5 ms·

Compute power has never been an issue for me, but I generally try to max out the RAM as much as my budget allows. This is why I still have a 2010 Macbook that i

Compute power has never been an issue for me, but I generally try to max out the RAM as much as my budget allows. This is why I still have a 2010 Macbook that is more than fine. Started with 4GB and was barely usable for heavier even when it came out, but dropping 16GB into and it has been smooth sailing for over a decade now. That said my daily runner is now T420 from (2011-ish) that came with 6GB of RAM that is in near mint condition I bought for $100. I swapped the HDD for an SSD and just threw Linux Mint on here - I disable the swap file so that it doesn't hammer the drive. So when it is 6GB of RAM - that is all it can work with but it has never been an issue. But the original HDD was running Windows 7 and oh my gosh the bloat they had installed! This poor thing was in pain with that junk on board! It is amazing how many times I have had an old laptop come up, unusable because of how the OS treats the system and the users just keep dumping more on it that is reasonable. But swap the disk drive and OS and you would never recognize some of these things. I once came across some netbook Toshiba Presario (?) - 1.4Ghz Core Duo with 3GB of RAM running Windows Vista. The poor thing! But do the old one two on it and it was a brilliant little machine for plucking away on, could easily get 6-7 hours on battery as well.

yokoprime 3y ago
My main issue with especially lenovos from 2010-2015 is that the lcd panels are poor quality (dim, loads of bleed etc) everything else is really good
- kramerger 3y ago
  You could buy them with both crappy panels or good high resolution panels. Obviously most companies opted for the cheaper crappier version, that's why most second hand thinkpads have them But you can often buy a LCD upgrade kit for cheap on amazon/aliexpress
AnonymousPlanet 3y ago
I have a T420s that really struggles with video e.g. Youtube. Watching any h.245 via VLC or mplayer is impossible. Also the battery is in a bad state and I haven't been able to find a good replacement that isn't equally poor or worse right from the start. It actually has two batteries, one being in what used to be the cd tray. Still, usage time is 3 hours tops. It had been my daily driver for years, running Linux, but I had to replace it with something newer. How is your T420 doing with all this? Did you update the CPU? Does it still have the stock battery?
- HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  Yeah, I replaced the battery on my t540p but it's still sub 1 hour life. Replaced hard drive and upgraded the ram so now it works pretty well as a desktop PC running win 10. It was running super slow for ages, fixed after I banished Google drive backup. Maybe a compatibility issue with newest Google software thrashing constantly on older OS / hardware.
- nython 3y ago
  On aliexpress, there is an usbc adapter for the t420 power cable that will allow it to take charge from a 65w powerbank (maybe even 20w). No need to search for battery replacements anymore and can also throw away the original power brick.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  It is still running a 2.4ghz 2nd gen i5. The battery is in decent condition but because it was a second hand machine, I am not sure what its life was like before it. I do find it odd that it is struggling with video content, it doesn't seem to really push this thing to the limit even at 1080p but it does drive the CPU's a fair bit. It is fun looking at the video state of video decoding on Intel chips during that time period. 2nd gen are still fairly CPU heavy. 3rd gen the load is cut in half. 4th Gen it almost looks like your system is idle running that stuff. I have a Dell Optiplex Mini that runs a 2Ghz 4th Gen i5 and you can barely tell the CPU is doing anything do the media acceleration. Cool to see in action.
Delk 3y ago
> I swapped the HDD for an SSD and just threw Linux Mint on here - I disable the swap file so that it doesn't hammer the drive. If that's for the longevity of the drive, I don't think that's really even necessary on a personal device, based on my limited experience. Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. I have a basic consumer-grade Samsung 850 EVO SSD that I've been using daily in my laptop since ~2015 or 2016 or so. I've had zero problems with write performance so far, and the SSD reports a wear leveling count of ~140 which seems to indicate the (average?) number of writes per block so far. That value normalizes to a SMART value of 93 out of 100. While SMART may not be much of a reliable indicator of anything, if the number of blocks written is anywhere near realistic, that value seems to make approximate sense if TLC NAND lifetime expectancy is rated at ~1000 writes per block. Samsung also seems to have a warranty of up to 5 years or 150 TB written for this SSD (depends on drive capacity). The drive reports a total of 23.7 TB written so far. I haven't been doing a lot of data-heavy work on the device but I haven't really been particularly careful with the SSD either. I've got a swap that's seen some actual use (8 GB RAM), and I also hibernate semi-regularly. I've been trying to keep at least ~15 percent of the capacity free to help with wear leveling but that's about the only conserving I've been doing. Of course it might be that my drive is just waiting to suddenly start failing writes but I'm not really expecting that. And your disabling swap might be for some other reason, of course. But if this is par for the course for consumer-grade SSDs in general, I wouldn't really be worried about the effects of swapping on life spans unless there's some particularly heavy hammering planned.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. This one. My VERTEX3 is running fine, though it's not TLC, of course. And with auto-leveling all you really need (if you care that much) is to.. increase the swap size, so there would be less evictions from the swap => less writes. But anyway, even modern TLC drives would be fine for a decade if this is just a machine used for a couple of hours everyday. You need like a constant 3MB/s 24/7 to even be close for their rated TBW.
  - 3y ago
foo42 3y ago
I have a t420 in my drawer I've been considering doing this with. Years ago before it was old I used to dual boot it with mint and the power management wasn't great. How's your experience been? mind you that was with original spinning drive. what spec SSD did you install? sorry for all the questions.

