Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide (2019)

Posted by Mr_Minderbinder 22 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by mdspan 17 hours ago

I really miss the customization that older laptops offered, especially the socketed CPUs. I remember putting a i7-3840QM in my T430 and having it shut down due to overheating every few minutes to the point where I had to install the heat sink from the GPU model. Was fun tinkering around with it and I wish modern laptops had a similar level of hackability.

Comment by aljgz 14 hours ago

You'll feel right at home with something from Frame.work (writing this comment from my 13" FW).

If they ever sell their 12" version with AMD cpu, I might get one as well.

Encouraged my friend to buy one, his feedback: "best piece of tech in my past few years."

Comment by mdspan 3 hours ago

Yeah, Framework seems to fit that niche well. Only thing is that Framework isn't a tech giant like Lenovo so I imagine it would be more difficult to source replacement parts.

Comment by unrented7977 13 hours ago

Everyone I know hates their framework and calls it unreliable garbage

Comment by agrue 5 hours ago

I want to love the frameworks but the modifiable ports being a slot-in usbc dongle feels like such a cheap hack. Last I checked, the only available Ethernet module still sticks out of the case like a Lego brick

Comment by mirror_dude 9 hours ago

That's weird, I know several folks who like their frameworks. Certainly the build quality is a little so-so, but the magic of small samples I suppose.

Comment by addaon 9 hours ago

To be fair, that's exactly what the original poster said that they "really miss[ed]", so it seems like a good recommendation.

Comment by bdunn 12 hours ago

I'm using a Framework 13 right now. I love it.

Comment by ssl-3 7 hours ago

When I was shopping for that same CPU a couple of years ago for my T530, the cheapest way I found to get one to my door was to buy it already-installed in the bottom-half of a whole 'nother T530 -- with the nVidia upgrade (which I already had).

I thought it was pretty amusing to get the CPU and a complete pile of spare guts for less than the price of the CPU by itself.

Comment by Gathering6678 17 hours ago

Never managed to get one myself, but Framework laptops could be your thing as well?

Comment by matltc 16 hours ago

Hah I'm doing this with some models of that same era judging by the CPU you cited. I had frankensteined one laptop from like the best parts out of three I had from that era, got xubuntu on it, running fine-ish but the Wi-Fi antenna ran through the on-board display chassis, which was destroyed. Took off the top clamshell, was gonna put ether in it and use as a desktop, but oops! The clip holding ethernet cable fell out during disassembly! No prob, pop it back open, oops! One of the screws holding the mobo is stripped! (Also, wife goes into labor while everything disassembled) No sweat, get something from ace to extract. I think I ended up throwing it back together and not testing?

Forgot about it for a couple years, wanted to put opnsense on it and see if I could replace stock equipment leased from ISP, nope. No display.

Fun to a point but probably should just spring for a used thinclient at this point, but prices are scary and I hate letting all this hw go to waste

Comment by sandreas 16 hours ago

I was looking for a Notebook (best case Thinkpad) with the following Criteria:

- Business class

- Ryzen 5 or greater (Strix Halo would be great)

- >= 32GB RAM (soldered would be ok)

- 14.5" WQHD 2560x1440 Display (>1920x1200)

- NO Numpad / centered keyboard

- >=70Wh Battery

There just is hardly anything to find in this category. There is Dell Precision, Hp Elitebook, LG Gram, Acer Swift... but somehow they all feel unsufficient. The Thinkpad P1 was close, but has Intel...

So I'm gonna wait until the Framework 16 Pro (if ever released) or until Intel gets another decent GPU upgrade so it can compete :-)

Comment by hypercube33 15 hours ago

Lenovo think pads don't have strix halo... you'll have to go to hp for that and pay $1000 over list price for it. Asus rog z13 is probably the only hope for that.

Comment by sandreas 14 hours ago

Yeah I know... ZBook Ultra G1a is the only "notebook" alternative while the z13 i more like a "Pad" with keyboard - and while the zbook seems to be a good notebook in general, it is not > 14.5". Otherwise I would have bought it right away.

