Did anyone get a x210ai from tpart.net?

[Medessec]

Excel and heavy workloads? That must be a hell of a sheet. I've only used regular Excel sheets yet, nothing out of the ordinary. Real workloads? I've had the chance to run the laptop at full power for about 2 hours straight with libretranslate. It's a powerful laptop, it does what it's supposed to do.

I use a lot of VBA Macros and querys with my Excel sheets for daily reporting and data analyst stuff. It's not super high-impact stuff like content creation, 3D assets, ML stuff- but you'll have moments where a really powerful CPU and a lot of RAM will come in handy. Some data management interfaces can cause high CPU loads and it certainly helps to optimize your VBA code if your Excel isn't crashing or softlocking every other time.

X210Ai I'd imagine would work just fine with such loads, and it is capable of hooking up to a Thunderbolt dock and displaying to desktop monitors too through the Type C port. I haven't worked it like that on the daily, so I'm not too sure about stability, but I have done quite a bit of light gaming on the laptop on it's own without a dock, and it's worked pretty good (aside from the current EC issues that they've mentioned they plan to fix soon).

[shrimpboyho2]

it is capable of hooking up to a Thunderbolt dock and displaying to desktop monitors too through the Type C port.

For some reason, the TB4 port only appears to support one display out. Only the type C 3.2 port can do multi monitors, albeit with bandwidth/resolution/refresh rate limits.

I can confirm the port does work with eGPU via ADT UT4G, but the monitor limitation is odd. One other user on this forum has confirmed this phenomenon as well...

[NonesensE]

Excel and heavy workloads? That must be a hell of a sheet. I've only used regular Excel sheets yet, nothing out of the ordinary. Real workloads? I've had the chance to run the laptop at full power for about 2 hours straight with libretranslate. It's a powerful laptop, it does what it's supposed to do.

I use a lot of VBA Macros and querys with my Excel sheets for daily reporting and data analyst stuff. It's not super high-impact stuff like content creation, 3D assets, ML stuff- but you'll have moments where a really powerful CPU and a lot of RAM will come in handy. Some data management interfaces can cause high CPU loads and it certainly helps to optimize your VBA code if your Excel isn't crashing or softlocking every other time.

Yes, more power is always better. But my first thought reading the question was about an excel sheet that should have been at least an access database. Super laggy, yet somehow this abomination still kind of worked on a (desktop) core2duo.

That's why I found it slightly funny for someone to ask "but can it run excel?" as if it was crysis. If a modern laptop is not powerful enough for your excel sheet, you should have switched to appropriate software long ago. At that point, it's not the laptop, nor the data, it's excel that's not up to the task.

[astral]

Windows 11 has way more bloat than 10, and you will absolutely notice the performance difference, especially if you're using an older computer. You can get it debloated with some work, but with how much Microsoft has been touting their use of AI in programming Windows recently, I wouldn't exactly trust the kernel to be more stable...

So debloat it, and don't use an older computer. Windows versions always run best on contemporary hardware anyways. Otherwise you are asking for compatibility issues, since no one tests the drivers properly. The X210Ai hardware should be modern and good enough.

As for the Windows kernel - it's the only component of Windows NT that's been steadily improving with every version, no exceptions (barring, of course, localized 'hiccups' which are typically fixed within weeks). Most of it is simply due to Microsoft's development and maintenance policies. Past a certain date they will simply not introduce any new features into "last year's" OS, and even bugs will be fixed begrudgingly. All the serious kernel development is only forward-facing.

Like everything, AI in programming can be a great thing or a horrible thing, all depends on how you use it.

And yet it feels like every 2 weeks I see a new report about how the latest Windows update has broken a core component of the OS. Yes, Windows updates causing problems has been a joke for years, but it used to be more of a once a year thing.

In any case, there are a bunch of other reasons I don't run Windows 11. I don't like the UX, I don't like Copilot getting shoved down my throat, and yes, I have some older hardware. Older hardware that does everything I need it to, that I have zero reason to upgrade from. If Microsoft is making Windows 11 so poorly optimized that it won't run well on this older hardware that runs fast and smooth on Windows 10 and Linux, then that's on them.

[dr_st]

I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to run Win11 when they have reasons not to; as I said, I myself would not run it on hardware that predates it significantly. It is not even Microsoft's lack of optimization that is the main culprit (although it is one of). It is more that hardware vendors stop properly testing their older hardware and drivers at some point, as the ROI is typically low.

I have not measured objectively the frequency of major breakages due to updates, and subjective feelings are hard to judge by. Mine tell me that everything I read now on these (and other) message boards about how terrible Win11 is compared to its predecessor - I recall reading about Win10 some 8-10 years ago. And if we hadn't been in the midst of an AI revolution that will take us God-only-knows-where, I would bet that the same song would be repeating about whatever "Windows vNext" in a few years.

However, one thing I do abide by - whether I use 11, 10 or older versions of Windows: I don't rush updates. All my Windows versions are Professional or higher, and auto-update is always off.

[astral]

I get what you're saying. I don't really like Windows 10 very much either, if it were up to me I'd still be running Windows 7.

My issues with W11 don't have anything to do though with how it performs on unsupported hardware, I wouldn't expect it to be fully smooth. It's just that on fast, supported hardware, it still performs worse than Windows 10. Recent example of Microsoft's handiwork is with the file explorer. They got a lot of complaints about how long it took to fully launch a new file explorer window. They decided to improve this by pre-loading it in the background. This "solution" ate a significant amount of additional RAM, and yet still the file explorer launched slightly slower than it did on Windows 10. Just stuff like this makes me want to stick with 10 (or just Linux, if only there was a decent Photoshop replacement...)

Worth noting I've had zero issues with driver stability on supported or unsupported hardware. It isn't crashing issues that's kept me from adopting W11.

[Bionicman]

Reality is accelerating, Linux is 10 times more successful than it was two years ago, and then again another 10 times it was 8 years ago. The speed with which Windows is degrading is faster than the speed Linux is becoming superb to the point, it actually is running games! (YEAH!). You just need to take stroll in the woods - you will lose yourself one or two times, but will come home wiser and more free than when you left.

[flyingfishfinger]

Thanks, I'll try it.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention, the WWAN mPCIe port is a flat flex cable port, there will be a matching daughterboard but that is still in development. They used a 24 pin port (if I counted correctly), so none of the generic mPCIe / mSATA extensions will match plug'n'play - at least none that I have found.

Has anyone succeeded here yet? I missed this post and (obviously) found that the upper M.2 slot is actually an upside-down M-key (!) and is designed for an SSD. Frank said the WWAN adapter is still MONTHS away - which is a little disappointing.

[jamesfawcett]

Is there any news on ec/bios, I believe there was meant to be a new release around January with sleep fixes for Linux? I don’t have my x210ai yet but I was hoping for a release for when I receive it.

[eqan]

Yep i'm also looking forward to the EC updates

[g4b]

Is there any news on ec/bios, I believe there was meant to be a new release around January with sleep fixes for Linux? I don’t have my x210ai yet but I was hoping for a release for when I receive it.

The new update has been delayed until after Chinese New Year's holidays according to this post https://www.tpart.net/newsfiles/x210ai- ... mment-2002

[Medessec]

Yep, stick close for any updates... they should be back at it, but last I heard they are quite behind on their order fulfillment. I'd imagine the EC patch is slated to coincide with the second batch they announced.

Here's a link to another post that goes over the details of the delays.