Hey all - what’s your experience with refurb Lenovo laptops for Linux from companies/shops that specialize in this as a service? I’m looking at LinuxPusher.dk but am also curious about other EU-based shops. It seems like a good, affordable way to get a Linux machine if you’re a novice, like me (some experience with Ubuntu and Kubuntu about 10 years ago).
first off, “lenovo” is not the thing to get, it’s just a subset of those - thinkpads. and even then, not all of those - just the T and P series. those are the “pro” lines, durable, dependable, expandable, serviceable, and widely used. so when corporations swap out their fleet for new models, they flood the market and hence can be had for cheap. multiple generations of the same model are cross-generation compatible, so they share the same peripherals, like docks, have interchangeable parts, like keyboards, displays, etc.
don’t get used ideapads, thinkbooks, thinkpad E/L series, etc. those are either consumer-class models, have substandard features, are incompatible with each other, etc. don’t get the yogas and S-suffix models, as you’ll have a removed time servicing and/or upgrading those.
the whole point of getting something used, i.e. something that was touched and rubbed and spat all over, is if it’s a) in good enough shape and b) you get it for cheap. you took care of of item A when going for thinkpad T-series and you’re compromising on item B if you’re going through an intermediary.
them dudes you mention are skinning you alive - 500 EUR for a T14 G1 is insane, it should be less than half of that. I also like how they’re including none of the tech specs which just ups the ick factor.
what about the X line? particularly the x250 and x260? been thinking on getting one of those for a while because of their compact size
I’m referring to semi-modern laptops you’re most likely to get out of some corporation’s dump of obsolete tech, but that’s still usable - let’s say T480 and onward. you can retrofit those with tons of RAM, cheap storage, they have capable quad-cores, etc. you can get something like a T14 Ryzen 6-core with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD in the $200 region, if you do everything yourself.
everything before that is proper old tech, with predominantly anemic dual-cores (the ones you mention have single-channel RAM) and as such are a fun tinkering project, similar to the cyber deck projects - costs a lot of money, doesn’t do much. on the other side of that fence are power-hungry haswells and friends that can’t be wrangled into single-digit Watt/Hour territory however hard you tried.
so if you get one of those for free, or close to it, and you have parts laying around, by all means - this is as close you can get to the bespoke PC build in the laptop world. but ixnay on bying a decade old laptop for work and/or education.
edit:
X260 vs T14, negligible size difference
thank you brother, you might have saved me from a bullet; t480s and t470s are much easier to find on my country than x260s and x250s, also it’s easier to get better deals on them.
Was planning to go for one of those because of size exclusively pretty much, i like compact machines and was planning for a tiny laptop. if it isn’t bothersome to ask, do you so happen to know a cheap thinkpad around 28 x 22cm?
skip the T470, T480 with 8xxxu cpu is the lowest you should go; the hardware is practically identical (and interchangeable!) but the CPU is a huge difference. also if you find them for cheap, there’s T490 (refresh), T495 (AMD Ryzen), and T14 (newer variants of the T4xx series with Intel and AMD CPUs).
the 12" version would be the X280, again single-channel RAM only. in the 12" space you also have Dell Latitude 7290/7200 (just the latitude series, no inspirons and friends) as well as HP Elitebook 820 (and 830) with 8xxx and newer CPUs. Elitebooks and Latitudes are Thinkpad T-series equivalents with similar build quality and features.
thank you! your advice will be very valuable! i’ve had came across those ryzen thinkpads and found quite some nice ones, but didn’t knew they would fit me dimensions
What’s a model you could stuff the most RAM into? I’d like a 4th Proxmox node I could replicate to and take offsite, but I don’t need a pile of redundant storage on it. Something I could get 128Gb into would be awesome.
T480 can take 64 GB (2x 32 GB); no idea if more is possible. I imagine newer models could but I struggle to remember seeing 64 GB SO-DIMMs… P15 can fit four sticks so that should be possible, but them things have beefy CPUs, are rather large, and also have Nvidia graphics so dunno how low-power you can make those.
you’re kinda outside of the intersection of cheap and still capable with that spec. do make a write-up if you succeed, that sounds interesting.
You have to be careful on the 80 series. They are either 7th gen Intel or 8th gen Intel. My sister has an i5-7200u t580. Also 8th gen is weird, I’ve been having issues with my pavilion trying to get it to run at base clock. I had to uninstall Intel thermald and run “throttled”, a GitHub script to run at base clock.
Also it’s the last generation of T series that has dual batteries, and a few gens later, they move to soldered ram.
you’re absolutely right about that last point. my fully-spec’d t440p (4910mq, 16GB, 1080p IPS, t450p trackpad, backlit, quectel eg25-g for WWAN, the whole 9 yards) cost me less than $300 to build – a similar machine from minifree would’ve cost nearly double that for worse specs. though, it should be noted, that that price gets you more than silicon – they offer support over IRC, some sort of warranty, and i think other shit too.
That’s super helpful - I didn’t realize how big a difference there is between models. Thanks for clarifying. And yeah, by now I get the sense that LinuxPusher.dk is not for me. :)
E and L series ThinkPads tend to have upgradable ram. The build isn’t as good but the upgradability is something to keep in mind.
As for the specs and the lack of mentioning them, I agree.