Blog log

Last update : 17/7/2026

Archive Blog Logs :

2020/1 | 2020/2 | 2021/1 | 2021/2 | 2022/1 | 2022/2 | 2023/1 | 2023/2 | 2024 | 2025

17/7/2026

Some short notes on the 845G7 I got to replace my T470:

Interfaces (display, keyboard, mouse replacements, sound)

• The body is pretty much what I would expect from an ultrabook of 2020. The bottom is flexible and thin, but also relatively solid enough not to feel like a gymbro could easily snap it in half; while the display/top felt nicely rigid. That said, I also appreciated how easy it was to bag the 845 whereas the T470 needed some space management before it can be bagged.
• My 845G7's display is a NV140FHM‐N63 (which was intended for some other laptop but made its way to my 845G7 from the refurbishing service), which does decent colors to my eyes at the standard 60hz.
• The keyboard is unnoteworthily decent. The base flexes if pressed hard enough, keyboard types decently fine for a modern membrane laptop keyboard, and it also comes with backlighting. Annoyingly, the fn key and power button (which was fused to the keyboard assembly, to the left of the delete key) has an always on white light. And the home key being right next to backspace is troublesome as well.
• The 845G7 has 2 inbuilt mouse replacements ‐ a trackpoint and a Precision touchpad called the ClickPad. The trackpoint isn't something I would use (though its mouse buttons would); while the touchpad is pretty serviceable, though I would rather use the trackpoint's mouse buttons over the touchpad's clickers for accuracy. However, the trackpad's offcenter (to the left) placement interferes with gaming if it's enabled (mostly with the WASD keys) and editing its setting it in Linux required a reboot to apply and they're all named SYNA30B0:00 06CB:CE08, making any form of adjustment on them a headache.
• The sound coming out of the 845G7's speakers (flanking the keyboard, facing upwards) is tolerable at worst, with it making clear efforts to hide its lack of bass. As for the combo jack (which is located on the left side), it's serviceable for a laptop.
• For physical connectivity, the 845G7 has a (mostly pointless) nanoSIM slot, 2 USB‐C 3.1 (with USB PD), HDMI, & HP's barrel plug (resulting in the 845G7 having 3 charging ports). The left side has 2 USB‐A 3.0, 3.5mm combo jack, and a Smart Card reader (that is begging to be sealed shut). As it is a Ryzen computer, the 845G7 lacks Thunderbolt 3, preventing use of external GPUs. No Ethernet, though I also got an USB hub with Ethernet adapter (which wasn't perfect but it works).
• The 845G7 also comes with a fingerprint scanner, though it only works on Windows. As for sleep, I (accidentally) tried out hybrid sleep and it froze the 845G7 (requiring me to manually shut it down); while suspend worked nicely. I also did not test the webcam out (the bezel provides an inbuilt camera shutter). As for the BIOS settings, HP's running a highly obnoxious white theme on it.
• My 845G7 comes with Ryzen 5 4650U, which is overkill for most daily computer tasks (browsing internet & editing texts) but allows playable framerates for Mineclonia / Luanti. And it is all done with little fan noise, which is nice.

Repairability

As far as laptop repairability goes, the 845G7 is almost as decent as the T470. Sure, it does have some advantage (like replaceable USB‐A and 3.5mm jack) but for the most part it is average laptop repairability (meaning it is overall less repairable than the T470).

• Getting access to most of the 845G7's innards takes 5 PH00 screws, all of which are held captive in the bottom shell. Afterwards, it's held by plastic clips.
• The 1 M.2 NVME SSD & 2 DDR4 SODIMM (up to 3200mhz) slots are each covered by a metal cover, which clips on to the motherboard. After its removal, RAM & storage replacements can be done.
• Heatpipe is held by 4 captive PH00 screws and is separate from the fan, so you won't need to unplug the fan when repasting the CPU (or replacing its thermal paste with some PTM7950).
• 845G7 features 2 M.2 slots without metal covers, one for Wi‐Fi (with included coaxials) and for WWAN (though mine somehow lacked their coaxial cables, making the nanoSIM slot even more pointless).
• Battery is held by 4 PH00 screws.
• Under the battery, we have the trackpad and extra mouse buttons. Trackpad's stuck with 5 M1.6 x 1.8 (essentially PH000) screws, mouse buttons 4 (and some metal tape).
• Speaking of the trackpad (which does double as a subboard to connect the mouse buttons & trackpoint; perhaps explaining the whole SYNA30B0:00 06CB:CE08 thingy), it is stuck to its metal bracket by 2 small solder points and adhesive on the top section. If the trackpad ever felt loose & spongey, perhaps refreshing the adhesive (and maybe replacing the bracket) isn't a bad idea compared to replacing the entire trackpad assembly (at least if spare parts are hard to find), though it'll require some precision to ensure proper functionalities. As for whether those solder points serve as grounding for the trackpad, I am not sure, though I noticed my trackpad wasn't soldered to its bracket (but just stuck using tonnes of B7000) and so far I see no issues with it.
• In what can be called a departure from most HP laptops that I am aware of (by the Elitebook G9 HP returned to its roots of onboard charging ports by removing the barrel plug), the barrel plug is replaceable. It is held by 1 M2.0 x 4.0 screw, with its cable going under one of the SSD cover's tabs.
• As mentioned at the beginning of the repairability section, the left ports (2x USB‐A & 3.5mm combo jack) are on their own subboard. On the other hand, the right ports (the 2 USB‐C ports and 1 HDMI port) are directly soldered to mainboard & requires soldering to replace.
• The keyboard and trackpoint are held by some plastic rivets under the palmrest, with some screws. Replacing them while keeping the palmrest requires breaking those rivets & hoping whatever thing you'd use to replace them (more rivets and/or actual screws) don't fuck the build up and force you to get another palmrest assembly with included keyboard (which would've been the default method).
• Display replacement starts with unclipping (and unadhering for either the first time or subsequent detachments if adding adhesive) the plastic bezel. Then the display is unadhered from the display (the first time around it uses those stretch‐pull strips like the ones on iPhones' batteries). Readhering the display also required spacers to ensure their correct position as neither the top case nor the display had brackets to ensure proper positioning.
• As for compatible displays (other than the NV140FHM‐N63 I've previously mentioned), the 845G7 wants one without attachment brackets and whose control board are flush with the display's bottom, with its connector somewhere on the bottom‐right section. The refurbisher also noted that they can plug in a random LCD with protruding control board (to test out brightness controls because the display it came with before the NV140FHM‐N63 was some knockoff with stuck brightness), though it didn't fit into the top case.
• For hinge replacements, that's only possible when the top case is separate from the palmrest, as the hinge cover is unremoveable otherwise (preventing it from being detached off the top case).

