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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy
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What are you hoping to do with it? I got a used Thinkpad T480 that was like new for €180 and added a couple of upgrades to it (1TB NVMe, 64GB RAM, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi card) that cost me €137, meaning a total of €317, and I'm very happy with the laptop right now, it's very responsive with Arch Linux and an i3 desktop and I think this baby will be good for many years.
I third that motion. Doing similar with a T440p. I've spent $400 total between upgrading the CPU to a 4712 and putting 16g of RAM. Running WoW happily every night on Debian. Second hand Thinkpads are the way to go.
Congrats on still rocking a laptop that's 10 years old!
where do you find used thinkpads online?
I've bought about a dozen from friends and family.
Search on eBay.
Find a seller with many of the same model. These are tech contractors offloading the laptops they just replaced under some contract - you'll get a laptop that's been sitting in some managers drawer for the last 3 years.
Next go to the contractors own website, not ebay. See what stuff they have.
I usually email them and just try to express interest in buying 2 or more laptops, ask what peripherals they have - get a dock or something. Ask about RAM or SSD upgrades, things like that.
You're helping them offload their second hand stuff, avoid ebay fees, not being a dick.
There are various ebay sellers who carry certified refurbished laptops with warranty included. You can also buy some directly from Lenovo.
Seconded, I have been very happy with my last 2 purchases of Acer refurbished laptops from the official Acer store on eBay.
Amazon sells used thinkpads other than general age of the hardware love mine that I got for about $300
Got mine on Ebay, and you usually have to be careful like with any purchase of a used item: ask for detailed photos if you can't judge the state of the item from the photos that are there, ask questions about things that were left out in the description, look for sellers with very good ratings and look at their reviews, see if you can return etc...
Amazon also sells refurbished ones, but so far I've seen the best deals on Ebay.
EDIT: important, make sure the BIOS is unlocked.
Same. X380 here. Cost ~$200 refurb a yearish ago. Love it so much I steered my mom onto one a couple months back, and she's been loving it too. Manjaro on mine and Win10 on hers, both great little performers. They fall short on tasks you expect to need some grunt for, but are great for everything else. I recommend it for anyone who will listen.
Having said that, I really am eyeballing the framework to be in the running the next time I'm in the market. Whenever I reach that point I'll need to do some comparisons. I could theoretically be convinced to spend a bit more to enable ongoing piecemeal upgrades, desktop-style.
whats so good about arch? is it faster?
It's just another distro that has gained a following more because of some perceived superiority than any truly practical reason. If you're new to Linux I wouldn't recommend it.
due to the nature of arch and its rolling releases, it tends to get bleeding edge updates/features rather than having to wait for a major update to iron itself out then get rolled out. If you're a gamer for example, if Valve fixes a bug in the gpu driver, then Arch would probably get it asap (especially given that Steam OS is arch based)
What's good about it is that if you know what you're doing you can install only what you need and keep your system small and tidy. Also, since it's a rolling distro, updates become available really quick and sometimes some of the updates introduce optimizations (meaning more performance) or better power consumption. And finally of course Arch has also an amazing wiki, they have hands down the best Linux documentation along with Gentoo, and they even have a page about Thinkpads: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo
You have the freedom to customize it how you want. The downside is that you have to customize and install everything yourself. A happy compromise is to get an arch based distro which handles a lot of the main stuff, my current favorite is endevour os.
but cant you customise any distro yourself?
Yes, but with arch you have to because you have to set it up yourself. In all seriousness, arch is a great base but unless you have the patience and knowledge to set it up yourself, staying with arch based distros (like Manjaro) is much easier. And if you’re new to Linux in general but actually wanna try it, start with something like Mint. It’s fast, stable, easy to work with and this a good entry point
Yes, but that's not the same thing as "all distros are really the same" just to be clear.
Some folks would have to spend so much time ripping things out of Ubuntu or Fedora etc that it's much easier to build Arch with only what they want.
There are other benefits, but like everything else, not everyone cares about the same things.
If you feel like no distro does things the way you'd prefer, Arch may be for you. If you have no complaints about whatever distro you use, there's probably not any reason to jump ship to Arch.
Here are a few articles.
https://www.systranbox.com/an-introduction-to-arch-linux-exploring-its-features-and-benefits/
https://linuxiac.com/archlinux/
https://www.howtogeek.com/872962/arch-linux-vs-ubuntu/
https://www.debugpoint.com/arch-linux-vs-other-distros/
Found it! surprised this wasn’t the top comment
there will always be a Thinkpad nerd to do the shilling in a laptops thread, just doing my job 😎
based and thinkpilled
That's amazing, but not reasonably indicative of the specs we'll normally find for that price.
The specs that I have now are due to the upgrades I've listed: the NVMe is a WD_BLUE SN570 1TB, and the RAM sticks are Patriot Memory DDR4 3200Mhz, both bought new on Amazon, and then there's the AX200 Wi-Fi card that I bought used (you could also spend €5 more and buy it new but I didn't see the point in doing that).
The base laptop (the one I bought for €180) has an 8th gen i5 and came with 8GB of RAM (single stick), and you can find these specs below €200 on Ebay (very good chance if you also participate in the many auctions that are there, as an example here's one if you're in the US: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266452790554).
This is the answer OP. Or similarly, I lined up a T14S Gen 1 for $299 with a 2 year warranty included on eBay. 10th gen i5, 16GB RAM, 512GN NVMe.
Here's a random one I found. Touchscreen too if you like that, but slightly over $300.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/335054071269