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Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? I'm no expert but the cost to performance ratio isn't to far off. I am typing
by limeblack 8y ago
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? I'm no expert but the cost to performance ratio isn't to far off. I am typing this on T420 Thinkpad laptop. I get desiring to use open hardware but at the detriment of performance doesn't quite make sense.
- megy 8y agoI bet this is cheaper, and lighter than your thinkpad, with a better battery and require less care.
- limeblack 8y agoI got this thinkpad without hard drive for under $100 so they are a lot closer then some would have guessed.
- msh 8y agoAnd how long does its battery last?
- larkeith 8y agoCan't speak for parent, but my T430s lasts for three or four hours, despite longterm heavy battery use. Beware of Lenovo's rootkits if looking to buy from them, however.
- Stratoscope 8y agoThinkPads never had the rootkits, it was the consumer Lenovo models that had them. Very different culture between those two groups.
- examancer 8y ago10000mah and an ARM A53 mean it should last 10 hours or more with moderate brightness settings. It's hard to beat this for a light cheap terminal/browser with plenty of battery if that is something you need.
- crowbahr 8y agoReviews I read said 4-6 hours. Poorly optimized probably.
- jandrese 8y agoI bet it's software compositing. GPU acceleration doesn't work on those boards last time I checked, so it's probably having to do a lot more work on the CPU. It would also explain why it feels so sluggish despite being on paper more powerful than a Raspberry Pi. You should probably forget about trying to play video on it.
- loser777 8y agoCheap for good reason; an A53 quad core is Raspberry Pi 3 class. Hope every package you're gonna need is precompiled for arm64 because building anything nontrivial is not going to be fun.
- geofft 8y agoCan you not cross-compile from a cloud instance? It seems like compiling software would be a perfect fit for per-minute or per-second VMs.
- RandomCSGeek 8y agoI used a aws spot instance to compile GCC for Alpine Linux. It's a decent idea I think, especially if you already know what you need to do. I had to do a lot of trial and error stuff to get it right, but anyway, I was having that spot instance sitting there almost idle, while using up the credits I got for free, so I had no issues with it. The C5 instances are great for this kind of stuff.
- phaer 8y agoI got my x220 for 150€ plus 70€ (3 years ago, still running smooth) for a new replacement battery, so it's not directly comparable. The x220 might be a bit heavier but it's not too bad and I got a x86 cpu (i5-2540M) with 8GB of memory compared to the arm64 with 2GB in the pinebook. Considering the memory usage of many contemporary desktop programs thats makes quite a difference too me
- intrasight 8y agoI do agree. You can get used X and T series Thinkpads for a couple hundred dollars. They will outlive most cheap new laptops.
- freedomben 8y agoIf you get a good one. I've been burned so many times now by people selling something they know has problems. They often don't manifest during the "test drive." It sucks.
- cubano 8y agoRefurbished by a reputable re-seller always seems to work well for me, altho it adds a bit to the cost. I've picked up i5(2600)/8g/500G laptops for 150 like this on several occasions.
- crowbahr 8y agoAnd who is a reputable reseller of old ThinkPads? It seems like it's the wild west in the market and I am interested in an old reliable ThinkPad with an expansion slot for an ssd.
- ekianjo 8y agoYahoo auctions in Japan is reliable. They also ship overseas.
- cubano 8y agoI've had good luck so far (knock wood) with Newegg...let me find a link... https://www.newegg.com/Laptop-Notebooks/RefurbishedStore/ID-64?name=Refurbished-Laptops-Notebooks&cm_sp=Cat_Laptops-Notebooks_7-_-TopNav-_-Refurbished https://www.newegg.com/Laptop-Notebooks/RefurbishedStore/ID-...
- crowbahr 8y agoSounds great, thanks for the link.
- antoineMoPa 8y agoI like both old laptops and new chromebooks, but I prefer my Chromebook for university, since it is very light (I walk ~45 minutes per day). I think that this Pinebook thing would be a perfect replacement for my Chromebook once I drop coffee on it by mistake. However, it would be even better with a x86 like my current Chromebook. It is not that much of a problem, since I remember living happily with my old ARM Chromebook with crouton (before the screen died).
- shams93 8y agoYeah I went the same way as you got a t420 upgraded to ssd and threw Ubuntu studio in it and it smokes. I use it for everything from native Android development to music and video production and with lxde compared to windows 10 it's smoking fast even though it's not exactly lightweight. When you dj with a laptop the last thing you want is a flimsy device. Mixxx enables me to dj on the same device I use for software engineering.
- crowbahr 8y agoDo you have the i7 or i5? How is the android emulator (or do you debug on the phone)? I'm looking into a better mobile setup.
- greenshackle2 8y agoI bought a refurbished T410 from Ebay with an i7, discrete GPU and 1440x900 display, for like $250, and put a SSD in it. The big limitations of this model are: - Display has poor contrast - Even with discrete GPU, worse performance than modern integrated graphics - it can drive 1080p monitors and play old and some indie games, not much more than that - Max 8GB of RAM - No USB 3 (but I have a USB 3 express card which works ok) - Not great battery life - more recent CPUs are not THAT much faster but they are less power-hungry Its upsides are: - Classic thinkpad keyboard and clit mouse (if you're into that) - Cheap, easy to find refurbished accessories (though I don't know for how much longer this will be true) For my use (mostly development on Ubuntu), it works pretty well. For computation heavy stuff I remote into a 6-core Dell Precision I got refurbished for $400 (DDR3 ECC RAM is cheap as dirt). Unless you have particular needs for high-perf CPU or GPU, or want extra-long battery life I'd buy a refurb and throw an SSD in it over buying a brand new laptop every time.
