https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u01AbiCn_Nw mental outlaw video:
hi everyone, i was planning on getting a new laptop cheaply for about 500ish but then i stumbled upon this near-totally modular laptop rhat starts out at above 1000 bucks. do you think the cheaper laptop in the long run is just a false economy and i should go for the framework or what? if you want to ask questions go ahead but im mainly concerned about the longterm financials (and how well it will keep up over time)
What are you hoping to do with it? I got a used Thinkpad T480 that was like new for €180 and added a couple of upgrades to it (1TB NVMe, 64GB RAM, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi card) that cost me €137, meaning a total of €317, and I’m very happy with the laptop right now, it’s very responsive with Arch Linux and an i3 desktop and I think this baby will be good for many years.
Seconding a used Thinkpad. They are plenty modular/repairable compared to other laptops. I’ve got an X270 and it’s a great little machine.
where do you find used thinkpads online?
Amazon sells used thinkpads other than general age of the hardware love mine that I got for about $300
There are various ebay sellers who carry certified refurbished laptops with warranty included. You can also buy some directly from Lenovo.
Seconded, I have been very happy with my last 2 purchases of Acer refurbished laptops from the official Acer store on eBay.
Got mine on Ebay, and you usually have to be careful like with any purchase of a used item: ask for detailed photos if you can’t judge the state of the item from the photos that are there, ask questions about things that were left out in the description, look for sellers with very good ratings and look at their reviews, see if you can return etc…
Amazon also sells refurbished ones, but so far I’ve seen the best deals on Ebay.
EDIT: important, make sure the BIOS is unlocked.
whats so good about arch? is it faster?
due to the nature of arch and its rolling releases, it tends to get bleeding edge updates/features rather than having to wait for a major update to iron itself out then get rolled out. If you’re a gamer for example, if Valve fixes a bug in the gpu driver, then Arch would probably get it asap (especially given that Steam OS is arch based)
It’s just another distro that has gained a following more because of some perceived superiority than any truly practical reason. If you’re new to Linux I wouldn’t recommend it.
What’s good about it is that if you know what you’re doing you can install only what you need and keep your system small and tidy. Also, since it’s a rolling distro, updates become available really quick and sometimes some of the updates introduce optimizations (meaning more performance) or better power consumption. And finally of course Arch has also an amazing wiki, they have hands down the best Linux documentation along with Gentoo, and they even have a page about Thinkpads: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo
Found it! surprised this wasn’t the top comment
there will always be a Thinkpad nerd to do the shilling in a laptops thread, just doing my job 😎
based and thinkpilled