Thinkpad x220 aka screb

I’m typing this in 2024 on a 2011 Lenovo Thinkpad x220 named Screb, and it’s pretty fun. I have it because of an x200 I got to use on a long trip on the Siberian Express that my sister took me on in 2013. My first laptop ever was a cheap-and-old-even-at-the-time Thinkpad that I got in 2000 mainly so I could write whatever it was that I was writing at the age of 20 on my lunchbreak at work (because, you know, files mostly existed in a physical locations then so I needed a way to bring them with me). I remembered it fondly, so when I needed a computer that could keep me reasonably connected with work but also get crushed by a train without it being a big problem, I went for a ~$200 x200. It was honestly pretty usable!

Then, around 2020, I was in one of those situations with an internet service provider that involves hours of unpaid work to prove that they’re gaslighting you, and I had to find a device that plugged directly into ethernet, and, lo, there was my old x200.

Two remarkable things came out of this. One, a laptop running Linux that had been powered down for six years went through about 20 minutes of software updates and was good as new. Two, I saved my studio from burning down because its aftermarket battery was growing an enormous bubble and if I hadn’t dug that laptop out of storage it probably would have exploded soon thereafter.

So that’s good.

I ended up selling that and getting the just-better-enough x220, and did a decent amount of actual freelance work and writing on it. It’s definitely a better typewriter than development machine, which is mostly what I use it for now.

But it’s excellent at that! I had been running Kubuntu on it, which had some nice quality of life things, but I could not get the power management under control. It regularly got hot enough to be uncomfortable on an actual human lap (mine), though the overheating vintage electronics smell the fan blew out was oddly nostalgic and pleasant.

I recently scrubbed it and installed Mint, which seems to have solved the problem. I get a few hours out of it, and it stays quiet and cool.

At the moment, all it has is Obsidian, Dropbox, Firefox, and an email client on it and that’s delightful.

No notifications, very comfortable keyboard, dedicated keys for page up/down and browse back/forward, and a little light in the lid that shines down on the keyboard. And the weird nub mouse thing.

This is one of those devices that has developed an intense and dedicated following – you can buy an x330 now, which is not a model that was ever issued. Modders have put together an impressive suite of hacks and upgrades to make their own, new beast. As far as I ever got sucked in was installing an mSata hard drive to dual boot Windows and then modifying the BIOS to run some containerized client software – which I am glad not to be doing anymore. Some guy once called it the Toyota Corolla of laptops, and I agree. Wait, that’s not just some guy, that’s Maxime Vaillancourt, the guy who wrote the Digital Garden Theme that I used as a starting point to build this memex! Clearly only geniuses use this laptop.

Mainly, I like it as a calm, solid feeling device that lets me do a few, focused things and doesn’t interrupt me when I do.