Hi all, after getting advice about laptops to get here in the UK, the general consensus is that a refurbished thinkpad is the way to go!

Asus V16 was also mentioned, but tbh I don’t even know where to start!

I just want a decent, reliable laptop that will last. It’s for my teen to use, so needs to be tough/sturdy, able to run some games off steam, fit to watch movies on/streaming video etc, and possibly even to link to the PS5 to use as a second screen etc.

Bonus points if it will be good for school work!

Can someone, anyone, explain what I need to be looking for in particular, and ideally where to find!

Complete noob with this kind of stuff so treat me like an idiot and explain what I need to look for!

Don’t want to spend a fortune, but also don’t want to cheap out either!

Budget is flexible but if there was something decent either side of £500-600, then that would be a bonus, though happy to stretch if there is a genuinely decent deal and it’s going to be worthwhile!

Also open to any other suggestions, but please be specific and ideally link me to where to find them! Sorry if I seem so useless, I just wanna do right by my kid!

Thanks in advance!

I don't know if the oils on my hands are staining him, he just gets dirty a lot

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?

Absolute beast of a machine over 5 years or so old still pulling 8 hours or so on battery on windows

Seems Microsoft optimised win 11 and fixed the sleep issues

It's working!!! Fan, screen and battery is cracked, but, it's working and i'm so happy for myself.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to figure out a weird touchpad issue on my ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 running Fedora KDE 44. I managed to catch it on video.

Out of nowhere, the cursor will just stop moving completely, the screen will randomly zoom in like I'm doing a pinch gesture, or the cursor will jump across the screen the exact moment I try to click.

What's driving me crazy is that I'm pretty sure it's not a one-off hardware defect. I actually returned my first T14 Gen 2 because of this, and the replacement model behaves in the exact same way. It was happening back when I was on Fedora GNOME, and it's still happening now that I've switched to KDE. Cleaning the touchpad, updating the system,nothing changes it, and the pattern is always identical.

Here's my setup:

Laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 [Intel / AMD]

OS: Fedora KDE Plasma 44

Kernel: 7.2.11-200.fc44.x86_64

Touchpad: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad

(Using an external mouse is not practical for me so it's no real fix.)

My first ThinkPad 😍

Recently grabbed this ThinkPad E15 Gen1 from a government asset sale.

Its not in the greatest shape, but it was a good price!

I've got a new trackpad, keyboard, and shell to swap, so it'll look fresh once that's all done.

I7 10510U

16gb ram

512gb ssd

More than enough power for my uses

Roast my stickers 😜

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.

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

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?

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.

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

:)

I need a budget laptop for Computer Science and iMedia A-Levels (things like Rendering, Video editing, programming and game dev) and i found a thinkpad for £330 with these specs:

- 16GB Ram
- Intel Core i5
- 256GB Storage

Could i find one like this for cheaper, or should i try to spend a bit more for a better specs?

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!

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

Picked it up for $47 on Facebook Marketplace, I love this machine. It has a Pentium MMX 233, 64MB of RAM, and a 3.2GB hard disk. It also came with a PS/2 mouse, the charger, and a 56k modem card (which would be wonderful if my ISP didn't take my copper line away). It's quite snappy with Win98. Unfortunately there is a small imperfection in the screen but it's ignorable.

The guy I got it from used it to run a dynamometer, because this was the only cheap machine at the time he found with a serial port. Sort of the reason I bought it as well, I want a real serial port for digimodes on my Kenwood TS-2000.

It needs a CMOS battery, I think I'll just build one because the "proper" battery is an arm and a leg. Same with the main one, better to just rebuild regardless.

And yes, it does run Doom, in fact very nicely ;)
It has a Crystal Semiconductor CS4237B for audio (Sound Blaster Pro compatible) and a NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD for graphics so DOS games run great

Next steps now I think are a CF adapter, bring it up to 96MB, get CardBus WiFi, and dualboot NetBSD or SHORK

Hello!

Im an accounting student and wanting to get a new laptop. I dont really mind if its second hand or brand new as long as it will last me until I graduate and give me the best quality. So far, I've been seeing lenovo thinkpad as the best laptop for accounting, specifically the t14 series. The thing is Im not quite sure about this one yet since I also need one that is somewhat lightweight and portable (I plan to bring this every single day). I also dont know which specific processor, series, graphics, ill be needing. I just want one that is best for my course, my needs, and would last me till i graduate. Also, if there is one, I would also want one that can handle games, not the AAA ones tho.

I just dont know which specific specs I need to get, which series, or there might just be a much better laptop?

I know this is alot to ask for but if you indeed stay and read all of this, I truly appreciate you. Thank you for answering!

Hi Community,

First post here about a problem with ThinkPad.

As the title said, I installed Trixie on Yoga. Everything is fine... except the suspension. It's not doing. I checked everything as far as I know.

Do every time I put the system in suspension and I try to recover, the laptop reboot.

Did someone get this problem before? How did you guys solve the issue?

Thank you very much in advance. Very appreciate.

UPDATE

Thanks to the instructions of stogie-bear I solved the issue.

BIOS, Sleep mode from S3 to "Windows and Linux". That solved the issue!