Hands-on: ThinkPad X230

Part One: Replacing the Screen

Last Friday, I suddenly noticed a very small white spot in the bottom-right corner of my ThinkPad X230’s screen.

I have no idea when it appeared. All I know is that from the moment I spotted it, it became absurdly conspicuous. I could barely stop myself from fixating on it. Sure, it only shows up against white, and my desktop is black—but it still looked wrong, plain and simple.

First thing I thought of was checking whether there was any after-sales service, even though mine’s a gray-market unit.

Asked the seller I bought from. Answer: after-sales is possible, but the process takes a month if everything goes smoothly, and it’s not even certain this situation would qualify for repair.

Fine, fine. So I bought another screen off Taobao. Supposedly it’s an upgraded STB1, thinner and lighter than my old one, and more power-efficient too. As for the old screen, the Taobao seller said they’d take it for 100 yuan.

So I ordered Friday, it arrived Saturday. Long live SF Express.

Got the screwdriver ready and started taking it apart.

There are really just two spots on the screen: pry off the covers and unscrew the screws.

Carefully pried open the screen bezel with an ear pick.

Once the bezel’s off, the rest is easy—the ribbon cable is just a connector, no big deal.

Done. OCD saved. Part Two: Replacing the SSD

The first SSD I ever bought was a Crucial M4. Back then the internet consensus held it was the best. Times change, though—now those same bastards say, with the air of prophets, that the M4 has long been garbage and it’s the Plextor era now.

Those damn Reddit brats. They’ve barely touched a handful of things in their lives; all they know is jumping on the bandwagon and hating.

Besides, I’ve got a Plextor too. Before I put my Dell 14R out to pasture, I bought a Plextor M5P for it.

Even though I scoff at the Reddit kids’ “Crucial slowdown theory,” I ran a benchmark anyway. Huh… dropped from 700 to 420.

Whatever, whatever. So I’ll take the Plextor M5P I have on hand and swap it into the main desktop in place of the Crucial M4. Messed around for ages, redid the dual-boot setup, and incidentally switched Ubuntu to 14.04 Final beta too.

Spent the whole afternoon tinkering, then watched the SSD benchmark hit 800-plus. That satisfaction—indescribable. Boot speed’s still the same, though…

Anyway, half a day of fiddling cured my OCD, more or less.