I need a portable laptop to:
- have a lot of online quality video calls
- type a lot during each meeting
- have a ton of browser tabs open
- have a few CPU-demanding apps running at the same time
I will use this laptop as my main PC.
I’m also considering:
- T480s
- Carbon X1 Gen 7-8
- Dell 7490
Awesome and impressive advice, thanks a lot!
I’ve actually managed to find a used Carbon X1 Gen 6 (i5-8250U, 16GB, 512) for 310usd so I reordered that instead. I assume the course of action won’t really change in this case.
And I’m not too familiar with some of that stuff, do you mind if I ask you the following:
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Where can I see if Bios is locked?
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Best way to boot into a Linux environment with a USB? Where can I get a Linux distribution that would work seamlessly from a thumb drive?
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Is there a testing app for the microphone (it’s important for me) and the ports?
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And what’s the fastest way to see the battery health?
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How to install ‘stress’? And how can I watch “/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp”?
Sorry, all of the linux stuff is just specific to my own preferences/environment - if you’re more familiar with windows it would be best to just use that for testing. Presumably it will come with windows installed?
If so, put some programs on a normal usb storage device and then install/run them from there.
- For the cpu stress loading, you can use CpuStres: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/cpustres
- For temperature monitoring, you can use Open Hardware Monitor: https://openhardwaremonitor.org/
- To test the microphone/camera, I’d just use whichever app you’ll normally be using them for
As for the rest:
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When you first turn the laptop on, at the red Lenovo splash screen, press Enter repeatedly to get into the boot menu. Once there, it’ll give you a list of options with associated keys to access them - go to “BIOS Setup - F10” (or something similar, not sure of the specifics on the X1C 6th gen). If it prompts you for a password to enter that, it’s locked.
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To test all the ports, plug your usb stick with the apps on it into each of the usb ports and make sure it shows up in explorer; try the same with an sd card if you have one; plug in to a wired ethernet connection and make sure you have internet access through it (disable wifi at the same time to make sure); plug headphones into the jack and make sure they work; plug into an hdmi display if you have one.
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To check battery health, run Command Prompt with administrator privileges, then run
powercfg /batteryreportto generate a battery health report
Good luck!
