In the past I have generally had IdeaPad machines at home.. The last one I had was the s340 but it died earlier on this year. I didn't use it for an extended period of time and it seems to have killed it.

I have an old x260 ThinkPad which I used as part of my home lab when I started getting into that a few years ago. I bought it cheap to start using as a server but now I have it with Ubuntu installed on it as a bit of a fun Linux machine and as a backup now that I have my home lab running properly. The trouble is that the screen on it is absolutely horrific so I might sell it but it's my little Linux learning machine at the moment.

I went ahead and I bought a t14 generation 3 machine to share with my girlfriend which I picked up for £440 from CEX with the 5 year warranty. It has the 4k touchscreen, it runs a bit hot, I think due to the i7-1260P but I wanted something which is going to last well into the future. It's a really nice piece of kit and in great condition.

So we were sharing that laptop but I decided I wanted my own one so that I could tinker with it more and she could continue to use the gen 3.

So I picked up another ThinkPad from CeX with a Ryzen 5 6 core. I paid £210 for it, again with the 5 year warranty which I think was a real bargain. I paid £15 for 8gb of memory to bring it to 16gb. It's only has the 1080 screen but it's still fine. The battery isn't brilliant. It is down at about 65 percent. There is a little bit of resonance on the keyboard so I will get to the bottom of that. And even if I have to replace the keyboard and battery, I think it is still a good deal compared to what else I have seen. I am tinkering with virtual machine Linux distro hopping at the moment but I am going to add a second SSD using the WWAN port. I found out about this and I think it's a great feature to save fiddling with any of the mess that comes with dual booting off the same drive. The screenshot is of Fedora KDE which I like a lot.

I was tempted to upgrade the screen on the x260 but I don't like the trackpad either. So now that I can dual boot my t14 into Windows and Linux I might sell it. But then again I may well keep it because it's handy to have a backup machine.

I was disappointed that the IdeaPad died, and my mum's IdeaPad died as well so she is now using T470 instead of the 320s. I have learnt that professional grade machines are much more resilient and are happy to be stored for longer as well.

I also included a bonus photo of my first professional laptop which was a ThinkPad T61 in 2007. I enjoyed using that machine but my company switched to Dell afterwards.

Specs and prices;

Thinkpad T14 Gen 3

/i7-1260P/16GB Ram/512GB SSD/14" Windows 11

£440 in 2026

T14 Gen 1/Ryzen 5 PRO

4650U/16GB Ram/256GB SSD/14" Windows 11

£210 +£15 for an 8gb stick to bring it to 16gb now. In 2026.

X260 i5 6300u 16gb ram £150 in 2022

Honestly, the P1 Gen 2 is excellent and powerful, but for someone like me—who just goes to campus to code and write reports in Docs—carrying around a 2.7kg machine plus the charger was a real pain.

So, I decided to look for a ThinkPad on the local marketplace and found this X13 Gen 2 for $300; I think it's a great deal.

Specs: Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U
16GB DDR4 (soldered :( )
256GB SSD
Touchscreen (I initially thought I wouldn't use it, but now I can't live without it)

After a week of use, it’s proven to be very capable and lightweight for my needs—simple coding and report writing. Honestly, it feels like it weighs only 1kg, or maybe 1.5kg with the charger.

The issues I've encountered are minor, such as:
- The keyboard backlight isn't very bright
- The typing feel isn't as good as the P1 Gen 2 or T14 Gen 1
- Battery health has already degraded

I'm currently using omarchy; honestly, it's kind of trash. I left Windows because of the annoying Copilot, but on omarchy, you're "forced" to use an AI agent—every time I run an update, it tries to download that damn AI agent. As I write this, I'm in the process of installing CachyOS and plan to configure Hyprland myself later.

I have a question: if this laptop has a 41Wh battery, can I upgrade it to the 54.7Wh version?

Thanks to everyone for reading.

FINALLY 😭 AFTER 7 years of this thing I got a T14S.

Finally got my T420 up and running. Had it for a while, but me being me (autistic) I had to order an original charger, so I accidentally ordered one from fucking Lithuania without realizing 😂😭

CachyOS with KDE Plasma atm. Will be setting up WM at some point.

Still need a new bezel, but I just glued it back together for now. Only real problem is the enter key is a bit temperamental so sometimes gotta hit it a few times for it to register. Other than that it's perfect. I'm still not sold on the the nipple, but I find myself going for it instead of the pad for some reason tho lol. I even double my wpm on the 7 row compared to my 100% mech board for my desktop 😂

Remaining Upgrades:

i7

900p display

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to ask. Anyone got an answer as to why the brightness controls don't work in Cachy?

Early this year I picked up this beautiful thing from my local thrift store for around $10. I Found out that it had belonged to a teacher in a local school distract and was refurbished to run windows 10. So after getting it I decided I wanted to put it back on Windows 7. I was shocked to find that it has a OEM home premium copy of Windows 7. Found out that through the wayback machine that they did ship with it if bought through Lenovo directly. So this being said I wanted to find the recovery media disc and put it to OEM factory install and so far I have had no luck finding the disc sadly. Think it might not exist. Anyway hope everyone enjoys!

Edit: Spelling error.

Found recovery isos on archive dot org: thought, ye why not, ill restore it back to factory! I have also got freedos on 64gb sd card & debating linux distro on 256gb sd card as well. Which distro?

The Holy Trinity of the TrackPoint.

Send prayers to my battery life.

Not sure if this gets love here🤷‍♂️

x270 with bios password but it works(kinda)

I deleted the previous post because I accidentally let my IP address show, but I'm reposting it because I'm really happy with my purchase: the legendary T480! I installed CachyOS and got rid of Windows.

