It’s when a dog has something to say after his signature.
xoxo,
Barkley
S.W. See you at the dog park.
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Another possibility, but I’m not confident this was intentional, is that it’s a passive radiator intended to release the lower frequencies without being an active, powered speaker or woofer. (not a port, but a passive speaker cone). When designed well, they can sound very good. Years ago I had Electro Voice Interface A speakers at home, pictured here, very good at the time. and I know that Polk and a few others currently use a similar design.
The large “speaker” removed on the right is the passive radiator with no wires. The center of it is actually a short aluminum tube attached with a black screw-on cap. This provided some mass to help move the cone.
Of course, this was a fairly large bookshelf speaker, about 20" tall x12" wide x5" deep. The sound was somewhat flat across the range, but they sounded quite good when cranked up.
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I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Laptops have gotten a lot better and Lenovo hasn’t always kept up.
Apple started making the unibody aluminum laptops and it took years for Lenovo to up their game. This still make a lot of flexy, plastic encased machines. They still ship with trackpads that are significantly worse than their competitors. They still preload their machines with a lot of garbage software.
You’ve got it wrong…that’s just the tweeter. The real subwoofer comes separately
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early camera shutter design
Miniaturization truly is a marvel.
The tradeoff, though, is that smaller subwoofers are not very efficient. It must require a truly massive amplifier, which will, in turn, run down the battery.
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Thinkpads are usually my go-to laptops, though other manufacturers (Dell with their XPS series, Surfaces, even HP sometimes, have pretty much caught up). My last one was the entry-level X121e, loved it to bits. Not gonna be a “fan” of any one company though.
That subwoofer however is pretty hilarious. I’d really like to know the story behind this…
Marketing: “Nice product, but it still needs… more speakers, why not. More sells more. Can you add a subwoofer?”
Engineer: “Uh… sure. turns arounds, quickly slaps a grille somewhere. Like this?”
Marketing: “Good job!”
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Did Lenovo get rid of the magnesium/titanium composite case for the Thinkpad? The one they started using back when Apple sold plastic Powerbooks? (I can believe it, Lenovo have been cutting corners on the brand to save money for years. I just don’t want to.)
If the current model doesn’t have a T, X or P in the model name it shouldn’t be considered to be a real Thinkpad. Brand dilution is a bad thing, and I said so back when they introduced the Edge.
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I’ve even seen subwoofers and tweeters working together towards a common goal.
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That case is there to some degree to protect the motherboard. They put a plastic shell around it and that’s where a lot of the flex comes from. The keyboards are especially bouncy. The black plastic case feels cheap.
I’m not a fan of any current laptop models. My employer bought some Dells and they have coil whine. My personal laptops are Thinkpads. Apple have been going to keyboards with very little travel.
My ideal machine would be a Thinkpad keyboard, a motherboard that can hold more than 16 GB of ram, at least two USB-C ports, an Apple trackpad, in an Apple-style metal case, and a stock Windows install (no Lenovo bloatware). The display should be a high-dpi display with a mat finish and no touch screen.
10-12 hours of battery life is a good start.
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I can agree with that, as long as it keeps the trackpoint. I’ve never liked any trackpad, including Apples.
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There’s nothing inherently superior about unibody construction unless your first priority is thickness and weight. Proper thinkpads (setting aside Edge and the like) might be thicker and heavier, but they’re still quite durable and much better made than the crap you find for sale at Wal Mart.
Thinkpads are Lincoln towncars, and Macs are BMWs or Lamborghinis. Both are more expensive and better built than the cheapest alternatives, but they are completely different animals serving completely different markets.
Most of the people who I advise about laptop purchases don’t have a lot of money. A used mac can be twice as expensive as a similarly equipped thinkpad from the same era. If someone definitely wants Windows, I steer them towards a used thinkpad. If they don’t care, or if they want a mac, I steer them towards a used mac, but only if their budget and their desired minimum specifications will allow it.
ETA: I should say that I’ve built and bought several computers for friends and relatives over the years, but one thing I have always done is make sure that I wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of the OS, and install an ad blocker on whatever browser the person prefers to use. Now that decent size SSDs have become affordable, I also make certain that they always get an SSD instead of a HDD inside. Those three things are my bare minimum standard for a decent computer experience.
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Thinkpads are pretty much indestrucible workhorses with the best keyboards ever.
Used to be when they were IBM and for a while when Lenovo was making them for IBM but now that they are Lenovo only they are definitely in decline. Not just in manufacturing quality but in design as well. They seem to be letting the marketing department steer the design.
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Just following a long and storied tradition of slapping crap on devices that looks neat but has zero function.
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I always thought of them as Volvo 700 series estate/stationwagon cars.
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I looked at that video a little bit and had to laugh at this shot… it’s got short wave!
My favorite useless bit I had on a boombox was an “enhance!” button that basically did what every kid does when they discover the knobs on a stereo- it turned up both the bass and the treble. Then there was a Stereo-Effect button, that just boosted the tweeters, and since they were on the edge of the speaker frame it gave the illusion of wider stereo.
But that boombox had RCA stereo inputs, which gave it a far longer useful life than most boomboxes, whose tape players tended to crap out early and often.
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Aren’t most bargain computer speakers made to the same exacting standards?
Take the subwoofer. Human’s can’t really tell the direction of really low frequency sounds, so you might as well just use one large speaker. But the key is “really low frequency”. If the subwoofer is small enough it’s just doing the job of a woofer-- which is meant to be heard in pairs.
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Because they’re really hot now!
:joy:
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