To all my readers - sorry for not being able to blog more frequently lately. Here's an easy read about my favourite laptop brand Lenovo and some of their design flaws I've found.
X220 and T60 Batterries are ALMOST Identical
As you can see the X220 and T60 batteries are nearly identical with the notable exception of the connector placement. The end result - I have to purchase yet another battery as a backup for long travel/work on the go. Not what I want.
I wish all Lenovo models had the same batteries so people can swap them around as they wish. Is this too much to ask for? Have you seen another brand which got this right?
ThinkPad Mini Dock Design Flaw
I'm using a ThinkPad Mini Dock Series 3 docking station with my X220 laptop. Being a QA engineer for so long I immediately noticed something that wasn't quite right. The buttons on the left and the mechanism next to them are blocking the hot air exhaust from the CPU fan. This model of docking station is made to fit several models of laptops and those which dock in position 2 are less affected from those which dock in possition 1. Mine was not a lucky one.
On the pictures below it is clearly visible that most of the hot air coming out of the CPU fan is blocked.
In order to reduce laptop heating and provide better cooling I decided to remove the 1/2 position switch mechanism. To do that you have to unscrew all screws from the docking station and carefully split the top and bottom halves. The offending piece of plastic is screwed with two tiny screws at the bottom. Once they are removed everything comes off.
Even with this piece removed my laptop still hets up too much! I guess 80 C is just normal for the Core i7 processors :(.
Have you found something not quite right in your hardware design? Please share in the comments.
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