Used Thinkpad: Meme or not Meme?

Sup Forums keeps telling me to buy an old Thinkpad from four or five years ago. Sometimes even farther back than that?

Is this actually good advice? What's the downside?

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Most recommend them because of nostalgic attachment to them. If they take care of them, they will last, like most tech.

>What's the downside?
You simply could get one that wasn't taken care of and will have much less time using it, versus getting a new laptop/computer. After five or so years, many laptops start shitting the bed. sometimes it's an easy fix like swapping harddrives. other issues can be problematic, like dying fans, dead components on the motherboard, pixels giving out, etc.

it's can be hard to find a decent one because of neckbeards, elitebook/latitude/precision are all fine

They're pretty good computers considering how cheap you can get them. Parts are abundant so repair is always possible and they're quite durable.

It's hard to find one that's not beat to shit or something, and the screens aren't incredible, but the keyboard is fantastic and you're not going to find better build quality on something so affordable.

They're also very well designed in my opinion, I really enjoy the aesthetic of Thinkpads.

I have literally no nostalgia associated with these computers. I was tired of paying good money for mediocre laptops with shit build quality. Thinkpads were the answer.

I bought an upgraded & refurbished T530 a couple months ago - was using an old POS before. The meme is real. Pros: cheap, hella comfy, excellent performance for a low price. Cons: screen resolution isn't great.

posted from my refurbed thinkpad

They are built well and can be repaired and upgraded very easily. Few other laptops have such an easy repair process.

Something like the x220 gets great battery life, has a strong processor, and can upgrade wifi, ssd, even a LTE simcard.

Other laptops age like a cat shit in a glass of milk.

You also have access to the whole hackintosh scene.

I bought my sister an x230 and she said she can't even imagine doing work on another laptop keyboard. The x220/230 key travel is like night and day with the competition.

It isn't a meme. I don't even go on /g

>What's the downside?
They're old and slow. But quite capable to watch anime, shitpost and make fizzbuzz programs.
They also have ugly screens.

>Is this actually good advice?
They're cheap, have great build quality, they have the best ergonomics out of any other laptop with dat clit mouse and dat keyboard

If you're loking for a comfy web browsing machine they're nice.

Using a used T420. $99 laptop $50 ssd, $20 battery. Works great, nice kb, battery. Good meme so far.

>They're old and slow.
Laptop CPU performance hasn't changed at all since Sandy Bridge. In fact as IPC increases, manufacturers decrease voltage and clock speed to hold the same baseline

I've seen benchmark suites where the i5-6200U in a $1000 laptop is a whopping 7% to 15% more powerful than the i5-2520M in a $150 laptop

>ugly screens
>one of the most beautiful IPS LCDs ever manufactured

wut baka . The IPS they use in most of the Thinkpads are among the best in the industry. Don't blame us if you bid on one with a shit tier business TN monitor

I bought a Thinkpad X60 about a week ago, and it runs surprisingly well, I recommend it.

They do this to reduce heat and power demands but in turn they also include smaller batteries and weaker cooling solutions because this planet is shit

This must be the biggest fucking lie I've heard in my entire life.

Are you retarded? That model can't come with an IPS screen. He's obviously talking about stuff like the X220/X220T.

I don't have one but they look like big fat memes to me. I bought a macbook this month. Zero regrets.

I have an android phone, not a fanboy. I just want whats best.

Just look at that trackpad, now look at the latest Macbook. Don't fall for this fucking meme. At least try one out first if you are thinking about it. Stores have various laptops on display.

Not involved in this argument but this means it's true that a simple majority of Thinkpads have bad screens

There's good screens on the X220 IPS, the 4:3 15 inch T60, a few of the high end options in the newer Thinkpads nobody wants, and then everything else is shit. The 410, the 420, the widescreen T60, the X200, it's all just awful.

Shit, look at the inventories of T520 and T530 computers. 90% of them have a 15.6 inch 1366x768 screen!

God you're worse than an Apple shill. No it's not obvious he's talking about the X whatever series. Everyone else recommends the shitty T ones because of the price.

Sure.

