TLDR: Old Thinkpads are powerful and rugged, but the screens are terrible. A wistful story: I used a Thinkpad X201 (2010 model) as my primary laptop for 6 yea

TLDR: Old Thinkpads are powerful and rugged, but the screens are terrible. A wistful story: I used a Thinkpad X201 (2010 model) as my primary laptop for 6 years. I called it "lappy" (yes, a homestar runner reference). That thing took at serious beating. I worked on solar power system monitoring and control, and this involved a lot of field-work to debug problems. Lappy was exposed to a lot of dirt, dust, moisture, heat, cold, grease, and spilled coffee. Yet, after I upgraded the HD to a SSD it was the fastest build machine on our little software team. It did require repairs, but Thinkpads are designed for repairability. The most fragile part is the power connector, which will break if the laptop falls and lands on the connector while attached to the power cord. This repair requires taking EVERY part out, but I followed the instructions and was able to replace the connector. After taking a break from Lappy for a few years and working on a Macbook with a retina screen, I have to say the biggest deficiency of the Thinkpad was the screen. When I read about using an 11 year old Thinkpad as a primary machine, this is the first thing I think of. After using a modern laptop display I can't go back to that washed out, fuzzy display on the X201. 2 years ago I took it on a "last mission" when I was building an installation at Burning Man, which is probably the most hostile field environment I've worked in. It had started to shut down randomly, but it kept running reliably enough for my week-long dusty hack-a-thon. [edited to fix some typos]