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Refurbed Lenovo ThinkPads - whats the "current gen"?
I'm in the market to hurl at a wall upgrade our badly ageing general use family laptop (Lenovo V110).
I've used ThinkPads in the past for work and due to their ubiquity there is a value to be had, I believe, in corporate refurbs.
However, it's been a good few years since I used one - think it was a T440 - and am looking for some advice on what the most recently obsoleted gen is that I should be looking for, or where people have found a sweet spot on price/performance. Any pointers?
Just pulling up that laptop on google... is that with the Pentium or the i5?
If its for family use have you considered getting a desktop?
I mean, having a family-use laptop is really convienient, lets people take it to the spot best for them. Sometimes having it on the kitchen table, sometimes in the den, sometimes on the couch.
It's the Pentium, a real dog of a laptop bought cheap by my wife for a course years back.
I'd love a desktop but we don't have the real estate for one downstairs - the laptop gets stashed in a cupboard and used on the island in the kitchen as needed.
Fair enough. I ask because I'm using a T480 and it has a similar gen (maybe the same?) i5. Im running Linux on it with no problems, but I'm not sure how it would run windows.
Im not sure if the t480 was the first to have it but it has usb-c for charging which is something I look for. I wouldn't buy a laptop today that has a proprietary charger.
Sorry to hijack this thread a bit, but i live in the Apple ecosystem excepting when I have to use windows for work. Is that EOL date firm? Win 10 was the default not long ago, and last I heard there was a lot of frustration with Win 11. Just seems really aggressive forcing corporate upgrades with such a short lifecycle- but maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon.
If you're a casual Windows user, you probably won't care once you adjust to UI changes. If you're a power user, there's a chance you're gonna hit something that makes you want to format the hard drive.
Yeah, fair point. It's mainly for web browsing, some non-demanding software etc. No gaming or taxing applications - Photoshop is probably as stressed as it will get.
I've replaced laptop ram in the past but didn't consider it here - good tip.
Yea with older Thinkpads, I'd almost certainly just buy one without a HD, RAM, and battery and just source those myself. Having the power supply included is nice tho.
I have a Thinkpad x395, which was one of the first with the Ryzen chips in it. I love this laptop, and it's still running strong on Linux. My biggest regret was not shelling out for a bit more RAM, 8GB is starting to feel long in the tooth, esp since the APU steals 2 GB for the GPU.
If I were in your shoes, I'd look for any of the Ryzen 5 PRO series, namely 4000 or better. Any of those would be a decent upgrade, and you can scale according to your price point. I see on Ebay right now several 4000 series with 16GB of RAM for under $300.