ha! I have one of those at home. I think it still works too.
I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
21–30 of 595 posts
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#22I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…
There is Thinkpad T25 25th anniversary edition[1]. It has "modern" spec, while still having that traditional keyboard of t420
Also iirc there are projects that make Motherboard that fit in old thinkpad chassis. It has very impressive spec: 8 core Zen3 AMD cpu and 32gb ram. Some M2 slot etc.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_25th_anniversary_edit...
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#23A 17 year old ThinkPad is going to have extremely limited utility for today's applications. You can browse the web****, sure. You can replace parts, yes. But it still performs like dogshit for today's applications. That said, I maintain a G4 Cube running an outdated OS to play Sim City and Sim Tower. And it's "upgraded" as much as possible. ****JavaScript not included
Web, including JavaScript, should work fine on that laptop.
Until recently, my daily driver was the T500 (the larger screen version of the T400 in the article), and it worked fine for everything except GPU.
(I actually downgraded to the T500 years ago, because I was pissed off about the Intel Management Engine.)
Recently, I upgraded from the T500 to the T520, which is the last ThinkPad with a non-chiclet keyboard. It works fine for everything except GPU and fitting inside many backpacks.
With ThinkPads of this era, you want to get a high-spec variant of the model (e.g., top-res IPS display), and then make the following upgrades:
* SSD
* run Linux
* run uBlock Origin (and block most of the third-party surveillance, which hurts performance) (JS runs fine, so long as you're not running multiple dueling adtech slimeballs' intimate mouse trackers)
* max out the RAM (you don't need that much for Linux, unless you're using an exceptionally bloated desktop option, but it's cheap, and you can use it to keep filesystems like ~/.cache off your SSD )
* (optional) replace the CPU with a more optimal one for power draw or heat, or maybe for compute (these are socketed in most models)
* (optional, not for the faint of heart) install Coreboot, and then you have more WiFi upgrade options
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#24> A [macbook] battery replacement involves carefully prying out a glued component. Can't speak to every model, but it's not always like this. I just swapped the battery on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air, and it's much easier now. The battery is glued to a metal tray that unscrews and lifts out of the laptop. It is discarded with the old battery. The tray is also held down with pull-tab adhesive strips, but they are trivial t…
I remember I had to take the whole MB out just to replace speaker on my Macbook pro 2015. It does not help that there were multiple different screw type
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#25Side note, but I noticed now practically all Thinkpads are available with Linux as an option. That's a big improvement from when Windows tax was practically unavoidable with them.
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#26I still use my T470S as a Ubuntu 22.04 development machine. I bought it from my pre-pre-company as a used one back in 2022 and it is a fantastic laptop for personal projects. The only update I did was a 16GB RAM to up the memory to 20GB. I also bought a new battery as one of the two was dead.
I wish the graphic driver could be better as playing Youtube videos constantly crashes Firefox on Ubuntu. Other than that I have nothing to complain. I have been using it for 3+ years with zero maintenance (I didn't even bother to clean the fan) and it never failed me.
I have a second "new" Dell workstation laptop standing by just in case it breaks down. But it is a Windows machine with 32GB of memory, so I'll probably use WSL2 instead.
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#27Off-topic about the Nassim Nicholas Taleb opening: Does anybody else feel like he just restates obvious things in a more formalized and somewhat pompous way? I do not mind formalization but I feel like I am supposed to swoon over it as if some profound truth, that was not already implied in our every day thinking, was being revealed.
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#28I have an x31 from 2003/4 I'd love to rescue but the bios won't boot.
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#29A 17 year old ThinkPad is going to have extremely limited utility for today's applications. You can browse the web****, sure. You can replace parts, yes. But it still performs like dogshit for today's applications. That said, I maintain a G4 Cube running an outdated OS to play Sim City and Sim Tower. And it's "upgraded" as much as possible. ****JavaScript not included
This is the asterisk that always stands out to me with the raving posts about how great people's dinosaur Thinkpads are.
Yes, if I don't have to keep multiple browser windows, video calls, Slack, and whathaveyou open, then I too can get by with an ancient Thinkpad. If it is enough for you, then all the power to you. I am sincerely supportive of the fact that you can stick it to today's consumerist, disposable tech industry.
Here I am on my T480s with 40 GB memory (8 is soldered) and the highest tier CPU for the Thinkpad gen (apparently these are soldered on too), and it's a drag. I'm trying to scrape by until I can start thinking about saving up for a new Framework.
Re: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
#30I wish that Framework could attain the same lofty levels of "second hand market success" that ThinkPads enjoy. A lot of the "Thinkpad fans" I've talked to genuinely want them, or respect them for similar reasons they enjoy the ThinkPad legacy. ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (a…
There is Thinkpad T25 25th anniversary edition[1]. It has "modern" spec, while still having that traditional keyboard of t420 Also iirc there are projects that make Motherboard that fit in old thinkpad chassis. It has very impressive spec: 8 core Zen3 AMD cpu and 32gb ram. Some M2 slot etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_25th_anniversary_edit...
I currently have this T25. But it’s mostly a gimmick. Once the coolness wore off it’s just a midrange T470 under the hood.
Still trucking after 7 years though. But I can’t upgrade it to Win 11 lol