Update (2020-05-18): I’ve since switched to a more powerful desktop computer for my photography business. I still use the X220 as a dedicated machine to connect with Zwift, a social cycling app. 🚴

Micromax X220 released on Released 2010, January with attractive specifications having 78.5g, 16mm thickness, Super Performance Operating system of Feature phone and Heavy Storage of microSD slot. Micromax X220 is amazing choice within similar mobile phones catgory with along with microSD slot builtin storage with AddOn power of 0.3MP Excellent. This video will show you how to install RAM into a Lenovo X220 laptop. Most Lenovo laptops will have the same process on installing RAM. The X220 takes DDR3. Officially, 8GB is the maximum amount of memory that the X220 is supported for, i.e., tested and verified to work with. That said, I have 16GB (2×8GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs) installed in mine and it seems to work fine without any problems.

My personal machine is a 8-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad X220 running Ubuntu 18.04 with i3wm.

It does not have a single USB-C port. It sports a 1366x768 TN display panel (in case you’re wondering, you can see each individual pixel with your bare eyes). The battery life of the 4-cell battery is horrendous (I barely get 2 hours out of this thing). The trackpad is so small, one could even wonder if it’s a trackpad for ants (no need to say that I never use it). The Wi-Fi card only supports 2.4GHz networks, so hopes for blazingly fast Wi-Fi are to be pushed aside. There’s even a bit of gaffer tape on the bottom left corner of the body to hold the cracked plastic together.

At my day job, I’m lucky enough to work on a top-spec MacBook Pro provided by my employer. It has a glorious Retina display, 16GB of RAM, a modern Core i7 CPU, and a huge trackpad to boot. All in all, it’s a pretty fancy machine, one that many people would love to use as a daily driver.

I mean, let’s just compare the trackpads for a second. It’s almost funny at that point.

Surprisingly though, out of the two laptops, my favourite is not the MacBook Pro. When I’m at home, I tuck the aluminium slab away and take out the magnesium brick that is the ThinkPad X220.

It’s not pretty. It’s not particularly fast. But it does everything I need, and it’s always ready for everything I throw at it. Could it be a bit of nostalgia for old school hardware? Maybe.

I strongly believe a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 is still a terrific laptop to use in 2019 and beyond. It’s not for everyone, but the X220 definitely sparks joy. Plus, its accessible price point makes it almost impossible to ignore. I got mine second-hand (third-hand? fourth-hand? I don’t even know) in great condition for less than 200$ in Canada.

In practical terms: the X220 plays 1080p videos from YouTube wonderfully, renders Portal 2 quite happily (albeit with lower graphics quality than what you may usually enjoy on higher-end machines), and is a perfect machine to dual boot Windows on for maximum value. I spend most of my time in a Web browser or CLI tools, so it’s not like I’m running complex simulations, but still.

The X220, just like any other classic ThinkPad, is extensible, sturdy, reliable, and provides everything I could ask for in a laptop.

Extensibility

The classic ThinkPad laptops have “extensibility” written all over them. Most components are user-replaceable. In “ship of Thesus” fashion, if you individually replace every single component of the X220 one at a time, is it still the same X220?

Seriously though, just look at this list:

• User-replaceable display
• User-replaceable wireless card
• User-replaceable keyboard
• User-replaceable RAM
• User-replaceable battery
• User-replaceable 2.5” storage and mSATA

That’s a list many laptop owners can only dream of. Laptops are increasingly shut tight deliberately, preventing users from fixing and/or upgrading their devices themselves. Not with a classic ThinkPad though.

I previously owned a ThinkPad X230, which many consider to be part of the last generation of “classic” ThinkPads. Multiple components of that X230 had been upgraded: IPS display, SSD storage, additional RAM, backlit keyboard in my native language, new 9-cell battery, etc. It was a dream machine, and the X220, just like other classic ThinkPads, offers the same extensibility and user-friendly servicing. I eventually bricked the X230 by spilling water in the underside RAM slot (weird accident, don’t ask).

