[Author here]
Good heavens no! That wasn't the anti-Windows rant. *This* was the anti-Windows rant!
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/21/lenovo_thinkpad_x13s_the_stealth/
For clarity, I was an early adopter of Microsoft Windows. I used, supported, and deployed in production Windows 2.01, and _every single version and every update and service pack_ from then onwards, until Windows Server 2008, which I think is the last version that I have deployed on a production machine. In the past, I have been training and/or certified as a Microsoft Exchange and Windows Server system admin.
As I am currently struggling with a broken right arm, this review was written on the Z 13 itself, using a mixture of Microsoft Wordpad, Notepad++, Panwriter and the latest release of Libreoffice, using the dictation functionality built into Windows 11.
When I criticise Windows, I do so from a position of considerable professional experience and knowledge. I have almost entirely switched over to using Linux and Apple Mac OS on the desktop *because* of 35 years' experience using Microsoft Windows, not despite it.
You become cynical of everything with an MS label on it. They FSCK around with things because they can and as far as I can see, for no good reason. One [cough][cough] patch to Server 2012 caused the whole MSCS estate to fail miserably. Two days on the phone to MS in Redmond from South Asia (the locals were total POS) and I finally got a fix and clustering worked again but... Why?
After more years than I can remember writing system level software for a Windows platform, it finally got the better of me in 2016 when I saw W10. WTF multiplied by 10x9.
That was it. I decided that it was time for this GOF (Grumpy Old Fart) to retire and kick MS into the dust of history.
Now I ONLY run Linux (AlmaLinux) and MacOS. Sanity restored.
The above OS's are not perfect but I can live with them. Long may that continue.
I have almost entirely switched over to using Linux and Apple Mac OS on the desktop *because* of 35 years' experience using Microsoft Windows, not despite it.
Exactly how I feel!
When I must use windows "privately", I use it in a virtual machine on my MacBook and I have backups. I know it will eventually screw up when I need it to work! I am sick and tired of the unreliability. Don't get me started on the Microsoft bullshit of re-organising and re-skinning the same old bits of fossilised code into different constellations, branding Brownian movements as innovation.
Latest example:
I have to use Dassault's Solidworks at work. Huge thing, expensive, yet pig-ugly and clunky too (Everything looks like an unclean bastard between OS2 Warp 3 and "Windows ME", maybe they even used Borland C++ anno 2003 to code it?).
Again, to add pain to my "Windows experience" this is a physical windows installation. Windows gets an unskipable upgrade, Upgrade bricks the solidworks component database. Nothing can be done by IT, because something about being out of "Temp-space" - with nothing in C:\Temp (Again, typical windows, the error is never what it says it is) - blocks the installer and they have to delete the whole of windows and rebuild the machine to get the Solidworks installer to work, the next day IT does another installation round because here are some options that should also be installed.
This was an "upgrade", but, Windows is still windows, and will break itself again. Solidworks is still clunky & ugly.
This post has been deleted by its author
I just looked at my 2021 notes for dual-boot Win10 and MX Linux. The MX Linux installer picked the wrong boot partition, I had to change it before proceeding. I guess if you don't change it that would be one way to wipe out the ESP partition.
Copying new system
94% - Paused for required operator input
Select Boot Method
[x] Install GRUB for Linux and Windows
Location to install on: [ ] MBR [ ] PBR [x] ESP
Partition to use: sda1 (200.00 MB vfat - EFI) // !!! not this !!!
!!!-.> change to nvme0n1p1 (250.0 MB vfat - ESP)
I've been looking for a replacement for my trusty X260, my thinking is that it is better to replace it when I'm ready to and not when this 8-year old hardware decides by itself. (And the battery life is down to two hours...)
But the options these days. And the prices. Z13, X13, XPS13, Latitudes, etc etc. Trying to find that small screen size combined with other features is not easy.
And who can stand for a 256GB disk; only 1TB will do. Movies are not small!