>soldered ssd and ram

lmao

>one of the most beautiful IPS LCDs ever manufactured

what the fuck? chinknovo only started putting decent screens early last year and only on their top end workstation/carbon >FHD screens. And nobody is retarded enough to buy one of those used.

>old and slow
ayy lmao

ultimate workhorse, shitposting machine, comfy do it all. One of the best memes of Sup Forums beats the every living shit out of a lot of consumer laptops that are out on the market today.

My X230 has been great for the last 5 years, even though 5 years ago Sup Forums hated it and told me not to buy one because
>muh 1366x768 16:9
I am on my second battery and keyboard though, the battery because I wore the first one out over 3 years of daily use and the keyboard because a pug jumped on my lap and ripped a few keys off.

>What's the downside?
your penis

calling the trackpoint a nipple or a clit mouse or whatever sounds fucking retarded. Say it properly.

meme.
Get elitebook instead.

not sure if you're shilling on purpose or on accident.
if the latter enjoy your laptop

>Is this actually good advice?

It was 5 years ago

enjoy your botnet

I know a few retailers that sell used Thinkpads, elitebooks and latitudes after leasing them to a few organizations, they usually come on a 9/10 condition because they charge full price to the company they lease the laptops if they do too much damage. I got mine this way and it hasn't failed me but it has got really outdated by newer tech. Considering the price of a new Thinkpad i don't have a problem "updating" to an used last gen model.

some dude was selling both a t43 and semi broken t41 combined for $15, picked that shit up instantly

i dont regret my purchase at all, theyre incredibly useful and its appalling how much abuse theyve been through and still working in top condition

I wouldn't buy one older than 3 years old if I was going to use it as my main PC. 5 years is pushing it

The batteries drive up the fucking price and they still don't last long enough

Just got a w530 with an i7-3940XM and a quadro K2000 for $500 and holy balls it still flies. The CPU benches higher than a 6700HQ as Intel have jewed everyone out of any improved performance in the last 5 years because muh power consumption.

Verdict: a meme i am happy with

Proud owner of t420 here.
They're really good. I used to hate laptops because of its constructions, heating and keyboards and then I got memed to old thinkpads and regrets. Actually I'm going to buy x60 which is pretty old (+10) and I'm excited about it that would never happen with other brand I think.

*no regrets

i've been using an ebay t520 for years and i have zero desire to replace it

Got a refurbished t430. Never looked back. The biggest advantage is that they are cheap and they are still working like a proper laptop.

It's not to say that this is the only stuff worth buying but it is not a meme.

>What's the downside?

Shit battery that usually lasts less than an hour.
If you want a truly portable laptop you're better off with a low power (U) CPU, which is only available in newer Thinkpads.

Also only the 2xx series are light and small enough for a laptop. Even then, the X230 and older are pretty thick.
I used a T420 and that thing is heavy.


Old Thinkpads leave much to be desired when it comes to portability. But other than that, they're decent laptops.

The laptop market in general is really shit, though. Very few manufacturers put any effort into making a good laptop.

OP, I have an x220t and I am not going to give it up anytime soon.

Personal is a T460P
Took an X220 from work, real clean example. Never used one before...
Could daily it if I needed to, the screen is the worst part - 1366x768, it's noticeably blurry but guess I could get used to it, it's certainly not unusable. The trackpad is shit too, I've adapted to using the trackpoint which works well, something I hardly use on the T460P, guess when you have no real choice...

i7, 8 GB RAM, threw in an 400 GB S3700 SSD I jewed from there too, it's reasonably good for the age of the machine.
The aesthetic is real nice, overall it's pretty comfy to use... don't think I'd pay to own one though

>2017
>buying outdated hardware
I don't see how is this recommend.
If you go and buy one then you'd need to use Win7 which will reach the end of support soon.
And win8 and win10 aren't supported for older hardware.
Even if you decided to use GNU/Linux which will give incredibly high boost in performance.
You're still limited to use it as typing machine and light web browsing, since most of current web sites uses JS very heavily making browsing with old CPU very slow, not to mention using latest version of applications also assume you're on the most recent hardware rendering the thinkpads as a paperweight.

>But quite capable to watch anime
Not 1080p BD on X 2.00 Speed, with iGPU.

