Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon
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Looking at potentially getting a new laptop. Looking at the T470s & X1 Carbon. Right now I utilize an X230 w/docking station.
I'm leaning more towards the T470s because of the integrated ethernet. At the same time as time goes on we'll see ethernet disappear from more and more notebooks and at least the X1 Carbon has an actual ethernet adapter (doesn't use USB to ethernet) and it has much better battery life.
The other major question is the dock - T470s supports the traditional docking solutions, while the X1 only supports USB C docks - will the USB C dock charge the laptop as well as a traditional dock? I've seen reports that some people with other laptop models w/USB C docks are having charging issues.
Thoughts?
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Neither? Lenovo isn't a company that should be trusted. Look at a different vendor.
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@coliver said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
Neither? Lenovo isn't a company that should be trusted. Look at a different vendor.
But who else makes a laptop as light as the Carbon or even the T470's. I can't think of any off hand.
I get why people continually look at Lenovo as the go to brand for business laptops.
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@DustinB3403 said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
@coliver said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
Neither? Lenovo isn't a company that should be trusted. Look at a different vendor.
But who else makes a laptop as light as the Carbon or even the T470's. I can't think of any off hand.
I get why people continually look at Lenovo as the go to brand for business laptops.
Dell has an XPS that is only slightly heavier. The Surface Book I think is around that as well. But you're right they are light... but not sure if the cost outweighs the benefits.
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@DustinB3403 said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
@coliver said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
Neither? Lenovo isn't a company that should be trusted. Look at a different vendor.
But who else makes a laptop as light as the Carbon or even the T470's. I can't think of any off hand.
I get why people continually look at Lenovo as the go to brand for business laptops.
We've got one and I don't share your confidence. Terrible quality. Have to replace hardware out of the box for it to work. Even doing that it was unstable without Windows (Linux fixed a lot of the instabilities - removed all Lenovo drivers completely .). Build quality is okay, but that's it. No redeeming qualities.
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I use Ethernet, but does anyone else? Is that really a selling point for you? My guess is that you'd regret that as a deciding factor.
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Although it's Lenovo, so the wifi is possibly a weak point. So the Ethernet might matter where it would not fit another vendor.
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@scottalanmiller You have a 5th generation carbon? That's the latest and has received the best praise/positive reviews - pretty much from everyone.
It's extremely light, has top of class battery life (15+ hours), one of the best keyboards, great connection options - full size HDMI, 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports. What parts did you have to replace out of the box?
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@DustinB3403 Exactly. I've only had Lenovo laptops the last few years. Besides that maybe I would look at Dell's lattitude lineup. In fact I was cross shopping these two options against the Lattitude 7480. The problem with the 7480 is that unlike the T470s it doesn't have a dock connector, and it's only got 2 X PCI express lanes going to its m.2 SSD vs 4 for both the T470s & X1 Carbon.
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@frodooftheshire said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
@DustinB3403 Exactly. I've only had Lenovo laptops the last few years. Besides that maybe I would look at Dell's lattitude lineup. In fact I was cross shopping these two options against the Lattitude 7480. The problem with the 7480 is that unlike the T470s it doesn't have a dock connector, and it's only got 2 X PCI express lanes going to its m.2 SSD vs 4 for both the T470s & X1 Carbon.
I moved to Asus. Vast improvement. We bought three this past year at home, planning for another.
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@coliver I've deployed 2 different SurfaceBooks (not a lot I'll grant you) and both of them had issues. One had to be sent back to Microsoft as the screen release system didn't work, and the other one would just periodically lock up ( fixed through updates eventually).
The XPS is a good machine though. Besides not having a dock connection, the main downside as I see it - it doesn't have a trackpoint keyboard...which is what I've used for the last 10 years.
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@frodooftheshire said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
@scottalanmiller You have a 5th generation carbon? That's the latest and has received the best praise/positive reviews - pretty much from everyone.
Here is a problem with reviews.... the majority of the people that I'd trust writing a review won't look at a Lenovo, period. So any reviews of one are filtered by people who are either not up to date or don't care about factors that we generally care about. This makes reviews very, very skewed. Sure there are fewer reviewers, but the reviews that get published now are almost totally filtered to only be fanboys. Reviews are nearly worthless at the best of times (see our discussions on Consumer Reports and Gartner) but with a product like Lenovo, they are dramatically worse.
That said, no, the issues we've had were a little older. There is no vendor I would use less than Lenovo. Literally. Worst build, worst support, worst customer service. Every aspect of dealing with them has been insanely bad. Both as a vendor and their product have been terrible.
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@frodooftheshire said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
@coliver I've deployed 2 different SurfaceBooks (not a lot I'll grant you) and both of them had issues.
Avoid any product with Surface in the name. Microsoft isn't doing the illegal and unethical things that Lenovo does, but their stuff is shoddy to say the least. We actually have to upcharge clients who demand to use them because they are so much more expensive to support than quality gear.
I'd take a Surface before a Lenovo, but I'd never buy one with my own money.
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There are loads of good vendors out there, varying a little depending on the market. But Dell, Asus, Acer, Samsung, HP, Fujitsu, Toshiba might still be around, etc.
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@scottalanmiller I'll never buy another Asus. To give you an idea how about their support is - my wife bought a Asus laptop a few years back with Windows 8. When 8.1 came out her trackpad stopped scrolling. Asus never released an update to fix it. That's crazy to me. We're not talking about going from Windows 7 to windows 10...windows 8 to 8.1.
eople all over the internet were complaining and it was at least a year or two until someone discovered a driver for another laptop model would work on the Asus laptops.
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@frodooftheshire said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
It's extremely light, has top of class battery life (15+ hours), one of the best keyboards, great connection options - full size HDMI, 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports. What parts did you have to replace out of the box?
We have one of the business class Yogas. Had to replace the wifi. And we aren't the only ones in the community that had to do that. And the OS. Even with the wifi replaced, Windows 10 was flaky on it. Something about the drivers even coming signed from MS, they weren't hijacked like the Lenovo ones, but they weren't stable. Korora 25 on the same hardware is a totally different experience. GPU is stable now, network stack is stable.
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@frodooftheshire said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
We're not talking about going from Windows 7 to windows 10...windows 8 to 8.1.
That's a change in OS version. So it is effectively the same as 7 to 10, just fewer steps. But all it takes is being the step between supported and not supported. That was an unreasonable expectation for you to make of Asus that they would just have support for a newer OS unless you checked with them before updating and they said that they were going to support it then didn't. 8 to 8.1 was a full OS update, just like 7 to 8 or 8.1 to 10.
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@frodooftheshire said in Lenovo T470s vs X1 Carbon:
eople all over the internet were complaining ...
But not complaining about something that Asus did wrong. Complaining that they had not verified compatibility before switching OSes, right?
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@scottalanmiller Oh come on man! Dell/Lenovo would never do that to people. I supported LOTS of clients in their move to windows 8 to 8.1 and while some manufacturers took a month or two to get updated drivers to fix certain things...Asus was the only company to drop the ball. While windows 8.1 was a larger update...it was not a entirely different OS.
If you were a general consumer that just bought a computer, and a few months later Microsoft released and update that was highly recommended from a usability/security standpoint you would want/need to install it. It's not crazy to expect the manufacturer to release a driver update for something especially if it's within the warranty period. -
@scottalanmiller I would agree that a lot of sites can be skewed or very uniformed, but take a look at this:
I would challenge you to find a site that takes a deeper look at laptops than this review. They look at everything - I even know that the panel inside the X1 Carbon doesn't utilize PWM to dim the screen - which is nice.
