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I just bought a "new to me" laptop. Refurb Thinkpad T420s from 2011. I added 16G RAM, two Intel SSDs, an Ultrabay battery, and an 802.12ac wifi card. Grand tot
by mrbill 11y ago
I just bought a "new to me" laptop.
Refurb Thinkpad T420s from 2011.
I added 16G RAM, two Intel SSDs, an Ultrabay battery, and an 802.12ac wifi card.
Grand total: less than $325.
This will be my primary portable for at least 2-3 years, and it's already four years old.
Just because I can afford Apple doesn't mean I can justify the 2x price premium, or that "old" hardware isn't capable.
- aibara 11y agoA month ago I did the same thing, a T420s with just slightly different specs. The sad thing is that in 2-3 years whatever we choose to replace it with will likely have an inferior keyboard.
- sh-run 11y agoI've been using a T410 for almost 6 years now. It's got 8GB of RAM, an SSD and the hard drive that it shipped with is now in the ultrabay. With the 9 cell battery I get almost 5 hours of battery life with normal use. I see no reason to upgrade. Sure a newer laptop might be a little thinner or a little faster, but for what I do I'd never notice. It's not like an ultrabook is going to fit in my pocket. I'd still need to carry it in a bag.
- pmlnr 11y agoX200 user here. AC wifi, 3G for fallback, minipci-e 64GB, SSD, 1TB HDD, AFFS screen; ultra light, robust, battery replaced ~every 2 years. The only things it needs to keep up with the web today are uBlock and IRC gateway to Slack.
- spronkey 11y agoThe best thing is that said a high end model of said T420s is more capable than, literally any 13" MacBook ever produced (with the notable exception of display quality). I'm not the biggest fan of the x20 series Thinkpads due to many stupid niggles (electrical noise, fan noise, LCD quality, build quality issues, driver issues, bad trackpads etc etc etc), but if what you need is a computing tool... well....