This is half rant, half warning to others.

Relative merrits of the IBM ThinkPad X31 vs the Lenovo ThinkPad X220...

Old IBM ThinkPad X31 which I abused for years:

• Built like a tank
• 4:3 screen at 1024x768
• Fell down several times
• Got doused in coffee and coke
• Has been invaded (as in "filled to the brim") by Indian ants which ate out all the coffee and coke over about a week of constant occupation (even while the machine was running; I had no choice) years later
• Got hit by a truck's rear view mirror (~40 km/h)
• Got stepped upon repeatedly (not by me)
• Experienced everything from -25 to +35-40 degrees Celsius
• Experienced very high and extremely low humidity
• Survived uncounted kilometers of very rough off-road driving
• Got sprayed with sea water repeatedly
• Prolonged exposure to various kinds of abrasive sand
• I probably forgot other abuse

I upgraded the RAM, swapped the battery once and the HDD twice. If not for a loose power socket, I would still use it.

Contrast my new Lenovo ThinkPad X220 after a few months of pampering:

• You can remap the blue button to something useful (nice!)
• Wide-screen 16:9 at 1366 x 768 with no upgrade option (we are talking 5 years of technological advancement being ignored)
• Cardbus slot, but only one mini and one micro PCI slot so Wi-Fi, UMTS, SSD, and spindle disk at the same time are impossible
• Charge LED can only be seen from the outside which is great when my battery starts running low. Other people do care more about my battery status than myself, obviously! Making the LED visible from both sides would cost next to nothing. This is sloppy/bad design and nothing else. I am unable to understand why anyone who ever used a portable computer would do this. Argh!
• Sleep LED can only be seen from outside
• Use of built-in 3G or GPS can totally lock up device and/or make KDE/X quit and go back to login screen
• Random segfaults of programs that cause high network load via Wi-Fi (Chrome is especially queasy)
• Random ssh disconnects when using Wi-Fi
• Random sound artifacts during high network load via Wi-Fi
• All of the above, but less often, when using wired network
• Random segfaults and other magic issues after more than a few hours of uptime and/or warmth
• Three distinct USB ports (1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 2.0 with power pass-through) which do or do not work correctly depending on uptime and temperature
• Makes weird noises
• On-desk combined power brick and USB hub broken after a few months of sitting on my desktop and being used once every week

Google tells me there are several people with random issues with their X220, especially when the mini-PCI slot is being used in a machine with USB 3.0. Removing the UMTS/GPS module did help, but still, this means no SSD for me as that's the slot I would have to use.

Recently, things have been degrading very quickly to the point where I refuse to do even simple things, like write and push blog posts, on this machine.

I am not sure if I am simply unlucky and received a dud, if the X220 is a model with issues, or if this is indicative of a general trend within Lenovo, but it's time to contact Lenovo support.

If I had known all of this in advance, I would simply have soldered the power socket back into my X31 and held out for the X221. Or something else, entirely.