After bricking the X230, I purchased a second-hand ThinkPad X250 on eBay, only to sell it a few weeks later as it’s a huge step backwards compared to the X220/X230: there’s only one user-accessible RAM slot in the X250 (instead of two). The rest of the RAM is soldered to the board. The keyboard is user-replaceable, but to do so you need to take the entire computer apart (instead of just replacing the keyboard directly as with the X220/X230). Like, what? Who thought that was a good idea?

Compatibility

Being a 2011 laptop, it also features various ports that some modern laptops users may only have heard of. At work, where everyone uses a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro, it’s like some sort of utopia where everything is wireless, and we don’t ever need to use the USB-C ports for anything other than charging the laptops or connecting to a giant 4K display.

In the real world, however, you’d need a handful of adapters with a MacBook Pro to connect to the rest of the world. The X220 provides everything you could practically ask for here:

• USB-A ports (3 of them!)
• SD card slot
• Digital video out (DisplayPort)
• Analog video out (good old VGA)
• Ethernet port
• Kensington lock

Plus, there are other goodies about this machine:

• 7-row keyboard
• Visual status indicators (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, battery, storage I/O)
• Physical Wi-Fi killswitch
• ThinkLight above the screen for late-night hacking sessions

Reliability

I like to think that a classic ThinkPad is akin to a Toyota Corolla, one of the most (if not the most) reliable production cars ever produced. Give it a good and thorough clean up once a year, change the oil at regular intervals, keep your software up-to-date, and you’ll enjoy this machine for a long time.

Classic ThinkPads just feel like business. They won’t let you down. The /r/thinkpad sub-reddit is full of classic ThinkPads (some of them I would even call “retro” instead of “classic”), and these things just keep on running, decades after the initial release date.

The laptop’s shell is made out of magnesium instead of plastic, making it extra sturdy. The keyboard feels great. Not your typical cheap keyboard from your run-of-the-mill HP laptop. The display hinges are solid.

Again, going back to the X250 I used for a couple of weeks: it felt cheap compared to the X220/X230. The shell was made out of plastic, the display seemed fragile, and the trackpoint buttons felt flimsy. Not a great experience coming from a X230.

That’s when I knew I’d go for the X220, and stay for a while.

If you’re looking to purchase a second-hand classic ThinkPad, do it. Buy the thing. Slap GNU/Linux distribution on there (or *BSD, if you’re into that sort of thing), and have fun.

Thinkpad X220 disassembly steps:

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Prepare tools, shut the laptop down, and unplug the external power supply,
Remove the battery, memory, and the hard disk,

Remove the screws in the red circle at the bottom of the X220.

Then you can remove the keyboard.

The X220 C surface after removing the keyboard, it seems very simple.

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Then loosen the data cable connecting the palm rest and the motherboard.

Remove five screws that securing the palm rest, press both sides of the palm rest toward the inner surface to loosen buckle that connects the palm rest to the D shell, and then you can get the palm rest up toward, and then gently push it towards you, you can remove the palm rest.

After removing the palm rest, the lower left corner of the C face is as shown below: just a 54 ExpressCard slot, which doesn’t need now, and also cannot be removed.

The lower right corner of the C face is as follows:
The part connected by the black and gray antenna is a mini PCI-E wireless half-height card.
Red and blue antenna convergence is a non-occupation miniPCIE full-height card slot.
The round part is the motherboard back-up battery (BIOS/COMS battery).
The long object below the motherboard back-up battery is a Bluetooth card.

Unplug the plug that connects the backup battery to the motherboard, and remove the motherboard backup battery.
Remove the antenna on the wireless card, and loosen a screw you can pull out the wireless card.
The Bluetooth card can also be pulled out just by loosening one screw.

Remove the keyboard dock (commonly known as the C shell).
First, unscrew the screws at the bottom (marked below).

Then remove the antenna embedded in the keyboard base, and the two screws marked below.

Then remove the screen on the right and the motherboard cable.

Finally, press both sides of the keyboard base toward the inner surface to loosen the snap joint, you can get out the keyboard dock.

Remove the top cover part from the D-shell base.
Note first remove the following marked X220 bottom and the four screws in the rear.

Then remove the cable that connects the screen to connect the motherboard on the left.

You can easily remove the entire top cover screen part (note the red gray two antennas on the right, you need to take them out from the D-shell before removing the top cover).

