2 ms·
As with used cars, 1-3 year old Thinkpads seem to be a pretty good sweet spot. New enough to be reasonably powerful / efficient / light, but old enough to be ch
by ohazi 6y ago
As with used cars, 1-3 year old Thinkpads seem to be a pretty good sweet spot. New enough to be reasonably powerful / efficient / light, but old enough to be cheap and accessible.
Corporate IT shops are often selling off batches of laptops that they've replaced, so selection is usually good. The repair ecosystem will have been running for a while, so it'll be easy to get model specific upgrade and replacement parts on eBay for ~1/3 of what Lenovo charges (hinges, LCD panels, keyboards, trackpads, batteries, outer shell, motherboards, etc.).
You can usually find anything from "this laptop sat on a shelf for two years and looks pristine," to "previous owner was a slob, please take this off our hands." So depending on your comfort level and interest, you can either start using it right away, or buy every possible replacement/upgrade part and essentially build yourself a new custom machine.
Right now I'm using a T480 purchased new from Lenovo (for work), and another T480 that I bought on eBay for ~$600 and completely refurbished. I doubt I'll be buying a new personal laptop again -- rebuilding an old one is too much fun.
- reasonabl_human 6y agoStill rocking my T430s bought used on eBay about 6 years ago... the hobby community around these devices alone is worth the cost of ownership, especially when it comes to repair and Linux support. Installed a community made eDP converter for 1080p screen upgrade and flashed custom EC firmware for 3rd party battery support, replaced a cracked palm rest and odds and ends for a few bucks on eBay etc all pretty easily thanks to great hardware documentation. With an ssd and decent ram it runs arch + gnome as well as my modern desktop does, but costs next to nothing to repair, is built like a tank, well supported in Linux and has a great keyboard. 10/10!
- ohazi 6y ago> replaced a cracked palm rest and odds and ends for a few bucks on eBay Heh. I did exactly this with my previous T520 after half a decade. I've been meaning to dig it out to play with coreboot, but haven't had time or desk space lately. Speaking of EC firmware -- one of the annoying aspects of the T480 dual-battery system is that the switchover point is fixed at 5%. It would be nice to be able to set this to something like 20% for better battery longevity. I don't really want to do firmware experiments on a system that I'm using as a daily driver, but at some point it would be nice to try and hack around this, assuming someone doesn't beat me to it.