Back to the past, I think. I'll try to find something used and do some upgrades.
I bought a Surface Pro 9 recently as I wanted something portable and don't really need the umf (though, I did buy the i7 version) but, for less than the price difference between the 256gb and 512gb models I could buy a 1tb ssd (even in the oddly small format it has), so I did, got the i7, 16gb, 256gb and pulled the drive and stuffed in the 1tb (especially as the v9 finally has a handy hatch to access the ssd).
What would be nice now is if I could find a small enclosure to put the old 256gb in and have a spare USB drive for my keyring, but the only one I tracked down (aliexpress) doesn't seem to fit the keying of the drive..
An annoyance of the Surface, related to a mention in the article about the macbooks ethernet on power adaptor, is there's a USB socket on the powerbrick for the Surface, but, it's power only and doesn't pass through to the unit (presumably so they can sell you their vastly overpriced docks instead), would be quite nice to have a couple of usb's and an ethernet on the powerbrick with passthrough, for those that don't need a full dock for screens and such, but keyboard and mouse on their home desk, would be ideal for my partner for instance. Even my chromecast has a functional ethernet port on its powerbrick, if they can do it on a hundred dollar (aud) dongle than a few grand laptop shouldn't really have an excuse.
Is the Surface not the Microsoft thing with the totally proprietarty power connector on their power supply? I recall getting my hands on one of them about half a year ago (as the original one had failed for a user) and wondered WTF possessed MS to use a proprietary connector while literally everyone was sane enough to have already converted to USB-C.
I was *not* impressed.
I've been looking for a replacement for my trusty X260...
A few years ago, bought a X230 to replace a X220 - bit of a downgrade on the keyboard front - bought another X220.
A couple of years ago bought a X1 Carbon - most of the time that is gathering dust - back on the X220 again - it's the keyboard again.
As the author comments, there must be something against keyboards - though probably not just at Lenovo - I have to use a Microsoft Surface for work - with the function keys and some of the cursor keys being assigned to the same keys, have to keep switching modes - WTF
[Author here]
As a personal aside, I have to say that I entirely agree with you. In fact I just recently bought a second used X220 myself, to replace the second hand one that I bought in 2017. That was a Core i5 model, and it has now been replaced with a Core i7 model. The old Core i5 machine is now running just Haiku.
I love my x220s, but it's getting near-impossible to get a_decent_ 3rd party battery, even from reliable stores. And I found it impossible to find an IPS panel replacement last year when one of the machines developed the dreaded vertical strip. Yeah, I can live with (...) TFT replacement, but it makes my eyeses bleed. But THE KEYBOARD (and it's not the best 'propa' keyboard anyway), it's the love of my life (my wife's looking at me, past suspicion, but strangely). Ironically, I've grown soft and to my total self-disgust, a found a touch screen in my offspring's lenovo quite... appealing. I don't mind the bulk of x220, given I get THE KEYBOARD, but touchscreen would be nice. And tablet mode, once in a blue moon, tiny luxuries...
Ironically, all the latest and greatest thinkpads, though half-height, are exactly the same weight as my x220s, and missing essential ports.
Got several Thinkpads, and you'll prise my X230 from my cold dead hands. But..
I'm experimenting with a Framework. Treating myself to an AMD one, so still waiting.
The lower-specced Intel devices are quite reasonably priced.
Yet to find out how terrible the keyboard is, but the display looks like it's going to be sweet.
Others have mentioned the keyboard is the most important part of their laptop experience. Yes I agree.
But I realize now that I need a "Windows 11" compatible machine, as good old W10 has a limited life left.
There are lots of "refurb" (ex-lease) and "open-box" (ex-stupids) available, but it's very hard to tell which are W11 compatible.....
Sigh.
Not everyone that reads the Reg wants a ThinkPad or to run Linux…
There's lots of sites with many reviews. Look around. And I am not disagreeing with you ($2300 for a flaptop?? Argh!!).