To be real I already had my mousepointer over the "order" button, when it was 3099 with Ryzen 395+ and 64GB RAM, but I didn't do it and 3 days later it was 3299 - regrets ;)

Another option as buy a used T14s with Ryzen 7840, 32GB and 2k Oled for 699 - but it was too far to check it out and pay it in cash, so I skipped... regrets²

Comment by dTal 7 hours ago

Heh. Even a riced T480 can have all that, except the CPU.

Comment by agrue 5 hours ago

That's my current setup. Only 2 pcie lanes on the nvme though. CPU is feeling a bit long in the tooth for some compiling tasks.

The current t14 with the 16:10 screen and improvements to repairability look good. I'm trying to patiently wait for them to start hitting the used market, but I also recently snapped off one of the two usbc ports on the 480.

Comment by dTal 5 hours ago

Hey, me too :) I made myself one of those T25/T480 Frankenpads. But I'll probably use it until I spill coffee on the keyboard, because the mod cost the earth and everything except the keyboard is replaceable (and indeed, everything except the motherboard and bottom case has been replaced).

Bad luck about your USB port. At least replacement T480 motherboards are not scarce!

Comment by sigio 15 hours ago

Thinkpad T14 gen 5/6/current should have AMD APU, has a 4k OLED, and 2 sodimm slots.

Comment by sigio 15 hours ago

https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/configurator/cto/?bundleId=21WV...

Comment by sandreas 14 hours ago

T14(s) is to small for my old eyes - see comment above ;)

Comment by sandreas 14 hours ago

Yeah the T14(s) would be the right choice in nearly all of my requirements - even Gen 4 has Ryzen 7840 + OLED + 32GB configs (rarely, but available).

Unfortunately T14 is NOT > 14.5" Display... I would prefer a 15-16" Display (I'm getting old and my eyes are not as good any more), but all of these have a numpad, except the Thinkpad P1 which is only available with Intel and pretty expensive. So the only Ryzen > 14.5" Display option without numpad might be the Framework 16 or maybe some other non business or niche brand.

Comment by 16 hours ago

Comment by tosti 12 hours ago

The shit Lenovo does, spyware in hardware, spyware in software, cheap plastic, the E models... Yet ThinkPads are iconic kinda like how a MacBook is instantly recognisable and looks cute. ThinkPad does the same except it looks like it means business. Which perfectly fits their origin.

Would still buy again unless something really good hits the market.

Comment by ssl-3 16 hours ago

I'm getting the sense from the comments here so far that I'm likely to be the only one still using a Thinkpad T530 from 2012.

It still works.

Comment by UncleSlacky 16 hours ago

T60 user here - just upgraded the CPU to a T7400 C2D, added an SSD and increased the RAM to 4Gb (3.25 or so usable thanks to Libreboot). It's actually still quite usable. I'm currently running Exe GNU/Linux for a modern yet retro look (Trinity DE), and the 4:3 screen and decent keyboard really make it.

Comment by Steve44 12 hours ago

I still use my T61p quite regularly.

These days it's only really a thin client for RDP into work and some admin tools & toys, but the 1920 x 1200 matt IPS screen is unbeatable and the keyboard is still lovely.

Comment by 2b3a51 15 hours ago

There's two of us. Stock T60 (3Gb ram, 320Gb mechanical hard drive, stock BIOS) with Slackware64 -current.

Nice keyboard as you say. These things are solid.

Comment by hypercube33 15 hours ago

I have a pile of dell e series with the og i7 in them. Still can run windows 11 but yeah Linux is beautiful on these things.

Comment by UncleSlacky 9 hours ago

Yeah, I have a couple of e6220s, one running MX Linux and the other Win 10 IoT LTSC. The MX one is my "road warrior" travel laptop as it's tough and still acceptably fast, but I also don't care too much if gets lost or damaged.

Comment by kjs3 13 hours ago

I regularly use a significantly older T42. It has a honest-to-gawd parallel port, runs XP nicely and controls a couple of instruments and device programmers. I upgraded the screen at some point (SXGA?) and put a solid-state disk in it. Still going strong.

Comment by ssl-3 4 hours ago

[update, 12 hours later: Yep. I seem to be the only one still using a T530.]