yokoprime 3y ago

My main issue with especially lenovos from 2010-2015 is that the lcd panels are poor quality (dim, loads of bleed etc) everything else is really good

kramerger 3y ago
You could buy them with both crappy panels or good high resolution panels. Obviously most companies opted for the cheaper crappier version, that's why most second hand thinkpads have them But you can often buy a LCD upgrade kit for cheap on amazon/aliexpress

AnonymousPlanet 3y ago

I have a T420s that really struggles with video e.g. Youtube. Watching any h.245 via VLC or mplayer is impossible. Also the battery is in a bad state and I haven't been able to find a good replacement that isn't equally poor or worse right from the start. It actually has two batteries, one being in what used to be the cd tray. Still, usage time is 3 hours tops. It had been my daily driver for years, running Linux, but I had to replace it with something newer. How is your T420 doing with all this? Did you update the CPU? Does it still have the stock battery?

HlessClaudesman 3y ago
Yeah, I replaced the battery on my t540p but it's still sub 1 hour life. Replaced hard drive and upgraded the ram so now it works pretty well as a desktop PC running win 10. It was running super slow for ages, fixed after I banished Google drive backup. Maybe a compatibility issue with newest Google software thrashing constantly on older OS / hardware.
nython 3y ago
On aliexpress, there is an usbc adapter for the t420 power cable that will allow it to take charge from a 65w powerbank (maybe even 20w). No need to search for battery replacements anymore and can also throw away the original power brick.
NovaDudely 3y ago
It is still running a 2.4ghz 2nd gen i5. The battery is in decent condition but because it was a second hand machine, I am not sure what its life was like before it. I do find it odd that it is struggling with video content, it doesn't seem to really push this thing to the limit even at 1080p but it does drive the CPU's a fair bit. It is fun looking at the video state of video decoding on Intel chips during that time period. 2nd gen are still fairly CPU heavy. 3rd gen the load is cut in half. 4th Gen it almost looks like your system is idle running that stuff. I have a Dell Optiplex Mini that runs a 2Ghz 4th Gen i5 and you can barely tell the CPU is doing anything do the media acceleration. Cool to see in action.

Delk 3y ago

> I swapped the HDD for an SSD and just threw Linux Mint on here - I disable the swap file so that it doesn't hammer the drive. If that's for the longevity of the drive, I don't think that's really even necessary on a personal device, based on my limited experience. Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. I have a basic consumer-grade Samsung 850 EVO SSD that I've been using daily in my laptop since ~2015 or 2016 or so. I've had zero problems with write performance so far, and the SSD reports a wear leveling count of ~140 which seems to indicate the (average?) number of writes per block so far. That value normalizes to a SMART value of 93 out of 100. While SMART may not be much of a reliable indicator of anything, if the number of blocks written is anywhere near realistic, that value seems to make approximate sense if TLC NAND lifetime expectancy is rated at ~1000 writes per block. Samsung also seems to have a warranty of up to 5 years or 150 TB written for this SSD (depends on drive capacity). The drive reports a total of 23.7 TB written so far. I haven't been doing a lot of data-heavy work on the device but I haven't really been particularly careful with the SSD either. I've got a swap that's seen some actual use (8 GB RAM), and I also hibernate semi-regularly. I've been trying to keep at least ~15 percent of the capacity free to help with wear leveling but that's about the only conserving I've been doing. Of course it might be that my drive is just waiting to suddenly start failing writes but I'm not really expecting that. And your disabling swap might be for some other reason, of course. But if this is par for the course for consumer-grade SSDs in general, I wouldn't really be worried about the effects of swapping on life spans unless there's some particularly heavy hammering planned.

justsomehnguy 3y ago
> Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. This one. My VERTEX3 is running fine, though it's not TLC, of course. And with auto-leveling all you really need (if you care that much) is to.. increase the swap size, so there would be less evictions from the swap => less writes. But anyway, even modern TLC drives would be fine for a decade if this is just a machine used for a couple of hours everyday. You need like a constant 3MB/s 24/7 to even be close for their rated TBW.
- 3y ago

foo42 3y ago

I have a t420 in my drawer I've been considering doing this with. Years ago before it was old I used to dual boot it with mint and the power management wasn't great. How's your experience been? mind you that was with original spinning drive. what spec SSD did you install? sorry for all the questions.