But the 1% who DO love some good O/S on good hardware are enough to justify Liam's apparently tireless install-boot-fail studies.
[Author here]
I took the pricing from the current Lenovo US website. As far as I can tell, there is some sort of promotional special offer available on the UK site at the moment, which I think is not available on the US site. That is why the prices do not agree.
However Thinkpads are very popular for people who need a professional Linux setup on a laptop.
Over the years they have got a reputation as the go to Linux laptop (if you have the budget).
The extra expense for the hardware is more than justified by the long life of these machines.
Got a thirteen year old X thingy running windows still in use 'cos I refuse to fork out for another MS Draw license.
“However Thinkpads are very popular for people who need a professional Linux setup on a laptop.”
That’s fair. It’s not so much a dig at the reason for the review - just the lack of any/many others. Many other tech reviews are laden with ads and aimed at general consumers.
Sooo... you shredded the Windows partition, overwrote the EFI and then spent half this article complaining about it. I'm Mac through and through and no fan of Windows, but even I was offended reading this trash. Either use (and review) it as designed, or STFU about how it wasn't able to recover from your butchery.
FFS.
Actually he only spent 17.8% of the article on it. ;)
`... we managed to overwrite the machine's EFI System Partition (ESP). This, it appears, is a category of error which Microsoft's "startup repair" process is unable to handle.`
If startup repair could recover from that, it would kind of negate the value of EFI, wouldn't it? It's kind of funny the author did it _again_, perhaps in a hurry to write the review.... Rule number one of setting up a new computer is, take your time.
`In part, this process demonstrates the uselessness of Microsoft's "rescue" partition: it's absolutely no help if your computer can't boot, which is a common category of problem.`
For as long as I can remember, the solution to a non-booting computer has always been a second computer. I thought this was an inherent limitation of the "bootstrap" process, which either succeeds or you are dead in the water -- call the Coast Guard.
`The same can be said of "safe mode" in recent versions of Windows: to access it, you must choose it before shutting down.`
Yeah, that's just stupid. We can all recognize a crap safe mode when we see it.
"If startup repair could recover from that, it would kind of negate the value of EFI, wouldn't it?"
I thought the same thing. The Mac can boot to a recovery environment because Apple's put an internet stack in their hardware, which downloads an OS image from Apple and only from Apple (it's signed and verified). The on-disk recovery won't work if the EFI is broken; only that online method will. How would people react if it was announced that Microsoft has installed a new piece of firmware which will contact Microsoft servers, download and run signed code from Microsoft, start up before anything else starts, and can't be replaced? It would be exceedingly unpopular in these forums. I trust Microsoft more than the average person here and I still don't want it. Is Liam really asking for that?
[Author here]
Yes, I really am asking for that. I am asking for a recovery partition which can actually recover the machine from multiple categories of boot failure, including a corrupted, damaged or missing ESP.
To my incredulity, in reading various Linux fora in recent months, I have found that some people as a matter of routine allow each Linux distribution that they installed to create its own ESP. And then they set one of those ESPs as active in order to boot the distro they want. It's also quite common to have one ESP per drive, and the installers of a number of different operating systems routinely create one ESP on every hard disk which they provision. If what is necessary for Windows repair to actually be able to start up with a missing or damaged ESP is for it to have its own separate dedicated ESP, then I would consider that as an acceptable compromise.
I have worked with Windows 8.0 and and 8.1 in the past, but not very much. I don't recall now if they automatically created a recovery partition during installation, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did. However, as far as I can tell, from the first release of Windows 10, it always does this by default unless you do not allow it created its own partitions. Frankly it seems reasonable enough to me for a new installation of Windows to search a vendor-provided or OEM recovery partition for a drivers directory and use one if it is present. And, as I said in the review, the strikes me as an easy and obvious ways of understand value to their offerings.
