4 ms·

I recommend a used ThinkPad (probably in the T series), with some variety of Linux. I bought mine from my high school when I graduated, but they're readily avai

I recommend a used ThinkPad (probably in the T series), with some variety of Linux. I bought mine from my high school when I graduated, but they're readily available for a few hundred USD. ThinkPads are renowned for being virtually indestructible; I personally have dropped them onto concrete floors, stepped on them, and dumped a liter of water in one, with no major failures. On mine (currently a T420) I can run KUbuntu with a fairly heavy instance of Firefox, a small VM, and a few other programs with no difficulty at all. It's not quite as fast as a brand-new computer might be, but not problematically so. I see no reason why such a computer couldn't be stretched to last 5 years for light use; the main reason I've needed to upgrade in the past has been that I've started doing things that needed more RAM and it was cheaper (due to the school's program) to get a new computer. The one thing the above does not cover is the SSD. If this is actually a requirement for you (I've never particularly needed one myself), you will probably need to buy that separately and install it (a single Phillips screw), but that will still be significantly less than $1700 and you may even be able to get a discount on a laptop that's missing its hard drive.

milankragujevic 10y ago
I will look into it definitely. There are lots of cheap business Thinkpads from Germany in Serbia, so I will find some. The only shitty thing about old laptops is that the screen is 1366x768. That's too damn small. Yet you can find budget laptops that are Full HD, but are built so bad they can break if you open them (for example recent HP 15 series which I've fixed for someone and had the body crack because I opened it (you need to remove the whole back cover and what's left is the top cover and the screen and the guts stuck to the top cover, but the bottom cover overhangs the top one so it's difficult to remove. )) Note on the SSD, if you ever upgrade to an SSD you will not be able to go back. At least I can't. Even a slow eMMC card is faster than a HDD in access times, and in a laptop makes a huge difference.
- wolfgang42 10y ago
  Many of them are available in higher-resolution models; for example the T420 I have (released 2012) is 1600x900. I also suggest getting an external monitor so you can have two screens--until recently I had an awful 800x600 LCD I got for $10 and it was still better than nothing.

milankragujevic 10y ago

I will look into it definitely. There are lots of cheap business Thinkpads from Germany in Serbia, so I will find some. The only shitty thing about old laptops is that the screen is 1366x768. That's too damn small. Yet you can find budget laptops that are Full HD, but are built so bad they can break if you open them (for example recent HP 15 series which I've fixed for someone and had the body crack because I opened it (you need to remove the whole back cover and what's left is the top cover and the screen and the guts stuck to the top cover, but the bottom cover overhangs the top one so it's difficult to remove. )) Note on the SSD, if you ever upgrade to an SSD you will not be able to go back. At least I can't. Even a slow eMMC card is faster than a HDD in access times, and in a laptop makes a huge difference.

wolfgang42 10y ago
Many of them are available in higher-resolution models; for example the T420 I have (released 2012) is 1600x900. I also suggest getting an external monitor so you can have two screens--until recently I had an awful 800x600 LCD I got for $10 and it was still better than nothing.