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Hi all,
At the end of this year (October +/-) I plan to buy a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 3.
I will mainly use Visual Studio, office, some robot programming IDEs with 3D robot representations, some virtual machines and not much more...
RAM question
Given currently the SSD disks are very fast, and seeing the default RAM amount in thinkpads is 16GB I was doubting if it was worth or not to upgrade it to 32 or even 64.
DISPLAY question
4K or FHD?
It will have a big impact in battery life and maybe in a 15" display it's not worth it... not sure of that.
In any case IPS not OLED, I don't want the burn effect and I hate the yellow whites in phones, I don't want them in my laptop.
THUNDERBOLT DOCK STATION question
Years ago I got a USB dock station from Lenovo; it was a USB2.0 dock station. the experience was terrible, dragging a window stuttered a lot...
Now I have a mechanical dock station which works perfectly and that connects my laptop to a set of USB loudspeakers, keyboard, mouse, 2 24" displays using Display Port, a Web cam, power and LAN.
That mechanical dock won't be compatible with any new Thinkpad model, so I won't be able to use it.
I'm planning to get the best thunderbolt 3 dock station they offer at the time (currently this one[^]) anyone has experience with this dock station? Does it work smoothly?
Thank you all for your hints and comments!
 + ![Beer | [beer]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif)
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Joan M wrote: seeing the default RAM amount in thinkpads is 16GB I was doubting if it was worth or not to upgrade it to 32 or even 64.
How many tabs in Chrome are you going to have open at the same time?
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Then you need 32GB! 
In all seriousness, 16GB is good. I never had any issues with 16GB on my dev machine, but there was a project that I was working on that made me want more, so I threw another 16Gig at it because it was so cheap.
I'd probably throw 32GB in a machine today without even thinking about it just because I build a new machine about every 7 years and Windows and what I'm doing changes over time and the requirements just seem to creep up all the time.
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I plan to use that laptop for 5 years, In fact, I'll get the extended total warranty that will cover battery, accidental damage... so the same day the warranty ends I will get a new one.
Sounds good to go for at least 32GB...
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I can suggest you HP Elite Book (resp. one of the successors).
Take at least 32GB RAM it does not cost that much more.
Have currently a Elite Book 8770w, about ten years old
Intel Core i7
2.7 GHz
8GB RAM
64 Bit
128GB SSD
17" screen
And it is still very powerfull!
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
Chemists have exactly one rule: there are only exceptions
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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I've had Fujitsu-siemens, HP, IBM and now Lenovo.
Fujitsu-Siemens was terrible: since the very beginning the battery was dead, an old t41p IBM laptop that was amazing at that time (It still works), some HP laptops that always ended failing in the electrical area (elitebook or not), and lately I've got Lenovo... I used a T440s and my current one is a T460s which is very nice, but warranty will end soon and I decided to jump from the T line to the X1 extreme one, which seems to be the top notch in Lenovo series... I could get a P1, but I don't need the 3D design software compatible graphics card.
In one virtual machine I have a programming software that takes 2 minutes to load with my current laptop... I really want/need to improve this.
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Again, I have my HP since _10_ years and it still performs very much even with VS 
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
Chemists have exactly one rule: there are only exceptions
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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Sure all the big brands can make good things... I've just been unlucky with 4 HP laptops... and I can tell you I take extreme care with my tools so it was clearly something wrong with the device...
If my memory is not failing me it was a 8300w or something like that... an elitebook too... which one day decided not to turn on anymore. Had to recover all data from the HDD from another laptop.
Their technical support is nice though.
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I second this. My workplace supplied the EliteBook 1050 G1.
i7-8750
16G RAM
15.6" screen
GeForce GTX 1050
Easily the nicest/stable laptop I've had, and the build quality is great.
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Yep, the build quality is also very good, I forgot that aspect . My machine has been with me all over the world for ten years and it was very rough now and then and still is alive.
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
Chemists have exactly one rule: there are only exceptions
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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I use visual studio extensively, often with three instances open plus a browser. 16GB has been adequate for me but if you can afford it 32 would probably be good to have.
As for the display, I would avoid 4K in a laptop. The pixel density just gets too high and you might finding yourself using large fonts. For me, since I use the laptop so extensively, I insist on a 17-inch display - 43cm.
I went for a gaming laptop. It has a 2070Q video card in it, 17-inch display and a good amount of storage (16GB RAM, 512MB SSD, 1TB HD). Best of all, it weighs about five pounds or 2.3kg. It's power brick weighs more than it does. I highly recommend this configuration. It is an MSI GL75 but other companies have similar products. I really like this one.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I think it will be 32 + FHD...
Yes, moreover the battery life of the 4k version is +/- 3 hours... 
But I need to move a lot too so I won't go for a 17 inches one... Currently my t460s is 14" and I'm happy with it.