"I have worked with Windows 8.0 and and 8.1 in the past, but not very much. I don't recall now if they automatically created a recovery partition during installation, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did."
Yes, they did, as did their server versions. I had a similar issue to the one you describe with a bare-metal Server 2012 R2 install. The bootloader for the OS was clearly corrupted and It booted to a sort of 'safe mode' with big W8-ish buttons which did nothing useful - the repair options all failed to fix it and I had to clean install it from an ISO in the end.
> ...boot failure, including a corrupted, damaged or missing ESP.
[Boomer here]
WTF is a ESP? Mind-reader? Yes, I am increasingly behind the times.
Before Microsoft, this was sorted by Al Shugart and pals. A hard drive was much too big ($$$) for a single op/sys. Al suggested the first sector of the disk should be a partition table, four entries for up to four partitions. CP/M, FORTH, unix, each in their own space. The first sector of each partition contained boot code (or enough to load more code).
IIRC(?), the first breakdown was Microsoft insisting that MSDOS *had* to be in the first entry in partition table. Like Billy Gates could not code a FOR 0..3 loop to look for his mark. Once a joint standard gets taken-over by one vendor, all is lost. If "the other" OS makers had grown a unified plan to self-defend against MS' selfishness..... but of course they didn't.
Then many decades later EFI was bodged to work-with legacy boots. I know there is a huge EFI committee; I don't think they grok the whole situation (maybe nobody can).
Anyhow.... for old poofs like me, here is a simple summary of EFI function and fixes. It is Windows-centric, vendor-written to lead you to a $60 software, and does not get into the nitty-gritty, but is a simple overview. What is an EFI System Partition and do I need it? It does give processes to both delete and create EFI partitions.
The EFI is the thing that finds the partitions on a disk. If it's not running, it's not going to locate any partitions. If you destroy the EFI partition on a Mac, the recovery partition that Apple installed on the disk won't help you because it too requires the EFI to load. All you have left after that is online recovery, which is there because Apple has a part of the firmware which runs before the EFI does.
Windows can't just install a bit of firmware which will run before the EFI. OEMs could put that in by installing a bit of memory preloaded with a firmware image, but for existing machines, it's not compatible with the boot process. Making that change would bring Microsoft into a part of the system that has formerly been the OEM's to manage and it would give them theoretical control over every part of the boot process. Anyone who doesn't trust Microsoft is going to be very angry if this ever gets built.
Your alternative suggestion basically just boils down to having a second EFI partition, which you would know how to switch into, but others wouldn't. That partition is also no harder to break by doing an installation incorrectly.
I don't really think Microsoft would care that much, although I disagree that people wouldn't buy the product. They'd likely want a laptop enough to buy it anyway and they'd just speculate about the potentially malicious code in that recovery firmware which they can't see or change. If someone wanted to complain about Microsoft, it would be one more thing in their list, similar to how some people complain about Secure Boot even though Microsoft didn't write that.
The reason I bring it up is that Liam is, as many have pointed out, an advocate of open source software and of user control of systems. This is usually the kind of person who would not be pleased with closed-source firmware, so in my first comment, I assumed that he was trying to ask for something else and I was misunderstanding. Now that he has stated that I understand him correctly, I just find it surprising that he has that opinion and wanted to explain to anyone else who might share his collection of views what the request would actually look like if implemented.
I take a different view on most respects. I like open source software, but I don't tend to view Microsoft as evil or incompetent. However, I don't want them to have recovery firmware on all computers. I appreciate that the typical X86-based computer boots to whatever disk I've put in based on an open and configurable firmware setup. If the cost to that is that it can't automatically recover if I destroy my firmware partition, I can deal with that. In addition to the security concerns, I also don't have confidence that that recovery environment will handle all the different ways someone might choose to boot their computer, and as a person who sometimes has unusual configurations, I'd rather have to clean it up if I destroy it than to have something automatically clean it up when it might be working as expected.
