I’m thinking of picking up a used ThinkPad on eBay for cheap to serve as my daily driver. I’ll likely run LMDE, and primarily use it for web browsing, office programs, coding, and FreeCAD. Any recommendations on which model would best hit the sweet spot of capability vs price?
X1 Carbon. Buy what businesses buy in bulk. They get it for a reason
It’s what I use for work, and it is quite nice!
T480 can be had on eBay for 200-300 bucks and will perform very well in modern applications. I’ve seen a few that are banged up pretty bad for under $200, if you’re cool with a well loved laptop.
As long as the insides work all right, I’m good! I’m into thrifting and visible mending, so something well-loved, but cheap, is right up my alley
Funnily enough, I’ve got a pretty well-loved ThinkPad T480 16 GB 8350U sitting right here. Used to be my main development laptop. Now it’s just an agent for Portainer.
Right on!
I have the x230 and like it, but I’d love to have a t420 for the meme
I have a T480 that I’m very happy with. With shipping I paid a little under $250. It came with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD (which I replaced with a larger one).
Seems to be the top contender atm.
Yep, I think it’s what I’ll be going with!
For me, the X270 ist the sweet spot: it is small and portable and has a acceptable battery( in fact 2 of them). The display is usable and comes in full HD. 720p is a little bit too low for my tastes. You can upgrade the RAM and put an m.2 ssd inside(although only with 2x PCIe bandwidth). You can also charge it with USB-C. With an i5 it goes for around 200€ in Germany. US prices are usually lower.
Had quite a few of the X and T series, X200, X201, X220, X230, T430 mainly, x230 would be my pick, you can quad-core mod it with the classic keyboard and use ivyra1n to flash the bios easily. I haven’t bothered with the Full-HD mod because the 720p IPS is fine to me, you can get them from Taobao or similar (Check sources!)
They’re all socketed CPUs, or you could get the chonky T530/W530 instead, or a P series. Old Thinkpads last a long time (although I have a bad habit of testing them :)
EDIT: MY T430 was also a fucking tank, it survived being thrown across a room in San Franciso with a tiny dent on the lid, no damage. They’re easier to Full-HD mod than the X series.
Go for P52 if you are serious about FreeCAD.
I have seen a ton of P52 laptops used in the architecture and engineering industry. I would lean that way or a more modern option depending on budget. P1 laptops are also pretty cool. Not as powerful but more portable and slimmer.
I’ve just done some quick check on P52, I saw that it only has Nvidia GPU version in my region (which is generally a bad idea if OP want to run any Linux distros)
X1 for ultra portability.
Otherwise, T14 or T15.
I’ve got a t14 and it works perfectly under fedora 40. My only complaint is that the Left Ctrl key isn’t in the corner.
Swap with fn in BIOS…
Also I heard the thinkpad golden age was around pre-2005 when ibm was in charge.
You may get top-notch casing and chassis quality, but all the computing stuff would literally be two decades behind.
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