The best ThinkPad models for running ArcaOS?

[Tuure Linden]

As I've written, ArcaOS works perfectly with T60 (if hibernation doesn't count - but this functionality seems to be missing from the OS itself). But T60 is quite old and slow machine for browsing Youtube, Facebook or other modern web sites with Firefox. The display panel and low resolution also shows its age.

I have a reliable hardware vendor who occationally sells second-hand Thinkpads with quite a reasonable prices. Now there are several models with i5 processors available: X220, X230, X240, T431s, T440s, T440p, T410 and T420. The best prices for my budget are with T410 and T420. But are any of these models listed as functional with ArcaOS as my T60? The most important things for me are WLAN- and sound support. And DOS- and WINOS/2 -sessions should also work without issues.

[Neil Waldhauer]

Look here for some tips.

http://blondeguy.dyndns.org/new/ComputersForSale.html

An external router does a lot of things better than XWLAN. I never used DOS, so I'm less help for something like that.

[Doug Bissett]

I have an IBM ThinkPad A22e (ancient), an IBM ThinkPad T43, a Lenovo ThinkPad T510, and a Lenovo ThinkPad L530. They all work well with ArcaOS, within the limits of memory, and hardware support. I would say that the best one is the T510, followed very closely by the L530. The other two are too old to really perform. I will note, that the T510, and the L530, have 1600x900 screens. The other available screen is 1366x768, which is pretty well useless, IMO. The L530 is UEFI BIOS, with the necessary CSM support. WiFi works with the T43, but not with the T510, or the L530 (the A22e has no WiFi option). I use a DLINK DIR 506L for WiFi support, with all of them. Sound works, with all of them, using the latest UniAud driver.

Be aware, that there are more than one model of T43, T60, T510, and L530. Some features are different, and the unusual stuff, like finger print readers, SD card readers, etc. probably won't work (no drivers). My L530 also has a USB 3 port, that won't work, until they get the driver done. USB 2 works fine.

There is also a WiFi driver under construction. Apparently, the first WiFi devices to be supported will be INTEL devices, so try to get one of them. No guarantees though.

I haven't used DOS/WinOS2, for many years, I do install it, for testing, but it doesn't work well with newer machines. The answer for that, seems to be to use DOSBOX (it is at HOBBES). Install DOSBOX, then install win 3.11 to it. I know that it works, but I really don't use it, so I can't comment on how well, or badly, it works.

BTW, the only machine, that I have ever seen, that actually works properly with hibernation, is the A22e. It uses BIOS support to do it. The OS doesn't seem to do much more than tell it to hibernate, and it does it.

[Tuure Linden]

Neil, I've come across your site before and actually have a TP-LINK travel router (looks like exact the same model you have on your site). I had a ThinkPad X200 but sold it away because the internal WiFi adapter that the machine came with didn't seem to work with ArcaOS - and it had only Core2Duo cpu. And I sometimes just like using a laptop on may lap without any add-ons sticking out or hanging from a wire. The T60 is just perfect for that but Core2Duo just seems to slow for modern web browsing experience. And the display resolution could be higher, too.

A T540p is a bit too expensive for my blood at the moment. I DO own a less expensive E540 model that is based on T540 series if I'm not mistaken.  It is running Windows 10 at the moment. I haven't tried ArcaOS on it yeat - I'm quite sure that WLAN wouldn't work with current driver support.

So what would be the best machine from the models my vendor has available at the moment? Or are all of them without proper WiFi support? The T410 would be the safest choice? I had a T410s before and it worked fine but the WiFi didn't work and there were issues with DOS and WINOS2. I'm not sure what the differences between T410s and normal T410 are...

[David Graser]

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T430S which works Great with ArcaOS 5.02 or 5.03.

It has an
Intel (R) i5-3320M CPU@2.6HZ 2.60GHz which is a 64 bit processor.
8.0 G B of RAM
ACPI x86-based PC
Intel(R) HD Graphic 4000
Matshita DVD-RAM UJ8E2
Standard SATA AHCI Controller
Ricoh PCIe SD/MMC Host Controller
Intel(R)82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
Intel (R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N-6205
Intel Display Audio.
1 USB 2 port in the back
2 USB 3 ports (1 in back and 1 port on the left side)
I use a 4 port USB 2 Hub presently to run my mouse, my USB drives and a USB drive.

I bought the machine refurbished and the internal DVD stuck closed after a while. I paid a little over $200 dollars for it and spent another $22 dollars for the USB drive.

My WIFI is presently not supported, so I use  an ethernet cable.

The machine is fast and responsive.

I took Windows 10 off and installed Windows 8.1 and boot between Windows and the two ArcaOS partitions that I have installed.

The laptop CPU does run a little hot at around 150 degrees F but as near as I can tell, it has not hurt this laptop.  I have been using it for around 1 year.

[Doug Bissett]

If WiFi is that important to you, stay with the T60, until the WiFi driver is made available. By then, there may be other options, including your E540.

BTW, DO NOT use a laptop on your lap, without some sort of protection from the heat. You can cook your legs, without even knowing it. That is why IBM, and Lenovo, do not call their machines "laptop computers".

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

If you need WLAN for a notebook, I see three options:

- Use an older model.
- Use a LAN/WLAN converter.
- Replace the WLAN card, as Sigurd did it multiple times.

For higher display resolution, I find the 1440x1050 (4:3) optimal for a notebook. Unfortunately the last one with that was the T60. After that, 1920x1080 (16:9) or 1680x1050 (16:10) is probably the best.

