- I’ll buy used, so don’t want latest and greatest. It won’t be my main laptop.
- to run linux obviously.
- good battery life, light, not too small to use, but large enough to type on (obviously can do without numeric keypad). not too fragile!
- I’ll be doing some light python work, perhaps some c/c++ but I’m not after a workhorse, just something for quickly fixing bugs, or making notes on
- sub 200 GBP / 250USD I guess
I’d be interested in hearing recommendations, and also what to avoid!
loving my recently acquired T480. not the fastest by any means, but solid and great keyboard. plus non-soldered memory allows for upgrades. got mine off craigslist for 120, a steal.
T480s is my backup work laptop. Runs Linux fine (have had Ubuntu, currently Fedora 42). Runs windows 11 like shit, but then my primary P1 gen 4 also doesn’t run 11 much better, so…
You basically need a supercomputer for windows 11 to not run like complete shit. Linux will run well on 15 year old hardware, although I wouldn’t suggest anything that old if you care about power consumption.
Thanks for mentioning the actual model number.
maybe search for system76 too. I found one on my local craigslist.
If you’re in the US, refurbished thinkpads are probably the best option. Not so much here in Australia (but you mentioned GBP so perhaps you’re in UK). Whatever. I bought a refurb Dell Latitude 3120 for AU$229
mfg yr 2021 Intel® Pentium® Silver N6000 @ 1.10GHz 8Gb RAM Intel UHD graphics Intel Wi-Fi 5 9560 (160 MHz) Bluetooth 5.0 Display: 1366 x 768 11.6" touchscreen 2-in-1 Disc: M.2 256Gb PCIe NVME Class 35 SSD 1.35kg
Runs voidlinux like it was born to it. It’s my travel laptop.
intel macbook air works good for me, with debian and xfce
-1 for intel macbooks. Horrible cooling and poor hardware support. Source, I own one.
Horrible cooling is the last couple of years of Intel MacBooks. Nothing to do with Linux.
If you run them with a “balanced profil” in Linux, they run a bit slower but the fan stays quiet. It is probably what macOS does.
Before 2019 or so, they run awesome. I mean, the newer ones are faster so they run great too even in balanced. I guess it depends what you pay for them.
The older ones are crazy cheap these days and, in my view, great value.
I have recently bought 2 dirt cheap thinkpads, one for me and one for the wife.
T490s - i5 intel
T14s - Ryzen 5 AMDBoth are tick all your requirements except for the numbpad, the T14s is definitely worth the extra money, though. It can even handle some medium gaming.
Both have upgradeable nvme ssds. However the ram is soldered on the “s” versions of these laptops so find one with 16gb or more.The generic answer for this is to get a refurbished thinkpad. Pretty much any T-series fit your needs and there’s plenty of pre-leased corporate machines around which are refurbished and often have even a some kind of warranty.
This…is not the best answer. You need to be REALLY SPECIFIC about model numbers now that Lenovo has pollutes that brand space.
polluted, how?
I think what just_another_person means that Lenovo, specially at the beginning when they got the Think-brand from IBM years ago, tried to ride the brand and released sub-par laptops under ThinkPad -brand. At least some of the L-series were closer to what you could get from your local supermarket than actual work machines.
The brand-riding is now greatly less and the crappy ones generally aren’t the models you can find refurbished from 3rd party retailer. I’m currently using T495 and it was ~300€ from a sale couple years ago, now you apparently can get L13 for less than that. And of course, when you buy used units do your homework and only make deal with a reputable seller, there’s always an option that previous owner didn’t treat the thing nicely.
While you’re generally right, the T-series is a solid business laptop. Only thing I would add is steer clear of anything with “Yoga” in the name. They can be sleek, but very few of those ever impressed me.
No. Only if you guess the right one. That’s the problem that OP is asking about.
Dell latitude 14 inch 5430 or similar, cheap ish. Its got all the wants and needs. Plenty of ports. Its dell so it’ll survive forever.
I’m loving the new Snapdragon laptops, especially if you don’t have any heavy (read: gaming) workloads!
sub 200 GBP / 250USD I guess
Last time I checked most were starting at 700+
Whoops! I did miss that part, my bad!!
Refurbished Thinkpad. The answer is always refurbished Thinkpad.
Yep. I’m using a used ThinkPad X1 Carbon. 8 years old and running Linux like a dream
what are they like for duability - e.g. knocks from being put in and pulled out of a rucksack
Some of the best you can get in terms of durability. You might pay for it a little in weight and thickness though compared to some ultra thin models.
Lenovo also sells older models for dirt cheap on their website sometimes.
A light Chromebook?
t480 or t470
I’ve had great results with various refurbished Dell Latitudes from eBay over the years. I have a stack of about 5 or 6 of 'em and they’ve all run many mainstream Linux distros with fantastic out-of-the-box support. I pass 'em out to members of the household whenever a laptop is needed and they’ll usually get the job done.
I’d just type in “Dell Latitude” on eBay and filter by price and such. I suspect any model with an i5 and 8GB RAM oughta be fine for light programming work. I’ve found sellers with high ratings (like 97% or higher) and thousands of sales are pretty reliable (and tend to have return policies in case you get a lemon). Just test all the hardware (webcam, microphone, headphone jack, USB ports, ethernet, etc) as soon as you get it.
I’ve saved a lot of money over the years buying secondhand, and these machines have been running without a hiccup for years of casual use.
They’re not light though!
My 5290 definately is. But it’s slightly thick. 12-13 inchers are still portable in my opinion.
If you’re going to hang out in coffeeshops just get whatever has a clearly visible Apple logo and spend the rest of your money on a beanie, airpods and fake glasses.
Try Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5.
I got myself an old EEE PC for exactly that purpose. (Except, substitute python with lua).
8h battery life, cost me €20 and does what it’s supposed to. Just make sure you get one with an Atom N280 or better. The popular N270 is 32bit only, and more and more programs are dropping 32bit support. Some of them you can DIY compile for 32bit, some you really don’t want to.
(For example, compiling Node on an Atom N270 takes around 3 days.)
I had one with an N270 first and replaced it with one with an N450 to get 64bit.
Maxed it out with 2GB RAM, a cheapo €10 SSD that maxes out SATA and overclocked it to 2GHz.
It’s not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s totally ok for editing text files with Kate and compiling with platformio.