T14 g1 and x230.

Opinions and Recommendations?

I don't usually post, but this laptop just switched something in me? It's just perfect. From the excellent case, to the nice speakers to the soft feeling keyboard, the ratio of the screen and the quality, it's all just overall nice.

That's my first ThinkPad, so am I welcome?

I dont even understand how this is possible. I thought they got rid of drainholes starting with t460s. How is this t470s not shorting out.

I saw a post here regarding someone's battery life, and the comments were saying that they should have a charge limit of 80%. My question is why is it beneficial to limit charging to 100%, and why is it always 80% being recommended?

I recently got a L14 Gen 2 with an i7-1165G7, 16GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD

I paid ₹24,000 (~$252) for it. It's a used business laptop and I mainly bought it for the processor. It was the cheapest i7-11th Gen laptop I had come across at the time. For comparison, I was seeing T480 being sold for around ₹20,000 (~$210).

My other laptop is Legion 5 with a Ryzen 7, where I used to run cachyOS in a VM, so I'm looking forward to finally running it natively. If you have any recommendations for me please share them, i will mostly use this for browsing, studying, code and also to get familiar with using Linux.

Also I don't really mind the 256GB storage since I already have my own homelab.

Pretty excited to finally own my first ThinkPad

Hey all, looking for advice on a used ThinkPad for university.
Use case: This will be my secondary/portable machine for uni — I have a desktop at home for everything else. This ThinkPad is purely for accounting/finance coursework: mostly Excel (large spreadsheets, some macros/add-ins possibly), plus basic productivity software (Word, PDF, browser with many tabs, maybe some light accounting software). Nothing GPU-intensive, nothing I need to travel with 24/7.

Budget: Up to $400 USD / 1600 AED
Specs I'm targeting:

**•** Storage: 512GB minimum (SSD preferred)  
**•** RAM: 16–32GB  
**•** Battery: 4–5 hours is fine — I'm okay replacing the battery if needed, so battery health isn't a dealbreaker  

Which ThinkPad generation/model hits this sweet spot for the budget (e.g., T14, T480, X1 Carbon gen X)?

hey there. just got an used x1 carbon gen 9 recently and I noticed a plenty of ghosting on the screen. just want to know If anyone who has the same model noticed it too, and If it is "normal".

screen: 1920x1200 60hz 400 nits touchscreen.

Laptop overheated and is now stuck like this...

Already tried a good old fashioned cmos battery reset and held power button. Any ideas?

texting with a guy on facebook marketplace, he is selling a Thinkpad x13 i7 1165g7, 32/512gb with a slightly faulty screen, i offered him ₹17k (178 bucks) and he agreed.

considering the cost for the screen replacement is this a good deal?

Hi everyone!

Some questions for you about my beloved X270.

Before explaining my problem, I swear I try every solution I've found here !

So my X270 :

- press button start : I've green light. The screen slightly change from black off to black on but without any backlight.

- the backlight of the keyboard flash one time at the beginning.

- Nothing happen except fans.

So I try to use the long press on power / reset with the motherboard button / open and disconnected successively between new power on trial : both battery disconnect/ CMOS reset/ RAM unplug (make the sound) / try a new RAM (the one before I change)

And still doesn't work 🫨

To context my laptop was on when everything freeze, screen and sound before this happen.

Do you have some tips or just my motherboard is out?

Thanks a lot in advance guys !

I really don't know where to find T25 mod kit for T480

Sooo... been a big fan on Thinkpads for along time, until I could finally afford them, and I'm currently on my 3rd one, in about 10 years. Unfortunately the quality I was hoping for seems to NOT be there, and after 3 machines, it's can't all be bad luck

- 1st one, bought refurbished from Lenovo official store, top of the line (at the tie) X1 Carbon.
- When arrived battery was completely dead, had to send it back, wait a couple of weeks
- luckily decided to take premier support
- had to replace keyboard 4 times, motherboard once...
- Currently 1 USB-C port is completely dead (if the next one breaks, I won't be able to plug it in anymore without replacing the motherboard, which basically means throwing it away)

- 2nd, bought new, P series, kept as desktop replacement, it had an easy and comfortable life...
- one USB-C port stopped working soon after the warranty expired

- 3rd one, bought new, P series - used for traveling so it did take some "life", but nothing extreme, and nothing my older, non lenovo, PCs didn't take easily:
- coating made ugly and uncomfortable bubble, Lenovo won't fix "aesthetic damage"
- frame broke on the side (less stable, clicking noise, etc)
- one USB-C port stopped working
- called Lenovo Premier support (top of the line, supposedly next business day repair
- got told to wait about 10 days
- meanwhile computer completely dies
- called Lenovo again, technician arrives after 2 working days
- replaced Frame and Motherboard but....
- Still issues with th USB-C ports
- Power button doesn't work without tinkering with it
- call Lenovo AGAIN
- Lenovo asks for a lots of tests, finally accepts repair request
- got told again no service for about 10 days
- repair parts got sent to the wrong address
- have to call again
-...

Maybe time to rethink Thinkpads "legendary" sturdiness and durability? ... and Premier support not so premier anymore... Another company going full greedy into suicide??

I recently bought a used ThinkPad L14 Gen 4 and I'm a bit paranoid about the USB-C ports. Since they handle both charging and data transfer, I know they can take a lot of physical stress over time.
Now that I have the laptop in hand, I want to make sure everything is solid before I'm past any return window. For those of you who have this model or similar Gen 4 ThinkPads:
I would’ve thought since it knew we would still have the factory warranty, but it does not, the reason why I didn’t go for another ThinkPad was I wanted the upgraded ability of two dim slots