post music: Love Theme (Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots)
Okay, so for a long time I've been a user of old top-end hardware, and to some extent I still am. My laptops qualified as desktop replacements, and my desktops qualified as tower servers. I had Xeons in everything. This translated to the rest of my tech lifestyle as well. I desired the flagship, and was fine with it being a little older.
My everyday laptop was a ThinkPad P51, and a P50s before that. It was a superpower on my lap and on my desk, and I could do great things without even touching my desktop. It was perfectly serviceable, even as I serviced it a few times; it got a keyboard replacement, display upgrade, more storage. I was ready to ride into the next few years with this laptop.
But things changed. I changed. And my operating system changed. Several years ago I made the switch to Linux. I actually switched to Linux before getting my P51. And I probably should have read up on compatibility before buying it because, and this turned out to be the major factor in my recent switchup, the way the graphics are handled on this machine is dogshit.
On most systems with Optimus (presence of both Intel IGP and Nvidia dGPU), it is fairly trivial to exclusively use the IGP and rarely if ever use the NV GPU. Except on the P51, if you want to use only the IGP, you lose all of your display outputs. The IGP is only connected to the onboard display, and if you want more monitors you must switch to its Quadro.
My workflow is fairly dock-heavy, so that meant that going into my P51, I basically had to keep the Quadro on all the time. This was not good for the battery life, and thus I was tethered to a wall at all times. It also broke sleep, and was just too old to support modern NVK frameworks, leaving me stuck with the proprietary drivers. When I jumped from X11 to Wayland, it got even worse. Graphics flickered. Parts of the graphics engine just didn't work, like certain transparency effects. Early on, the Plasma shell wouldn't launch at all. But I pushed through until I couldn't stand it anymore.
And that's when I started researching what would be my next laptop. In order to do this, I had to discard my old flagship choices. After all, flagship laptops of my particular flavor (ThinkPads) all have Nvidia graphics, and that was something I explicitly wanted to avoid. In fact, I wanted to go out of my way to get an AMD model.
You see, up until recently, AMD components in ThinkPads were mostly relegated to the low-end. Small screens, pitiful specs, and not a lot of future expansion. Except things have changed in recent years. AMD has become an equal citizen in all but the highest end of ThinkPad lines. You can now buy your particular model choice in either Intel or AMD flavors, as long as it didn't start with P. As my research went on though, I spotted subtle differences between the blue and red SKUs of each model. Little things like one less DIMM slot or one more M.2 slot or the option for Nvidia graphics.
Which brings me to what this post is about. I bought an L15 Gen 2. I bought a mid-range laptop. And I bought it on purpose. It beat out both T and P series ThinkPads. It was a personal recommendation by a friend, but I wanted to be sure.
This mid-range laptop is cracked.
I don't mean like damaged-- it was a refurbished buy-- but this L15 is blatantly OP. First of all it's about half as thick as my old P51. P51 was actually heavy and carrying it around required crazy wrist strength. But the L15 is actually light and easy to take from place-to-place. L15 has more efficient hardware, needing only 65W of juice to perform instead of the 170W that P51 required to even turn on. Most of that 170W might've gone to the Quadro, though, as the graphics performance isn't quite up to par on L15. Except because I run Linux, it is up to par. And also the CPU is twice as fast. 1.9x on the CPU. I have the power AND the sex.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. I did have to step down from 32GB to 16GB of RAM. But, unlike the similar gen T14-and-16's, the RAM in L15 is still slotted. I can put in more when.... the AI bubble bursts.... eventually. But it's an option! What wasn't an option is losing my 2.5" drive bay. Yes, SATA has been on its way out for years and NVMe has been the way, but I'd've liked the option, especially because opening it up revealed a gap in the chassis where a 2.5" would've gone, and on further research the L15 Gen 2 Intel model does have the 2.5" bay. Lenovo!!
These are more transition pains than anything material, though, and given more time I'll have adjusted to the changes and this lappy will serve me well for years to come. I do need to source a new docking station though-- my old C13-based Ultra Dock is not compatible.
Sidebar, I also noticed that newer P-series ThinkPads don't offer a Xeon option. I guess Intel just doesn't do mobile Xeons anymore. So much for my flagship dreams.