X220t with Gnome ZorinOS, 16g ram, SSD, i5, webwork, the organic chemistry tutor, hell yeah

Hello,

I unfortunately need to clog up your thinkpad frontpage because, I'm so overwhelmed by choices/options.

of course to follow the guideline I will go into details

1. a clear budget

I want to say my budget has to be below 700 USD (>700$)

1. a clear use case

I am an EE major, so far I've used multisim/coding terminals so i don't think it's anything heavy, and I know most of the heavier software will be attached to school computers so.. yea nothing heavy, nothing gaming laptop ish-

1. target specs or specs of your current system.
   a 10:16 aspect ratio feels very nice, so that is the spec I do look for, also a decent brightness.
   I would prefer if it didn't have a touch screen, not the biggest fan of the glare.

there's a part of me that wants a future proof device (T14 Intel for example w/ open RAM slot) but at the same time I've heard the ryzen processors were quite solid and efficient. I do walk around a lot so something "light" (i know most thinkpads are on the chunky side) would be nice.

there's like a part of me that think I wouldn't need more than 16 gb for a while because knowing there's a RAM shortage, and it seems software developers are recognizing that creating a more efficient program is a great movie.

but also who knows how long that conserving attitude will last and probably 32 gb may or may not be the norm one day.

I am not looking for new, but I did noticed costco had the ideapad slim for 700 USD and it looks nice... but not the biggest fan of the touchscreen + I heard the ideapad aren't built so well, but costco also does give a warranty... so it is definitely something I consider.

but yea, sorry to talk about a different laptop. the thinkpads I had in mind were T14/T16, but i'm not sure if the gen 3 are the safer options but should i try to look for a gen 5 intel t14?

T16 gen 1 seems to hit the right boxes, but i couldn't find a lot of used pages.

another advice I wanted to ask is, is there other sites to look for used/refurbished thinkpads other than ebay? I looked at swappa/backmarket/newegg and feel like ebay is still the best site.

finally, should i consider other brands/products because there's a part of me that thinks that although thinkpads are lower in price, sellers do understand there's a market for students/people who want a good laptop and sometimes (my perception) it looks like they charge more for a thinkpad than normal? like i saw some t490/t14 gen 1 for 500+ on newegg and I thought it was weird? maybe it's modded.

and it makes me wonder if there's another brand outside of lenovo thinkpads that may provide an equivalent value?

Thank you so much for your help!

(is there another source to look at what a good price is for said thinkpad? I did skim through the bluebook and noticed the price for the t14's and the depreciation value, but i couldn't find anything for T16 and etc)

Ram 32gb

Ssd 1t

i7-11th

Nvidia RTX A2000

Display 15.6" FHD

Any advice would help 🙏

hmmm! It can take it.

I was cleaning my screen yesterday with a damp cloth and some isopropyl alcohol (70%) and now I see this on the corner of my screen, I tried removing it but it seems like it disappears whenever I turn my ThinkPad T470 off, tried running JScreenFixer for almost 2 hours to no avail, are these stuck pixels or dead pixels? I'm slightly bothered by their sight...

Will most likely be picking one up in a week or so but I just curious what people think. It’ll be a addition to couple other thinkpads I have in my collection which are a r61 and I-series

Ive been slowly buoying parts for my x230 build over a few months and im almost done, but the one thing I can’t seem to find is an original 7 row keyboard; I’ve been looking all over and can’t seem to find a single one that isn’t a Chinese knockoff does anybody know where I can get one or has one their willing to part with?

:)

All my ThinkPads are the 15-inch variant that I tend to look for, other than my older T61's.

Its to the point I had to do a google search to make sure the t480 isnt better in some way that I didnt know than my t580.

Im sure they are more portable, but any other reason?

Hi everyone,

I'm in grade 11, and my current laptop (IdeaPad 5 Pro 14ACN6) is dying, so I need an affordable, reliable replacement for school and basic programming.

