{"id":12488,"date":"2025-11-10T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=12488"},"modified":"2025-11-08T17:15:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T22:15:50","slug":"13-years-is-a-long-time-for-a-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=12488","title":{"rendered":"13 years is a long time for a laptop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n 1 <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dedicated laptop<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014with the goal that after I earned my Master’s degree, I’d reinstall the laptop with Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part<\/th>Description<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Processor<\/td>Intel Core i5-3317U Processor (3M Cache, up to 2.60 GHz)<\/td><\/tr>
Operating system<\/td>Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)<\/td><\/tr>
Operating system language<\/td>Windows 7 Home Premium 64 – English<\/td><\/tr>
Display type<\/td>14.0″ Premium HD+ (1600×900) LED Backlit Display<\/td><\/tr>
System graphics<\/td>Intel HD Graphics 4000<\/td><\/tr>
Total memory<\/td>4 GB PC3-10600 DDR3L SDRAM 1333MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM)<\/td><\/tr>
Keyboard<\/td>Keyboard (Backlit) US English<\/td><\/tr>
Pointing device<\/td>TrackPoint with Fingerprint Reader and Clickpad – Type US<\/td><\/tr>
Camera<\/td>720p HD Camera<\/td><\/tr>
Hard drive<\/td>128GB Solid State Drive, SATA3<\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth<\/td>Bluetooth 4.0 with Antenna<\/td><\/tr>
Ethernet Adapter<\/td>USB 2.0 Ethernet Adapter<\/td><\/tr>
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters<\/td>Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205S (2×2 AGN)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014when 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodbye, little laptop<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
I never removed that Windows sticker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>. That system has a faster CPU with more memory, and should be a very good demo system to replace this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’ll always have fond memories of my X1 Carbon. Goodbye, little laptop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll always have fond memories of my X1 Carbon. Goodbye, little laptop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":3887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84,5],"tags":[132,91],"class_list":["post-12488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","category-linux","tag-hardware","tag-linux"],"modified_by":"Jim Hall","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12491,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488\/revisions\/12491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}