Just bought a Thinkpad T420

Gonna be upgrading the hard drive and ram to SSD / 16GB.

>Anything else I should be looking at doing?

>Are third party batteries any good for thinkpads?

>Can't believe this wasn't a meme

>Anything else I should be looking at doing?

deleting this thread and keeping it in /tpg/

>Anything else I should be looking at doing?
Upgrade screen, CPU and battery.

Install coreboot and get an ivy quad core

>*20

Yes, keep the hard drive and go for a mpcie ssd instead.

Third party is fine but if you buy one make sure while you can still return it, if it will stay on under load, as in get mprime/whatever and put it on 100% for 15 minutes or so. Also make sure you check it with acpi -V or any acpi tool to make sure it is not lying about its mah.

>hackintosh it.
>mSATA SSD
>ultrabay caddy for a 3rd drive

how hard is it to do that? never really used mac but i do have 2 t420's

Very easy since you can find guides online, it is on a per-model basis.

>3rd drive
what? i thought the T420 had max two drives

nah i have 2 ssd's and it has msata too under

this. the t420 can take an msata ssd. so you can keep the current drive as just a storage drive. or even upgrade that.

Rip the wireless card out. Fuck wireless.
>2 msata ssd
>hdd in normal bay
>hdd in caddy
more fucking storage!!!!!!!!!!

>o u need wireless so get a usb card fuk u I need storage faggot!!!!!!!!!
>bottom of laptop is extra foot deep wrapped in black tape
>it's a ups and 25 san's with "MORE FAGGOT!!!!!!!!!!" written all over them

convincing people to buy old laptops is g's greatest meme and achievement. you just got played

fuck hdd they are too loud

Bought an L420 second hand a couple of weeks ago. Dropped some extra RAM into it and a larger hard drive.
Current specs: Core i5-2520M / 12 GB RAM / 1 TB HDD.

Some thoughts:
a.) Did not realize until after purchase that the L420 is Legacy BIOS only, no UEFI.
b.) Did not realize until after purchase that the BIOS implements whitelisting for mini-PCI wifi cards.

Solved problem A by using Clover EFI bootloader to emulate EFI in software.
Solved problem B by flashing a modded BIOS.

Now multibooting Linux Mint 18, Windows 8.1 Pro and macOS Sierra 10.12.2, all installed in UEFI mode.

Problems aside, bretty gud laptop.

Does the T420 also have the BIOS whitelist for mini-PCI wifi cards? I'm sure there's a modded BIOS available for it, but you probably need to swap the wifi card to hackintosh it. I had a spare Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 that I found a kext for and got working.

technically it's not an ultrabay since it has no connections for a battery. but meh.

I use hackintosh frequently on my desktop and I'm wondering: does the T420 trackpad work?

Because I can imagine it being really usable if it does.

Pretty easy.
insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285678-lenovo-thinkpad-t420-with-uefi-only/
Pic related.
There is a custom BIOS that removes the whitelist, but i just use a USB adapter i had lying around
Yes. The trackpad and trackpoint work.

Enjoy your USB 2.0

why are people still buying this shitty old 2011 laptop

its almost 2017 for fuck sake

>Don't like things I don't like

because the cpu was powerful at the time is still comparatively powerful. most of the cpu progress has gone into making them more power efficient, not powerful. yes, some progress has been made in terms of processing power, but not as much as the progress in efficiencey.

not only that, but it's a laptop. you don't need more than what is offered, and i would say it's future proofed for another few years

not much more is needed anyway. for most productivity uses, it's just fine. the only reason you need something more powerful is if you're using software that's graphics intensive. like video or photo editing.

>16gb

Why?

You will never experience a bottleneck resulting from 8 gigs of ram on a t420. The processor/GPU limitations will slow you down first.

I'm about to spring on a meme thinkpad thanks to Sup Forums

I don't care about the keyboard or build quality or whatever, I literally just want something for ~200. Choices are limited. For that price, I'll take a 5 year old Core i series than a newer atom.

What about heavy web browsing? Still processor?

Oem battery off of lenovo website ultra bay battery would be pretty sweet, re thermal the heatsink and ssd and new ram but you're looking at 500. Never buy third party batteries.

I've had like 30 chrome tabs open at once on mine without issues.

Ultra bay battery does not work with t420

The fewer ram slots you use the less battery power it needs also.