4 ms·

I could buy 3 equivalent laptops (finding IPS might be a problem) for the price. Is the Thinkpad brand really worth that much?

• rincebrain 10y ago
  It depends on what you want. You can buy reasonably cheap laptops with similar specs, either by buying >2 generations back (this T430 was $300), or by buying new models that are made of cheap plastic. In my experience, all laptops eventually suffer damage, the more durable ones just take longer and tend to be more minor faults each time. So if you can afford your laptop suddenly failing and switching to another machine (possibly by swapping the drive out, presuming that didn't fail, or restoring from backups/cloud storage), great, you have a robust setup. But many people don't have such a robust configuration, nor do they bring a backup laptop when e.g. traveling. So for individuals and businesses that have configurations of Highly Replicated Data (where it doesn't matter if you lose an individual laptop), it might be worth it to buy lots of cheap laptops. For cases where the amount of time/value of data lost to failed laptops is worth far more than the cost difference of the more durable laptops, it's probably worth it to get the ones with the rollcages and carbon fiber-infused chassis and [...].
• nickjj 10y ago
  You can get a 13" 1920x1080 IPS panel on a Chromebook for about $350. With ~5 minutes of labor (swapping in an SSD) you can install Linux natively on it with GalliumOS. Full details can be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromebook-cb35-into-a-linux-development-environment-with-galliumos https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo... Been using it for a few months now for development and it's been great.