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Then remove the X220 stereo speaker system, this is very simple, unplug the cable that connects the speakers to the motherboard, and then loosen one screw.

At this point, you can begin to separate the motherboard and D-shell.
Remove the five screws marked below.
The screw at the top is to secure the external power socket.
The two at the left are inside the ExpressCard slot.
The remaining three screws directly secure the motherboard on the D-shell. They are easy to be removed.

Then is to dismantle the two screws near the VGA.

Finally, according to the official description, place the wireless hardware switch in the open position, and then slightly curve upward the right motherboard (the side with a wired LAN port), to get the right motherboard out from the D-shell.
Then you can pull out the entire motherboard towards the right and take it out.

The front view of motherboard after removing the fan (the side of the keyboard installation location)

The rear view of the motherboard without the fan (the side where the CPU resides)

A family photo of X220 removed parts.

X220 motherboard front view

The red box is the back of the CPU.
Yellow boxes are the keyboard yielding water channel. One is at the lower left corner of the CPU. The other is at the top left of the right card reader.
Four blue boxes are cable interfaces, two cables used to connect the screen top cover to the motherboard and palm rest cable and keyboard cable.
Four green boxes are respectively the SATA hard disk interface, full height mini PCIe card (WWAN card or mSATA device), half-height mini PCIe card(Wi-Fi card), and the interface used to install the Bluetooth card.
Three white boxes are respectively for the 54 ExpressCard port, stereo speakers interface and motherboard backup battery interface.

X220 motherboard rear view

Two red boxes, the above is the front side of the CPU, it’s GBA packaged, so it can’t be replaced directly. The below is the PCH (Platform Controller Hub).
Two yellow boxes are two memory slots.
Three green boxes are the motherboard external power DC jack, fan power connector, and the expansion interface (used to connect the dock or docking station) from left to right.
Two blue boxes are battery connection interface and SIM slot.

A close-up of the back of the CPU

The parts on the back of the CPU still look very seductive.

X220 D shell

X220 cooling system

The X220 cooling system fan is from Delta Electronics, the parameters marked above are DC05V 0.30A and 1.5W.

The cooling fan copper design

The cooling system consists of the fan and two copper heat pipes, heat conductor copper and fixed connective accessories.

The interface on the X220 motherboard that connects to the LCD cable.

The interface that connects to the palm rest

Here’s mini PCI-E slot

SIM card slot

X220 motherboard Gigabit Ethernet port

The only blue USB 3.0 port of the laptop

Both sides of the X220 motherboard use black insulation tape.
Uncover a corner of the black insulation tape. You can see the third-party chipset that USB3.0 uses.

The details around the X220 motherboard CPU

The VT1316MAF produced by Volterra semiconductor has never been seen before. It should be a new model.
Seen from the number, it should be similar to the VT1317SF, and it should be responsible for the CPU power.

Finally uncovered all the insulation stickers around the back of the motherboard.

Continue to the uncover the insulation tape around the memory.

Three copper contact switches marked with orange boxes are labeled as SW2, SW3, SW4. It should be used to determine whether the motherboard in place and a good EMC/EMI function together with the D-shell.

The question of the RJ45 Ethernet port location.
Careful readers can see the top right corner of the D shell, between the security slot module and the drive bays, there is a quite large empty space, which seems sufficient to place the RJ45 Ethernet port.

In the orange circle, the black plastic block is a battery locking device in the battery compartment, the height (or thickness) is not great, the space above it is empty, so it seems feasible to place the RJ45 Ethernet port above it.
Perhaps there is an alternative: shown in the blue strip below.

This long strip space is basically idle in X220/X220i, and it’s only used to place the cable that connects the right of the screen to the motherboard.
However, this area is used to place the stylus in the X220t or X220it. Therefore, the right part of the case of this region cannot be used to place the RJ45 Ethernet port.
In the figure above, the orange box is the battery lock switch. The green area is occupied by the security slot module, and the white box is where the screen hinge lies.
The RJ45 port is placed at the top of the battery lock switch, as shown below.

So in order to ensure sufficient lateral space, the safety lock module must be removed to screen hinge direction, the best design is the safety lock devices and screen axis placement as one solution.