13 years is a long time for a laptop

I ask for a moment’s silence to mourn the passing of my Lenovo X1 Carbon. Pre-ordered in August 2012, shipped September 2012, and first powered on on October 2, 2012. It “died” on November 7, 2025, after the SSD finally gave out.

A dedicated laptop

I’ve run Linux since 1993, the very early days of Linux. I started by dual-booting Linux and DOS, then Linux and Windows95. By 1998, I realized I only booted Windows to play PC games, and I opted to buy a PlayStation for gaming and avoid the unnecessary “upgrade” to Windows98. I’ve run Linux full-time ever since.

There was one diversion to Windows. In 2012, I entered a Master’s program in scientific and technical writing, and the program recommended “Mac or Windows, with Microsoft Word” for all students. That meant I needed a laptop dedicated to running Windows.

I had run Linux on several ThinkPad laptops by then; somewhere on the internet, you can probably find several reviews I wrote at the time about installing Linux on different ThinkPads. I’d run Linux on a few Dell laptops too, with some mixed results. So for my new laptop, I decided to buy a ThinkPad—with the goal that after I earned my Master’s degree, I’d reinstall the laptop with Linux.

On August 16, 2012, I pre-ordered a new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This was the first generation of the new X1 line, with a lightweight carbon fibre body and SSD storage instead of a spinning-platter hard disk. I purchased it as part of a pre-order discount: only $1,245 instead of $2,285, for a total price of $1,334.87. Here’s a summary of what I ordered:

The system shipped on September 17, 2012, and arrived October 2, 2012. I happen to know the date because I immediately opened it, booted, and registered the device with Lenovo; I still have the email confirmation.

That laptop got me through my Master’s program. Although it turned out that Microsoft Word was only needed for one course throughout the entire program, it was nice to have a dedicated system. When I wanted to run Linux, I booted my Linux system; when I needed to work on my studies, I booted the Lenovo. And I could take the X1 Carbon with me to class and not risk my Linux data.

I graduated with my Master’s degree on May 2, 2014, and quickly reinstalled the X1 Carbon with Linux on May 3. It’s only run Linux ever since.

A second life

I started an independent consulting practice in 2019, and decided that running my business from a 7-year-old laptop might be too much of a risk. I knew SSDs had a limit on the number of read/write operations per cell. This puts a practical limit for desktop users to about ten years, although the average lifespan is shorter.

On December 30, 2019, I purchased a Lenovo ThinkCentre M720 Tiny, with an 8th Generation Intel Core i3-8100T (3.10GHz, 6MB Cache), 32GB (16GB + 16GB) DDR4 2666MHz memory, and 256GB Solid State Drive PCIe-NVME Opal M.2 storage, which I immediately installed with Linux and transferred my files. I purchased a Chromebook for my consulting practice, to keep my “work” and “home” separate. It turned out that I purchased my systems at exactly the right time—when the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard and everyone started working from home in March 2020, it was almost impossible to order new computers, especially laptops.

After that, the X1 Carbon found a second life as a “demo” system. The X1 Carbon became my travel system; I used the Chromebook for my work, but I gave many presentations at open source conferences with the X1 Carbon. When I started teaching a few university classes, especially an MIS course about the fundamentals of information technology, I brought the X1 Carbon with me to demonstrate certain computing concepts. Over the last few years, I’ve used it almost daily, including with some pretty intense third-party desktop applications like Oxygen XML and Visual Studio Code.

Goodbye, little laptop

When I taught class on Thursday, November 6, everything was fine. It wasn’t until Friday, November 7, that things suddenly turned sour.

I had brought the X1 Carbon with me to a meeting. I didn’t really need it, but I thought I might use it to take notes. The laptop wouldn’t boot. Instead, it only booted to the UEFI menu. Nothing I did could coax it to boot into Linux.

When I got home, I ran a few debugging experiments. I had already upgraded my desktop computer and a spare laptop to Fedora 43, so I booted the X1 Carbon with the Fedora installer via USB and checked the dmesg kernel logs. Aside from the USB flash drive, the laptop didn’t recognize any storage devices. Booting back into the UEFI menu, I confirmed it: the SSD had finally died.

And so this little laptop’s Linux journey has come to an end. It’s had a good run; October 2012 to November 2025 is 13 years, which is a few more years than the expected lifespan of SSD drives.

A few friends and others on the internet have suggested that I might replace the SSD with a new one, to breathe new life into the X1 Carbon. And while I appreciate their support, I think it’s time to just let it go; 13 years is a long time for a laptop. I have a 5-year-old Lenovo IdeaPad that a family member gave me because it doesn’t support Windows 11. That system has a faster CPU with more memory, and should be a very good demo system to replace this one.

But I’ll always have fond memories of my X1 Carbon. Goodbye, little laptop.