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If you're going to develop on that laptop, sooner or later (if you haven't already) you'll probably be thinking of using virtual machines. And being a laptop, if you're going to be away from (and can't reach) a beefy system hosting VMs, you'll probably want to be hosting them locally. That means getting all the RAM you can afford. If the laptop maxes out at 64GB, go for it. I don't have a laptop with that much memory, but once I started using VMs extensively, 32GB turn out to be wholly inadequate.
Since I started using VMs, in fact, I haven't had a system that didn't have its RAM capacity maxed out.
modified 24-Jul-20 13:40pm.
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In the worst case I've got up to 3 VM's running at once, but that is very rare...
Usually I have 1 or 2 max on...
I guess that 32 should suffice in this case.
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I suppose it all depends on how extensively you rely on VMs. I'm all in.
In my job-related tasks, I need to run 3 different versions of server software that each requires 8GB of RAM, at a minimum. Then I have VS, a dedicated SQL server, WSUS, a DC, and a bunch of small-ish VMs I use for testing on various versions of Windows.
If, at a given time, I'm down to 10 VMs running simultaneously, it's because I've run out of memory and had to power down a few of them.
I like to tinker with various distributions of Linux, but had to put together a second VM host just to run them. Otherwise sharing 64GB was a constant juggling act.
If you don't max out the RAM the day you get the machine, at least make sure you get a board that supports a ton of it. Otherwise you're stuck with it.
Incidentally, what used to be inadequate as a VM host--with 32GB--has become my gaming machine...I've yet to come across any game that requires, or benefits, from more.
But of course this whole discussion was about laptops. YMMV.
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Now I'm searching my jaw under the desk... 10 VM at once and that because you've reached the memory limit????
WOW!
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I could give each VM less memory to run with, but that means each one would start paging a lot more frequently, and I have very little tolerance for that nowadays. My time's more valuable, and the extra memory pays for itself.
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Clearly you are right...
I can't imagine a situation in which I would need more than 32GB ram, but in any case, when I buy the laptop I'll get it with the 32 GB in one slot and one extra RAM slot free, just in case I need to expand the memory in the future.
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Joan M wrote: I can't imagine a situation in which I would need more than 32GB ram
I thought so too. I started "seriously" using VMs on a system with 16GB, and quickly outgrew that. Fortunately the motherboard could handle 32, so I maxed it out then.
It didn't take long before my VM use habits made it clear 32GB was also not going to be sufficient--the more you have, the more you'll use. Nowadays, my main VM host has 64GB, and I wish it had more - while the CPU (i7-4820K) is not a bottleneck and could handle some more, that's all its motherboard will take.
Eventually I wanted to play with multiple Linux distributions, so that had to be moved to an Intel NUC with 32GB. Just for tinkering, most Linux distributions are plenty happy with 4GB (I run most with just 2). It's an i5 rather than an i7 (though newer than the i7), and frankly I notice the difference. Though I don't suppose it's fair to compare an i5 in a NUC with an i7 in a desktop system.
Joan M wrote: when I buy the laptop I'll get it with the 32 GB in one slot and one extra RAM slot free, just in case I need to expand the memory in the future
That's a wise approach. Take a good guess as to what it is you'll need, then buy hardware that can accommodate more if it turns out you need to turn it up to 11.
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For what it's worth, when I bought my new laptop this past spring I bought it with 32GB of RAM. The price difference at the time between an i5/16GB and an i7/32GB was about $200.
With everyone working from home now and wanting a new laptop YMMV .
Software Zen: delete this;
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It will be an i7, and maybe 32GB RAM in a single chip...
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The Thinkpad X1 seems to be a favourite on Slant too: best-laptop-for-programming[^]
I had a lot of laptops of different brands in the medium price range but after some years of intensive usage they all had problems, never had a Thinkpad though so this might be an interesting option.
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If you jump into Thinkpads be aware they have the left Ctrl key swapped with the Fn key... 
I've been super happy with them since the first day.
Their keyboard is super nice to type in, as in other business laptops you have the "nipple" in the middle of the keyboard to assist you in summer days when you don't want to put your sweaty fingers into the touch pad, the software updater they include is super easy to use and (as other brands out there) they can come to solve any problem in your device at any place in the world in 24 hours, which is very nice if you travel around and your work is done in your laptop.
Before the "extreme" versions appeared the X1 were more focused on travelling and being ultra light, and therefore much more expensive than a T series laptop. Nowadays the extreme version is much more powerful than the others (it's exactly the same than a P1 workstation with a different processor and graphic card) and it makes it a good choice as a laptop that must last +/- 5 years.
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A big disadvantage of the X1 is that it has no ethernet port, the "ordinary" Thinkpads do have one though. So if weight is not your main concern, the ordinary Thinkpads seem to be a better and cheaper choice.
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