The advantage is that you get a cheap, nigh indestructible, highly customizable and long lasting laptop.

The downside is that it runs as fast as old laptops can be, have shit screens and resolutions, and if you're concerned about frivolous public appearance it won't turn any heads when you're coding at Starbucks

ancient machines with housefire CPUs from 2011

also the screen is so bad, its painful to look at it

its a neckbeard meme, just because thinkpads look different than the average laptop

it fits their "im a special snowflake" personality

Get a 40 series, I.e x240 or t440
they cost the same as 20 series but way better

It's terrible advice for people that basically can't afford a computer.

The entire point of buying a fucking ThinkPad is getting the fucking best in industry IBM ezcare service.

What do you think OP?

>falling for 1080p meme

Depends on a lot of factors. It's worth considering, but for me, I decided against it and the turning point was when I found that other laptops with better specs only cost only a little more.

Of course I don't know about US prices, but officially refurbed thinkpads with alright specs seem expensive where I'm from, and I'm not gonna gamble with other used laptops.

That said, I do admire the build quality of those things. Everything I see these days is trying to be small and sacrifice a lot of ports and shit. Or cater to muh games. It's tough to find a sweet spot between "apple clone" and "muh gaming space ship laptop"

Oh damn I haven't noticed Sousuke used a thinkpad. Man he must have been on SSJ levels of mad to damage it like that.

Iris they w520 whit they quadro1000 any good?

Not meme. Got three of them, intended to sell T420, but I kept it to myself, because it's SO GOOD to take it on business trips: it's solid and business-looking, unlike my semen-stained home laptop. And with 14", it's a pleasure to work on.

Okay OP, I actually did this and did some cheap mods to make the computer viable in today's world.

I bought a R61 14.1" (1440x900) Widescreen ThinkPad with barebones everything on eBay.
I proceeded to upgrade it with a cheap SSD I had already, 4gb of ram, a new extended battery, a new bios, a better CPU, a new nicer trackpoint, a vinyl wrap because the lid was all scratched up, cooling upgrades, and some other software tweaks.
>CPU: T8300 @ 2.4ghz

Honestly it runs Windows 10 really well. It is very quick for daily tasks like shitposting, readings PDFs and typing up documents (the keyboard is fantastic).
It's super chuckable and with the steel cage inside it's almost indestructible.
>Is it thick? Yes.
>Is it heavy? Yes.
>Did it cost me less than $100? Yes.
>Could I have gotten a better laptop for $100? Probably not.
>Do people every really notice it? Not really.

In a day and age where thick laptops aren't super common, a thick laptop with an engineer working long problems on paper isn't unusual at all. Especially on a college campus. My gf used it while her 2015 MBP was being repaired and said besides the battery life and weight, it's just as good as her Mac. She liked the keyboard better as well and that fact that it never freezes or lags.

>lasts less than an hour

Dont listen to this retard, I get average of 6 hours with a 9 cell on my T420

>that keyboard
might as well type on a touchscreen.

THEY ARE ONLY GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY MINIMAL USAGE AND NOSTALGIA

THAT'S IT OP

Not a meme
You're a meme
I've been using this as my sole "desktop" for 3 years

Are Lenovo monitors good, is that a TN Panel? Whtas that thing that looks like a soundbar attatched to the bottom of it?

>Is this actually good advice?
I had a T420 first. Was way too heavy for mobile use. Now got a X220 for a while and for 200 bucks it is the fuckin best I could ever get. Since I only do embedded shit and simple programmiing tasks this is more than enough.
>What's the downside?
It is still kinda heavy compared to newer ultrabooks, but I dont really care as much

t420 i7 external gpu... portable and works

Thinkpads are cheap, plentiful, easy to do minor/moderate repairs on at home (RAM/Drive replacement/upgrade, all the way up to something like a CPU swap.) They function well as browserboxes and can play a lot of games of yester-decade. Their keyboards feel nice to type on, and the trackpoint is a nice addition.

Much of the same goes for Dell Precision/Latitude or an HP Elitebook of the same era as mentioned, or any other enterprise- or business-tier laptop.