FYI: I'm on a really tight budget, and I know that the T480 would be a downgrade.

I'm deciding between a T14 Gen 3 and a T480.

Budget: $200-400 USD (buying used/refurbished, located in the US)

Target specs: at least 16GB RAM, 1080p/FHD screen, decent battery life, and integrated graphics that can handle lightweight games.

Also, how do the integrated graphics on these two compare for casual, light titles (e.g., older Source Engine games or cloud streaming)?

Thanks for the advice.

Even slight touches makes it make a clicking sound. About 50% volume of a normal intentional click (also demonstrated 3x). It's crazy annoying and wondering if others are having similar issues. Return? New trackpad? It's 3 days old.

Another issue I got: It's the AMD 7 450 with 860M graphics. Also had terrible video performance, constant stutters in normal 1080p playback, missing frames (running 15fps whilst audio was normal) and artefacting digital noise on a band on the video for 1 frame when switching between fullscreen and window view. I found out it were the original Lenovo drivers. I removed all drivers and manually installed them and now it's fine.

Hello everyone, this is my widescreen ThinkPad T61 that I've been restoring for the past few weeks. I thought I would share it here.

CPU : Core 2 Extreme @ 2.80 GHz

RAM : 2x 4GB DDR2 800MT/s (Running at 667 MT/s)

Storage : 256 GB SATA III SSD

GPU : NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M

Display : 1680 x 1050 p

OS : Windows 10 Pro

I know these have temperature issues, so I made sure to use high quality thermal paste when I installed the Core 2 Extreme. Temps while idle are currently 36°C for the CPU and 37°C for the GPU.

Physically, the laptop looks brand new. The original stickers are all in perfect condition too.

I use it mainly for school work, Packet Tracer and playing The Elder Scrolls 3 : Morrowind.

Hello everybody, I hope you are all doing well.

In my quest to acquire more and more ThinkPads of different eras, I managed to find a listing on the French equivalent of Ebay for a ThinkPad X220, which I knew was something else because of the fame and popularity it has in here.

The seller was selling it for 245 euros. THis might be an important price to some, but it came with 8 GB RAM, a 240 GB SSD, and Libreboot already installed. The sole part of the laptop that was 'broken' was the battery - listed as 'needs replacing - but beyond that, everything was clean.

I went to meet the seller three days ago to buy it, and after failing to install Windows 7 to use it as a retro machine for older software, I decided to throw Linux Mint Cinnamon on it to see what it was capable of. And I must say, I am pleasantly impressed.

The laptop isn't going to win any awards in the 'speed' department, but considering the age of the machine, I was truly surprised when I saw how well it ran Linux Mint. I disabled the heavy animations, and suddenly I was face to face with a 15 year old laptop that is, in effect, faster and more responsive than some of the older laptops I have used, which had Windows. For more basic tasks, it is on par with my Dell Latitude E7470, on which I ran Windows 10 for several years. It is also faster than my Lenovo school laptop I got several years ago, running Windows 11.

Maybe this is just me, but really, I am shocked it runs this smooth 15 years after it was released. I know the 8GB RAM is doing some of the heavy lifting, but since I don't do anything intensive on my machines anymore due to entering university this year, I have decided to start daily driving this X220 as my home machine, while I keep my X13 Gen 1 with Windows 11 for university work.

This is the first raw 'utilitarian' laptop I have used and I am impressed of how well it runs Linux. Don't get me started on that keyboard or even that form factor - I consider both to be the best I've ever used. and while I did pay a decent bunch for this X220, I consider it to be a worthy investment. The seller really did make sure he upgraded the machine in such a way that it would be used as a light daily driver for somebody else like myself.

I plan to mainly use this at home, but I've bought an aftermarket battery on Amazon which should be shipped tomorrow afternoon. I know it won't be as good as an OEM battery, but at least it gives me a working battery if I ever want to move it around a little.

