Thinkpads

I'm looking at getting a thinkpad (pref a cyb looking one, not one of the new shitty looking ones.) What's the one to get, I have a budget of about £200 and I'm only going to use it for programming and anime. Cheers.

W520

>>13935 If you want portable get an x201 with a 9 cell battery. Really good value for about $150. If you don't want a super portable laptop, get a t400.

I would suggest a T420. I sold a batch of 20 of them for $150 a pop, and they had the 1600x900 screens and 120GB SSDs, so they are definitely attainable for your price, they have good GNU/Linux support, and if you get a new 9cell battery, you can expect around 8 hours batter on one.

>>13935 T410 has nice aspect ratio screen. T420 is really hackable (I dewhitelisted in BIOS to use an atheros wifi chip, and I have the t430 keyboard on mine, soon I will be putting in the w520 quad core CPU.)

Be wary that lots of think pads come with intel wireless cards which have proprietary firmware. I only say this because some operating systems like openbsd can't be distributed with the intel drivers.

>>13939 I like the look of the x201 with the 9 cell. >>13944 The amount of stuff that I can hack on the T420 is interesting too. >>13945 Thanks. I've only ever had one laptop and it was a newish Toshiba Satellite but I'm replacing it cause the build quality is absolute shite. It looks like a child's toy. But that Toshiba had the same problem so I always have a memory pen with most of the proprietary drivers that I need on it. Also, this is the most comfy imageboard I've ever been on. Anywhere else would have told me to fuarrrk off if I asked a similar question.

>>13946 no problem anon we all use Thinkpads or MacBooks generally. The site Admin has both. welcome to comfychan.

http://minifree.org/ https://shop.libiquity.com/product/taurinus-x200 One of these.

Qubes devs use T420[s]. Both and a few other Thinkpads are all green on their compatibility table: https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/

An older model from IBM, pre-2010. I say pre-2010 because post-2010 is when Intel began adding their shady bull soykaf into their CPU's and other things.

Don't get a t410 over other Thinkpads. soykaf battery life. Got a 9 cell and a slice in it and max out at 6 hours. T420 is your best bet bud.

>>13939 >>13935 I second that, got a after-leasing nearly mint one for less than $150. It's portable, somewhat durable (in comparison to X230 I guess), has a good keyboard and nice processing power. Buy an extended battery though, the flat one probably is like kicking dead whales down the beach . Use a lightweight distro as well, with WiFi turned off you can get ~7h on battery. I heard good things about T420, but I need portability, so here you go.

OP here. I've narrowed it down to a choice between an x201 or a T420. Probably going to go with the x201 as I would really like it to be super portable, but I don't want one of those stupid tablet 2 in 1s as I need it to do actual work. Thanks for the help!

>>13970 Also, Whilst the threads up. What's some cool soykaf (hacks / mods) I can do to the X201? I've already got a 500gb ssd (with one of those adapter things so it fits) and 2x4gb DDR3 sticks on the way.

>>13971 Threads tend to stick around here for a while, so don't worry about things 404ing very quickly. That bieng said, I have seen a whole load of buzz around new FHD and 4k screens for T420/T420s machines, and some of that buzz might trickle down into the development of HD screens for the X201, which it desperately needs.

This is the best guide to buying used ThinkPads I know. It has lots of useful information on specific models and series and the recommended prices are always kept up-to-date. I'm genuinely surprised no one has posted it yet. http://ktgee.net/post/49423737148/thinkpad-guide

>>13970 I own a x201 myself. I use it as my main computer. For the money I doubt I could have done any better than this. I bought a t410 for my dad. It's nice too. But for portability x201 is the winner.

I got a t410 on ebay for £90 and I have no complaints. Can someone explain what makes the t420 more hackable?

What do you guys think of those refurbished x200/T400s that already have libreboot pre-installed?

>>14003 expensive and old

>>13970 I use an x200 as my school computer, I got it for $35 from my university's surplus store and I put an ssd and GNU/Linux on it.

>>14003 I recently bought a x200. I love the hardware but I am having difficulty flashing libreboot myself. If you are not practised in such things I would recommend getting libreboot pre-installed. You don't want to be stuck with the Lenovo bios' wifi module whitelist

>>13935 I just got an L440 and it's the best laptop I've ever had. Then again I've never used a different thinkpad.

I've ended up deciding on the x220. Thoughts? I really like the hardware and the IPS screen, however there is another version of the x220 on ebay that only has the little read mouse clit and a l/r click. I might get that just to check it out, the guy has a 30 day returns policy (and I've bought off him before) so I'm not losing any money if its soykaf . Also what's the deal with the wifi whitelist? why is it bad? I have literally no idea what it is...

>>14055 It makes you use only certain WiFi cards ie. if you break your card, you must buy a whitelisted one or your laptop will refuse to boot.

>>14056 Cheers, That's a bit soykaf . I think I can probably flash libreboot, but I don't want to risk bricking it just yet.