Recent Dell Lattudes do have something similar to the Macbooks now - if they can't boot (I've tested it by completely wiping the SSD) they have a cloudy recordery option. The one I used for testing (a 5430) offered W10 or W11. Select the one you want, and it downloads and deploys the OS image, then boots to the first setup screen. Works quite well, but is pretty slow even on a fast internet connection.
[Author here]
> You shredded the Windows partition, overwrote the EFI
I think that you misunderstand. For clarity, the windows partition was completely intact and unmodified. The ESP had the windows boot files deleted, as far as I can tell, by a Linux installer, but starting Windows from a new unmodified installation USB medium, the start-up repair tool found under troubleshooting is unable to find an intact Windows partition if the relevant files are missing from the ESP.
Only the ESP had been modified. The C drive was completely unmodified. Nonetheless start-up repair was not able to even find the Windows install let alone repair it.
I consider that to be a critical failing myself, which is why I reported upon it.
"We tried vanilla Debian 11.7, in the form of an Xfce live medium with non-free firmware, and FreeBSD 13.2, plus a couple of non-systemd distributions: Devuan Chimæra 4.0.3 and MX Linux 21.3. Not one of them booted successfully."
'Linux is over 30 years old now and has had over a dozen major releases. That this kind of fooling around is still needed is ridiculous.'
"And all of the major distributions worked."
Except Debian is not a niche distro.
Debian comes with a tried-and-tested kernel 5.x (LTS), so it probably will have problems with latest hardware, be it the storage, GPU and such.
Perhaps Liam also used the original 2021 version of Windows 11 for installation and for some reason it didn't contain the driver for the wireless that was released afterwards.
[Author here]
> Except Debian is not a niche distro.
Ubuntu is about 1/3 of the Linux market, as best as anyone can measure.
The various RH distros & rebuilds are 10% or so.
The rest are all down in the single digits somewhere.
> Debian comes with a tried-and-tested kernel 5.x (LTS), so it probably will have problems with latest hardware, be it the storage, GPU and such.
I am fully aware, which is why I tried it. I wanted to make and reinforce the point that this machine has some fairly leading-edge hardware and if you want to run a slow-moving, stable, that is *old* distro, this is not the machine for you.
> Perhaps Liam also used the original 2021 version of Windows 11
Please do me the credit of assuming I know what I am doing. It was the very latest 22H2 ISO available from Microsoft.
"Ubuntu is about 1/3 of the Linux market, as best as anyone can measure.
The various RH distros & rebuilds are 10% or so.
The rest are all down in the single digits somewhere.
How did you come up with those numbers?
https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux
1. Ubuntu 34%
2. Debian 16%
"Please do me the credit of assuming I know what I am doing."
Now, that sounds something Sledge Hammer might say. :-)
Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it... World's largest laptop vendor releases whizzy x86 - but we could do with a better Windows rescue party
Title says it's about the ThinkPad Z13 and Windows, not about Linux. If you want to write about Linux, put it in the damn title. Or even in the subtitle. I have zero interest in Linux, so if it was mentioned I'd have skipped it and not wasted my time reading about somebody else's inability to use a product as designed.
I'm quite baffled that Lenovo still doesn't have some kind of "online recovery". Even my company's Latitudes have an online emergency boot (found out after swapping the SSD on one), just like a mac. And lately i don't particularly like Latitudes, they're way too plasticky - heck even HPs feel better even though they almost certainly will stop working in less than 3 years. I was looking into thinkpads, but i think i'll stick with XPSs at home, my 2014 xps 13 still goes strong (obviously with linux on it, windows 10 runs kinda ok but with 8gb ram i have to be careful how many tabs i open)
I commented elsewhere in this thread about the Latitudes before noticing that you had already done so - the 5xx0 range seem to have had it from the 5x20 models onwards (currently on 5x40). I assume the equivalent models in the 7 and 9 ranges (where they exist), and possibly he 3 range, will be similar.