For the HDD: You should replace it with a SDD. That requires the notebook to have a SATA port. (IIRC, the T60 was the first one with SATA.) The harddisks in the newest models doesn't seem to be made to work, see Sigurd's report how to replace it.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I can not recommend any laptop, but I had tried to document some of the laptops used by the community with OS/2 and ArcaOS.
I had them listed on the OS2World wiki: https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Laptop_Computers

I hope it can give you some hints.

Regards

[Tuure Linden]

I am using a Kingston SSD with my T60 and that makes it much more responsive that it would be with the traditional HDD, for sure. My E540 might be a great alternative for running ArcaOS. I might try replacing the WiFi adapter if there won't be a compatible driver for the one it has installed. Was it an Intel one... I'm not really sure, I should go and check.

Sadly dual booting with Windows 10 isn't an option if I have undersood right.  Back in the day OS/2 had a great boot manager and I remember running OS/2 Warp, Linux and Windows all of them on a single hard drive. Using multiple hard drives would be a solution but it's not suitable for the E540 because only one hard drive can be installed at once. That's why I'm looking for another laptop for ArcaOS use because I also need Windows 10 for some applications.

Most of those Thinkpads available at my retailer are about 100 dollars or even less. That's why it wouldn't be a great cost to buy one. Actually I already reserved a Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71 from him to be my ArcaOS Desktop. The Lenovo M90z All-In-One that I have at the moment has video issues with ArcaOS (the panels native resolution doesn't work properly and the resolutions available result a stretched image because the aspect ratio is wrong - and there is no fix at the moment).

What are the suitable replacement WiFi cards at the moment when talking about the T420, for example? That would be the most cost efficient alternative. And theres also many T430 models under 200 dollars. It turned out that most of the Thinkpads I mentioned before are already sold and there are only T420 and T430 models available for a reasonable price at the moment.

[xynixme]

If WiFi is that important to you, stay with the T60, until the WiFi driver is made available. By then, there may be other options, including your E540.

Or upgrade to a pimped T60p, which could take care of the resolution: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T60p.

[Tuure Linden]

T60p is hard to find nowadays. Such an old model - and still Core2Duo. I also have a T61 (currently running HaikuOS) but it wouldn't be much of an improvement compared to T60. Tomorrow I'm going to see my vendor and find out what he has available. But propably none of those alternatives has a WiFi adaptor supported by ArcaOS. Perfhaps I'll get one with an Intel WiFi card and wait for drivers to be available - I do have my TP-LINK Travel Router anyway.

[Tuure Linden]

I ended up getting a T410s and a T430... The T430 gives a great Youtube performance with a quad core cpu that ArcaOS sees as 4 cpus. T410s would be a little lighter machine and if my memory serves me right I was able to run DOS and WINOS2 without issues when using full-screen mode and switching to windowed mode with the Alt+Home key combination when I had that model of Thinkpad earlier. (I sold it away because of the missing WiFi support in ArcaOS.)

HD resolutions for Youtube are not available with T430, but I think that it has to do with lacking accelerated graphics support and limitations of the Panorama "driver" (that's not actually a driver at all). I haven't been able to play videos in HD resolutions on any machine I've tryed ArcaOS on.  And the wide-screen resolution also works "out-of-the-box" with Panorama. Of course the external router is required for WiFi. It was possible to disable USB3 from the BIOS and all the USB ports operate in USB2 mode. There are however issues with DOS and WINOS2 - the traditional lacking windowed support and WINOS2 refuses to start even in full-screen mode. I'll have to dig into that. T430 would performance wise make a great ArcaOS laptop even for daily use. Of course also my T60 would do that if I didn't do so much web surfing on Youtube and Facebook etc. I'll have to choose whether I keep the T430 or T410s - I don't need both of them, so I'll keep only the one that performs with ArcaOS better. Besides I would have to buy more ArcaOS licenses to be able to run it on more than two machines.

[David Graser]

I ended up getting a T410s and a T430... The T430 gives a great Youtube performance with a quad core cpu that ArcaOS sees as 4 cpus. T410s would be a little lighter machine and  It was possible to disable USB3 from the BIOS and all the USB ports operate in USB2 mode.

Thank you Tuure.  I did not realize by disabling USB 3 support in my notebook bios that it would enable me to use my USB 2 devices in my USB 3 ports on my Thinkpad T430S.  Now I have 3 functioning USB 2 ports.

[Dave Yeo]

There are tricks to getting HD video on OS/2. Using hooktube is one, I just tested, 1080 video plays fairly good on my 10 year old quadcore desktop though the 1680x1050 monitor is slightly to small. 4k never did start playing, maybe due to my LTE connection to the internet. To use hooktube, just change the URL in a YouTube video replacing youtube with hooktube, or go to hooktube.com.
Another trick is to force h264 with the h264ify extension. Might not give higher resolutions but h264 is more efficient then VP9. You might be able to play the videos in VLC or FFplay as well, which gets rid of the overhead of the browser. No experience with facebook.

[Rick Smith]

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T430S which works Great with ArcaOS 5.02 or 5.03.

It has an
Intel (R) i5-3320M CPU@2.6HZ 2.60GHz which is a 64 bit processor.
8.0 G B of RAM
ACPI x86-based PC
Intel(R) HD Graphic 4000
Matshita DVD-RAM UJ8E2
Standard SATA AHCI Controller
Ricoh PCIe SD/MMC Host Controller
Intel(R)82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
Intel (R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N-6205
Intel Display Audio.
1 USB 2 port in the back
2 USB 3 ports (1 in back and 1 port on the left side)
I use a 4 port USB 2 Hub presently to run my mouse, my USB drives and a USB drive.

I have the same machine, can you run winos2? My machine just hangs I can’t even run the setup.exe

Regards

Rick