Reflections & stuff

Why change your laptop?

• Recently (as of June 2026?) Minecraft (in the form of Mineclonia / Luanti as Microslop's offering has a far‐too‐high barrier of entry for most of us in the Dorms) is becoming a bit of our favorite breaktime games. With me being around at that time (and an active part of it), I cannot keep using the T470 if I wanted to reliably stay there.
• Cutting out bulk. While the T470 is mostly portable, it is kind of annoying to pack in a bag, especially now that I've somewhat downsized my bag to a 14‐incher (which doesn't always fit my T470 without dedicating space to it) for easier travels.

Wait... What about the G531GD?

On raw performance alone, that's more than good enough. Though it's not as mobile and I don't like its tendency to force 48hz when running on battery (which never lasts long enough anyway). Not to mention the G531GD is shared so I can't just monopolize it (and I can no longer keep it if I moved). And that's all before I fuck it up (and myself as well) even more by running any Linux on it.

Was the 845G7 your original target laptop?

Initially, my main target wasn't the 845G7, but rather the 835G7 or 835G8 if allowed by my budgetary limits (both of which offered everything the 845G7 had under a 13‐incher format; also centered trackpad). The only issue was its availability (it couldn't be found in time), so I fell with the crowd for the 845G7.

Before anyone starts recommending Framework, I readily admit their 'solution' to soldered USB‐C ports (by turning them into modules) is serviceable (before Lenovo just made replaceable USB‐C ports with their T14G7, at the very least). And their laptops' build quality seem nice (though QR codes for repair guides can be a bit iffy). However, their questionable availability (in addition to their cuckflared webpage (and hcaptcha on opening telling everyone to fuck off) being the only way to purchase their laptops, if you're physically wherever Framework would ship their laptops to) killed all chances of me (or anyone in the Dorms) ever owning a Framework machine. And that's before we even start discussing their prices (which is still far above my budget even accounting for the refund from the T470)

What do you seek when switching laptops?

• As much charging ports as possible, with at least one of them being modular so I have more time to keep my laptop around without having to solder replacements.
• Good build quality, running the perfect balance between durable, light, and thin; all the while retaining as much features as reasonably possible.
• While not required, replaceable RAM and storage is appreciated. That said, they rarely fail on me (and if they fail, FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!! the ongoing RAM & SSD supply issues will ensure I can't get replacements for reasonable prices), so I rarely take advantage of them.
• Costs up to US$250 (before T470 refunds) for one working laptop, spare parts not included. Also available at commercial markets (not that I will be the one to deal with them for now).
• Between Intel & Ryzen, I've preferred the latter for its better out‐of‐the‐box performance. I am yet to give Nvidia a try with Linux, especially considering there are no Nvidia computers I would (or could, for now) like to fuck up with Linux. That said...
• If Intel performance woes aren't an issue (or if I learned how to get anything usable out of it) I would've rushed into either Dell Latitude 7300 2019 or HP Elitebook 830G7, depending on how cheap I can get away with either.
• As for Ryzen machines that do fit my needs... honestly, other than Dell's Inspirons, HP were the only ones to somewhat match them. Even Lenovo's Thinkpads (A485 and beyond) are a bust for me, thanks to its all‐onboard charging ports; while its latest T14G7 / T16G5 does have replaceable USB‐C ports but are far too expensive at the moment (setting their bulk aside).
• And that's before we start counting their footguns in (Intel ME / AMD PSP). As an end user, I can only hope these don't backfire on me. That said, I do welcome machines without these footguns (like Librebooted Intel machines), if I could get them in the first place.

13/5/2026

• NixNet Git's back up again. Nice.
• Welp, typing capital I and smol l is indistinguishable in Roboto. So I slapped Comic Sans MS in. Now big i and smol l should be distinct, at the very least.

22/4/2026

Welp NixNet Git just went error 500 (24/4/2026 reflection: I think I remembered seeing NixNet Git being flooded with spam when I made my repos) so I moved Git repoes. Again. This time to Disroot, though without the typo that forced me to garryjail so it's GearJail now. Here's hoping things won't go down...

19/4/2026

• I moved most of my Git repositories from Codeberg to NixNet Forgejo as garryjail, as one smol typo in the email section (for my git email) caused me to lose access to the GearJail username. Moving forward, I expect to use Codeberg only as a site mirror.
Codeberg's unreliability & cuckflare support forced my hand.

13/3/2026

A new tenant (who could've been a coworker if I weren't appointed Dorms maintainer for this year) attempted to compile crDroid‐Revived LineageOS 18.1 for my newly‐reassembled OP5T. So far, we're not doing well as we kept crashing into various ninja & soong issues 18/4/2026 update : now compiled & running but we have nowhere to upload them. As for my OP5T, I'm running some tests on it, so I should have the review out soon.

Main Page