Agree about the Latitudes getting plasticky - they really are. The move from black to silver is also not great as it's far more prone to showing scratches and scrapes. They are now also much harder to repair (ever tried replacing the keyboard on a recent Latitude?), and the keyboards are crap compared to models of ten years ago.
"a Windows 11 boot medium was now able to find the existing Windows 11 installation – but it couldn't fix it."
That's basically my entire experience of Windows Repair since it began.
Usually if you know the problem you can use drop into a command line and fix it. If you can't, there's always Windows Repair, and that won't know how to fix it either.
I've never understood the purpose of Windows Repair. I fiddle around loads, and routinely break things - all part of the fun of computers. And when I break things, I reach for the installation media, delete all partitions, do a fresh install, and restore data from backups. In the modern era, on any kind of competent machine, it takes about 30 minutes, I get that might be longer if you have some more esoteric applications with odd installation requirements.
A fringe benefit is that fresh installs work *way* better than machines that have suffered in-place upgrades for the last four versions of any OS, but especially Windows.
GJC
On this note...
Entertainingly, I just reconfigured the bootable partitions on one of my own elderly ThinkPads, since I have discovered that one of its SATA interfaces is significantly quicker (twice the speed) than the other. So I moved the bootable OS partitions onto the drive on the faster interface, and I moved the data partitions onto the drive on the slow interface. Obviously this required me to reinstall both Windows 10 and Linux' boot loaders.
While copying partitions across, I deleted the entirely useless Windows recovery partition. In the process of reinstalling the Windows boot loader, it proceeded to recreate and repopulate a brand-new rescue partition all on its own. I found this rather amusing.
"I've never understood the purpose of Windows Repair."
Think of Windows Repair as being the level 1 service/help desk. It can fix the most basic of problems, ie the most common ones, the sort those us with a bit of experience rarely cause because most of the time we know what we are doing. But your average user, who doesn't always understand why Windows should be shutdown properly or the battery should not be forced to keep going even after the OS warned you to shutdown or plug in, or who doesn't understand the difference between Restart and Shutdown (helpfully obscured and bastardised my MS), or or or etc and "break" things the equivalent of "is it properly plugged in" and "have you tried turning it off and on again" situations that 90% of users have 90% of the time when there is a "problem".
Well, use cases differ.
I used to build my own machines, but I stopped doing that some 2 decades ago and in that time I have had ONE (1) occasion to open up a machine post purchase, and that was a laltop because I wanted to stick a new battery pack in it. This is mainly because I buy machines with higher specs than I need at the time of purchase which means I rarely have a need to upgrade them later until I refresh the system.
So I don't mind soldered components.
I'll see your anecdote and raise you a Dell Inspiron purchased with a standard 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD and currently fitted with 32GB and 2TB respectively.
I've had very few PCs over the years that haven't had some kind of upgrade applied once the component prices dropped far enough.
It's bad enough that laptops are increasingly supplied without DIMM sockets. Soldering in the secondary storage too is totally unacceptable to me at this kind of price-point.
-A.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Apple's designers used to act the same way, and that company even removed the whole function-key row and replaced it with a very shallow touch-sensitive display. It's interesting to note that Apple listened to its customers, reverted the decision, put back physical F-keys and scissor switches, and reinstated multiple ports to its pro-level kit that it had previously removed."
I had a look at apples website, and at least for the 13 inch MBP I only see one headphone jack, and two USB-C jacks.
And it uses that oled strip instead of function keys.
Lookling at the 14 and 16 inch models they do have real F-keys and some more ports. Guess the 13 inch model is on the way out. But boy are the 14 and 16 inch models pricey!
in short: shit.
p.s. wasn't keyboard one of THE key (sorry!) distinctive features of IBM laptops inherited by lenovo and one of the main selling points, alongside reasonable hardware self-serviceability? Plus... port selection and durability. Plus that little red... red... no, I'm not gonna say it!
