What is the big chasmic difference?
I got my T14 for less than $100
It works great for what I need it to with Mint
The computer store didn’t have it for sale. I went and asked if they had any really cheap laptops out back, that still could do browsing and streaming
They had a whole stack of maybe 15 laptops that they were going to either ditch or strip
So I think the answer is, that they’d rather sell you a really expensive computer when they know that you’re afraid to buy a really cheap one
You either get them refurbished on ebay or brand new. They don’t sell for less than $2k new. Newish refurb thinkpads can be as high as $800
They come in all shapes and sizes
Reminder: Lenovo got caught putting a rootkit in their BIOS so…you should probably not buy one at any price.
That rootkit didn’t affect Linux installations at all, and was never loaded on ThinkPads.
Still a shitty move to protect their bloatware at BIOS level.
The specs.
Think pads get ordered by companies in bulk. After a few years, they get swapped out for a newer model. The old ones often get resold to a refurbishing company, and they test them and sell them refurbished for way less money. This happens a lot, so because they are refurbished and there’s so many of them, prices are extremely low. I got like 6 of them for 200€ each. It’s insane. So that explains the extremely cheap ones.
I could hypothesize that the price jump is because there’s a gap between new and refurbished models, but tbh I don’t really know and I also don’t see that much of a jump. But that’s kind of my theory. Hope that helps.
I bought a used T480 on refurbed.de for 430€ a while back and installed Debian Forky. I only realised it had a touchscreen when I touched the screen. I am very happy with it. I firmly believe the Wikipedia and FSF stickers make it run faster.
Or they get auctioned off in bulk and some local guy resells them on facebook marketplace piecemeal making a quick buck.
If I max out the ram and ssd space as much as is possible would that be as powerful or more than a Macbook pro of similar or lesser stats?
Is the think pad arm?
Im not sure yet, will be choosing a few canfidates on Saturday, I’ll see them when my chores are thru—I dont know how long ill be-eee
Refurbed business machines FTW, you can find them easily on e-bay and they usually come with extended warranties too.
What keywords are relevant and help filter the sheer fuckton of machines floating around on internets?
Go on eBay or whatever marketplace and search for any halfway recent X or T models. Specs obciously depend on what you need. I only use my laptop once or twice a week when I don’t feel like writing/coding on my desk and would rather sit on the couch or go somwhere else so a Gen 1 X13 with an i5 10310U and 8GB RAM for 120€ was perfect for me.
They have the cheapo plastictastic ones they sell to consumers, the generally decent mid range ones that corpos buy in bulk for their office drones and the fancy ones for executives. Then of course there’s the secondhand market where the corpo machines get flogged off for cheap after a few years of use.
I would prefer aluminum or magnesium
Basically a Linux Macbook Air but hopefully cheaper
You could just run Linux on a macbook air…
That said, I have used macbooks and thinkpads and the aluminium might feel sturdier it is not. Drop a macbook and your looking at an expensive repair especially if it is case related, basically easier to buy a new one. Thinkpad parts are very plentiful and easy to repair yourself. And the cases may scratch but are not easely damaged.
Edit: I’m talking about the mid to high end thinkpads, comparable in price with macbook. The cheap ones are absolute shit.
Are you talking about used ones? There are no new ones for less than a thousand.
Im not sure the distinction between new/used/refurbished altho thats a hell of a price drop if the 500 ones are basically reasonably souped up altbeit used/refurbished
If you post two examples I can probably break down the differences, but as other people said new carries a premium over used/refurbished and for old ones they’ve been around for decades so the specs could vary wildly.
Thanks, very generous of you to offer your time and attention like that to silly ol’ me.
Could I be a pain and ask give me till Saturday, is that cool? I just need to wrap up some life-enhancing changes and housework I need to put to bed before I can devote my attention fully to this :) Ive been procrastinating on them leading to many of my posts lol
I will reply with my selects on Saturday, deal?
Yeah no worries
Thats such a relief I’ll have this guidance, its definitely on my bucket list
I’m too lazy to look up Lenovos current lineup of products. But atleast 10 years ago when i was somewhat knowledgable on that matter they already had tons of differing SKUs to water down the brand. The $2000 offerings were normally the T and X series. The business juggernauts. T’s for the devs. X’s for the departments who wanted a Macbook Air but werent allowed to have one from corporate for reasons(MS contract). I think there also was also the somewhat rare W-series with workstation GPUs for the engineers.
But Lenovo also branded the L and E series as thinkpads. Which were just shitty entry level laptops with the design cues of a “real” Thinkpad. Whats a “real” Thinkpad? Probably some IBM machine with a Pentium 3 processor if you ask an enthusiast.
Anyway, i made half of my post up.