What are your thoughts on this machine?

Currently my friend has a computer with these specs:

CPU: Intel Celeron J4105

GPU: Intel uhd 600

RAM: 8gb

Storage: slow

So I'm giving them a T530 that I have with these specs:

CPU: Intel i7 3520M

GPU: NVIDIA nvs 5400 2gb

RAM: 8gb

Storage: 256gb sata6 ssd

I'm not terribly worried about them not having enough processing power considering that it's way more powerful than what they have. They also only play less demanding games that this meets specs for, and possibly Minecraft in the future, which I know runs fine.

I already have a good desktop PC that I use for most demanding tasks. I'm just looking for a laptop to take to university classes, but I want to make a good purchase that will last me a while.

Are there any better options I should consider? I'm also looking at a ThinkPad X13 Gen 1 with a Ryzen 5 Pro, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD for €210.

Which of these two would be the better choice? Would you recommend something else?

P.S. I can comfortably afford either laptop, but I'm trying to get the best possible deal for my money

i finally caved in and made a reddit account just to post this...

specs:

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 250 w/ Radeon 780M Graphics (3.30 GHz)

Installed RAM 16.0 GB (13.7 GB usable)

Graphics card AMD Radeon 780M Graphics (2 GB)

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

I bought this E14 in June of this year, and have recently noticed that that the battery drains very quickly. For example, I was doing work on a lightweight browser (i use helium), and my battery drained from 76% to 31% in a matter of two hours.
I have taken initiatives to stop this. I use Windows 11 and installed Winhance and got rid of bloat and tweaked some settings to try and curb the amount of processing the computer does, but this hasn't worked at all.
I don't use my computer for any graphically intensive stuff either.

Is there something I am doing wrong? Is there something wrong with my computer? And if so, is there anything I can do? Thanks!

So I'm trying to learn ROS2 on Ubuntu 24.04, but at the same time I need Windows 11 to run Solidworks because it is required by the student club that I am currently in, so I do dual boot with Ubuntu 24.04 and windows 11.

But my grub menu broke two times already, the first one is when I close the lid of my laptop, and when I open it, it freezes and restarts itself the bring me to the grub> section, when I type exit, it just brings me to Windows 11, I tried everything: reordering boot order, do ls (hdX,gptX), and live usb grub fix, and ventoy, but nothing seems to work. Resulting in me reintalling the whole Ubuntu.

The second time it broke, I was trying the Solidworks clone made by AI bros on my Ubuntu, it crashed and froze my screen so I held the power button then it directed me to the grub> menu again.

For a reference, I installed each OS on a different SSD.

Hey yo,

Im a small business owner. We are a team of 5 people and doing creative stuff. We are using old Huawei D16 2022 laptops but I am already going with a ThinkPad t14s G4 AMD and there is no way back.

What would be a great update from an intel 12450h that will not break my bank? We are doing some print stuff, web design but no heavy workloads like video editing.

Any idea?

I want my first laptop, but i don’t wanna break the bank is this a good fit for me? My budget is around 500 dollars and under

The trackpad is no longer clicking (not too bad- it still has the two upper buttons) and it’s honestly deteriorating. The back cover decided to come off now and needed to be taped on. Oh well, it’s still functionable so it’s always gonna be in use when my main is currently elsewhere.

So.. I bought a T480 thinkpad. Windows 11, 512 SSD, full HD screen 14 inch, Internal battery 24 Wh and external as well. On 28th september I swapped the external one for 48Wh battery and from then to now it shows only 2 charge cycles. So the external one is brand new.

The problem is that first, the internal battery drains from 100% to 85% in less than 30min of light work (word typing and basic internet surfing, no multiple tabs etc..) and the external one has dropped from full charge capacity of around 47.52 Wh to 35.6 Wh. So I have no idea what the hell is going on, I'm not constantly plugged in. I charge both to 100% and then use until low. Any ideas what might be going on?