Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen4 amd Updated +Created
Bought: November 2023 during Black Friday sale for £1,323.00 to be Ciro Santilli's main personal laptop.
Six years after, and we are 2x on every key spec (except processor Hz ;-) at about 1/2 the price and 1/2 the weight (though smaller 14" screen for greater portability), so not bad! Customized to max out each hardware spec:
Specs:
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 7 PRO 7840U Processor (3.30 GHz up to 5.10 GHz)
  • Operating System: No Operating Systemselected upgrade
  • Operating System Language: No Operating System Languageselected upgrade
  • Microsoft Productivity Software: None
  • Memory: 64 GB LPDDR5X-6400MHz (Soldered)selected upgrade. Specs at: www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/accessories-and-software/memory-and-storage/memory-and-storage-hard-drives/4xb1d04758 quotes "64 Gbps", i.e. 8 GB/s. dd count=1M if=/dev/zero of=tmp gives only 255 MB/s however.
  • Solid State Drive: 2 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Performance TLC Opalselected upgrade
  • Display: 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60Hz
  • Graphic Card: Integrated Graphics
    The Ubuntu 23.10 "About system GUI describes its graphics as: Radeon 780M Graphics × 16, which e.g. www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-780m.c4020 documents as running the RDNA 3 microarchitecture.
  • Camera: 1080P FHD RGB/IR Hybrid with Microphone
  • Color: Thunder Black
  • Factory Color Calibration: No Factory Color Calibration
  • Wireless: Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6E NFA725A 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 or above
  • Integrated Mobile Broadband: No Wireless WAN
  • Ethernet: Wired Ethernet
  • Near Field Communication: No NFC
  • Fingerprint Reader: Fingerprint Reader
  • Keyboard: Black - English (EU)selected upgrade
  • Battery: 4 Cell Li-Polymer 52.5Whselected upgrade
  • Power Cord: 65W USB-C Slim 90% PCC 3pin AC Adapter - UKselected upgrade
  • Electronic Privacy Filter: No ePrivacy Filter
  • Adobe Elements: None
  • Adobe Acrobat: None
  • Adobe Creative Cloud: None
  • Security Software: None
  • Cloud Security Software: No Cloud Security Software
  • Warranty: 3 Year Courier or Carry-in
Identifiers:
Upon arrival:
  • Weight: 1490 g
  • Charger weight: 323 g
  • Firmware according to sudo dmidecode -t bios:
    Vendor: LENOVO
    Version: R2FET33W (1.13 )
    Release Date: 09/08/2023
Buy research:
Log:
2024-01-17: firmware update:
Vendor: LENOVO
Version: R2FET36W (1.16 )
Release Date: 10/24/2023
Actually fixed performance mode: askubuntu.com/questions/604720/setting-to-high-performance/1343879#1343879
Lenovo ThinkPad P51 (2017) Updated +Created
Bought: 2017 for approximately 2400 pounds to be Ciro Santilli's main personal laptop.
Specs:
  • screen: 15.6 inches, 16:9
  • weight: 2691g (self weight in 2023)
  • charger weight: 700g (self weight in 2023)
Identifiers:
TP Link ARCHER VR2800 Updated +Created
Connect to other computer in LAN by hostname with DHCP Updated +Created
TODO didn't manage to get it working with TP Link ARCHER VR2800 even though it shows DHCP as enabled and it also shows MAC addresses and corresponding hostnames in the router management interface.
Network switch Updated +Created
A switch is a box with a bunch of Ethernet wires coming into it:
+--------------------+
| +-+  +-+  +-+  +-+ |
| |1|  |2|  |3|  |4| |
| +-+  +-+  +-+  +-+ |
+--------------------+
Except that it doesn't have to be Ethernet, e.g. it would also be a Wi-Fi.
What the switch does is:
  • an Ethernet request came in from wire 1
  • decide which wire to send it out on, e.g. wire 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. You likely don't want to send it back through 1 where it came from.
After the destination is found, a confirmation is somehow sent back to the switch, which then learns which wire to send each MAC address to.
A switch is a bit like a router but it is a bit dumber/operates at a lower level: it basically operates only on MAC addresses, not on IP addresses.
The Internet service provider boxes most people have at home combines a switch for the local network and a router for the ISP communication.