So keyobard's gone (LONG gone), serviceability is practically gone, port selection is laughable (across the range, with some exceptions). Durability: glass and aluminium on thinkpads, way forward! All that's left is that little red... red... no, I'm not gonna say it! What have Lenovo done to us?!
Lenovo DON'T learn and frankly, they don't care. One approach: be bold, lead the pack, take greater risk, take greater rewards. At some point Lenovo decided to switch to safer approach: follow the trends, follow the herd. Of course, once they joining the stampede, they because indistinguishable from the rest of the herd, safety in numbers, etc. But if don't stay upfront you gradually lose your place in the middle, and then come those river crossings. Are they still upfront, or perhaps slowly trailing the herd?
I'm on my third Thinkpad Linux machine (all T-series), and have been very happy with all of them. They've all had the inverted T arrow key layout. I don't think I could ever get used to the arrow key arrangement on the Z series machines — I'm just too old to change at this point.
I'm assuming Z13 is a 13" laptop, although physical size appears to have been left out of the review... according to the photo, there is a fair bit of chassis all round the keyboard so its either a massive chassis for a tiny screen, a comedy keyboard, or is it just really far away! maybe this is not the laptop you are looking for....
oohh.. the temptation to liken the authors skill at finding a photo of the laptop hes actually reviewing, to his ability to install an OS is quite high... but I wouldn't do that!
in all seriousness, less ranting and more photos of the laptop would have been nice, maybe some more details too - is the trackpad a haptic or old style clicky pad for instance?
I dunno, but "clicking" on a thing requires some kind of "clicky" thing.
Some years ago I read about touch interfaces using "haptic" feedback and presenting it as an alternative to proper clicks. I was seriously disappointed to discover that this simply meant that the device vibrated.
If I press on a thing I expect it to move in the direction that I pressed it. Somewhere along the way a spring might give and produce a click. This is nothing like haptic feedback. In fact "haptic" isn't feedback at all, just noise.
-A.
This isn't always true. Apple has a system they call Force Touch which involves a shorter vibration system unlike the more familiar vibration feedback we've seen before. They've used it for trackpads and buttons, and those really do feel like they are moving downward when pressed and upward when released, even though they are really not. It's much more convenient trickery and helps with usability because they can detect different levels of pressure, and they are therefore just as convenient as interfaces with moving parts. For example, if I simply touch the home button on an iPhone that uses that method, it's not going to activate unless I then put pressure on it.
I’ve had a good few laptops over the years, and the Lenovo I briefly had was the only one that didn’t have working Ethernet or wifi after a clean Windows install.
I don’t care if the blame lies with MS or Lenovo, no way was I going to accept having to faff about with a separate computer to get the drivers to get Windows working on the Lenovo.
So I returned it and went looking elsewhere, and won’t bother even trying another Lenovo.
It's not a Lenovo thing - the latest W10 or W11 generic MS installer doesn't have drivers for the ethernet or the SSD on the latest Dell Latitudes - have to pull in the storage driver from a USB stick at the partitioning stage of the setup, then Shift-F10 at the region screen to get a command prompt to allow the ethernet driver to be installed off the USB stick.
Well Lenovo offer an install image for download which one would hope includes the appropriate drivers. I would expect Dell do also.
(Full disclosure: I'm formerly of System x support so worked for both IBM and Lenovo. I also know that the legal position is that if you supply a system with an installed OS image, you have to provide a method to reinstall, hence the former practice of the OEM providing a recovery partition. I presume offering a download fulfills that requirement)
Yes, Dell does - but creating and installing the image (which is in the form of a recovery image rather than an installer) takes a lot longer than a clean install with generic media, plus you need separate images per model. We just have one set of USB sticks with the latest generic Windows installer, and one with the storage and ethernet drivers for all the models which need this. Once we've got them installed we just use the Dell COmmand Update utility to pull down the full driver pack.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