It's a TN panel, but is far superior to the t420 screen
That's a sound bar

I got a refurbished full specced X260 for under £600

I love it, although obviously not as old as the X220 so i can get 20ish hours of everyday usage. The size and portablitlity get my dick hard.

They all have roughly the same price

Dont. I have about 20 at my company. You can get referbished models for about £180 - £300 off ebay. I replace the spinny disk with an SSD and clear shitware but it's pretty meh. If you don't need Pro, you cant get hp250 fpr £419. ebuyer.com/762290-hp-250-g5-i5-laptop-x0q07es-x0q07es-abu Feels cheap and plastic but it performs really well.

X220 and t420 are still solid laptops. Great keyboard, battery, good processor, durable, upgradable ram etc. Honestly not too different from a modern laptop.

Anything else is a giant meme.

i'd rather buy an ipad pro than this shit

I use a Thinkpad R50 as a small Linux Machine (Currently Ubuntu Server) so I can rice and do all the Sup Forums shit. Windows on my main HP computer for actually getting shit done.

It's a comfy setup. The Thinkpad keyboard is super comfy and I've upgraded the Hard Drive to an SSD, so I get decent write speeds.

You're not going to be gaymen on it, but you can run a desktop environment like XFCE (without compositing) and use it to code pretty well.

Then you should have bought a Full HD T530. The screen of that beast is super awesome.

Is there any Thinkpad alternative with a good screen? I need it for multimedia work but all refurbished busineee laptop here doesn't seems to come installed with IPS panel.

I can imagine that a 15,6" with 1366x768 is awful. But have you seen 1920x1080 as stated in ?


>iPad Pro
>shitty pleblet for candy crush and facebook masked as "pro" device

I have a dell latitude d410.
It has pentium m cores.
It's fucking amazing. Still web browses like a champ.
Had a gay notebook from acer with atom(2010)

That dell is way better.
Totally made me understand why I should buy used bussiness-tier laptops.

No? I bought a t530 I wish the screen was a higher res but other than that I like it(I probably should've bought a t430). Another upside to thinkpads is if you want to try out weird/obscure operating systems some autist probably wrote thinkpad drivers for it.

I've recently bought a X200 for less than $75 and I really like it, even more than my asus UX305 for $1000. I still wouldn't use it as my primary machine though
Also it would probably suck ass if I would have to run windows on it

>Still web browses like a champ
What sites, and what browser?

>loud cucklet keyboard with 0.01mm key travel
>no ports
>no upgrade paths whatsoever
also
>look at muh trackpad!1
>completely ignoring the fact that Thinkpads have far more superior input method

Same I didn't know that reaction was punching a Thinkpad.

I've seen it maybe half a dozen times or more, too.

>and win8 and 10 aren't supported on older hardware

A t420 will have no problems running 10 LTSB. The only thing that will be weird is the power manager. Thats about it, I installed 10 for my mom's X220 Christmas gift and she's 100% satisfied with its performance with an SSD.

10/10 would Latitude again

gayest post in months

>mom's X220
Your mother couldn't tell the difference between win10 and win 98.

Recently fell for the meme and bough a beat-up old X220 for £150.

An SSD, double the RAM, and one ganoo-leenuks later, and I couldn't be happier. It's plenty fast for every day tasks, I even tried running minecraft for shits and giggles and was absolutely astounded at a completely stable 60FPS even with 16 chunk render distance (with minor stuttering when loading/generating chunks), with < 80*C temps. It's absolutely more than enough for e.g. compiling stuff (if you unironically unstall gentoo) or whatever else you might want to do which doesn't involve extreme computing requirements.
I am also in love with:
- the battery life (it's a several years old battery - most likely never been replaced - and it gives me double the juice my new ASUS does, easily going above 4hrs of medium use)
- the portability (you've never experienced comfy if you haven't used a 12'' in bed - though of course that won't apply for larger models)
- the keyboard (actual keys instead of chinklet nigger spawn)
- the trackpoint (not having to move your hand away from the keyboard is really useful for productivity)
- the three-button "mouse" (you can even scroll accurately - on both axes, even - by pressing mouse3 and using the trackpoint, something I've never seen any other laptop do without fucking dumb "gestures". Unless it's a mac, whose trackpad actually works well even for scrolling, but then your problem is that you are using a mac.)
- the customisability (I could literally replace the CPU in less than 10 minutes if I wanted to. I added an M2 SSD in like 5 minutes. I've removed the screen bezel and put it back in with zero problems to take a look at something. It's literally like a laptop-sized desktop in terms of how easily you can take things out or modify it.)

