I want to join your ranks. The legendary serviceability, the easy upgrade potential, the gorgeous business appeal. All those factors have got me in a chokehold. I have my eyes on a T480 but have no idea if them old behemoths are worth it in 2025, I want to get VERY familiar with linux and practice coding and the like while ignoring gaming as a whole (i have a beastly win 10 desktop for that which also has mint installed. Is the T480 or similar good for such a purpose? Is there an even better model that doesn't sacrifice repairablility for looks and efficiency? I don't care about 3d graphics and the like I'll use my desktop for that, I want a machine to focus my adhd on linux and coding/programming separate from my gaming setup, it helps to force my brain to focus. And I can even buy for-repair devices because I love fixing stuff so they don't even need to be brand new. Thanks in advance ☺️
#Older ThinkPad Owners. I need guidance
brazen depot
hard beacon
I invoke @zealous burrow (when he has free time), I know he knows a thing or two regarding Thinkpad.
zealous burrow
I want to join your ranks. The legendary serviceability, the easy upgrade potent...
I am summoned. Although I chuckle at the T480 being called a behemoth, looks more like a flounder to me. The true "Thickpads" ended with T430/530, which only have (still perfectly cromulent) Ivy Bridge CPUs and can be upgraded with quadcores. If you get lucky (like I did recently), you might find a T540p, which is already from a diminished generation, but crucially still has a CPU socket and is Haswell. That gets you iGPU support for Vulkan, which you do not get on any earlier ones.
You can of course get a T480, but you may point out to sellers that this one has no Win11 support and haggle them down somewhat, since it will drop out of all Windows support come Octobre. It of course depends on your preference, but for coding, you may look at the models starting with a 5, since these are 15", over the 4xx models' 14" screens.
With the old ones, I like the excellent keyboards, but the best ones are found on T420/520, like I am using right now. With the right cheaply available mobile quadcore, these can still do a surprising amount of work. Always assuming you stuff them with 16GB of RAM and an SSD.
old bobcat
If repairability and serviceability is what you want, then Framework is a great current brand (if you're willing to spend quite a lot). They're coming out with a supposedly cheaper 12-inch model, but who knows when you'd be able to get one since I can imagine they'll be extremely popular