Comment by reasonabl_human 12 hours ago

T430s as a mobile linux workstation for garage projects. For anything else, 14” M series macbook.

Thought I’d put Asahi Linux on it but the workflow I’ve settled on is to use my Mac as a thin client for a linux box under my desk. Best of both worlds.

Comment by zh3 15 hours ago

More of us than you think (and often by preference rather than cost).

Current main travel laptop is a T420, backed by a T520 w/nvidia when needed (older T41s, T60's lying around). Both work fine with linux & modern browsers (the T420 is particular has great battery life).

Comment by Skwid 15 hours ago

I only very recently upgraded from an X230 with X220 keyboard

It was a close call between a totally new machine and a display mod though

Comment by nticompass 14 hours ago

I still have my T430, but I use my X270 more often now.

Comment by CrociDB 17 hours ago

A newer guide would be good, as some of the information now is a bit outdated. But I love the concept. My main laptop where I do lots of programming and writing is an old T490s, i7 8th Gen, 16 gigs of RAM, running FreeBSD, that I paid around 150 euros last year. :)

Comment by zuuuuul 14 hours ago

and now it's 300 :')

Comment by daymanstep 16 hours ago

I refuse to buy any laptop that doesn't have an easily swappable SSD. I don't want to have to open up the case to swap out the SSD.

Yes, I realize that this requirement limits me to 15-year-old Toughbooks and Getacs.

Comment by hotcrossbunny 5 hours ago

X220 was so good for this. Almost like having a FDD

Comment by wkjagt 16 hours ago

What is your use case? Do you have multiple SSDs with different OSes?

Comment by daymanstep 12 hours ago

Yes, I want to do dual boot (well, multi-boot) with one OS per disk.

Also sometimes friends come over to my house and need to use my computer to do their stuff. So it is convenient if I can easily swap out the SSD and hand it over to my friends.

Comment by bar000n 15 hours ago

using a T470s currently with 20GB memory and a 2tb ssd, but it cannot keep up anymore because it has only 2 CPU cores Ubuntu/wayland is really sluggish sometimes. i think i'll go for a 5th gen T14. too bad that you can't upgrade the RAM anymore on the new T14s models... and also they ditched the LAN port at some point on the s

Comment by shellwizard 11 hours ago

I used to have that similar T470 laptop 5 years ago and it worked really nice. Given that it was company owned, it came out with Windows 10 enterprise, but never felt it underperforming.

It's hard to come by that gnome is slower than windows 10

Comment by jmclnx 12 hours ago

You should try NetBSD. I know people run NetBSD on T480s so the T470 should work fine. NetBSD on that system will seem very zippy, plus you will learn some new things :)

FWIW, posted via NetBSD 11.0 on a T430 w/16G memory and a 2T HDD.

Comment by beAbU 9 hours ago

Here, I'll simplify it somewhat:

- Get the model T480 (avoid the T480s)

- Verify that both thunderbolt ports work before buying.

- After purchase, update firmware and bios as a step one.

- Install your favourite OS.

Comment by dTal 7 hours ago

It's still great advice :)

Comment by windex 15 hours ago

Anyone have any pointers for sourcing genuine keyboards for thinkpads? I seem to run out of luck with them everytime.

Comment by hypercube33 15 hours ago

I think Lenovo has a parts depot website. I was able to get parts (LTE modem kit) for an 8 year old model there.

Comment by PennRobotics 16 hours ago

Lenovo needs to fix the awful quality USB-C ports on modern Thinkpads.

Comment by Skwid 15 hours ago

Hey, stop it! If they do that I won't be able to buy basically new machines for £200 any more!

Comment by elric 15 hours ago

Somewhat tangential, but Lenovo's website is an absolute shitshow. It is so hard to find a laptop that matches a bunch of criteria. Their search facets are next to useless. Not to mention glacially slow. It's almost like they don't actually want to sell laptops.

I probably buy more laptops than most people, I've owned some 30 thinkpads in my lifetime. Quality isn't what it used to be, but the serviceability and on-site repair warranty is still amazing.

Comment by josefritzishere 12 hours ago

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