>M2 SSD
How?

All that having been said, it might be worth pointing out that I also have a pretty nice "gaymeeng" desktop (GTX 1070, some high-end i5 k-series skylake I can't remember) for any particularly heavy tasks and also 144Hz games, and my ASUS is also a 15'' "gaymeeng" laptop for when I need decent power outside my house (and it's good for playing less graphically intensive games, which is useful when I e.g. bring it over to a friend's house for some LAN fun). The thinkpad, on the other hand, is purely for tasks which don't specifically require intensive power, and for when I need to do stuff "on the go" - I can't really comfortably use the asus e.g. on a train, due to both size and battery life. The thinkpad fills that niche perfectly.

It has an M2 SATA II port. By default I think they normally come with WWAN cards in there (unless somebody already replaced it).

There's also the expresscard bay (basically a PCI-e port), you could stick an SSD in there. Then you get to keep the 3G if you really wanna use that (I just tether to my phone, since I can't be bothered to get a sim for it anyway).

I have a dell xps 13 and kind of want to use my t420 mainly because of the keyboard and the red tit mouse thing. The keyboard on the xps 13 is very similar to the macbook and I just don't like it too much. I suppose I shouldn't worry too much bout it considering my desktop is my main computer but still. Also other factors of the thinkpad add on to it being a good option and I'm not gonna lie, the geek factor is pretty cool. I brought it once on campus and some foreign exchange chinese student came over to check it out and asking about it. His words were, "OOhhhh is that the engineering computah?". Felt cool for a second.

facebook machines with housefire CPUs from 2011

also the screen is so flimsy, its breaks when you look at it

its a cuck meme, just because macs look different than the average laptop

it fits their "im a special snowflake" personality

no, they are shit. even the ips ones are shit at accuracy. either you mod it and put on a better panel or connect it to an external monitor.

Or you get an IPS panel and live happily ever after

I mean I don't do stuff like graphic design and shit - the screen is 1366*768 anyway, I couldn't do that even if I had like AMOLED UHDR or whatever the latest meme colour tech is - but just by looking at it it's clearly better than all the TN panels at my disposal (including my nice desktop monitor).

Liar, CPU s are soldered on the x series.

My used 6 years old T410 still werks without problems, bought it 2 years ago
I assume you wont be doing resource heavy shit anyway

And if you are the new ones aren't THAT bad if you don't have any previous experience with the old keyboard layout as the travel distance is still the same. I've been very happy with the T450s.

>5+ year old batteries
>good
>replacement batteries cost as much as the laptop itself

Typical "I've never had a Thinkpad" answer.

I paid 200 euros for a x230 and 90 for an original batter (9 cell). The battery is literally the best investment I've done. If you think 290 euros is a lot for a machine like this you probably should not own a notebook at all

Nigger wat. Stop spouting bullshit.
Their IPS panels look like fucking TN with better viewing angles.

t. T60, x220, x230t, T460p owner

>you could stick an SSD in there.
You can but it won't boot from that.
Also I think you mean mSATA SSD, not M2 SSD.

i don't like touchpads where the mouse buttons aren't individual physical buttons. i do like the red nipple mice though.

a few years ago i bought a x121e with broken screen for one 90 bucks off a guy. the model is from like 2011 i think. replaced the screen and put an SSD in there and so far it's pretty good for what it is. battery is starting to deteriorate but the performance is perfectly fine for browsing, videos and office stuff when not at home. I've written several papers on it without anything to complain about.
however if you're gonna spend more than 200 bucks total on a machine, you better prioritize it not just working now, but also some years down the line. and i imagine this little fella from 2011 might not make it until say 2020. we'll have to see how much more retarded windows 10 and the Internet will become.