They clearly show wear.
I am not sure if they were replaced from another older device, or the entire cover is from L390, but that one would have a plastic cover for where this one has a stylus. It doesnât seem like anything was snapped out of there.
I couldnât find replacement ones online, and I am not sure if contacting the shop is a good idea. See, the L390 Yoga has a touchscreen with better colors and seems to be a bit more expensive (but not much).
However, I bought this as âL390â. I noticed the description said âTouchscreen: yesâ, which I realized meant they likely mistook the Yoga version for the base version. Indeed, that is the case.
Currently they have one L390 Yoga in similar condition and same configuration, but the screen has some white spots (this one is flawless), âŚand itâs âŹ46 more expensive.
If youâre curious, i5 8365U, 16GB RAM (single-channel), used 256GB Samsung SSD (I donât remember if SATA or NVME), âŹ180 and 2 year warranty.
Also, if youâre wondering what that port with network symbol is, it appears to be a proprietary connector used on ThinkPads requiring an âEthernet Extensionâ adapter to be usable.
Exacto knife and carefully slice them down?
Well, return it. While being refurbished, it doesnât necessarily need to be in perfect shape, it still needs to work as it would when you buy it originally.
Return it and get your money back or have them send you the correct feet. This is unacceptable
I have an L390 Yoga (i7) and these feet are indeed way too large.
The device is painful to use even with the correct feet, though - at least if youâre using Windows. Itâs constantly overheating, because the cooling system is just reused from the L380 and canât handle the heat of my i7 8565U processor. But hey - at least the marketing people were able to put â4.6GHzâ into the specs.
I have to undervolt the CPU to make it run cool and prevent thermal throttling, which is not possible anymore if youâre running a current Windows version.
That thing is probably the last Thinkpad Iâve ever bought, to be honest.
Also, if youâre wondering what that port with network symbol is, it appears to be a proprietary connector used on ThinkPads requiring an âEthernet Extensionâ adapter to be usable.
Yup, the port is called âMicroLANâ and the adapter was 30-50⏠back when the device was new. Itâs of poor quality (the rubber of the cable on mine is turning into a sticky mess) and entirely passive.
Lenovo mustâve looked at Appleâs accessory profits and thought they wanted to make money off of crap, too.
Itâs of poor quality (the rubber of the cable on mine is turning into a sticky mess) and entirely passive.
Maybe ten years back, a whole ton of consumer electronics were made with some rubberized coating which felt great when new, but over the course of several years, degraded into an incredibly sticky mess.
I had a Grundig shortwave radio covered in the stuff. A couple of other gadgets.
Eventually, after I went to a lot of work with different substances, I discovered that isopropyl alcohol and some elbow grease could get it off. Didnât look or feel great anymore â just plasticky, no rubberization â but it was a lot better than being sticky. But if this is the same stuff and itâs just a cable, Iâd probably just replace the cable.
EDIT: Probably the same stuff as here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6fznfp/cant_companies_stop_using_coatings_that_make/
The main reason why this happens is the âsoft touchâ, rubbery coating that gets put on plastics is a substance called âTPEâ.
TPEs are popular for this sort of thing because theyâre quite cheap to apply, look and feel good and quite importantly compared to genuine rubber coatings, donât smell bad.
The problem with TPEs is that they experience a chemical reaction when exposed to oils which causes them to degrade into a goopy-sticky mess.
The way to avoid this happening prematurely is to ensure that your hands are clean when using your mouse/headset etc., both bodily oils and environmental (food etc.) oils can and do affect the TPE.
It still happens after some time: I bought a rangefinder in a sealed plastic box at a fleemarket and it was somewhat sticky. It was the kind of welded box that needs scissors to open it and it was manufactured only a decade ago.
As somewhat of a retro '90âs-2000âs electronics collecting nerd, this stuff is the bane of my existence.
It seems like in the early 2000âs there were only three types of finishes applied to electronics products:
- TPE âsoft touchâ coatings that turn into snot after a few years (many game console controllers, binoculars and other optics, some portable tape/CD players, etc.)
- Crappy metallized silver paint that starts flaking off immediately (basically every digital camera ever made from 1999-2006, and quite a few computer input devices)
- White or Bondi Blue plastic under a clear acrylic layer trying to ape an early iMac or iPod, which gets dirt trapped between the layers and then turns yellow (the Nintendo 3DS Lite, innumerable computer mice, USB hubs, and knockoff MP3 players)
You just canât win.
Crappy metallized silver paint that starts flaking off immediately (basically every digital camera ever made from 1999-2006
Oh, man, yeah, Iâd forgotten about that. Had (have?) a camera with that.
White or Bondi Blue plastic under a clear acrylic layer trying to ape an early iMac or iPod
Hah, I avoided those. I think I had one translucent device at one point.
That being said, from the 1970s and 1980s, you had all those light beige things that yellowed. It wasnât the worst kind of aging, and it was treatable, but there were so many items whose age was visibleâŚmost of those later trends werenât as universal across items.
https://www.henningludvigsen.com/index.php/2020/06/03/sun-fading-old-yellowed-plastic/
Hmmm, did you get it new?
Iâve checked a review of this laptop and it had correct ones:
It looks like the feet are on the opposite side of the hinge in this photo and on the same side as them in your photo?
You can buy them online for a few bucks