Working on the assumption that Win10 being EOL is going to cause an influx of old hardware becoming available, I was thinking it might be a good time to start looking for a good deal on a laptop for travel. It doesn’t HAVE to be an old unsupported laptop, but saving something from e-waste is a bonus. Here’s the kind of thing I’m looking for.
- Something small-ish, around a 13" screen.
- Can install Linux. Generally a given, I know. But I think not always an option with Chromebooks? I’m OK with a Chromebook as long as I can replace ChromeOS with Linux.
- X86_64 preferred. For games, though obviously not a great platform for that. Not opposed to ARM, but the PineBook Pro is compelling as a small low-cost ARM laptop, it’d have to be a better deal than that.
- Somewhat serviceable. I’d like to have the option to replace the batteries, storage, and memory. Being able to replace the wireless card would be nice.
- Durable would be a bonus. It probably won’t see a lot of use, but it’ll get tossed around in a backpack or in luggage.
- Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.
All of that might be too much of a unicorn, but if I can find a good deal that mostly fits, I’ll be happy.
Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.
web browsers are pretty fucking heavy these days, I think the minimum spec for an “ok” experience is a 3rd gen quad core “mobile” chip like the 3612qm or an 8th gen quad core “ultrabook” chip like the 8650u
Thinkpads are super durable and kind of fun. I got a bunch of T420s (nice) from my boss for free and they’re all running Mint fantastically, as well as some 90s games. (They are being used for the occasional LAN party)
The T420 is from around 2011, so if you spent money on one you could get a better one easy.
god i love the t420! the only limitation it has for my usecase is gaming which is fine - i use the steam streaming feature when i want to play games like citybuilders in my bed :)
The Pinebook Pro is unfortunately not a very good laptop. It’s very slow, has a weird storage setup, and the hardware isnt 100% supported by any distro even now, years later. The battery also takes forever to charge and doesnt last all that long.
I get better performance on a Raspberry Pi 4 and even that is too slow for me
It was a cool idea and if the software support was there it might have become a very compelling laptop, but as it currently exists the PBP is not worth what it costs
10-year old lenovo thinkpad unanimously wins, as expected
Thinkpads were basically made for Linux, depending on your Budget you can get a Thinkpad X220, X230, T420 or T430 for small money - perfectly usesble machines and Linux (my experience is CachyOS & Arch) work out of the box.
For a bigger budget i could recomment the T480, it’s still upgradeable.
And for a bigger budget i’d recommend a T14 GEN2
Are the T14’s easily upgraded too?
unfortunately not, power wise it only lets you upgrade the RAM.
but those CPU´s are vastly superior to those 2nd and 3rd Gen i7´s you can put into a t420/t430
the german website https://thinkwiki.de/ has detailed information about possible upgrades of every model :)
I never came across that site before. Thank you for the useful info.
glad i could help :)
Since people allready recommended Thinkpads and Elitebooks I can only add up on that.
If you don’t mind thinkering a bit you can buy old cromebook for really cheap. You can install linux on them and they usually have pretty nice screen, even if specs could be lacking (but for linux and web browsing it would be fine)
I’ve wanted to do this but have read many chromebooks don’t like most linux distros. Is that still true?
Try locally. Facebook marketplace is huge in the USA. It’s a royal pain to sell tech offline, so you get good deals. Selection is worse so just broaden your search or be patient.
Business laptops are more rugged and serviceable. 4chan’s /g/ has a thread for “thinkpad general” which is all the business laptops. (Mind the 4chan racism and transphobia.) I’ve found that Dells are far more common (and thus cheap) than comparable HPs or Thinkpads.
For some price comparison, I sold a 6th gen Intel Dell laptop with a 1080p screen for about $60. On ebay they run $40-$100.
I love thinkpad L480. Also, if you get a good deal then try getting Macbook 2017 Intel version. You could install Linux on that and it’s quite light weight.
I got two laptops from local electronics recycling this past month. One of them is 2020 spec and just needed a charger and some dents smoothed out. Can’t beat rescuing something that’s going in the trash, sustainability wise. If you’re going on the actual used market, Thinkpad like everyone else said.
How does one actually get laptops from local electronics recycling? I keep reading about getting EOL equipment but details on how to actually get one’s hands on such equipment are scant.
Not sure I was following the rules, tbph. Box of laptops and I grabbed some promising looking ones.
As expected, ThinkPad. I have a Yoga X1, the stylus and touch works fine. But if you’re installing Linux take great care of to have copious amounts of swap or swapfile because ram is low.
I got a thinkpad E14 off of eBay for $400. There was a slight haircrack in the hinge, but it came with 40gb of ram 1tb ssd and amd ryzen 7730u I believe. I always recommend looking on eBay first, it’s likely you can find a $1000+ laptop for $400 like I did.
I have a Thinkpad X395 which I bought refurbished. I has average specs for a laptop, you can find it with up to 16 GB of RAM and a quite nice 1080p touchscreen (depending on the configuration). Also it may come with a fingerprint reader, an LTE modem or a Smartard reader. I don’t know how serviceable it is because I have never opened it but you can easily remove the keyboard by unclipping some clips and undoing some screws, you don’t have to open the case
Look for dell latitudes with 7th and maybe 8th gen Intel CPUs. Those are solid machines that aren’t considered upgradable to win11. They also have removable RAM (DDR4 IIRC) so many can be upgraded to 32GB max.
I love the Panasonic toughbooks. Most of them have a handle so they’re great to carry around like a briefcase. Had mine in the boot during driver safety training, it got knocked around voilently, not a single scratch. Also put a SSD in, running it with pop OS since many years.
You could try to get a dell xps 13”. I currently have fedora installed on my xps 15 that’s about 11 years old and it’s been working pretty well. I’ve replaced the battery and changed storage on mine so they’re fairly serviceable. Built pretty sturdy and have great keyboards and trackpads. Good screens too.