- sjellis 8y ago"Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones?" That's exactly how I've done desktop Linux: buy ex-corporate laptops from a reputable refurbisher. You get a quality machine with a good chassis and keyboard, highly-compatible internals (all-Intel) and a decent screen for a good price. Performance doesn't matter if you aren't doing stuff that actually needs the power. Trade-offs are worse power management, and short life-span (I change my Linux laptop every couple of years).
- KozmoNau7 8y agoX220i here, 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, runs like new. I put in a new 9-cell battery, and that's all I had to do. Amazing little machine, especially for the price 2nd hand.
- bloat 8y agoThere's also places selling them with libreboot. E.g. minifree.org
- khedoros1 8y agoI considered doing that, but I found a refurb Lenovo 11e for $190. I went for it because it's a bit smaller (11.6") and is "ruggedized" for the classroom. That latter is a benefit having a 3 year old around. It also had a fair bit of its original warranty left. Buying a used laptop off of Ebay or whatever sounded less appealing.
- fulafel 8y agoI hope the availability of nice used ThinkPads is sustainable. I guess it's fine as long as they keep selling well new and the used ones don't become popular.
- gaius 8y agoHonest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? Because the batteries are knackered and new ones aren’t available for old models. Tho’ this does vary by vendor. Chinese knock-off batteries are usually available but carry their own risks.
- xorcist 8y agoWhile I agree on the battery part, which is generally what dies first (that or fans), most batteries are available on eBay. I recently bought a new battery for a T60, a laptop which is over ten years old.
- gaius 8y agoOriginal part or generic clone?
- rwmj 8y agoI think a cloned, new battery might even be better in this particular case. An original battery that's been sitting on a shelf for 10 years is e-waste. There are several articles online about how hard it is to store Li-Ion batteries, eg: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batteries http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batt...
- gaius 8y agoA new part made by the original vendor is infinitely preferable to an off-brand clone. There have been too many stories of “bargain” LiOns catching fire!
- terminalcommand 8y agoI think I lost my x201 due to a Chinese battery. After I used the replacement battery I think a Mosfet transistor burned out inside. The laptop wouldn't turn on, and if turned on it closed in matter of seconds. Although the actual cause might be different (I'm no expert) I've become cautious of super cheap Chinese 9-cell batteries.
- deng 8y agoThat's what I do as well, but in my experience you need to do some serious reading before buying one. Some people claim you can buy the Txxx models pretty much blindly, but then you might be in for a surprise. The worst offender are the displays. I know these machines are office machines, but that's no excuse to use panels with deplorable contrast and brightness (look up the T410 and T420 on notebookcheck). Even current models like the T450 can come with displays with a contrast of 234:1 and brightness of 163 cd/m². Working with 'solarized' or 'zenburn' on such a panel is not fun at all, especially outdoors... Then there's the trackpad of the x40 series (T440, T540), which many people find unusable (you can change it against the one from the T450, though). Also, not all Txxx are equally serviceable. The 'p' series is much better in this regard than the 's' series, for instance. But yes, I agree that used Thinkpads are often a good choice - mostly good Linux support, very serviceable, and it is very easy to get replacement parts like keyboards, trackpads and panels for many years.
- ZirconiumX 8y agoI have a T410 and have to use the Nyan Cat Terminology skin simply because that's the only way the cursor shows up against the background. Additionally, the i5-520M is a little anaemic for my use cases, with effectively no hardware video decode and no AVX2.
- raesene9 8y agoI'd second this having just tried this yesterday. I picked up a Thinkpad X230 for £150. Battery test (looped windowed youtube video running over wi-fi) lasted 3 hours, so that's fine and the laptop itself all seems to work as expected.
- AnnoyingSwede 8y agoI second this. All laptops i bought lately are 2nd hand thinkpads. You cant get more bang/quality for the buck. A new battery and a large SSD are generally the only things that go into it.
- michaelmrose 8y agoI'm with you I recently purchased a thinkpad s3 yoga made in 2014/15 for $275. Works for me.
- buildbuildbuild 8y agoI'm a big fan of any i7 MBP generation that still has normal USB ports. After battery replacement cost used Macbook Pros are still a great deal for quality and speed, especially running a linux distro. #NotMyDongle
- icc97 8y agoI do, I bought a refurbished T430, core i5, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD and run it dual-boot with Windows / Fedora. Works brilliantly, I do all my work on it. I brought a second one of the same spec for my 5yo daughter out of curiosity. Thinkpads are perfect for kids as they're built much tougher and can take serious amounts of liquid spills on the keyboard. I have problems with sound and DVD playback on the second one I bought, but screen, speed and general reliability has been great. Plus I also had an issue with the microphone jack on the first one I bought. Battery life isn't great (~3hrs), but I typically don't need the battery for that long.
- tombert 8y agoI don't own one of these yet, but I just signed up for the waiting list because I a) want to support a more-open hardware than the x86/x64 duopoly we have with most laptops, and because I would like as many components in my laptop to be as open as possible. As a developer, I want to make sure my stuff works with ARM, if for no other reason to help the ecosystem a bit.