Low hanging fruit, but whatever. It is what it is.

  • nehal3m
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    4 months ago

    Old ThinkPads, the poor man’s Framework.

    • emergencyfoodOP
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      4 months ago

      System76 and Framework are mostly North America and Western Europe. Pine64 might sell in Australia.

      • shirro@aussie.zone
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        4 months ago

        Framework have been shipping to Australia for ages. I ordered in December 2022 and it drop shipped from Taiwan to rural Australia in about a week. It was faster than ordering parts from pccasegear though that isn’t saying much.

        I have been a fan of System76 since I saw some stickers at a conference nearly two decades ago. I think they have good intentions but unfortunately a badge engineering company for most of their existence. The quality hasn’t always been there from their ODMs and foreign RMA bothers me. You can buy a clevo or tong fang from local resellers and cover it in linux stickers.

        The used market in Australia is bad for most things unfortunately.

  • Mangoholic@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    I got unbuntu on my xiaomi notebook with a nice oled screen. It worked almost immediately. Easier install then windows. I chose Ubuntu as my first linux because of lots of support.

    • Persen@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      As far as I heard, their designs are similar to macbooks, are the keyboards as terrible?

      • Mangoholic@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        I think its a preference, I prefer the keyboard over mac. But the build quality and hardware is just really good for the price.

        • Persen@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          So all the qualities of XM phones and no drawbacks, like miui and official software support? Great.

  • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Refurbished ThinkPads are available in countries where Framework, System76, and Pine64 do not ship.

    Besides, ThinkPads are really well-built machines that perform well for everyday tasks at a fraction of their (or the aforementioned competition’s) original price.

    I love my two machines, which are from before Lenovo took over completely. Their keyboards, port selection, and repairability are almost unparalleled compared to today’s competition.

  • linkhidalgogato@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    as cool as they are the last time a good thinkpad came out was over a decade ago, so u are either just buying a normal laptop same quality as all the others or something so old its basically useless. They arent even cheap anymore cuz everyone wants them, its time to face reality refurbished thinkpads are no longer what they were they are no longer a good deal nor particularly good quality, u would probably be better off buying some random gaming laptop most of them are pretty well put together, easy to take apart and upgradable tho thick and heavy.

    • monsterpiece42@reddthat.com
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      4 months ago

      This simply isn’t true. They are still cheap even for decent stuff. I got a T15 Gen 2 when it was 2.5yrs old for about $400 on eBay. You’re not going to get an even remotely decent laptop in most cases for that kind of money. And to be clear, I love old Thinkpads. I have them going back to the IBM days.

      Modern Thinkpads: -easy to work on -plenty fast for most things -still made of the carbon composite and magnesium chassis we like -hinges are beefy -upgradeable ram -available with GPU -lighter and easier to daily than any of the old chonks -replaceable keyboard, track pad and track point, and fingerprint -dual thunderbolt connection (and docks are stupid cheap… I find them for $30 sometimes)

      Downsides exist but they’re not the end of the world: -one drive slot (drives are huge now, who cares) -8gb of RAM is soldered but the rest is not (max 40gb) -internal battery but laptop is faster and has better battery life than my maxed out T580

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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      4 months ago

      refurbished thinkpads are no longer what they were they are no longer a good deal nor particularly good quality

      Off-lease enterprise laptops are generally the best deals available for a good laptop for not too much cash. When you can get something 3-5 years old for 1/3 the price of a brand new laptop and know it still has quite a bit of life left, its hard to beat.

    • Persen@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Some gaming laptops are good, but others are just as crappy as normal laptops. New smaller thinkpads are still good enough, if you need a small laptop.

      • EvolvedTurtle@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I have a decent gaming laptop It’s a pain in the ass for collage tho I didn’t buy it for collage but I also can’t really afford to buy something else

        It’s too big and the battery life sucks

        Basically the least portable laptop

        • Persen@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Laptops can be compared to cars, you can buy an economical car (with higher range and lower costs, but less power) or a sporscar/muscle car (terrible economy, loud, but higher performance)

    • devfuuu@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Thinkpads were never cheap around here. Asus are cheap. The quality is many orders of different.

    • billgamesh@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Depends on what you do. my daily driver is a $20 x200. works great for my needs. But I don’t game

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
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    4 months ago

    I have a Framework and it beats the shit out of every Lenovo I have ever used.

      • Captain Aggravated
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        4 months ago

        Are you trying to say that the Thinkpad line was owned by IBM in the 90’s? Because…so what?

    • Vuraniute@thelemmy.club
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      3 months ago

      I was originally planning on getting a Surface Pro 11 or other ARM laptop as my next laptop, but one day I was thinking about an old CLEVO P150HM1 which tore everything apart, and outperforms my 2015 T450, while being made in 2009. Needless to say, I got a lot more tolerant of the idea of buying an X86 laptop as my new laptop. I also realised that the price range an SP11 involved also allowed for a Framework Laptop 13. I’m saying all this to not conflict with the rest of my comment history, but in summary: Long live the Framework!

      EDIT: This probably won’t happen, I’ve been seeing some γαμάτα deals for newer ThinkPads here lately.

  • bruhduh@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Any old laptop without Nvidia will suffice tho, upgrade WiFi card, ram, swap hhd for ssd, install your favourite distro and it’ll run like magic, if laptop have dying battery then also buy new one, or resolder elements and reset bms.

  • where_am_i
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    4 months ago

    buy any AMD laptop, replace the wifi card, install your favorite distro and it will run like magic.

    You get a new, capable, and power-efficient device, while not bothering with damn old ThinkPads or giving insane amount of money to s76.

    • Vuraniute@thelemmy.club
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      4 months ago

      until it gets completely fucked due to a form-over-function cooling system and hits 101C (NBLK-WAX9X)

      • stephen01king@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        It works well enough if you don’t mind the occasional disconnect and slow connection to wifi, which is true for a lot of people like me. It’s still pretty annoying to deal with sometimes, just not enough to go replace the WiFi card or anything.

      • where_am_i
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        4 months ago

        AMD laptops almost always ship with mediatek wifi cards. Cuz the alternative is intel, and I guess that’s not cool with AMD.

        But mediatek’s wifi cards are a steaming pile of bovine excrement. Bluetooth issues, wifi dropouts, drivers not being mature until a year after the release.

        Save your self the pain, buy an Intel wifi card for 20$ and upgrade it right after you bought the laptop. Might as well add RAM and storage. Takes an hour of work, 20 minutes of which is watching a YT video on how to do it.

  • somenonewho@feddit.org
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    4 months ago

    Been ThinkPad User for over 10 years. Edge E135 X220 X260

    This year was the first Time in about 16years I bought a non used machine and it was a framework. As much as I adore the good ol ThinkPad the recent developments regarding repairability/statement from Lenovo are turning me off more and more. And my framework makes me happy every time I use it …

    So I don’t know.

  • sloppy_diffuser
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    4 months ago

    My work laptop is a Dell Precision. It was a “data science” model that came with Ubuntu. Wiped Dell’s modified Ubuntu and put vanilla Ubuntu on it and now running Nixos. Works great. There was a weird period when using triple monitors with their dock had an intermittent issue on boot where resolutions and monitors were not being detected. Cause was Nvidia drivers. It eventually got resolved and it was easy enough to rollback the drivers to one that worked.

    • emergencyfoodOP
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      4 months ago

      The older models were also very repairable and customisable. Most newer ones aren’t. This is a problem for some users.